Anima Animus - Sabah

My name is Sabah, I’m 22, I’m from Brighton and my preferred pronouns are he, his, him.
I was born in London and I came to Brighton to study Psychology at university.
I chose Brighton because my cousin lived here, so I had already been, and I really liked the place and the gay scene.
I graduated in the summer and now I’m doing a part time course in counseling as well as being a part time PA for two disabled people.
I’d love to be a counselor, working with the LGBT community, and hopefully to have an house in Brighton.
I firstly identify as genderqueer and secondly as a trans man. I identify as genderqueer because I don’t feel like I fit into the binary terms of male or female. I don’t really believe in the binary system of gender and that’s the reason why I don’t feel 100% comfortable calling myself a trans man. I would call myself trans.
When I was younger, when I was a little kid, I was kind of waiting to turn into a boy overnight, but in my teenage years I stuck to the label of being a lesbian because that’s what I understood, I really didn’t know much about being transgender or gender reassignment. When I first heard and learned about trans people thanks to a girl I was with at the time, everything seemed to click into place and I realised I was trans.
She was the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans) officer for the NUS (the National Union of Students) and she would talk to me about what she’s done before and about some of her friends who were trans. As we talked about it and I learned more, it became obvious.
I didn’t have to come out to her about it because she knew before I did.
It was really easy to come out to my friends because they were kind of expecting it, so it wasn’t difficult for them to change pronouns and other than that, nothing really changed.
Coming out to family was a bit tricky. My parents are divorced, so I had to tell both of them in two separate instances, and then I had to tell my sister as well. Now everything is ok, my dad thinks that whatever makes me happy is priority, my sister has similar kind of views and I’m not really sure about my mum. I think they’re all waiting for something to happen, something to change, like surgery or hormones. I don’t think they really understand that I’ve already transitioned, they still see me as their daughter.
I did think about changing my name, but it felt very weird, like if it wasn’t me and I would lose a part of me, so I decided to keep my birth name that is unisex anyway. I thought about changing it because that’s what most people do. For transitioning, If you want apply for treatment through the NHS, they use the change of name as one of the markers that they look at, but they can go fuck themselves.
I came out over a year ago and I’ve gone private just because I was sick of waiting, but we’ll see what happens in the future.
I think trans representation in the media is very biased towards middle class white trans women, people who can afford to have surgery if they want to, and it focuses only on the medical steps of transition, like the hormones therapy and the surgeries. It’s not recognised that you can transition without doing anything at all.
There’s a general fixation on genitals because for most people, the heteronormative kind of population, that’s what it comes down to, defining people according to what’s between their legs, so there’s not real emphasis on trans psychological well being and the gender spectrum. There’s a general fixed belief that trans people are all “born in the wrong body” and they need to match their brain with their physical self.
I’m quite active in the trans and feminist community and I keep a blog at smashbrown.wordpress.com. In terms of aspirations and dreams, I want to be someone, I’d like people to listen to what I’ve got to say and hopefully to make a difference. Even just teach some people what my experience is and why it’s important that they should listen to it would be great. My main focus is increasing diversity in trans communities in terms of different cultures and ethnic minorities, because it's been a struggle for me and it's something that can definitely change. It's hard for people from ethnic minorities to come out because there isn't a trans and BME (black minority ethnic) community out there - there are more hurdles for us to face. Of course, it does happen, but once people are out and have transitioned, they tend to hide and disappear, avoiding any attention and the community is never built.