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Roxana Toloza Chacon
Hello, and welcome back to the Movable Type podcast brought to you by University College London. Movable Type is a graduate peer-reviewed journal edited every year by PhD students from the English Department at UCL. Please be sure to follow us on social media to stay up to date on our latest issue, new episode releases and more. We are on Twitter @MovableTypeUCL Instagram @MovableType_UCL and Facebook as mobile type or at Mt UCL. And if you want to browse our latest issue while you listen, head on over to UCL.ac.uk/movable-type. This episode of the Movable type podcast celebrates LGBTQ history month and because we have so much to share with you, we are pleased to say that this month's podcast will be a two-parter. Part one will feature two fantastic writers and researchers whose work centres around queer theory and praxis. Dr. Noreen Massud lecturer at the University of Bristol and Talen Wright, a psychiatry PhD researcher at UCL. Part two will include interviews with Ben Miller, co-host of Bad Gays podcast and queer historian and author Juliet Jacques.
We are very excited to share these interviews with you in a spirit of celebration. However, we also recognise the need to respond to the context in which these episodes are being recorded. At the end of 2021, UCL made the decision to leave Stonewall’s diversity champions scheme and its workplace Equality Index. It did so despite the positions, resolutions and votes of the LGBTQ staff and student community, its EDI committee, both UCU and Unison and the Student Union in favour of a vote by its academic board. Broadly, this decision was based on the idea that Stonewall support of trans rights runs counter to academic freedom, and could inhibit discussions about sex and gender. But for many, this decision discredits trans identities and is symptomatic of what Jeffrey Ingle, the head of media at Stonewall has called a tsunami of transphobia. Stonewall is the largest LGBTQ plus rights organisation in Europe, and for the last 30 years, it has helped create transformative change in the lives of LGBTQ+ people in the UK. Its Workplace Equality Index is a benchmarking tool for employers to measure their progress on lesbian, gay, bi and trans inclusion. While the diversity champions programme is the leading employers’ programme for ensuring all LGBTQ plus staff are free to be themselves in institutional environments. If you want to know more about the ramifications of this decision, and what you can do about it, we will make links and information available through our relevant platforms. In addition, we would like to highlight that this podcast is by and for the LGBTQ plus community at UCL and beyond. We support trans rights and condemn the ongoing harm. UCLA withdrawal has caused LGBTQ students and researchers. Trans people should be treated with respect and dignity. This should not be an issue of debate. We also acknowledge that the views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the individuals and do not necessarily reflect the official policies, views or positions of any institutions with which they are affiliated.
Our first guest is Noreen Massud, BBC New Generation Thinker and lecturer at University of Bristol. She specialises in 20th century literature and affect theory. She has previously examined short form writing and aphorism in the work of Stevie Smith, with her monograph, Hard Language being released this year. She's currently working on two books, academic and trade, using recent developments in queer and affect theory. Her work focuses on how apparently dull and unrevealing flat landscapes articulate difficult or tricky feelings.
Welcome, Noreen. Thank you so much for joining us here on the movable type podcast. Would you like to introduce yourself for our listeners?
Noreen Masud
Sure. I'm Noreen Masud. I'm a lecturer at the University of Bristol in 20th century literature. My first book, Hard Language, is hopefully coming out this year or next year. And I'm working on a new monograph called Flat Feeling about how we might think with flat landscapes in the 20th century.
RTC
That's so exciting. I have so many questions about your work and this idea of flatness and literature. But before that, we would like to have a bit of a discussion regarding academic freedom and research spaces, specifically as it pertains the LGBTQ+ community, in academia in general. So what are your thoughts? How are your feelings in regards to the UCL decision to leave Stonewall?
NM
Thank you so much for asking. Yes. So I thought long and hard about coming on this podcast when I was invited, because it's LG- I mean, apart from anything else, LGBT History Month. And that sat, it sat very oddly for me to come on a UCL podcast to talk about my research on queer theory in part in the backdrop against the backdrop of UCL’s decision to cut ties with Stonewall. I condemn the decision absolutely. And I came on this podcast to give me the opportunity to say that. This decision makes UCL an unsafe place, not only for trans students, but for queer students. For whom the rhetoric and the media, to which this is a response clearly it’s a political decision, which is really reminiscent of the sort of the scare that surrounded gay and lesbian people earlier in the 20th century. It is a threat to trans people, it's a threat to queer people. It makes UCL an unsafe place, the LGBT community.
RTC
Yeah, I completely understand what you're saying. And, moving forward, what do you think students and staff as individuals can do on their part, both at institutional level, but also as individuals, to work towards academic freedom, but also safety for work on queer and LGBTQ studies and support LGBTQ+ academics and students as well?
NM
Well, UCL or generally?
RTC
Both!
NM
Well, what we can do is to signal to trans students in as many ways as we can, that our classrooms are places where they will be safe, we need to do the research and listen to trans people about what makes them feel safe in these spaces. And we need to continue to campaign in as many ways as we can to put in place the things that trans people tell us they need. This fundamentally comes back to this, we need to listen to trans people, and we need to believe what they say.
RTC
Thank you. Thank you so much. And how do you see this, specifically as impacting research in academic spaces?
NM
I don't think we can do any sort of good research when the university that houses us is upholding principles that are so inimical to personal and academic freedom. The cloud hangs over everything we do.
RTC
Yeah, you're absolutely right. Thank you so much for calling attention to this. So moving on to your own research, which you've mentioned is a lot on queer theory and flatness. We would like to ask a few questions on your 2021 monograph on Flat Feeling and Stevie Smith. First of all, you write about how inhabiting flatness offers the blessing of potential indifference to oneself with a wider human pattern. And before we get more into Stevie Smith, specifically, we would really like to ask you – as a term that evades easy definitions, how would you conceptualise flatness a word that in an abstract for an essay you wrote, I found this brilliant, you said that it's a word that claims implicitly that no unpacking remains to be done. So how do you move from that, that space to like work on flatness and define flatness as a space for all this wonderful inquiry and research?
NM
Totally, well, of course the word flatness makes that claim but and the way that it is deployed in so much research and writing believes that claim but we don't need to believe that claim. And my definition of flatness, the way I use it, and this is perhaps idiosyncratic, but it's any space, whether that's a physical or an interpersonal space, which draws our attention in which there is nevertheless nothing to look at. And, but at which we nevertheless cannot stop looking. So there's nothing to see but we can't look away. And this hinges on the kind of double meaning of the word flat. The word flat means something sort of empty in which there's no feature in which when you have a flat tone of voice, it's something which doesn't have any kind of emphases in the right places. So it's something which is empty, supposedly, and but at the same time when we say something flatly when we say for instance, we make we make a declaration flatly, what we mean is that there's absolute emphasis, we mean that there is no dialogue possible. It’s, yeah, it's a sort of ultimate emphasis. So flat is simultaneously something very full and very empty. And those meanings absolutely interpenetrate each other. So flatness is something that's so empty, that it becomes full or maybe so full that it becomes empty. And that double meaning - a thing that is both empty and intense – offers, in my work, a kind of model for the human relationship, I think, and maybe we'll talk about that later in the podcast.
RTC
Yeah. Thank you so much. That is so interesting. And why do you think this happened that like flatness is so often overlooked and considered and or considered affectless? Yeah. Why? Why is that? Is it the emptiness, and how did you come to be so interested in it?
NM
I think it's the fundamental reason why we overlook flatness is very simple, I think I think it comes from a colonial framing, that something without content that we can either see or quantify or count that that something is something that needs to be filled, or maybe it's failed to be filled, or it's lost whatever it had that made it important. Yeah, and I see that as a colonial paradigm. And that's why we overlook flatness. In terms of my own interest in flatness, it started when I was writing my doctorate on Stevie Smith, which is going to become Hard Language in either this year or next. I've been grappling mostly in that thesis with Smith's affects. Her poetry is very strange, it sort of signals its simplicity, and its contingency as randomness. But equally, it refuses to quite allow these designations. It doesn't know whether it's simple or difficult, whether it's trivial or important. And I noticed how often Smith and her characters dwell lovingly in flat landscapes, whether those are real or imagined. She returns over and over again to Lincolnshire, which is a very flat space, or the Cambridgeshire fens, also very flat in her novels and poetry. And what I reached, the point I reached was that Smith loved flat landscapes, because they offered a space which let her perform or enact or practice a preoccupation, which I think underpins all her poetry, how we speak, without intimacy, what it means for writing to constitute a kind of withdrawal from relationship. So the flat landscapes in the relationships they enabled became a sort of stand-in or a space in which Smith's overriding concerns with how we speak to each other, could be enacted, particularly as women, particularly as queer people, particularly as people of colour.
NM
Oh, my God, that is not only fascinating, but it's actually quite beautiful. You say, like, flat spaces and surface as a point of encounter and contact. I think that's so lovely. So, in that, to what extent do the writers and specifically Stevie Smith, since we're still talking about her poetry, that you look at use flatness as a means of resistance to normativity, especially writing outside the nuclear family unit.
NM
So I suppose the way I think about it is that flatness is less for these writers I look at a way of resisting normativity it's more of a sort of, it gives form to a sense of self, other and environment that cannot be accommodated by normativity. It's not so much an act of resistance, maybe as a sort of necessary space in which one has to dwell. The flat landscapes for these authors, it becomes a way of expressing a self I think, which falls outside traditional Western assumptions about relationship and intimacy and the roles that the each should play. To Smith herself, she lives outside traditional family patterns. She never married, she was engaged once but called it off. And she spent her life living with her, her aunt, until the aunt died and Smith died fairly soon after that. So one of the examples I like to use to think about this and to think about these kinds of resistance to heteronormative Western family structures, it’s in DH Lawrence's difficult and quite troubling novel Kangaroo, where there are these writers from England looking at the flat Australian bush, with their sort of Western paradigms firmly in place and having a sort of struggle about how to look at this landscape. And one of the characters, Harriet, uses these sort of sentimental but I think really important terms to think about it. She says, ‘I can't tell you how it moves me, Australia. I can't tell you how Australia moves me. It feels as if no one had ever loved it. Australia feels as if it had never been loved and never come out into the open, as if man had never loved it and made it a happy country, a bride country or a mother country.’ And you know if you've read Sara Ahmed, right, we know it's fairly clear what's going on here. And that coming out is coming out into the open, you know, that's Lawrence's predating the first use the OED gives of ‘coming out’, but I think that pun has traction here: the Australian landscape and this western paradigm is sort of refusing to make its sexual debut. It's not coming out like it's having its coming out ball like a 17 year old girl, it’s not rising into patterns of expected desire. So Sara Ahmed describes how happiness scripts get offered to women, patterns of behaviour or life which are going to bring, supposedly going to bring them happiness. And Australia, in this paradigm is refusing these scripts of sentimental happiness via bridehood or motherhood, which, as a Western woman, as a heterosexual western woman are coming really easily to hand for her: she's married, Australia's refusing love. It's refusing the patterns of love, which are all Harriet can get a grip on. So yeah, in that sense, flatness, in its existence - I suppose we could say yeah, I’m coming around and contradicting myself. It can embody a sort of resistance to expected patterns of normativity, even as it is also the only shape in which those for these authors in which those selves can exist, if that makes sense.
RTC
No, it makes total sense. And on the topic, hearing you describe, or talking about how Laurence and authors like Laurence described Australia as this completely unloved and uncared for landscape makes me think of your appearance on the High Theory podcast where you spoke about the flat space as a site of indigenous erasure. It seems to me that there's this connection being made of like, because it seems barren through this Western lens that you mentioned it, like they are projecting that view onto this landscape just because it's different from what they perceive of as something cultivated and loved. So yeah, can you tell us a bit more about how that operates? And how you see the potential for decolonizing this view of flat spaces?
NM
Absolutely. So, in western writing at this time, that was sort of the major way really, in which flat spaces tend to be treated as a sort of empty space. And that's either in the American prairie or the Australian bush. And of course these spaces are not empty in any way at this time. It's just it's absolutely it's, and certainly not empty of human life: the homes of indigenous people that have been used in traditional ways of indigenous people, but persistently, you know, one of the major ways in which colonisation got a grip in the US certainly is through casting Native American spaces, whether that's reserves or spaces that hadn't yet been absorbed into that system, as ‘waste’ as empty: they're not being used, and therefore we can take them you know, like, they're not being used in the right way - the ‘right’ way, in inverted commas - that we can just take them. The rhetoric is consistently about these spaces as empty – either they're already empty when they're encountered: they're great sort of inviting unused spaces, or they've been made empty after Western intervention. There's a lot about looking out at sort of the cultivated prairie and thinking, ah, once the Indian roamed wild here, this is Willa Cather I’m paraphrasing here, and now and now he's vanished, and instead we've built civilization here. So it's a fantasy that revolves both around sort of indigenous invisibility and indigenous disappearance. Now, Kangaroo by D H Lawrence is a really interesting example. It feels like the kind of novel where what's happening is sort of more than can quite be accommodated by the author himself, you know, what's happening is it's is the anxiety spilling over exceeding the capacity of the author to accurately represent them. There's so much, so many instances with main character Summers is sort of sitting and looking out at the landscape and being like ‘I just can't get a grip on it’. You know, what's it secret was it's what's it hiding? You know, what's it keeping from me, which all sort of things which come out of a Western way of looking at the landscape. And he talks about the hollow distances of this landscape. And he says he can sense something in it, but he can't see it. At no point in this novel is there a mention of Aboriginal Australians, that’s completely absent from the narratives but what we have, we have the word Aboriginal, but it's used to describe cliffs, it’s tree trunks, rocks, the dust they're described as aboriginal and the closest brush we get with an indigenous person comes through a description of the landscape, as a face with little or no features a dark face Aboriginal. So the featurelessness of this landscape on which Summers can get no grip becomes identical with this open secret of continued Aboriginal presence and survival in a land that supposedly empty, and neither Summers nor Lawrence can see it or succeed in not seeing it. That's what I think is going on. That happens mostly at the beginning of the novel. And then at the end of the novel, there's a sort of series of there was sort of various political and upheavals and personal struggles going on at the same time, which it would take too long to sort of go into, but what happens is basically a catastrophe. And then at the end, we've got Summers coming to a kind of terms with Australia, or finding a way in which maybe that Western paradigm is laid to rest. And it's key that it's temporary. I'll come back to that in a moment. Australia's cutting itself off, they think, from sort of love and lovability in Western terms. It's refusing, as I said a little bit before to sort of enter the economy of love, which is digestible to a western audience in which in which is a kind of give and take where it can respond to respond in legible ways and be responded to, in that kind of what some critics what Kirsty Martin, I think, calls a rhythm of sympathy, which is, weirdly absent from this Lawrence novel. And this can seem like a sort of act of, of psychic hostility. But what I'm interested in, in the way that this is sort of spacious, accommodation of the other. I think a lot of the things around me when I write sort of creep inevitably into my into my thinking, and the thing that always comes into my head when I talk about this as my cat. And when cats sit with their back to you, but near you, what they're doing is, it's a really good exemplification of this kind of relationship where you are in relation, but not in exchange, you're in relationship and not an intimacy. And I find that fascinating. So, yeah, that relationship come, there's a really interesting sequence at the end of the novel and it lasts several pages, where Summers seeks relief in this indifferent Australian landscape and it's specifically encoded in terms of flatness. You've got sort of the black snails on the flat rocks, or the flat rocks near the cold jetty, the flat rocks he comes back and back to them, these flat things that don't give. It sort of accommodates that observer without being interested in a relationship based around mutual exchange. And without being interested in giving itself over to the Western terms of intimacy, which Summers demands from it. And the basis of this new pleasure that Summers derives from the landscape, it derives from this refusal to participate in legible passionate love. So, yeah. What's interesting, then is then the Summerses, they leave Australia, I think that's really interesting. What that does is it's a thinly veiled, autobiographical novel, Lawrence also left Australia at this point. But there's something there, isn't it about finding a new mode of relationship that then you don't know what to do with. And then you just leave? You know? Yeah. So it's very interesting, that sort of working against itself and its mechanisms is revealing more than maybe it quite knows, I think, Sorry, I interrupted you.
RTC
No, no, please. All, everything that you've been saying is so fascinating. So thank you very much. You mentioned this wonderful example with your cat and the moment of intimacy and intimacy, but no exchange, I think that also connects very well with the current moment that we are living we are living – and this is the well known aphorism, right of recent years – is that we're going through unprecedented times, and it feels like this idea of different networks of intimacy and exchange, or not exchange and leaving, or impossibility of leaving emptiness, all of that speaks directly to what we're going through, you know, as a global society, and also possibly as individuals. So what do you think flatness has to say about these times? And how can you sort of see the value of using flatness as the lens of analysing our current moment?
NM
Thank you. So there's two parts to my thoughts about this, I think and one part I went into great detail on the recent High Theory podcast about how flatness can be part of our political economic solidarity. So I'm not going to go into detail on that here. What I want to say here, I think is, is really simple and obvious, but very, for me, very important. And it's, you know, I'm speaking here to UCL management, I think, and it relates again, to what we talked about at the beginning. In terms of UCL cutting ties with Stonewall. I think flatness helps us sit with things and people whom we might not be able to immediately accommodate within our existing interpretive frameworks and cultural assumptions. If you’re cis you will never know what it feels like to be trans, you will never know what it feels like to not sit right in the gender you were assigned at birth. So flatness involves, at its best at its most redemptive flatness involves taking people at their word very simply about their experiences. I can't understand but I believe you. And I believe you when you tell me what you need. And I think flatness, if we continue along this line of thinking, in my view issues as strong moral demand that we protect and support the trans community.
RTC
Thank you. Thank you so much for that insight. It's really beautiful. Could you also expand? How would you like to take flatness forward in literary studies as well?
NM
Yeah. So I think it's really important to say here that that my work on flatness is part of this huge, huge, huge sort of movement in literary study going on particularly in affect theory. I think, I think our calls Xine Yao calls it the turn towards negativity, I think in affect studies, and Yao is this groundbreaking part of that. So are people like Rachel Radha, Lauren Berlant, Murray Rooty. What I think flatness in my conceptualization adds to that huge swell and a huge shift in affect theory is maybe a question a way of, of addressing the question of intimacy. And I think that the hidden question and a lot of recent work, in terms of negative affect is how could we do intimacy better? And I'm actually interested in moving away from intimacy, I'm interested in relationship without intimacy, which feels like a contradiction, but I actually don't think is, I'm interested in areas in which intimacy is for whatever reason, not felt to be possible, or desirable. There are certain people whose worlds have made it impossible for them to be in intimacy, and how do those people live good lives? How do they write, what form does relationship take for them? So I'm interested in areas where individuals might feel safest, might make a way of surviving or writing or relating without intimacy, and all of the authors I study from Smith to the new monograph are part of that. And I take that really seriously. And I asked what might it mean to have a relationship without intimacy? What is enabled by that? What new ways of solidarity, if we take it one step further, might that make possible?
RTC
That's so amazing, and in framing your studies in flatness within this new movement, in affect, very potent, of course. And as BBC New Generation Thinker yourself, how do you see this carrying beyond literary studies? How do you feel about bringing it to a broader audience? What would you like to say about that?
NM
I love bringing my research to a broader audience and what I enjoy - Well, my research has so many different parts or ways in which we can think about it simply in terms of a flat landscape and what it makes us feel and what that enables when we have that encounter. But it also, I did a recent documentary for the BBC on puppets and the gaze and I think of the puppet’s relationship as a - puppet as enabling a mode of flat relationship. I don't use that word in the documentary. But that's the sort of the next step of my thinking. It’s a kind of intermediary between the performer and the audience, which enables the kind of mediation or kind of block of intimacy which, which nevertheless makes something something happen. Yeah. So it's, it's great fun, and I hope useful for people. And it takes Yeah, it takes lots of different forms. Sorry, that's not a very interesting answer.
RTC
No, please, it's fascinating. I was looking at your work on puppets. And I'm also very interested in them. So it was lovely to see. And before we finish the interview, I would also like to segue on other aspects of your research interests, because you are very interested in aphorisms and nonsense. And could you just mentioned a little bit what is so fascinating about that for you personally, and how do you see as it relates to intimacy or like other aspects or areas of your work?
NM
Absolutely. So all of these areas of work: the aphorism, the nonsense, the flatness and the puppets are intimately interlinked. And fundamentally the argument I make about aphorism in my in my forthcoming monograph is that aphorism provides a way of allowing the marginalised to speak without risk of an answer. To engage in dialogue as a marginalised person can be not just dangerous, it can not just sort of subject you - we come from the point of view, often that dialogue will fix everything, there's still this belief that we can enter If we can enter into a meaningful dialogue, everything will be fixed. And I think the kind of political and technological changes of the last sort of 10 plus years, it's difficult to say exactly when it happens, have shown that to be fallacious that something else needs to happen before exchange can be meaningfully conducted. So aphorism provides a way in which one can have the relief of expressing oneself, but the sealed off complete finality of the aphorism says, ‘Don't talk back to me; don't enter into dialogue. That's not going to get me anywhere’. As a marginalised person, you're not just at risk of sort of, you know, often very direct threats to your life if someone engages with what you've said, but also, the terms on which dialogue is felt to be meaningful or valid, are those set by the powerful. And within that context, meaningful dialogue between the marginalised and the powerful cannot take place. So that's where aphorism fits in to my thinking about that withdrawal from intimacy or familiar forms of communication. Now, the nonsense I think about I suppose, I've always got Camus in my head that the absurd happens when man sort of calls out to the universe for meaning, and the universe doesn't reply, you know? So it's, again, it's that what happens in that, that space where intimacy fails, or is impossible, and how do we cope with it and nonsense is one of the ways we do that. Nonsense, again, is one of the ways we speak with that, while knowing that a meaningful response is impossible. To respond to nonsense is, it's like not getting a joke. You can't do it. So it's a space again, in which you can speak without the threat of a reply, I think.
RTC
Fascinating, thank you so much for being with us today. It's been a pleasure and honour and I definitely will be thinking about, as I'm sure all our audience will be, your very interesting points.
NM
Thank you so much. And in closing, I just want to call out again to UCL to rethink its decision to cut ties with Stonewall and solidarity with all LGBTQ+ students at UCL today.
RTC
Thank you so much. Up next is an interview with Talen Wright, psychiatry PhD student researching trans mental health at UCL. She has previously held posts which investigate experiences of marginalised individuals, such as skin infections amongst people who inject drugs, LGBT mental health, and TGD experiences with HIV services, and transition-related healthcare access. She's co-investigator on the longitudinal outcomes of gender identity in children's study at the Tavistock and Portland NHS Foundation Trust. Her PhD research examines the impact of social determinants on the wellbeing of trans people. Hello, Talen so nice to meet you. Welcome to the podcast. Could you please introduce yourself to our listeners?
Talen Wright
Yeah, sure. So my name is Talen. I am a trans woman and PhD student here at UCL, specifically the division of psychiatry. My pronouns are she/her and yeah, I do a lot of research into trans mental health and trans health more broadly as well, such as HIV, self-testing, and young adolescent LGBT mental health as well.
RTC
Amazing. Could you give us a bit of detail on your project?
TW
Yeah, sure, so my kind of PhD is in epidemiology and mental health sciences. So I'm doing a quantitative exploration of microaggressions and their impacts on, or their associations with, I should say, speaking epi-ways on depression, anxiety and suicidality. So as part of that, I also have a bunch of other things such as gender minorities, stressors, and loneliness and rumination as potential key risk factors with the kind of mental health burden in the trans community. So I can talk a bit more about that as well. But in terms of the project, I'm doing a big cross sectional study to begin with. So it's a big kind of survey of trans people and non-binary people in the UK if they're aged 18 or older. It's been, kind of the recruitment’s been going on via social media, mostly through Twitter. And, yeah, we've had a really great response so far. I mean, I've managed to recruit 811 trans and non-binary people. That’s in terms of who’s accessed the survey, but in completion, it's a little bit less, but it's still a great number is a good turnout. Especially since like the last biggest survey on Trump's mental health was back in 2012 in the UK, so it's been about 10 years, where they recruited about 900 to 1000. So I'm hoping to either get there or beat it is the plan Yeah, so that's kind of in the second part of the study is ecological momentary assessment study. And that's just a very fancy way of saying a kind of daily diary type survey design. So I will be using the same survey every day over three weeks, and participants will respond to that survey every day for three weeks. And the great thing about that particular methodology is it allows me to track daily fluctuations in mental health as a consequence of experiencing microaggressions, or micro affirmations. Should I explain what a microaggression is? Would that be helpful? Do you think?
RTC
I think that would be super helpful for our listeners, yes.
TW
Because the kind of issue of microaggressions I think, is really interesting. A lot of people and myself included would agree that what a microaggression is isn't necessarily micro, or necessarily aggression, they seem to be more like, kind of daily violences. Or like, at least they are felt as violences. So when someone is doing - so in the kind of broadest sense, a microaggression is kind of, it's a daily verbal, or behavioural, commonplace slight or indignity that communicates hostility towards a marginalised, or minoritized person. So it has its kind of origins within black and Asian minority ethnic communities with racial microaggressions, which is kind of like – an example of that would be someone saying, like to a black woman, like, Oh, I love your hair, let me touch your hair, and then touching their hair. That's, it's that sort of thing where, because a part of a microaggression is intentional or unintentional, I should have said, so it could have been, you know, maybe there's no intention to cause offence or to cause harm, but harm has been caused regardless. And the kind of theory is that a kind of single event microaggression could have a detrimental impact on someone's wellbeing. But I also think, and I think a lot of other scholars think that, or no-ish, maybe not in the trans community so much, but that kind of the frequency in which someone experiences microaggressions, if you're experiencing like, five or six microaggressions, every single day, that's going to have this kind of cumulative impact on your mental health over time, and lead to these sorts of big burdens of, you know, suicidal ideation, or, in other words, suicidal thoughts, and maybe even attempts and self harm. So that's what microaggressions are. And then the flip side of that, a micro-affirmation is, it's kind of like those little things that people do that displays kind of openness or acceptance of, say, your gender identity, or your cultural background, that allows you to feel like you are welcomed in a kind of social situation where you may be a minority, or marginalised person. And those I think, are equally as important for kind of building back up people's wellbeing and mental health.
RTC
That's great. That's fascinating. I definitely want to return to the point of affirmation versus aggression and environments. But before, I'm just very curious about a research aspect that you mentioned, which is access and who is partaking in the survey? Because clearly these data is - the previous data is from 2012, so in dire need of an update. But I'm curious about age and access, because you've had such a great turnout. 800 people plus is amazing. However, how would you ensure or like try to reach perhaps older, trans and non-binary people. And as you said, like, how you characterise microaggressions? How would you make sure to people maybe things that they didn't consider as microaggression? How would you engage in this discourse to make it like as cross sectional as possible?
TW
That is a great question, because it's something I've grappled with a lot. When it comes to yes, sort of, kind of, I suppose internet legibility or kind of understanding of how to use the internet, the older generations tend not to kind of quite understand technology in the same way as younger generations do. At the moment, it seems to me that we're doing okay, we've got quite a few people in the kind of upper age groups. But then, of course, there is bias there potentially. Because these are people who do have literacy in terms of the internet. And for those who don't, maybe they are experiencing more loneliness and less community connectedness. I think this is one of the problems with research is like how do you diversify your recruitment strategy is to really access the population you’re trying to access and one of the big issues with trans health research in the UK specifically and potentially more worldwide, is the lack of representative data on trans people. So you know, we can't say for any certainty what the trends community looks like in the UK in terms of maybe, you know, ethnic distribution or, you know, disability, and religious identity and so on and sexual orientation. So it's very tricky to kind of try and figure out who we’re accessing it is it's the right population to access. So the big kind of push we're doing, or at least I'm trying to do is just to diversify. So sort of think about things as representative try and think of like, good number of people in different categories or different demographics that we can actually make some decent report some decent findings on that could be beneficial to the community and intimate in mental health services. What was the other part of your question, though? You said something else that was important? I've forgotten.
RTC
Oh, I have forgotten as well! Sorry. No, but yeah, I just mentioned how it's important to update this data, and how would you make sure – oh, now I remember the microaggressions and how you explain how – I don't know because of, again, some of these ideas and what constitute as a microaggression can be, as you mentioned, tricky and complex. So how would you communicate without necessarily re-victimising? Or sort of receiving? It seems like it's potentially a very delicate area, depending on like the age conception of the people involved.
TW
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that when it came to trying to figure out how to ask about microaggressions in a way that, as you said, isn't retraumatising or triggering to the fact that, you know, someone may have experienced quite recently even and be like, you know, I just forgot about that and I remembered like, thanks a lot like, researcher at UCL, how dare you. Because I would feel the same way. But the kind of method I've used instead is to give some examples, but say that these aren't like exhaustive. So trying to think off the top of my head for like a transgender microaggression, or a gender identity based microaggression would be saying that, uh, you know, you're not really like, in my case, as a trans woman, I might say, you're not really a woman, though, are you? Like, you’re not really a woman. And that would kind of, you know, be a subtle (it wouldn't be that subtle, to be honest) but it would be something that is not so kind of impactful in the way that it might make me go and think ‘Well, am I?’ I might just say, I'm a woman, I might, I don't know, like, you know, I do a double take and it makes you think or someone giving you a funny look is technically a microaggression because it makes you kind of internalise that and think, Is it something about me, am I not passing? You know, and we can talk about passing and how problematic that is, but you do kind of think like, am I being seen as a trans person? Am I safe in this environment? And most of time, we don't feel that safe. But so like, in terms of trying to get across what a microaggression is, I've just given like, the very standard definition and said, you know, anything can be misconstrued as well, everything can be seen as a microaggression whether or not you experienced that way, or you don't. And if you do experience microaggression and you think this is a microaggression then it is therefore you have, otherwise, you know, I could end up with just a kind of 1000 page book on different microaggressions on each line and say any of these. And that would just not be very useful, I think for people but a few examples, that I tried to choose a kind of low level, like, you know, more annoyances than kind of something that would make you feel retraumatised, but I can't speak for everyone.
RTC
Of course, just as a last bit on the minutiae of the research. So will you get feedback at the end, or have you already had some feedback on the survey or some of the implications? Because this is, of course, framed within your PhD project, so it's a big project, but have you been able to sort of interact more directly with the people surveyed? What's that been like?
TW
Yeah, it's been, it's been interesting. There's been a few people who have given feedback. And so far it’s been positive, although I do understand that, like, the questions I'm asking people to fill out are incredibly depressing. Because it is about depression and anxiety and suicide, so it just make people it can be quite difficult to go through, hence why we give a kind of like, quite exhaustive list of support directed at trans people who are going through a mental health crisis. But then, you know, people feel, I feel like people want to do the study because they feel like it's gonna make a difference. And I hope it does make a difference in its own way, its small way or large way, whatever way it makes, you know, that impact. There's been a few times where there's some people because again, the trans community is very diverse. We've got very different political leanings. Very different ideas around gender, who just absolutely can't stand the survey already, because I asked a question on gender identity and how, you know, you identify with gender to try and make things as kind of inclusive as possible. But of course, that inclusivity means that people can be quite aggressively against it, which is easy to deal with, especially in you know, in terms of the data set. So if people are trying to mess up my survey, they'll have a difficult time doing so because I can kind of identify those people quite easily. But yeah, so people have been generally quite positive, kind of warning people that they should do it, but also, you know, take the time, and this is why we also implemented a kind of save option, so you can save and return to the survey at a later point if things are too difficult, because you know, it’s a 20 to 30 minute survey, depending on how quick people are. And that can be, you know, talking about your depression, suicide, self-harm, for even like five minutes can be a bit much so people are returning and saving, which is great to see.
RTC
That's, that's great. That's fascinating to know, and, like reflect upon how to conduct research ethically, especially research that impacts other people. And on the topic of just researching research environments, and you talked about affirmation versus aggression. So what is it like working within the UCL framework, specifically as it's a university that deals a lot with public surveys or like public studies, studies that have quite a very real impact in policymaking? But also, in light of the recent Stonewall UCL development that we've been discussing throughout the episode?
TW
Yeah. So being a trans person at UCL is – I've always felt safe here until relatively recently with the Stonewall with UCL’s decision not to rejoin the diversity champions and the workplace Equality Index. You know, I did my masters here back in 2016. And I had a great experience, you know, the division of Psychiatry where I work is, it's very, very welcoming and very lovely. I've always had like, no issues whatsoever. And generally around UCL’s campus, I've always felt completely fine and safe. But more recently with the, with the Stonewall decision, it's, it's felt challenging, it's kind of one of those situations again, where, you know, I, a lot of minoritized, marginalised people will experience a sort of hyper vigilance around others where, you know, you kind of look, you try to see the good in people, but actually, all you can really see is something bad's going to happen. There's expectation, that negative expectation of bad things coming your way, especially with things so widely publicised, like the Stonewall decision that UCL made. Well, actually, the interesting part about that is because it was the academic board that decided to not rejoin and actually, there's been overwhelming support from all of the, like unions and the study groups, the student clubs and groups dedicated to LGBT equality and diversity that have really pushed to kind of return to Stonewall and to include them in – to allow for better representation and help I suppose for LGBT students and staff. So it's been difficult, it's hard to really kind of like figure out how I feel most of the time because it's just one of the things where like, you know, I'm doing the work of trans mental health research, and then I stopped working and I look outside and it's like, all the world still on fire with transphobia. It's like, okay, great. I can't escape it. But yeah, so it's been tricky.
RTC
Have you find it has had any impact on your research? Or like, do you foresee it having any impact on your research? Whether, you know, internally or pragmatically.
TW
Actually, I think it has slightly. I've noticed since Stonewall’s decision when I reshared my study advert, which is branded with UCL, because UCL had a very good reputation amongst I think the LGBT community widely. And since when I reshared that people were kind of saying like, why, why is this person associating so heavily with UCL? Like, have they not read the decision? Do they not know the news like, what's going on here? This feels like a bit of a slap in the face, you know, to ask trans people to fill out a survey at UCL and so kind of proudly label UCL on it. And that was quite difficult, because it just made me kind of it just I was like, Well, you know, yes, I'm a student here at UCL, but I do not agree at all with their decision to leave Stonewall. In fact, it's having a more direct impact, I think on my well being, as well as my study success. And I think it's going to be hard for UCL specifically to gain that trust back, especially from the trans community. Yeah, so it's had that sort of impact it's had a personal impact in terms of my mental health and well being I just kind of feel a bit lost with it all and a bit kind of depressed about it, and then also seeing people kind of almost attack my survey. And because of what UCL decided, it's like, ‘Thanks, UCL. Thanks a lot. Great job, sweetie.’
RTC
Oh my god, yeah, that must be very, very hard to have that at odds with your research, which is something I'm sure you've been putting so much effort and thought and not just you, possibly a team, just in designing the survey, anything. So hopefully, we can contribute a little bit, also to people donating to the study, and we'll give more information at the end. But with the spirit of moving forward, I'd like hoping for the best on all accounts, where do you see your study going? Regardless of outcome, do you want to - I don't know, of course you want to publish it? But yeah, what effects are like what's the next step after the surveys completed regarding the research?
TW
So I think what I've always wanted to do is – yeah publications are a wonderful thing, right? You know, it's academic currency. If you want a career in academia, you have to publish, you know, that ‘publish or perish’, you know, BS that likes to be thrown around. But I like to see this project as kind of a starting point in a long line of research that focuses on specific risk factors for depression, anxiety and suicide in the trans community, and how we can best implement prevention and improve intervention. So one of the things that is quite lacking is research around microaggressions, being one of them, but also loneliness in the older trans community, we know that loneliness causes depression, especially in the older population. And it's assumed that that would be the same for trans people and non binary people who are, you know, 50 years or older. However, I can't find much empirical evidence of that. So it's hard to convince, like, charities and, and kind of services that this is a real issue that needs to be addressed. Something that I mean, the listeners might not know about is that, you know, the trans mental health burden in this country, at least and many other countries is, is just ridiculous. It's you know, 84% of trans people have thought about ending their life at some point. And then you look at kind of people with diagnosed depression and anxiety, and that's about 50% and then 30%, respectively. And the numbers are still high, you know, with probable depression and probable anxiety, you're looking again at like 60%, roughly for both. I might be fudging numbers there slightly, but it's – essentially the takeaway from that is disproportionately higher than the general population, which is much lower: for a common mental health disorder, it's, you know, about 20%. Or even less than that sometimes. So, you know, we're seeing this time and time again. So when I looked at the 2012 study, they had 84%, suicidal ideation, I look at my data on the ones I have got, and like, you know, I shouldn't really be doing that, but sometimes I just get a bit too curious. So I look, and I'm getting about 80%, as well and suicidal ideation. And it's, and then I'm looking at past year, kind of feelings of suicidality. And in that case, it's still just as high. So my kind of question usually is like, well, what is going on? Like, why is this number not coming down? And then you start kind of getting down the rabbit hole, and you look at like, you know, how services are just not built for trans people in the slightest. Or, you know, they actively contribute to that mental health burden through microaggressions and sometimes just macro violences is and, especially macro violence, there's when you think about kind of like the government and you know, trans equality and trans equality law, like, you know, we're seeing the Gender Recognition Act still being debated we’re seeing trans lives still debated, newspapers just running columns upon columns about trans people with not a single trans columnist there to, to kind of give their perspective. And I've even spoken to some friends and that, you know, they say like, you know, what's really, like, upsetting and then yeah, this is like cis friends of mine who say that their families have like after dinner debates about trans lives, it's like as if it's kind of entertaining thing to do, and not realising it's like real lives are being affected.
RTC
Yeah, you're completely right in that. And in addition to that, before we finish this lovely segment, could you tell us regarding sort of the opposite, right, how do you see care and the role of care for trans people in regards to your study, but also more generally, and what can can you see the mental health community but also individuals, how can we move forward and help?
TW
There are loads of things that people can do that just displays kind of acceptance of trans people, acceptance of just, you know, gender nonconformity or gender diversity more broadly. Just before that, though, there was a point I wanted to make about the prevention.
RTC
Yeah, no worries.
TW
It's just that I was thinking like, you know, all these kind of like, big issues that we're currently experiencing when it comes to, you know, politics and the politicisation of transness, I suppose it's, it's how do how do the services or how do prevention techniques take that into consideration and actively helped to diminish the effect that is having on people's lives, because that's the one thing that seems to be really lacking. But that's where it kind of fits in now with what people can do. And, and I think people have been doing this for a while, and it's great to see but you know, sometimes just having your pronouns you know, written on your email signature, or in your social media bios, is one step, but you know, it's probably not a step. It's probably a very, very small step; there can be a lot more done. It's about challenging and being a good bystander. So when you're witnessing transphobic incidents, incidences, you're standing up for that person, if they need you to be there to stand up for them, or at least checking in with them. It's, yep, boycotting, essentially any national news outlet that just consistently writes negatively about trans people as well. It's educating oneself, I think it's just taking the ownership of what are the experiences for trans people, and kind of making sure that you don't behave in that same way that they're telling you that it's the experiences. But in terms of the mental health community, I think what this all kind of leads to is this very kind of affirmative approach around gender identity. And I think a lot of times people misinterpret what affirmation is, because they see it as being almost the opposite of conversion therapy, where conversion therapy is actually trying to, you know, stop you from being trans or from being LGBT generally. What affirmative therapy does or affirmation is meant to do is to meet you where you are on your journey, and then support you with that. So you know, if there are moments where you kind of decide maybe transition isn't for you, you'll get you'll be supported through that process, as well as if it is for you. And I think that's what people need to do is just kind of like, be with trans people where they're at in their journey and accept them for who they are and, you know, realise that gender is a spectrum, and it is very fluid. Things can things can change that’s okay.
RTC
That's great. Thank you so much for joining us today. Just a reminder for our listeners, that you are still calling to trans and non binary people aged 18 or older to partake in your research. We are going to share the Twitter link. Is that alright? Or do you have any other way of contacting you?
TW
So there is that as a Twitter study site, and there's also it's also on UCL’s website, so I can send through any information as a link to the study page.
RTC
Amazing. We'll include that in our transcript and in the description. I'm sure we'll make it available so people can partake. And once again, thank you so much for joining us.
TW
Thank you.
RTC
And as we've reached the end of part one, we want to thank our lovely guests, team, and of course listeners for their support. Remember to check out part two for the rest of our LGBT+ History Month special. Tune in next month for another Movable Type podcast episode.