Maeve

INT: Okay, can you perhaps tell us a little bit about yourself?

M: Yeah, what do you want to know? My name’s Maeve and I’m 30-odd and I’ve lived in Brighton for 12 years, 2002 I moved here, via Aberystwyth University, and I’m from Merseyside, originally I’m from Birkenhead, which is obviously north-west England, opposite Liverpool, over the river, that’s where my family are. [LAUGHS]

INT: And what made you decide to come to Brighton?

M: I just drifted down here. I was…

INT: Just drifted?

M: Yeah, like proper, just ended up here. I was in… I left Merseyside in 1998, when I was 19, to go to university in Aberystwyth to study film and television, because I just wanted to get out of Birkenhead and Aberystwyth seemed kind of isolated and quite far away and it was on the coast, which was important to me. And then I ballsed that right up, and ended up dropping out of uni, just before I was supposed to finish my degree, and I was hanging out with my partner at the time, who would go on to be my fiancé, but that’s another story – maybe for later – and we were living in Ruislip in north London, I think, is that where that is? And it was dead boring and we just came down to Brighton for a day out, and we were just like “Oh this is nice”. It was literally I saw a poster for a band that I really liked, this punk band that I was really, really into the late nineties and they just wouldn’t have played in Aberystwyth, because nobody came through, and I just thought “This is cool, the Gumbies are going to play. We’ve got nothing and no plans, why don’t we just move to Brighton and just have a go” so we just had this little 1 litre Fiesta at the time, so we just piled everything we owned, which wasn’t much, it was like a bookcase and a telly and some clothes into the back of this Fiesta and we came down in January and smashed a month’s rent onto a credit card and just moved into this house and like slept on the floor for a week, until…

INT: So it was about 12 years ago?

M: Yeah, yeah it was a while ago.

INT: And was the notion of transitioning a part of your life then? Did it come into the decision at all or…

M: No, it didn’t play any part in that decision, it was… and the notion of transitioning wasn’t something that I really knew about or even felt applied to me, at the time. I was like quite deeply in a number of closets about my sexuality and my gender, I think at the time and just didn’t know anything… I mean I knew I felt a certain way and I knew that I felt kind of like “othered” from the rest of the world and like a bit of a weirdo, and I guess I kind of classed myself as a sort of closet cross dresser at the time, well, not that closet really, because, you know, I’d sort of been out and about with people, since I was a kid in the nineties and stuff, but as a young adult it didn’t… it didn’t really factor at all.

INT: Did it come into your life at university at all, at Aberystwyth?

M: It didn’t but one of the things that I wanted to do, when I moved to Aberystwyth, was to reinvent myself and to start exploring my gender, like, I think I was… I had this girlfriend when I was 18 and she was 17 and she was like just wise beyond her years, and she was the first person I ever talked to about that… I spoke about my sexuality and I didn’t have the words to say that it was about gender but she’d like lend me skirts and stuff and make up and we’d go out into Liverpool, sort of dressed up and, you know, we got heckled at New Brighton Station by these rough girls who were like calling us dykes and I was like partly terrified and partly made up about it, I was like “Yes, they think I’m a chick”. So, you know, I kind of explored in… it was the nineties so, you know, it was like Placebo were like, you know, singing Nancy Boy, and stuff and it was kind of… there was a kind of an androgynousness about, so I think in college I started to explore that a little bit more, you know, and I used to like… I used to go into college sort of looking like Skateboard Boy and then just be like at all the girls’ make up as soon as I got in, and like I had long hair and like used to plait it and just wore make up and then just be androgynous at college and then sort of get home just before my parents and like change out of it. So yeah, I’d always…

INT: So were you a different person at home with your parents, then?

M: I don’t know..

INT: Did they know about…

M: They did, I think I was…

INT: Your anxieties, perhaps not the right word, but…

M: I think, I made a decision quite young that I was going to try and be myself as much as I could and then I went out with this girl when I was 16 and I just said that… she was a slightly… this was… oh, no slightly older, this was after, after Becky, the girl I just told you about and she was sort of all right with me being kind of androgynous, I think it became a bit of a problem for her later on, and she wanted someone who like a proper boy. But, I think… I remember thinking I’m young, I’d quite like to have fun, and to me that meant being myself and I felt a lot more comfortable in sort of more fem appearance, but I saw myself as a kind of cross dresser or a sort of androgynous, but I knew that I felt quite a sort of a deep sense of peace. Because I’d been dressing…

INT: Peace?

M: Yeah, I’d been dressing in like, you know, girl’s clothes since it first occurred to me, and I was very young, and as I got older I thought well, you know, if I’m going to have some fun, I’m going to have to be myself, so I’m going to have to be slightly open about it, and like come what may. And I remember my mum and dad sitting me down when I was 17 and I was like dripping in eye shadow and like tiny little t-shirts with no sleeves and stuff, and they were like “Are you gay?” And I was like “No,” because I didn’t feel like I was gay, do you know what I mean, but I didn’t know what it was that I was and it was like I think Eddie… it was like Eddie Izzard, and my parents thought he was hilarious, so I had that on my side, and I could just say “Well, I’m like Eddie Izzard, you know, I like to dress like this” and they were like “Okay,” and as I sort of moved on from that, but yeah.

INT: And how do people at university take your androgyny, or…

M: Well, I didn’t, I didn’t do it, when I got to uni, no…

INT: You didn’t reinvent yourself?

M: No, I didn’t, I felt desperately lonely and really, really intimidated by everybody else, and really, like I wanted to be really far away from everything in Birkenhead because it’s not the most… it certainly wasn’t the most cosmopolitan place in the nineties and we used to get shit every time we went out the front door, you know, my friends and I were the punks and the skaters and then on top of that I was kind of androgynous and what else, and yeah we’d get shit every time we stepped out the front door and I was just really frightened of people and you know, I still am, like, I’m in my thirties and I step out the front door and I’m ready for something, every time I go out, and even before I started… acknowledged and started to do my transition, I would be like no on the kick-off but just, you know, I look everywhere all the time, and I’m really aware of what’s going on around me, all the time.

INT: So, can you perhaps say a bit about how Brighton helped you reinvent yourself and…

M: Well, it was kind of… let me think. It’s… I started about 10 year ago, and it’ll be 10 years this summer, I was engaged to be married to the woman that I moved down with, and I thought – and this is a classic, isn’t it – I love this person, I may well be bisexual, and I started to entertain the idea that I was probably transgender or something, but I still didn’t have the words for it really. And I thought “Well, I love this person, so that’s fine, and I accept that these things about myself are true. I don’t necessarily need to do it, because it’s just okay to know it,” you know, classic, and I proposed to her and I thought love, you know, love will save the day, you know, and it didn’t and I just… I don’t know, I just felt really, really bad and ended up just sort of tumbling out of the closet. It was really, yeah, it was really bad times and we split up and…

INT: So, your girlfriend – and fiancé – had been supportive of you cross dressing, being taken as her “dyke”…

M: No, because I wasn’t, I wasn’t then. When I left… when I went to university it knocked my confidence hugely and I sort of stopped for a good few years even trying to express that side of myself and then we got together and I just pushed it all back into the closet, so when we moved down here and we lived together, I wasn’t… I wasn’t free to do that around her and I didn’t do it and I think because I’d sort of… because I had expressed that quite freely to myself and around friends in my teens, when I pushed it back inside in my early twenties, and met her, I started the relationship with her without that being a factor in my life, so I would… to get that back I would then have to bring it up with her, and introduce it as something new and that was really intimidating, if that makes sense. That does, doesn’t it, that makes sense. And then I just thought, “Oh, I’m done with that now, I’m in my early twenties I’m just going to be normal now”, and that was never really a thing… but then just, you know, every time she was out of the house, wherever, because I worked shifts, for years and years, so I’d often have like the morning and afternoon to myself, and I’d just be like in frocks around the house and thinking that it was like, you know, a sexual thing or a fetish thing, because I used to like, I used to get like a real sort of sexual rush out of it and, you know, all that kind of stuff, and then eventually, you know, over the years it’s come to me, and I was like, I’ve realised that, you know, that I felt that way because that’s actually just me being me and that sort of rush of sexuality isn’t… wasn’t an end in itself, or a fetishistic thing, it was just me thinking “Oh God, I actually feel good,” you know what I mean.

INT: I used to work with this psychiatrist who used to call it, all that stuff as just general arousal and it all feels good.

M: Yeah.

INT: So, and people sometimes become quite embarrassed about having those kind of sexual responses to themselves.

M: Yeah, yeah, it’s, yeah, it’s quite… it’s almost intimidating I found it in a way and, you know, and I did all the classic stuff, like, chucking all my clothes, “I don’t need this any more, no, not going to do this any more”. And then just going “Oh, Christ what have I done”.

INT: You lived in Brighton…

M: Yeah.

INT: And Brighton is, you know, pretty much form of people like us, even then probably…

M: Yeah.

INT: … and so you had… how did you deal with this kind of lure of other people being around all the time?

M: I didn’t… I didn’t feel like it applied to me. I thought it was ace, I’ve always been a really open-minded person and like totally accepting of all kinds of people, but I didn’t feel like I could ever be… I used to wish that I was gay and I’d hang out with gay people, and going “Oh, I wish I was gay” and when I came out, I came out as gay, yeah, yeah, I came out as gay, because that’s what made the most sense, you know, I was… I am attracted to fellas, like, and I was attracted to guys, but I was attracted to women as well, and I thought, you know, maybe I’m just like… maybe I think I’m attracted to women because that’s a safe bet, and I’m just frightened of men because like most of people who have ever been shitheads to me, have been men. That’s not actually true, as I’ve got older, there’s plenty of dickhead women in my life, or has been, God bless them actually. [LAUGHS] But not that many actually I’m thinking of a couple, but that’s by the by.

So, so, yeah, I thought… I just never thought it applied to me because I didn’t… I didn’t relate to any of the gay people that I met and I certainly didn’t know any trans people, and it seems like superficial stuff, you know, like I like rock and roll music and I grew up a punk, and when I went to, you know… and you know, I still haven’t… I’ll be a punk till I die, you know what I mean,that’s the stuff that excites me. And I just didn’t see any of that in mainstream gay culture obviously, but I didn’t know it at the time, and I didn’t see gay people in the punk shows that I used to go, and one or two bands, and that, I was in hardcore bands for years and years you didn’t get like openly gay guys or openly gay women coming to hardcore shows, it was supposed to be like angry straight, you know, middle class white boys and, you know, I loved the rage and the excitement of that music, but I didn’t feel like I was part of it and I didn’t feel like there was anything there, do you know what I mean, and then it wasn’t till around the time that I came out that I actually met a guy who was older that me, who identified as gay, who started telling me that he’d, you know, been to all this kind of queer stuff, and I found out what queer was, and activism and like this whole sort of punk stuff that was totally aside from the gay scene and I naively thought, you know, if you’re gay you go to the gay scene, that’s where you belong, which, you know, which is stupid in retrospect, but made, you know, that was my thinking at the time, and he really enlightened me to all that, you know.

INT: It’s kind of not stupid because we kind of need some sort of security or feeling that we can relate to people…

M: Maybe naïve is the word, I was like, you know, I’d seen Queer as Folk and I thought well this is going to be like this kind of Holy Grail place where everyone’s going to be like all natural, and this really warm, loving northern manner, and just like taken under their wing and I’d have adventures and I’d fall in love and stuff, do you know what I mean and yeah.

So I met this guy and he kind of enlightened me to that and I started to think, well, actually maybe, you know, I could legitimately could be bisexual, blah, blah, blah. So, I tried to be gay, that didn’t work, because I just fell for this woman immediately, and you know, we sort of started this love affair that was off and on for like ten years and that just, you know, I was like well, obviously I’m not gay, because like… and I got my first boyfriend and we were together for two or three years and, you know, I really loved him, but I always felt like we were on slightly different pages about, I don’t know, about our connection, that he’d… I think he kind of changed… he’s kind of changed how he identifies now, but this is like ten years down the line, and we’re friends again now, it’s okay, but…

INT: So when did the epiphany come? Were you kind of… all this sort of congealed and came together to…

M: Yeah. Well…

INT: Or did it? Did it…

M: It did..

INT: .. or it’s still swinging around?

M: No, it did sort of, like we were together – my boyfriend and I – for a while and I was working in… I was support worker for about 10 years, I used to work with learning disabilities clients and, you know, people with autism, and like really high support, it’s that kind of thing. I mean that’s just the context I suppose, but I decided that I wanted to go back to university in 2007, because I kind of… I wanted to sort of settle a score with myself to prove that I could finish a course and I wanted a degree just because I wanted to do it. But I wanted to do a degree which would allow me to write a dissertation about trans, because it was bugging me and bugging me and bugging me and I was like there’s… I was like I’m transgender and I sort of known it on a level for a long time, but I wanted to…

INT: You’d obviously got a term for it by…

M: Yeah, exactly. I don’t know where I’d heard it, you know, I watched Hedwig actually and that just made me… it just made me cry, I remember seeing it first time, like my partner had seen it and he was like “Watch this, I think you’ll like it” and I think he understood where I was coming from at that time, and I was like “Oh my God, this is like… it’s a transgender rock and roller, holy shit!” like a revelation, like “Well, I could do that,” and especially, that song, that Origin of Love song, where, you know, it’s talking about [we’re] all split and, you know, the gods, and, you know, gender and love, it just made me ball my eyes out and so I went back to university, I did Humanities, with a view to writing a dissertation about trans, so basically had to like force my hand to sit and read loads of gender theory, which was just like this kind of sort of self-psychology sort of thing, and him and I ended up splitting up and I moved out and I ended up living in this tiny little room that you could nearly touch the walls of with your hands and I met… I used to live with Juliet [Jaques], I met her just before she decided to start her transition, which was really inspiring, she was… there was this knock on the door, because she knew I was thinking about it, and we think we really spurred each other on. And so there was little knock on the door, it’s like [MAKES KNOCKING NOISE] it’s like “Hello?” And they said… I opened the door, and she was like “I’ve burnt all my man clothes, I haven’t got any clothes!” [LAUGHS] It’s like oh my God!

INT: That lovely moment.

M: Yeah, yeah. “I’ve burnt them all and now I don’t have any clothes, what am I going to do?” But yeah, that was ace, that was really inspiring. But I went, you know, I did drive myself kind of round the bend with it. But started to transition in my way then, I grew my hair and I started to wear make up again, and got back in this relationship with the woman that I’d got with when I came out of the closet and we moved in together and she was sort of supportive in this kind of like, I like androgynous boys kind of way, so she sort of liked my presentation, but wasn’t down with me actually being a chick and that became really damaging and, you know, she said some stuff that really hurt me, you know. “You’re not a woman, you’ll never be a woman! You’ve no idea what it’s like”, you know, that kind of stuff, that breaks people’s hearts.

INT: It does.

M: Yeah. Yeah, I know. So, I…

INT: Can I just ask you, did that… have any positive effects… although it’s really painful, you know, I recognise that episode and I think lots of people listening will recognise that episode, was there anything positive that came out of that in terms of recognition?

M: It absolutely broke my heart and made me furious and I left and I couldn’t explain to her why it wasn’t working because she wouldn’t listen and I left while she was out of town, I packed up and left her a note, and it was like “This isn’t working, I’m outta here!” And that, that fucked our relationship up and then… we’d been off and on together since, but no that summer I cut my hair and I stopped wearing make-up and I thought “Well, this hurts too much, fuck it!” I’d already started volunteering for Allsorts at that point…

INT: So you actually decided, because of what she had said that it was too much pain?

M: I don’t… I’m not going to like totally blame that, but that was, that was a really hurtful contributory factor and I’d kind of… I’d got so far with the transition for myself but I hadn’t actually started one and I didn’t have a support network, as good as I do now, and I knew quite a lot about transgender and I was feeling like genderqueer was quite a good thing for me, it was almost like I’ve spent this last ten years trying everything out to narrow down everything to the last… so being a transwoman is the last possible thing that I could possibly tick off on my list before I go, “All right, yeah”. So, I tried gay and I tried bi and when I was feeling like I was identifying as a girl, I sort of felt like a dyke when I was with her, and queer and genderqueer and I was working for Allsorts and I was working for Transformers, and I decided to cut my hair and, you know, when I started working for Transformers I was identifying really fem, my appearance really was and when I cut my hair, I was like actually I started to feel like I was a bit like this kind of bi butch dyke sort of thing and, you know, grew my beard out and wore like Fred Perry’s and dressed like a skin head, and I was like “Yes, this is cool” and people were like “Wow! You look great, you look so…” you know, my brother said like, you know, “Oh brilliant you’ve stopped dressing like a nineties emo girl,” you know, all the stuff which is supposed to be encouraging but does actually still quite cut. But I was… but it was, you know, I was like yes, handsome or whatever, and I look cool, and people respect me now, and when I get on the bus, people call me “mate” and it’s nice and people are more positive… react positively to me in the shops, and I don’t feel intimidated in the street any more. Sound, I don’t need to look like a girl because, to myself, I felt like I was strong enough to know that my gender, you know, not higher, but it was a different thing to appearance and that I could keep it for myself and, you know, and that did for a couple of years, until November, last year, when it just all came crashing down about my ears and it was like, “Who are you trying to kid?” do you know what I mean? It’s like… it’s absolutely just bollocks, that’s actually just me trying to be tough and me trying to find some way of fitting in and I just…

INT: Where did you go though, for like some… because that’s like being thrown overboard, I mean looking for the middle of the ocean, and looking for some…

M: What, in the November, sort of thing? Yeah, I did, I just… I did… it was like being thrown overboard. I went to a mate’s wedding and it was a lesbian wedding it was really good, and I just… you know what you’ve just got this feeling that something’s going to happen and you’re just like I’ve got to do something now, and it was almost like I knew I wouldn’t be able to get it out of me unless I just got absolutely bladdered and it’s like, you know, like cracking something with a hammer, it’s like I’m just… I just got so pissed and I… like I don’t get pissed and emotional, I just… I’ve been holding it all for years and I can carry it round and I can just do whatever and just be the last person and just be like [MAKES NOISE], you know, I mean… you know, I’m not talking like operating heavy machinery, but I mean I can keep it all in, and that night I was like “Fuck this!” and I just got wrecked and just like fell apart on one of my friends and I was just like holding his hand in a doorway, and I was like… I was just like sobbing, like I need to do this now, I’m trans, like, I know what I am, I’m a woman and I was like if I do this, I need to know that you’re going to support me and, you know, that my friends are going to be my friends and I know that you’re beautiful but I’m going to go mental if I go on with this, like, I’m going to… I’m going to change a lot and I’m going to have to step up my game, and like really take responsibility for myself, I’m going to have look after myself and it’s that kind of, if I’m even going to do this I’m going to be big in the world and I’m going to let it out and I’m going to do stuff that I’ve been too scared of doing and I’m going to have feelings that I’ve been scared of and, do you know what I mean like I’m going to…

INT: I do.

M: Yeah, yeah, I thought you might. And it was just so intimidating, but I was like I’ll die if I don’t, by accident of by my own hand at some point…

INT: That’s the scary thing isn’t it that people don’t grasp?

M: Yeah.

INT: And really sad to hear though. Although it’s kind of expected…

M: Yeah. I mean, you know, I’d never tried… I never tried to like actually… I’d never had an actual suicide attempt, but I was… you know, I’ve been irresponsible, you know what I mean and there’s been days when I’ve just thought like, “I’ll have another one of them, maybe I won’t wake up, it’ll be all right” that kind of stuff and, you know, and like I never kind of cut myself because I always sort of really stubbornly proud but there’s ways of hurting yourself that people don’t notice or don’t mind that look okay, you know what I mean.

INT: Yeah, I do.

M: There’s pretty pictures that you can put on yourself that hurt like fuck and that’s kind of socially sanctioned and fine, and you can… you know, I’m not saying that my tattoos are entirely about self-harm because they’re not, but that’s, you know, that’s part of it.

So, anyway, yeah, I just… I was like [MAKES VOMITTING NOISE] just like vomitted myself out all over everybody. I didn’t actually vomit that night from being drunk, by the way, it was just an emotional vomit and I, you know, called my mum a couple of days later… because I’d had that conversation when I was in uni and I was like, you know, I’m doing this course because I’m a transwoman and it was sort of not like the silence but it really intimidated my mum, I think, made her feel really sad, and I don’t know, when you read this, it’ll probably really make her cry, but I’ll talk a bit more about how amazing my mum is in a minute, but the first time it happened, I don’t think either party – myself or my mum, or my family – really knew where to go from there. So, it sort of stalled and my brother was really funny, he was like… I was like “You know, I think I’m trans” and he was “Oh, I love transwomen, they’re like big, lovely mums” [LAUGHS] and I was like… I know it was like… he was trying to be really sweet, but I was like “What are you talking about?” like, I was like “What transwomen do you know,” and he was like “Oh, I know some”, I’ve still no idea what he was talking about and he was like, he was really trying to be sweet at the time, but I was just like “Oh man!” it just felt really lonely, but the second time around I phoned my mum and I said “Do you remember when I told you all this, back in 2009 or ’10, whenever it was,” I said, I said “I’ve really tried but it hasn’t changed, I don’t… I don’t feel any different, there’s not any… I don’t feel any different at all. I feel worse and this is what I have to do, I know.” And she was like… she goes “Do you want me to come down?” and I said “Nah, you’re all right,” she was like “Are you sure?” and I was trying to be all brave, and I was like “Yeah, actually do come down.” So, she hopped in the car and came straight down to see me, and took me out for a curry and she was like “Right, what’s going on?” And then we were in this, this Indian restaurant and she was like “What’s going on? Are you going to change your name?” And then we were laughing at this couple next to us, who were outraged that they hadn’t been brought an ice bucket with their red wine, and we like [MAKES LAUGHING SOUND] oh, they’re so funny. It was just… it was really funny, just, you know, just my mum laughing at people and stuff and but then the… you know. I cried so much on that night…

INT: With your mum?

M: At the wedding, not so much with my mum, at the wedding, that by the time I’m…

INT: You’re hopping around a bit.

M: You what?

INT: You’re hopping around a bit, from your mum to the wedding.

M: Oh no, sorry. It’s… yeah, on the wedding night I cried so much when I decided to come out with it, but by the time my mum had got down, I just… I felt loads braver and loads calmer and we, you know, I did I did a big cry with my mum and I showed her the video of you, actually, you’re My Genderation video and it, you know, we had dinner at the restaurant and then we came back here and I was like, you know, “If this hasn’t been too much of a, you know, a brain sort of challenge so far, do you mind if I show you some stuff?” And she was like “No, of course.” So, we watched your video and I don’t know, I just… I sort of saw this, while she was watching you speak, she… the penny really dropped, and she was like, “I get… I really get this” and yeah…

INT: That’s heartening to know.

M: It’s good isn’t it, and my grandma has seen it as well, my grandma wanted me to pass you a special message, just saying how wonderful you are, actually.

INT: Oh, thank you, grandma! That’ll be on the transcript.

M: I don’t know, you know, but God I am pinging around everywhere, aren’t I? I don’t know maybe I do make sense. But yeah, I just started in November and I’ve…

INT: Was there a point that you remember where, and it’s always hard, so it never stops… never stop being… but has there a point where you’ve actually gone, “Yes, this is right, and I’m okay with this now”?

M: Yes, and only in, what is it now? May, so it’s November, December, January, February, March, April, May, so six months. In the last couple of months I think I went to see my GP in March, and I was just like this absolute ball of anxiety and fear and there was loads of like, just loads of pain, isn’t it, that you don’t, that I’ve been carrying round with me and but I think as soon as I went to see my GP, I felt like I’d just like this put this burden down and it wasn’t because I inherently think I’m legitimised now I’m on this medical thing, but it was in the sense of me doing something proactive for myself and… that reaching out and saying “I’m trans, can I have some help, please” it was that and like allowing myself to look after myself rather than just trying to be this stubborn hard arse, just be like “No, it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t apply to me, I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine” which I’d been doing for years, which is just like, you know…

INT: How was your GP?

M: She was ace! She’s been really helpful with some of the health stuff, I’d been signed off work for a while, while I was qualifying to become a barber, which I wouldn’t have been able to do had I not been signed off, I was legitimately signed off with stress, but it was just, you know, that’s a different story, but she’d been excellent and I was… oh, it was something stupid like I’d had a cough or something, it was like two things, I’ve got this cough, and she was like “Okay, well, I’ll give you some medicine,” and I was like “Oh, and I, you know, after 20 years of careful consideration can I have a reference to the gender clinic, please” and she just went “Hmm, yeah.” [LAUGHS] Just started typing and I was like “Are you sure you’re not going to… I feel like there should be a bit levity to this situation” and she just took her glasses off and turned and looked at me, and just went “Darling, I’ve been a GP in this town for 20 years,” and I was like, “Okay.” [LAUGHS] Do you know what I mean, she didn’t bat an eyelid. And yeah, she was great. I’ve been back and seen her since and she’s just been really supportive and she’s like “Oh you look great” and blah, blah, blah. So, yeah, and I think…

INT: So it’s only very recently that you’ve actually had any space… given yourself any space to feel good about yourself?

M: I think that, yeah, I think that, yeah, you’ve put that really well and it hadn’t occurred to me actually. I’d been sort of… it’s little shit as well, like I’ve got my look down, and I can do my make up, you know, in about half an hour and I’m pleased with the way I look, and touch wood, I haven’t had any shit in the street, yet, I’m expecting it, but I haven’t, and my friends have been wonderful and it just slowly occurs to you, doesn’t it, actually I might be all right, actually, I can own this, I feel all right about it and…

INT: And you’ve got a life.

M: And I’ve got… yeah, I couldn’t…

INT: It’s a question and a statement in a way.

M: Yeah, I have got a life and I’ve got a life that I like and I’ve got a life that I can see a future in, and, you know, I talked about dying earlier and it’s not that I always thought I was going to be dead, it’s just that I couldn’t… I couldn’t imagine what I’d be, or where I’d go, or what I’d do and it was, it was holding me back from achieving things like I had no interest in… I didn’t believe that I could do anything or that I’d have anything valuable to give to the world and I was just tootling along in this career for 10 years until I’d, you know, I became a barber so I could have something to fall back on when I decided to transition and possibly couldn’t find work, which was, you know, I’d spent a long time checking things out and trying to make sure that I felt safe enough, like, you know, working at All Sorts, I gave that like two years before I was positive that I felt safe that I could… I know it’s an LGBT space, of course it’s safe, but for myself, till I felt like it was all sound and I’d be able to support myself and I’d be okay, and then I was like “Right, let’s do it,” so this had been building up for ages. So I guess maybe a couple of years ago I was just starting to think, actually I am going to have to do this and then it all just got too much in November, and blah, blah, blah, so yeah, I can…

INT: And is Brighton essential, or pivotal to…

M: Yeah.

INT: … that life?

M: It is, yeah, it’s like I said earlier like I had no idea… I mean I didn’t… I didn’t know anything about Brighton when I moved here, it just seemed like a good city, I didn’t know that it had a huge LGBT community and blah, blah, blah, but just, yeah, it is, I feel safe here, and I know the place, like the back of my hand, you know. I know where I can walk to be relatively safe and the short cuts and all that kind of stuff. I mean, you know, God forbid anything bad does actually happen, I mean like that could be a factor, but I feel safer here than anywhere, like I wouldn’t do this in Birkenhead town centre. I mean I have walked down Birkenhead town centre in a frock but that was a very long time ago and I wouldn’t do now, do you know what I mean, it’s… and yeah, and…

INT: You might in the future.

M: No! [LAUGHS] I might do, I might do.

INT: Okay.

M: With armed guard.

INT: Okay, so moving on from where we left off, which was really to do with you spending years beating yourself up about your confused feelings and so on, and then finding some sort of direction, maybe you’d like to say something about what transitioning, as such, means to you.

M: Oh! It’s…

INT: What the future holds perhaps?

M: What the future holds. It’s… it’s about moving forward, acknowledging myself, and giving myself permission to be myself. I mean it sounds kind of trite but I think… well, no it doesn’t even sound trite, I think…

INT: It doesn’t.

M: Stuff like this only sounds trite because it absolutely is just like proper true and it’s that simple, you know. I don’t know, I just feel like I’m actually just sort of ready to start life now and not to discredit anything that I’ve done, because I’ve had a full life so far and in the you know, 34 years that I’ve been knocking around on this plane, it’s been fun and I’ve done good stuff and I’ve met some amazing people and I’ve contributed to the world and I’ve made things. So, it’s not been a waste, but like I said earlier, I can see a future now, and it’s a future that I want to be part of, and all that buzzing static anxiety and self-loathing and all that kind of stuff is just melting away from now, and things are… like things are aligning, like so many good things have happened, and interesting things have happened for me since I decided to just kind of be myself, like the work that I do is getting more interesting and more opportunities have come up, and it’s because of this two-way process where, if you be yourself people can see who you are and you get stuff back off them and then they get stuff from you, you know what I mean. So, now I’m kind of like beaming, I feel like I’m beaming sort of more positiveness out of my face and my chest and just like I am happy, I feel all right.

INT: Can you… can you see your role and could you describe it, how you fit into say the LGBT community?

M: Yeah. I don’t know how I fit into the LGBT community actually. I feel like part of a community now and which is wonderful and having met so many wonderful trans people and so many wonderful like transwomen as well, it’s… I feel supported and I feel like I’ve actually got something that I can… something to share with people, I’ve got something to say, I’ve got a lot of stuff to say actually, and I lot of stuff to share and, you know, and like, as I say, I’ve always been a musician and I feel like I’ve got stuff to say in that respect, I’ve got songs… this huge like block that I had in creativity is like lifting that because I’ve actually got that energy that made me feel like I wanted to create something but I didn’t know what to do, that frustrated me, I now know who I am and that’s flowing a bit better.

INT: Do you have opportunities to perform? Do you perform?

M: Yeah. We’re playing Trans Pride, I’m going to be singing at Trans Pride, which is like…

INT: Yeah, brilliant!

M: It’s a total honour, like I’ve been in bands since I was tiny, I’ve been playing gigs until I was 17, which is half of my life now, and this is the most excited I’ve ever been, to be offered a show, my band, are playing on Saturday at Trans Pride, and the rest of the band are straight cis-fellas, and they’re the most beautiful, like I love them, they’re like, they’re my brothers and it’s going to be awesome. So, yeah, I do and I do other stuff as well.

But in terms of the LGBT community, like I said earlier, I used to feel really alienated by it, and I identify very strongly as queer and genderqueer actually as well, even though I take “she” pronouns and my transition I’m moving towards a more feminineness and I do consider myself to be a woman, but I still feel like I’m genderqueer in the sense that I identify quite strongly as being a transwoman. At the moment I don’t know if that’s going to change, maybe as I get a bit more into my transition and, you know, maybe that’ll change and, you know, maybe that has to do with me feeling like I don’t pass as well, because I’m like 6ft tall and whatever, you know, I stick out and we were just talking about the politics of passing earlier, I think it’s a total different subject and I do and don’t agree with it in a lot of ways, but, you know, I just feel really empowered to identify as a transwoman and as genderqueer as well, and you know, sort of…

INT: Well, the anxiety about passing does affect the…

M: Yeah…

INT: … way you feel yourself.

M: Hugely, it’s kept me indoors. There was a week the other week where I just… you know, I think we’ve all been there, I was just like I can’t go out, like I’m not sick, sick, but I’m calling in sick for work because I can’t… I can’t do it, like I just can’t be out the house, I can’t see anyone, I can’t perform any tasks…

INT: How long ago was that?

M: That was about a month ago and that was a real turning point for me. Yeah, that was… I think you asked me earlier like when I first started to feel like I was like owning this and feeling better. It was that week, and it was awful and I was… you know, sometimes you’re just like “Buck up, this’ll be fine” and sometimes you just think “No! Sod it, I’m closing the curtains. I’m just going to wait until this passes”. So I did, I just went to ground for a week and just like watched telly, or played like crap computer games and ate biscuits and waited and then towards the end of the week like the clouds just rolled off and I was like “Ah!” But I felt well better after that. Just for giving myself the time and I came out of that just feeling loads stronger and that’s when I really started to think “Right, let’s crack on now, let’s get into the world.”

So, I do feel part of the… you know, I I said earlier that I work for Allsorts and that I, you know, and my role in Allsorts is that I run Transformers, which is the group for young trans people, which myself and my colleague, Elliot, were asked if we wanted to start, so, you know we founded that, like it’ll be two years in November and it’s, you know, it’s the first project of its kind in this city that I know of, specifically designed for young transgender people, and the work that we do with that is awesome, like, you know, we go to schools and we do training for young people and staff and educational professionals, we produce the Being Human book which is the photography book, we produce the Trans Toolkit, with the Healthy Schools team, which is like a 40 page document which is basically an instruction manual on how to support trans people and it’s, it’s amazing to me that I get to do that and…

INT: But you have a very, very… it sounds like a very definite, positive role and persona within the LGBT community and…

M: [LAUGHS] I suppose it is, isn’t it. I don’t like… I don’t think about it that often, and then you say something like that…

INT: …and the wider community.

M: … and I’m like “Oh shit! Yeah, I do don’t I?” [LAUGHS] Yeah, it’s so nice, it’s so nice and it’s growing as well, it’s been amazing for my…

INT: I know you’ve been asked to do other things as well…

M: Yeah.

INT: … and in this project and…

M: Yeah, that’s true actually. Isn’t that weird, it’s like I don’t… I’ve still got that sort of thing where I just think “No, this isn’t… this isn’t actually applying to me,” you know, where you feel like a spectator in your own life, I think at this point… I think at this point in my life that’s more of a habit, really, from the past, just feeling quite disassociated from everything and it’s… that’s really melted away at the moment and…

INT: How about your role in the wider sort of community, if there is a wider community, because I’m not quite sure where the LGBT community, the queer community and the wider community, one begins and the other ends, if you know what I mean.

M: I know exactly what you mean, and I think about it a lot, because I don’t, I don’t like the idea of the ghettoisation of it, I totally believe that a safe space is essential, somewhere where we can go and nurture one another and lick our wounds if we’re hurt and encourage ourselves and support one another, and build things, you know, like a back room club, in some… you know, where you can go and just be like “This is our space” and put our flag up and do stuff without anyone bothering us, that’s essential. But I wouldn’t want to ever just be in there, like you were talking, earlier, about walking down West Street and walking through that street in Cardiff, which was, you know, dead rough and you said that – what did you say? – you decided that you were going to be in the world…

INT: But I wouldn’t let… I wouldn’t edit myself out of anything.

M: Yes, that’s… yeah, spot on, that’s a perfect way of putting it, and I feel like that too, and I’m just, just getting to grips with having the confidence to feel like I’m… I’ve been out, in the world, but just kind of cacking myself about it for a while, I’m just starting to get the confidence to just feel like I actually own my space in the world, I want to travel, I want to go everywhere and, you know, I spend a good deal of time in not straight places, but not explicitly LGBT spots and I always have, and, you know, it’s to do with, I guess mostly to do with, you know, the kind of the music scene that I like and all those… you know, to go and see bands you have to go to mixed venues and playing in bands you go to mixed venues and all this kind of stuff and it’s like, loads of my dear, dear friends are straight cis-people, who are gorgeous. And you know there’s stuff that they don’t necessarily get the same way that myself and my queer friends understand. So I go to, you know, I go to queer spaces for that, but, you know, it’s essential that we, as trans people, get on with our lives in the world, because it’s ours just as much as it’s anybody else’s and it’s… I don’t know, it’s… it’s not as bad… this is more of a theory than an opinion I think at this point, it’s not as bad as we think it is and we carry a lot of self-loathing and a lot of hatred around with us and we feel like targets and we, you know, for abuse and criticism and we feel fragile and we feel vulnerable, and I’ve been thinking about recently, like is it that bad or is it because, because we feel that?

INT: Well, it’s a sense maybe which we do project sometimes, you can project your insecurities onto the outside world and create a reality that doesn’t quite exist.

M: Exactly. And I’m not saying for a second, that, that we aren’t targets and there aren’t people who are going to be arseholes to us, and stuff, and… I mean that’s you know, I’m not that naïve but I’m trying to… I’m trying to reduce how much of my anxiety I ping out into the world, because I also think that that… you could put yourself in a dangerous position if you do that, because people see that, and you can make yourself a target if you do that too much. I mean it’s, you know, it’s a difficult of balancing act, but just sort of… I don’t know, I’ve really hated the straight world for a long time, you know, I used to… you know, I used to bands where we’d scream about it, “Just, you don’t understand…” and that was, you know, that was sound, that’s, you know, that’s been really formative for me and it’s been really, you know, I know we’ve… we had an impact on people who feel that same, and I still think that that’s important to do that, but… and I probably, you know, I will write songs like that, which are angry about the straight world, but I don’t want to exclude myself from it, because it’s… I don’t know, it’s just the world, not the straight world or the queer world, there’s different spaces within it, but it’s the world and it’s absolutely beautiful and I have wasted quite a lot of time and I don’t regret the way I’ve done things because there’s… it never would have… it was never going to go any differently, was it, really, like…

INT: So it wasn’t necessarily a waste really…

M: Yeah, it wasn’t a waste… yeah, I’ve wasted time but it wasn’t really a waste because I’m here now, but, you know, I would… there’s large swathes of my life that I can’t remember, where I just haven’t been engaged in the world at all, it’s like, you know, like I was a tape recorder that was just on pause and life happened around me and I’ve not recorded anything about it when it’s been happening, because I’ve just thought, “Oh God! I can’t be bothered, this is nothing to do with me”. So there’s like, months and years that I can’t really remember, especially in my twenties.

INT: We were talking earlier, off tape, about that thing of being yourself, enabling you to engage with the world…

M: Yeah.

INT: … positively and rewardingly.

M: Yeah.

INT: Yeah, totally. It’s… I don’t know, I’m trying to think of an analogy but I don’t know if you really need one, do you, it’s like if you be yourself to the world the world will see… it’s the mirror thing, isn’t it, if you be yourself to the world the world will see who you are and it will treat you like you, and you will get nourished by the interactions that you’ve had. And then that will… then you’ll think “Oh! That is me” and then that will kind of magnifies and then you do it back and it’s like this sort of positive feedback loop where you just being yourself gives the word something positive and it realises and gives you something positive back, in the main. Yeah, the world bounces back… well, the world bounces back and enables you to identify who you are.

M: Exactly. Yeah, yeah.

INT: In a way. It would be quite a nice place to stop on that positive thing, but I just wanted to just recap or go back a little bit to see how, now that you’ve got to this point, how that feels within your family relationships? Those longer terms family and really, really long term friends? You know, Birkenhead.

M: I don’t, I don’t have a lot of contact with friends from Birkenhead from when I was a kid, there’s some really good people there, who I chat to occasionally online, and I’m, you know, probably sort of aware of what’s happening with me, but most of my close friends… my family’s back in Birkenhead. My mum and dad are just really pleased that I’ve nailed what’s been wrong with me, and my mum actually said, she was like – I can’t remember the words she said – but basically like “I’m so pleased that you’ve found what it is. Like, we’ve been watching you for years, we haven’t been able to fathom what the problem’s been, we were worried that we were going to lose you,” and all this kind of stuff, which broke my heart. And, you know, they can see that I’m being authentic with what I’m doing, and I know that… I’ve heard so many stories about people’s parents and families just not supporting them and I… you know, obviously I understand but I don’t get it, I think it’s absolutely fucked up and I know that I’m lucky because my parents do, but I’ve also put time in as well, you know, it’s not just like “Bam!”, it’s been a two-way process for a long, long time.

But the people who are closest to me I think can just see that I’m, that I’m making the right decision here, like I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life and even, you know, this is just my best guess at what might make me happy, I don’t know how far I’m going to go with it, but I’ve never been more sure of anything. And I think people can see that and, don’t know people… most of the people that I know, as I said before, I sort of been here for 12 years, it’s quite a lot of people, like people I’m close to and people on the peripheries, you know, are just sound, they’re just like, yeah, “What are you going to do now?” and it’s… I feel a damn sight closer to the people that I am close to, and I’ve got closer to people that I haven’t been that close to in the past, because I guess because I’m just sort of changing as as person and we found that we actually get on a lot better than we thought we did and that’s been wonderful, and just had some wonderful stuff off girls as well, you know, like off women that I know, just being like, you know, just sitting in the pubs and just going “You looked boss’d, like, you look really good, you’re rocking it,” like, and just feeling like one of the girls and actually… you were saying earlier about for a while feeling like you were still like a guy, like I used to feel like I was a guy dressed up going out, or I didn’t feel like because I knew that I wasn’t, but I felt like I was being read as that. But I… yeah, and that makes you feel like [MAKES NOISE] but I don’t, I don’t feel like that now, I know, I know that I’m a chick, and, you know, whatever…

INT: I love that, “I know I’m a chick”.

M: Yeah, self-defined.

INT: And the world knows it.

M: Yeah, I think so, like people, I mean obviously people… you can get people going… pronouning you wrong and stuff, but they do know, like people know what my vibe’s about I think, when I walk down the street and stuff, more than, more than they did and I feel all right about it and, you know, I, you know, I don’t get like a… a grand piano doesn’t fall on me as I step out the flats or something after this, or like get ran over or something. Hit by a tsunami, but feel quite positive.

INT: Yeah, is there anything else that you, you think is kind of burning in your brain that you’d like to say about this whole transition in Brighton part of your life?

M: I’m really glad to be doing it here, I think this is a wonderful town, it’s got its flaws and it’s, like, it’s a hotbed of like sleaze, isn’t it, which I quite like [LAUGHS] and, you know, it’s like… it’s a bubble this town, it is a bubble and you have to be careful here that you don’t just get… I heard that… somebody told me Alistair Crowley cursed the place, if you come here looking for something you’ll never leave. But I just don’t think a lot of people just don’t leave anyway because it’s like… it’s a very comfortable place, but it is very beautiful and it’s very… it’s accepting and it’s a big magical and it’s a wonderful place to transition because it’s small and there is an actual community here, of people who actually like, you know, sort of love and respect each other and it’s, you know, and it is more open-minded on the whole, like I’ve walked passed many a building site and not had any grief off anyone, you know, I mean that’s really sort of stereotypical isn’t it, but I… yeah, I’ve pigeon-holed people, in my mind, expecting them to be a certain way and they haven’t been, and it’s just… it’s a good town, I really love it here, and I’m proud to call it my home and I would like to travel the world and do more now I’m sort of that path and I feel more comfortable with myself. I don’t know…

INT: You can always carry a bit of Brighton inside you.

M: Exactly, just keep a pebble on me, or something, or keep a bit of rock on me, but I’d come back, I think and settle here and, you know, what else, who knows. But yeah, it’s decent innit.

INT: Yeah. Is that a good point to end?

M: Yes, as good as any I think. Yeah.

INT: Because it sounds really nice and positive as well, thank you very much for that.

M: Thank you it’s been an absolute pleasure. I’m pressing the stop now. Thanks Mr Transcriber, I’ve tried to keep – or Ms Transcriber or whatever your gender identity is – I’ve tried to keep my Scouse accent a little bit on. I hope you can understand. I’m going to shut up. Bye!

[RECORDING STOPPED]

INT: We’re going to another five minutes because we didn’t cover Maeve’s hidden life as a musician.

M: Well, I went on about punk bands for quite a while didn’t I, but it’s, you know.

INT: But you were in two of the sort of best bands in Brighton.

M: Well, yeah, well, two of the most unknown bands in the world. Yeah, I suppose, I suppose, honestly, yeah I play guitar in Daskinsey 4 which has been going since last summer, and I’m the lead singer in The Corals, which has been going for a few years, and I was in Agatha and The Christies, which was…

INT: Great name.

M: Yeah, I think you might like that, that’s really kind of garagey, like women singing kind of garage music I was in that for a while a few years ago and I was in Abandon Ship, which was a hardcore band that I did for about five years with my house mate Rob, who plays bass in The Corals, and I was in a really dirty kind of crust hardcore band that I did with my brother…

INT: You’ve been in bands for a long, long while, has transitioning change the way that you think about yourself with music and so on?

M: Yes, especially with The Corals, like The Corals is like my main thing, that I’ve always wanted to do this kind of garage sort of seventies, bluesy garage sort of punk, kind of soul band, just taking loads of influence from The Stooges and The Stones and all that kind of stuff, bands beginning with “S” and we’ve done that for a few years and I… I never quite… I’ve never been like… I’ve sang in bands, but I’ve never been like the front person, like strictly, like just me and a microphone and we sing about a lot of quite personal stuff, like I sing about relationships and about gender and stuff into all my songs and I was doing that as like when I was a fella, and it was fun, but I didn’t feel like I was quite connecting the way I wanted to and then, when I… I remember the first the show that I’d ever done, I’ve played in dresses and stuff, but I did the first show I’ve ever done sort of as myself, just as I started to transition and I just felt it connected loads more and I found it easier to sing and I do now, when I play I feel loads more connected with the music, and with the crowd and with the songs, and you know, I’m not, you know, I’m not the best singer in the world, but I can do it, it sounds like I wanted and my voice comes more naturally to me, so yeah, I feel loads better funnily enough.

INT: Great, yeah. There’s a reason I asked that, well, have reasons for asking that, because like the poetry, the whole attitude towards that has changed really and partly been changed by the people around me, but yeah, so I just wanted to give you a chance to talk a little bit about that and they can either add that or not, as the case maybe.

M: Yeah, that’s cool. Well, it’s just… it’s a tremendously important part of my life, playing music, and, you know, I’ve gone on about it a lot, but it’s, it’s like… like I have to do that to feel any kind of peace. I mean I do other stuff in the community and stuff and that, which is brilliant but the music’s just… I need to do it, it’s like if I don’t do that, I just get really grumpy and depressed and it’s like, it’s just been a tremendous help for me like, expressing this stuff.

INT: Self-expression.

M: Yeah, totally, and I just… I like… I love the… the best bit is that like you’re in a band and you arrive at a room and there isn’t any music happening and then you all put your instruments on and then you play and then there’s music happening and it’s totally transportative, and then you finish and there’s no music any more and it’s like it’s gone, like it’s amazing. Anyway, yeah.

INT: What I like… it’s the thing that…

M: [LAUGHS] We’re never going to stop, are we? We’ll just keep chatting all day.

INT: We just gel, we just left it running and we’re just chatting now. But there’s this thing where, you know, when you’re beating yourself up all your life, every time you sort of do something that’s kind of putting yourself forward, it’s like showing off, you know, you’ve got this inner voice telling you you’re showing off, now it says “Yeah! I am, I like it,”

M: Yeah, “I am showing off!” yeah, yeah, exactly.

INT: It’s great.

M: That’s what I like about The Corals, is that… because it’s a rock back, like if I… I’m quite a humble person, like, I do like, you know what I mean, but if I go up on the stage and I don’t show off, it’ll be shit, do you know what I mean, so I have to show off a little bit, to carry it and it’s just dead fun isn’t it, like more than anything like, I just really like it, it just feels nice.

INT: It’s great. And you give yourself permission, it’s Maeve showing off. This is Maeve…

M: Yeah, and you doing your poetry, is like, it’s Alice showing off, and why not, like, there’s a difference between showing off and being like an arse, and being like “Oh, look at me, I’m so brilliant,” and performing, that’s a different thing, like showing off performing, like when you do it and such… in a way like that you channel something and give it to people, that’s cool, that’s different from being like “Oh, well,” you know what I mean, but I think that’s about how you carry yourself, like on and off stage as well…

INT: I think it’s about putting a positive connotation on things you do as opposed to the negative ones and that’s something that I’d really like people to latch onto a lot more, because you deserve it.

M: Yeah, totally.