The New Wave

I was in sixth year when first got into activism. It was the year of the Marriage Equality Referendum but due to the school workload wasn’t able to go out and campaign. That feeling of not being able to fight for my rights is what ended up politicising me. So when found out about the Repeal campaign in my first year of college, decided wanted to do something. began attending the Marches for Choice, carried out stunts based around the abortion pill with ROSA and other pro-choice groups, including a Handmaid’s protest outside the Dáil. started throwing myself into whatever was happening.

It was very important to see that it wasn’t just politicians involved in the Repeal campaign, it was actual people who had gone through abortions or who were looking at the situation and saying ‘No this isn’t fair, we should do something about this’. It showed that we are at a point in Ireland where it is people power pushing movements forward and creating change.

After we won Repeal, there was at first a renewed sense of hope at Dublin Pride but it felt like it was being overshadowed by corporations. Thomas and recognised that there was a movement in that, that there were people who were waiting for the next campaign. There had been movements such as the Trans Healthcare campaign so we saw the opportunity to organise a Trans Pride that would be a radical and grassroots event which would hopefully kickstart a wider movement for trans rights. think what made it take off so quickly when it hadn’t before was the aftermath of the Repeal movement. The topic of bodily autonomy was in the air. There was also an energy around Repeal that politicised a lot of secondary school students in the same way that the Marriage Equality did for me.

My own identity was also something that pushed me to want to start a Trans Pride movement. identify as non-binary, an identity that is not currently recognised by the Irish State. Many people don’t know what being non-binary is or that it is a trans identity. This is down to people not being educated properly in school. The school system is very outdated, it is run primarily by the Catholic Church and because of this, the sex education that we get in school isn’t good enough. It’s not giving young LGBT+ people the information that they need.

If you look at the movement for fair housing that has arisen, you can see that it is building momentum and is about to become a huge thing. The idea that if we come together we can make proper change is prevalent in the minds of young people. We hope that Trans Pride will take on a similar momentum, we want to make it bigger and more anti-capitalist. There are so many issues that aren’t being acknowledged at main Pride that we hope to draw attention to and deal with in the future.

Trans Pride was for me a political protest led by trans people, for trans people, which centred on the voices of our community. It didn’t accept pinkwashing and the influence of corporations who actively harm our community but who are still allowed to march in our Pride parades.

We wanted Trans Pride to be something that sparked a radical grassroots movement that would fight for real equality and liberation for trans people. identify as genderqueer and my own family are deeply homophobic and transphobic. know that a lot of my friends who fall somewhere on the LGBT+ spectrum have a similar experience. A lifetime of watching people that love and care about suffering because of their gender identity, suffering because they just want to express who they are as human beings, suffering instead of being able to live the life they want.

What we need is better health care. We need a huge investment in health care services, especially the mental health department. We need a better social housing programme. The statistics aren’t available in Ireland but international studies show that LGBT+ people make up roughly 40 percent of homeless youth. This is due to us having a higher rate of being disowned or having to leave home due to it being an unsafe environment.

We need an end to the inhumane Direct Provision system which locks up asylum seekers. It was not long ago that a trans woman who wasn’t being kept in the right gendered facility died in a Galway Direct Provision centre. The entire system needs to be abolished, which is why we had a speaker from one of the centres at Trans Pride.

We also need the church to be removed from any part of legislative decision making. We need a complete separation of church and State so that trans people can receive the proper sex education and general education that they need. We need a real social and cultural shift and that can be lead by people.

There will definitely be another Trans Pride in Dublin next year and we hope to work with some other groups in different parts of the country to organise similar Trans Pride events in places like Cork and Galway. In the meantime, if there’s anything that we can do to help facilitate the needs of the trans community we would love to do it. Whether that’s looking at the nature of Dublin Pride and what it needs to be, or working with other grassroots LGBT+ groups in various activist movements. We will do anything that we can.

What got me into activism was the Marriage Equality Referendum. It was a pivotal point in my life. saw people who had never been involved in politics before work together because they understood that people from all walks of life were needed in order to win. People had a fire lit inside them that made them get up to go out and pursue change.

At the moment am working with multiple groups, from groups trying to promote proper sexual health education, particularly for LGBT+ people, to groups who are working to expose the cover-up of abuse within the Catholic Church, to working with my college to tackle the current housing crisis.

I have not been affected by the housing crisis but know people who have had to leave home because they were kicked out or because they couldn’t pay their rent or their mortgage. This is an issue that crosses all lines in terms of race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexuality and religious beliefs.I have seen people whose mental and physical health have suffered extremely negative consequences as a result of being homeless. People are being treated less than human and it is disgusting to see.

Homelessness has been a massive problem in Ireland since before was born and it’s difficult to comprehend how action is only being taken now to try and put an end to it. Standing up when you see something and saying ‘enough is enough’ is a relatively new thing in Ireland. feel that if we don’t do that, if we don’t continue to occupy houses, to march or to sit down in the middle of O’Connell Street and shut the city down, then there won’t be an end to it. The young people and the working class people of Ireland know this and they know the severe damage that this crisis is doing. This issue has to be solved by legislation. We need the people in government to actually start understanding the impact homelessness is having on people who are not just numbers or statistics.

In this country, we don’t have any legislation against hate crimes. We can’t wait for that legislation to be brought in, people should not have to live in fear because of who they are. We can’t let a society that puts shame and stigma on people thrive, it needs to be fought against. We can’t let ourselves go backwards, we need to go forward and to learn from our mistakes and failures. want to say to young people who don’t understand what’s going on with the homelessness crisis - study to try and understand and start fighting. Even if you don’t know it right now, it’s more than likely affecting someone you know. Understanding these issues opens a door that allows you to help people and make a difference so don’t wait and hope for change - make it happen.

The campaign has four demands on both the government and the HSE with the primary one being to change the model of care provided to trans people in Ireland. The current one is a very outdated psychiatric model that was developed in the early ‘80s. Trans healthcare has moved on since then, the World Health Organisation recently declassified it as a psychiatric or mental disorder and it is not legally allowed to be treated as such. However, Ireland is one of the last developed nations in the world still treating it as a psychiatric disorder.

Trans people have to have a psychiatric diagnosis to access treatment and the waiting lists to obtain such a diagnosis can be up to three years long. What we want is for Ireland to introduce WPATH, which is the international highest standard practice of care which runs off an informed consent model.

The consultants who are currently leading trans healthcare in Ireland are quite conservative. Most people don’t know this, but there are no restrictions on the prescription of HRT. GP’s are capable of prescribing it, however, the consultants are putting a stop to that. People are afraid to treat us unless we are diagnosed with some disorder and that is just not good enough. Statistics have shown that pre-medical transition transgender people have some of the highest suicide rates in the country. We can do better than that. Three years for hormone treatment is too much, some people just can’t wait that long. We don’t have to be losing people to waiting lists.

Another huge issue is that the diagnoses people do get are centred mainly around binary trans people. A lot of the time non-binary people won’t be given the recommendation to start hormone replacement therapy. It’s the same for people with autism and personality disorders, which doesn’t make sense -you can have both. You can be trans and have autism and you can be trans and have Borderline Personality Disorder, these things are not mutually exclusive, yet they are considered as co-morbid conditions. If non-binary recognition comes through after the Gender Recognition Act review, it might change things but at the moment, because it’s not a legal gender status, there’s not a lot that can be done.

There is only one surgeon in Ireland who can perform top surgery for trans masc people. There is no surgeon in Ireland who can perform what we would call ‘bottom surgery’ or ‘genital affirmation surgery’. So you’re going back to this notion of sending Irish people abroad for very invasive procedures with no aftercare at home.

Young people in Ireland right now have such a huge voice, we’re in a time where if they see something that isn’t right, they’re willing to get up and say it even if it doesn’t directly aff ect them. always say that this isn’t my campaign, this is our campaign. We’re waiting for a response from Leinster House on a joint health committee and once we get that, you can bet that we’ll be back out on the streets.

OPINION: Jayson Pope

Activism

The first time the word ‘activism’ was used regarding something said or did, was 14. loved it. There was something powerful, something strong, something romantic about the idea of being an activist. So many people looked up to were activists, so it made sense that wanted to be one too.

But I’m not 14 anymore - I’m 19. I’ve always had a habit of getting in my own head and reflecting, and in the last five years have reflected on my work as an activist. always come to the same conflicted conclusion - do want a world full of youth activists, or one with none?

Youth activism has enriched my life in many ways. learned a lot of skills, gained a lot of opportunities, and grew as a person from the projects and events engaged with. have no stage fright, I’ve become better able to articulate my ideas and opinions, and I’ve gained a sense of determination that will aid me in many areas of life for years to come. am immensely proud of everything I’ve done as an activist - from YouTube videos when was 15, to the Youth Advisory Panel of the LGBTI+ National Youth Strategy as an 18 year-old. hope every young person can reflect on their teen years and see things they are proud of achieving, to see they’ve grown and become a competent young adult.

But why did anyone need a 14 year-old trans boy to speak out? We live in a world where from a young age, there can be a need for self advocacy. Coming out is self advocacy, and every time stood up for my identity from that day onward was self advocacy. Many people who read this will be all too familiar with the inexplicable fear that comes with standing up for yourself as an LGBTQ+ person, and for people to experience that so young has an impact. There have been times where I’ve felt that impact. wondered why had to fight so hard for me and my peers, when it looked like everyone else was just living. I’ve wanted to step away and just not think about it for a while, not fight my corner, to just be. But self advocacy as an LGBTQ+ young person isn’t optional.

I will always be grateful for my chance to be an activist. It has definitely changed my life for the better. But want people to read this and understand: youth activists are people, they are powerful, they are important. And they are still young people. They need to be young people too - to have fun, to laugh, to have respite from the energy activism takes from you. If you’re an adult, stand up so kids don’t have to. If you’re a young person, do not wear yourself thin from advocating for others and forgetting to take care of you. To everyone: be an activist today, so we can have a better tomorrow.