Hello, everyone. My name is Joanne Lockwood and I am your host for the Inclusion Bites podcast. In this series, I have interviewed a number of amazing people and simply had the conversation around the subject of inclusion, belonging, and generally making the world a better place for everyone to thrive. If you'd like to join me in the future, then please do drop me a line to jo.lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk, that's S-E-E Change Happen dot Co dot UK. You can catch up with all of the previous shows on iTunes, Spotify and the usual places.

So plug in the headphones, grab a decaf and let's get going. Today is episode 96 with the title "Authenticity Unveiled" and I have the absolute honour and privilege to welcome Lee Gilbert. Lee is a marketing leader and a volunteer, mentor and counsellor for adults with gender dysphoria. When I asked Lee to describe her superpower, she said, being an authentic leader who is comfortable with being vulnerable and using the happiness that comes from it. Hello, Lee. Welcome to the show.

Hi, Jo. It's a real pleasure to be here.

Likewise. And where are we now? We're in Twixmas, aren't we? The bit between Christmas and New Year 2023. And we were just chatting just now about our family occasions and all the things we've done. So, Lee, authenticity unveiled, what's all that?

I guess there's two parts to that. Authenticity is something that's become more important to me in the last few years, and the unveiling is the part that took 40 years, I guess is a way of looking at it. So, winding back the clock just to set the context here. I am transgender. I am someone that has been through and experienced a lot in my life, but I didn't become authentically myself until 2020. Prior to that, I was operating what I would call the role of a lifetime, as Ronald Reagan once described it, as an acting role. I was one of the world's best actors. I was acting a life that wasn't authentic, but a life that was very successful, productive, and from the outside to other people, looked amazing.

But inside, to me, was very uncomfortable and challenging. Winding back the clock. I knew I was trans in 1985, which was when I was about seven, coming on eight that year. In 1995, when I finished education in March of that year, I attempted my own life, because that was a point in my life that was possibly the lowest. I've never thought about it or had ideation about that since. But it was a moment that was the deepest and darkest time as I began adulthood at that point. And it was a time when it happened, but it thankfully failed. I guess I decided to do what society expected me to do for the next 30 years almost.

And I'll. And I'll tell you the difference between the 30 and the 35, the difference in the time there in a moment. But the intervening period, I was reasonably successful. I decided, for my own mental health reasons, not to go to university. I could have gone, but I chose not to because I thought the isolation of university, considering what had just happened, might have been one of the worst things I could do for myself. So I decided to go and get a job and go for the picket fence and the 2.4 kids and everything else that the world kind of dictates that you're supposed to do. Dictators, a bit of a strange word to use, but I guess that's how it feels. And that lack of belonging created that inauthentic feeling.

But at the same time, I'm quite a driven, passionate, entrepreneurial individual. So I kind of wandered through five years of life in my first roles and then set up my own business in the turn of the millennium, and then basically made myself unemployable for 20 years, during which time I founded a couple of startups and founded a marketing agency and did some speaking. Became very successful to the outside world with supercars and houses and multiple holidays and family and everything else. It looked like I was being authentic, but actually it was the biggest fraud in human history, certainly in my history. But in 2016, I kind of set myself free a bit. That freedom exercised itself fully in 2020. I can explain the gap between 2016 and 2020 a bit more later. And then since 2020, I've been living authentically, and now I've kind of found a sense of belonging, which means I found happiness.

And not only am I living authentically, it's dramatically improved the way I act, who I am, and I enjoyed being a leader in an authentic way. So I guess that's the unveiling part, Jo, and that's the journey to authenticity. Wow.

Well, first of all, thank you for sharing and trusting me with some of that information. It can't be easy to talk about that. I appreciate that. So you're of seven or 819 85. A little bit younger than me, I won't say how. Well, quite a lot younger than me. Ten or so years. 1015 years.

1985 was still the dark ages in human evolution. When we talk about Internet, we talk about probably right in the middle of section 28, I guess, close to section 20. 819 88, wasn't it? I think.

Yeah, I was at school when that happened.

So, yeah, you were growing up in a time where being queer was AIDS, AIDS was around, all that kind of stuff. It was being demonised. We look at those, look back at that time in history, it wasn't a great time to be a young, questioning person. There's no information, no literature, no nothing else around. So when you say you were trying to figure itself out in your head, what reference point did you have to try and use to analyse that?

Nothing. And I guess that was the problem, Jo, from 1985 to 1995, when I attempted my own life, you're quite right, that was the vacuum of information that we lived in and that was the backdrop to it. And I had no role models around me, which is why today I'm very driven to be open about my journey so I can offer myself as a role model to others. And as you said in the beginning, I do volunteer to mentor young adults that are going through that journey myself. And I'm very open on LinkedIn about my journey and some of the challenges amongst everything else professionally. But during that period, there was no information, there was no Internet. And I think the only things that happened, and this sounds silly, but the only things that would happen is occasionally you would get in the news of the world or the Sunday people or something, there would be a story every now and again, a few times a year, you would get sex swap cop or some army major that has been brave enough to change their gender and sold their story to the News of the World. You'd get like Julia Grant, who did the BBC tv series in the 80s, which was.

They were little diamonds in the rough. That happened. But the sex swap stop. Sex swap cop stories were so derogatory. But actually, I was compelled to read them because it was a point of identity. It was like, actually, I get that. But you're looking back at now, the way that the newspapers dealt with that and the headlines they put on it were, quite frankly, shocking, but that was the only information we had, and we didn't have any Internet, and there was very little in libraries because of government legislation, as you've alluded to, and there was no schooling. And I think the lack of information created the darkness and some of the mental health challenges I had at that time and put me in that difficult place in 95, which music actually got me out of.

It was music that got me out of the darkness. But that vacuum of information is so kick. Of course, today you flip that coin and there's arguably so much information, and so much of that information is still riddled with that media kind of poisoned language in places, but some of it is genuinely powerful and really great information. But you've gone from nothing to too much, arguably, and there's a lot of confusion. So young people today, the ones that I work with at least, have the opposite problem to the one I did, which is that they're bombarded with so much that they're not quite sure which way to turn.

Yeah, so many more options these days. In the old days, it was transvestite or transsexual or transvestite is pre cross dressing, because cross dressing is kind of the contemporary terms of. Transvestite was the term used in those days. And you were a tv or a ts, that was kind of a language. Now we've got a whole load of different ways to describe gender in terms of fluidity, demi transmasculine, transfeminine, nonbinary fluid. All these kind of different terms exist. And the one I think is most important, that's now evolved, is questioning. You're allowed to question.

You're allowed to say, I don't know, but society wants you to know. I think sometimes you get pushed into making a decision and not allowed to just figure yourself out for a bit.

I think that's right. I think we kind of grow up in a binary world in so many senses. There's left, there's right, there's up, there's down, there's male, there's female, there's black, there's white. And I think that binary makes people feel safe in their own thoughts. And being in that, dare I say the term, 50 shades of grey spectrum in the middle makes some people feel uncomfortable and they find that questions themselves, let alone those that are questioning. And that's where some of the discomfort and some of the challenges that others have with things I think happen. But we do live in a binary world, and there are good things that come from binary factors. It kind of makes things easy to understand.

But when things are less binary, that's when complexity occurs.

I did my evolution alone. I'm not saying it was easier or harder being alone or being with people, but I had no pressure from people around me to be. To operate at a different pace. I sometimes wonder if we have created a society where because of the queues for the gender identity clinics are now six to eight years. I think depending on where you go, if you're a young person trying to get on the pathway, I think the time scales are even longer. You're more like to become an adult before you get seen at the youth services now because they've all been disrupted, there's this kind of need to get on the conveyor belt. Whereas when I was trying to figure myself out because I was in isolation, yes, I didn't understand. I couldn't figure myself out.

But I didn't have a whole peer group of pressure or comparison drawing me into something that I wasn't sure about. People were surprised when I transitioned because I went from sort of naught to 60 in a millisecond. It was like, how did that happen? Because I kind of dotted all my I's and crossed my t's and then went, right now I know. I think today people are using their quite rightly questioning in public, and out they come out and question, rather than keep it as a secret in question.

I think that's quite right, and it's positive that that happens. I talk about vulnerability being almost a superpower or something that I'm. I see as part of an authenticity. I. You know, from my period up until what was November 2015, when I first came out to my wife, we then had a period of five years where no one else knew. But during that five years, myself, most particularly, but also my wife, and building those foundations of a strong relationship and everything else that goes with kind of having that cornerstone there, at least in my experience, for me, and it was important, it allowed me to do those things somewhat in private for five years, but with someone I could talk to. But up until that point, it was without it. But prior to that time, doing it in isolation created shame.

And shame is a very, very negative emotion, but one I've learned to turn into a powerful emotion now because shame is the backbone of vulnerability. So, yes, I feel shame about some of my past, and I do. I've learned to be okay with that and to turn that around and to say, actually, by being vulnerable, that allows me to engage people at a deeper level. And I'm quite glad that I had that time. I'm quite glad that I had that adjustment. There was this period of deep shame, then a period of five years of kind of figuring stuff out and a little bit of that with my wife at the time. But then, literally during lockdown, let's not forget, 2020 was during lockdown, when the world slowed down a bit and I was allowed some mental capacity to think about things. It was like, okay, now is right, now is right.

Lockdown was pants. But actually, one of the positive things for lockdown for me was it gave me that bandwidth to make the decision that I was going to come out to the world in summer of 2020. Professionally, I didn't do it till the new year, but the family was first, obviously, and had we not have had lockdown and that kind of pause of life, I'm not sure it would have happened at that moment in time. So it's quite an interesting perspective of deep shame transition, of kind of getting my mind together and dealing with some of that and then having the pause of lockdown and that to be the unveiling, as you described at the start. And it happened at nocta 60 for me too, from that point onwards. I mean, to the outside world at least, but actually it was a 40 plus year journey prior to that, but to the outside world, everyone was like, what the heck? But that's how it happens.

I guess your story is not too dissimilar to my story. I first talked to my wife 2012 and then didn't really announce it to the world until mid 20, 20 16. So it's a four year private secret to try and figure that stuff out and try and keep our relationship together and prepare for telling the family. Although even at that journey, I wasn't sure where I was going with it. There was no destination. It was just kind of, let's just figure this stuff out. You talked about shame. In order to have shame, I think you need to be almost, given the situation, where do you think your shame came from? You don't self generate it out of nothing, do you?

No. I think shame is quite a complex thing. On one level, it comes from a societal norm perspective that I was doing, or I was. I am not what society expects. So that creates shame on a sort of surface level. But on a deeper level, there's the shame of having a relationship and a marriage at that time. When I told my wife coming on for about 1314 years, it's, it's now over 20. But it's the shame of the sense of, did I do the right thing during that time? I'm quite a morally ethically driven person, so I think some of the shame comes from that.

And then the other part of shame, I think, comes from what I gave up, which is a strange thing to say. But I got to a situation where I built successful couple of successful startups, successful agency, a successful speaking career. I had a driveway full of supercars, two dressage horses. I was, to the outside world, very successful. So shame comes a little bit in kind of the public exposure at that time, and it's quite a journey to do that in public. I kind of created this Persona, which was my protection. But then the Persona became a big driver for change, because losing or leaving that, which was absolutely the right thing to do, because it was all a complete and utter front. But I built it up.

And then in order to be me and to be authentic, I had to close the door on all of that and almost start again, which is what I did, really.

There must have been a huge. I'm used the word fear, fear of that unknown, how the world was going to react, how people around you would react. And that fear, I'm just using my own experience, held me back for many years. How did you overcome that fear? And how big was that fear for you?

It was huge. There's two parts to it. You spoke about coming out to your wife first and then having a period where there's the adjustment, and then there was where you come out to the remainder of the world. I mean, let's face it, you kind of come out every day in some expenses, but that's a separate conversation. The fear of. I call it jumping off a cliff moment. That's how I've described it in the past. So I had a huge jump off a cliff moment.

I was at a hotel in Belgium on the corner of the Formula one racing circuit spa. Frank Orchamp. I'd been doing a two day track day thing with some cars, which I was ridiculously into at that time. And in the middle night, it was the night of the batter clan. Paris Brussels. Terrorist attack, actually, to anchor it in history. And at that particular time, although I didn't know it until the following morning. But about the terrorist attack, that is overnight from about 11:00 p.m.

Until 04:00 a.m. I was coming out to my wife from a hotel room in Belgium while she was back home. So I jumped off a metaphorical cliff, remotely, if you like, and then came back home to my wife and family. So that was the first jump off a cliff moment. The next jump off a cliff moment is when you come out to your family. And then the bigger jump off a cliff moment was, I'm now going to throw my professional career away in the following year and kind of stand on another grenade and see what that brings about. But, yeah, there's the three metaphorical cliffs, I guess, wife, family, professional, and they're all big leaps.

Which is the hardest?

That's a great question, Jo. The hardest was my wife, because I knew I had to do that. I'd been trying to do it for nine months. Prior to that, the family one lockdown really helped me get in a great place. To do that was actually the easiest at that point. The professional one almost felt like a rite of passage. It just felt something that, okay, we're now here. We now need to do this.

And I connected at that time with a need to find a belonging. I kind of had 20 years of making myself completely unemployable and doing lots of things, but I realised that actually I wanted a home then. And in order to find. It wasn't about being a solopreneur, an entrepreneur, an agency owner, a speaker. It wasn't about being a startup founder. I didn't want that anymore. I was probably too old to a point. But what I wanted was a sense of belonging.

I wanted to feel that I belonged in so many ways, authentically, from a gender perspective, authentically, from a human perspective. And part of that belonging was the need to find something that aligned with my purpose. So I came out and then thought, I'll go and get a job. So there's a huge shift, really.

I did the opposite, actually. I came out and started my own business, because at the time, in 2016, 2017, I couldn't find a job that I wanted. Again, you talk about being unemployable. I'd run a business for the last 30 or 35 years. Where do you apply for a role where your former title was business owner or running a business or. There was no easy, employable route at the time, but when I told the world, it was a kind of drunken moment, a bit of facebook, bit of prosecco, bit of truth serum, sort of thing. What I didn't realise at the time was that the biggest impact of that wasn't on me, but it was on my family. Because what had been a private secret, a private thing we had between us, suddenly I realised what my wife and my children were now publicly associated to a trans person.

Before, it was kind of a private thing. So suddenly my wife had her own shame, her own stigma, her own feeling. My daughter, my dad's trans, had to tell her friend sort of thing. So that was the thing I was really surprised at. It hadn't occurred to me in one slightest. I had this real wake up moment that actually it wasn't about me at this point. Now it was all about everybody else around me and the trauma they were going through.

I think that's right. I think during the five years that I was having private coming out, if you like, with my wife, it was easy there. My kids were very aware of what was going on without being told it was in front of their eyes. So there was an unsaid thing for a number of years. Eventually, we had conversations, but in the beginning, it was an unsaid thing, and then it became quite an easy piece. But at the point of professionally coming out, putting a post out on LinkedIn and telling the world in subsequent conversations and to clients and ex clients and everything else, I mean, that's a story in itself, where the ex clients then started to come to me and say, oh, I've got trans daughter and I've got a trans son. Can you help? And that's where my volunteering actually started from. My clients, when I ran my own business, they were bringing their own children to me, which was an interesting switch.

But you're quite right. My wife in particular, had to go through her own journey at that point, and it took her probably a couple of years to feel completely okay and completely comfortable in a public situation in so much a way that now she's quite proud of that and very openly identifies in that way. But we are three, four, three and a half years down the track from that point. But in the beginning, it was very difficult.

Yeah, we did it quite publicly. We did a channel four documentary, so it was hard for us to hide a lot of this. It was being broadcast on Channel Four on a Monday night in 2019. So that kind of created this crunch point where we had to start telling people, because in a few weeks time, it was all going to be everywhere. Because Marie was very nervous about telling her parents. I told my mum several years before, and that was quite emotional, but very supportive. But, yeah, I was quite surprised by my friends. And a saying I say, which sounds quite crazy, is that your friends are your friends because they're your friends.

The people who aren't your friends are no longer your friends, basically. So I was surprised by the friends and their reaction. It was almost like a little jolt in the spacetime continuum, and everyone sort of shook themselves out of it. Okay, fine. Okay, whatever. Because if anyone who doesn't know the history, I was national president of a man's club called the Roundtable. So a lot of my friends were through the roundtable movement, and there was obviously being a male only club and being national president of it kind of did disrupt a lot of people's thinking, so much so that, and we talked about belonging. I've lost the sense of belonging I had with that club because it's not for me.

And I go to some meetings because I'm invited as a past national president, past club chair, and all these kind of things. And I go there and I think, this isn't where I want to be. This feels uncomfortable. So I've lost the belonging I had. And it's not them, it's not at all them. It's all about me and what I want and what I need. So I've lost a sense of belonging. And I've drifted away considerably from old friends.

And it's not them, it is purely me, my needs and what fulfils me now. Did you have something similar because you're supercar racing, you were track days successful, probably spending far too much in bars that you shouldn't be in, having a.

Good time, spending far too much in bars that I shouldn't have been in was true to all intense purposes. I was an alcoholic during that period. A high functioning alcoholic, I have to say. But that was just a ridiculous thing. And I used the word ridiculous about some of the car stuff earlier on. I mean, it was all denial and masking and everything else. You look back at it now and it brings me shame thinking about it, actually, because I was denying myself through that denial. I was denying myself true authenticity.

But there are things I go back to now. It's like being in environments that's quite laddish now, or in situations that are quite atypical. Going back to a binary situation for a moment. Male environments, whether it's around cars or around football, or around heavy drinking or ladish behaviour. Literally, it's a fish out of water. And because I found my inner self and that sense of belonging, I just don't want to be there. So that shift of journey to authenticity, if you like, it was a long one, but when I found it, it definitely has put me in places. It makes me realise now that there are lots of things that I did that I clearly didn't really want to be in or be around or be part of, or be involved with.

But I was doing it again, going back to doing what I was supposed to do. And the 2.4 kids and societal norms and everything else.

You mentioned that lockdown gave you the mental capacity to sort of explore the space in your head to explore things. And one of the things I found throughout my life, I look at it from similar sort of age. Six, seven, eight years old. There was always this societal, you call it societal expectation. You're in school, you've got to get your exams, you got to get your exams, you got to go to college, you got to go to university, whatever. I ended up joining the ref from school. But there was always this kind of trajectory that you get on, this life expectation. And if you didn't, then you were one of those weird people that didn't succeed or you were rogue.

So I think I did that and I followed the must get married, must have kids, must have the picket fence, must have the four bedroom detached and have the biggest car I could afford and spend far too much and being very ladish. And I think what happened to me was I got to my mid forty s and I hit the stop button. It was kind of like, hang on a minute. My it career is not something I really wanted to do. I don't know how I got into it. I'm good at it, but I don't enjoy it. It's not something that buzzes me. And of course that time there, around my mid 40s, you start to question your life anyway, don't you? And I think it would have been cheaper to get Harley Davidson and cruise across America in leathers than it would be to transition and give up everything.

I gave up, but I think I did a reboot. I literally rebooted everything. My career, my identity. The only thing that is actually the same now are my wife and family. 99% of everything else is different. Don't live in the same house, we don't have the same cars, we don't have the same circle of friends. Everything is rebooted. And I think you talk about unfailing authenticity.

It's allowed me to rebuild a life that resonates rather than the life that was making me resonate, if you like. My life is now humming to my inner beat rather than me resonating to.

The outer beat, if you like.

I think that's probably the difference. It's now my life I've got control over.

And I completely relate. I love the analogy of the reboot. Fundamentally, that's what's happened. We still do live in the same house, ironically, but everything else is rebooted. And I went through that whole thing of pressing the stop button as you described it, and everything happened at that moment, and it happened quick, within a really short period of time. So it's almost like I spent the time prior to that preparing to somehow bring it together or creating some sort of mental space to allow that to happen. And I think I said it earlier on, lockdown gave me the pause.

To.

First of all, find the brain space to act. But it also allowed me then, because of course, lockdown didn't just happen for a couple of months. It happened after I came out to my family and continued for some time after that, it allowed brain space for others to adjust so they weren't running their lives at 90 miles an hour. So those that came along and are still on the journey with us kind of had the opportunity to explore and join in and see the world for what it was for us and experience that and go, actually, this is kind of the same, but different. And those friends and family are, as you say, still with us. But the reboot around us happened on so many levels and so fast.

Quite empowering, though, isn't it?

Hugely empowering. I can't tell you now how I find it difficult to describe at the moment. I've been through this period over the last month or two, trying to find words to describe it simply. And I'm struggling, if I'm honest, but the empowerment from it connected with some of my drive and passion and enthusiasm, entrepreneurial spirit that's always been there in my life, but connecting the empowerment with that stuff, I'm now the best me I can be. Whereas before, it wasn't all of me. I struggle to put that in as few words as possible, but that's kind of how it is.

That's beautiful. That's really beautiful. It so resonates. It's a connection of all the dots, isn't it? Everything clicks into place. And I always talk about this, the Japanese saying icky guy, which is when you have all those four elements click into place and the last one is what resonates, that you find that passion and then everything clicks into place. I felt I was always lacking that bit. I was good at something, I earned money at it, the world needed it, but I never found me in there. I think once you line it all up, suddenly that's where the magic happens.

My favourite poem is Marianne Williamson one. It talks about that it's our darkness. That's our darkness and our fears, which is our greatest. It's our light that we're most afraid of. It's not our darkness. And that's true, actually. I focus for so long on kind of all the things that I kind of captured in that darkness. But actually, once you connect those dots, everything becomes so much more enthralling.

Happy. Yes. And that in itself is quite a powerful emotion. And you mix that in with other things. I literally now feel capable of moving things that I never felt I could move or do or achieve, or conversations, even on a human level, that I never thought I could do before. So the bandwidth that I have from an emotional intelligence is far greater than ever was. But the bandwidth I have on an IQ perspective has somehow become more powerful as a result, because the emotion in there is allowing me to explore things that I didn't see before. It's really hard to capture, but it's amazing indeed.

Yes. Beautiful. Again. So here we are, the end of 2023, at the end of a pretty tough year for trans, nonbinary, gender diverse individuals. From a media perspective, from the government perspective, from a global perspective. It's getting worse, isn't it?

And I think it will in 2024, if I'm honest, because there's inevitably going to be an election in the UK. Obviously, the US election engine is warming up, so I think it will increase. It's an interesting one, Jo, because to some degree, I've stayed away from being actively involved in conversations about the media spin and hatred, but also the media lens broadly on trans issues. Predominantly because I just didn't want to get associated with being part of the conversation. I've always had the view that I can make a difference in individual ways, which is why I do my volunteering and my mentoring work with young adults, because I can make a difference there. And next year, I think it's going to be more challenging. It's never been something I wanted to stray into. I've never really wanted to be the kind of noisy, vocal person.

Although I've got the opinions, I must say, I do have the opinions, but I've always wanted to be. I guess it's my marketing head, I put it on and think from a personal brand perspective, do I want to be part of that conversation? And privately, I am very much part of that conversation. But publicly, I very rarely am. And there are some things that annoy me. I mean, the things that do annoy me, and I will talk about here is the lack of common sense. I read something the other day, maybe even been yesterday, about how trans chess players are now being treated in the same way as trans athletes. And I look at that and I think, okay, so we can have a conversation about the trans athlete thing, and that can go whichever way you want that to go. But then you start thinking about trans chess players and the world's gone mad.

Because there are sports, and I don't know why chess is not one of them. But there are definitely sports, and equestrian sports is one of them, where gender doesn't create a different class of competition, that you compete together, and there is no advantage or disadvantage from that in whatever way you choose to look at it. But how can someone that is trans have an advantage over another chess player? Of any other gender identity in a sport that's got no physical attributes to it, yet it becomes a story in the media just because it continues. This whole thing about trans in sport, it's kind of like, okay, let's make it make sense, please, let's just find something, find a place that delivers some common sense into the conversation. And the chess one was just like.

Oh, please, there's been a couple like that, hasn't it? And it was chess and something else recently where it just doesn't make sense at all. But then you look at ice hockey, and ice Hockey has come up with some very pragmatic, very simple rules where your transiness or your trans history isn't deciding fact. It's all based on risk, and I'm all in favour of analysing risk for participants and also risk of fairness. Sport at elite level has to have a perception of fairness because there's money involved, there's betting, there's competitions. So you have to believe there's fairness. But there's lots of inequity in sport anyway, around sponsorship, around money, around privilege. And one's gender identity is just part of that mix of fairness which we latch onto without latching onto the other inequities in society. You'd think that the 1%, 2% of the population that are trans nonbinary would be the majority, the way we're subverting the entire society and destroying family values and the fabric ahead of all the other things.

We've had politicians lying, we've got.

Countless.

Wars going on around the world, but yet trans people seem to be the ones that are the diverse from me tactic at the moment, aren't we?

Yes. And it's a potato, a hot potato, that seems to get passed around a lot. And it's something that I guess is part of the journey of acceptance in ten years time, probably look back and it'll just be part of history. And I'm sure that will be the case because you look at historical kind of periods of acceptance, and that's kind of how it's always played out. There's always been this time where it's been tumultuous and difficult and challenging and kind of buoyant, and then it calms down, then there's a piece of revisionism that happens, and then people look back and it's all norm kind of proceeds. And I do think in ten years time, that is where we will be at, but we're in the middle of it right now. And the bit that makes me sad actually, is that it becomes the most important topic of the day for some people, some media outlets, some newspapers, some tv stations and such like. Yet actually, there are far more important things going on in the world.

There are far more important challenges in the economy and in health care and in education and in everything else. Yet this is a story that everyone keeps talking about. It's almost like you use the word distraction, and I think that's it. If we keep it bubbling, then it means we don't have to have the tough conversations about the things that really matter. And the things that really matter are the economy, education, health care. But actually, if we kick the stuff around about migrants and trans people, then we can keep the headlines there and we don't have to have those tough conversations.

Just bury the real news under the fake news, isn't it, and create these political footballs. But as you say, I think 2024, we got the US elections where it would seem that Trump is now the favourite, apparently.

Allegedly.

That's hoping you listen back to this episode in a year's time that that wasn't the case. But that seems to be the trajectory at the moment. And the political football this year for the UK is likely to be. Trans people are likely to be dead centre. I'm going to say we, as we were in the Tory legit competition last summer, the summer before, where it was a race to be the most transphobic, got the vote or something. I think we're going to end up in that same hot potato political football sphere again. And everyone's going to be posturing on how to be the most transphobic or the most anti trans. They can be throw us under the bus as much as they can in order to create some sort of wedge issue in society.

That's why I'm determined to be visible, because by being visible, you creates. You challenge the myth that trans people are all of a certain type, or they're all. I mean, obviously, at the moment, every mention of trans is that they're somebody that's been held up in court for a physical assault on another female, and that person is identified as being trans as a way of getting out of whether that's true or not. In their case, the media spin that and it's like they've got this avatar of a trans person and every time that they mention it, they've got to be a rapist, they've got to be a person that's been held up on some sort of charge in court, or they've done something particularly wrong. But of course, that's kind of a smear thing. So my determination is to become visible and to create a positive role model for others, but to do it in a way that's not shouty and not always focused on trans issues, but to do it in a way that's about here is someone leading a normal life, wanting to make a difference and to be a role model. Role model is a strange word, but be a visible person, let's call it that. That challenges that avatar that seems to drop itself into the media all the time.

Yes, we can all close your eyes, think of a trans person. We all have this media infused, rocky horror type image in our heads that media keep playing on. And I think that's what keeps, as you say, keeps getting dropped in, if not literally, figuratively or descriptively, is the language that's being reinforced. And you're a marketing specialist and you have these common themes of threads you pull to get your message across. And that's the negative brand that trans people have.

It is, I think they've definitely got this playbook around it and who's driving that playbook is tough to find. But yeah, I still will continue throughout 2024 to have my own playbook, which is that I will not be drawn into debate or anything about that subject. It annoys me massively. But the way that I'm choosing to make a difference is to deal, is to work with individuals and to be visible as a normal human being.

I concur. I definitely concur with that. I have a similar approach where.

I want to do it through education, through engagement, through conversations, through being the best me I can be. And that's my motivation. I'm not looking to. I'd like nothing more than to be Jo the EDI specialist, Jo the speaker who just happens to be trans rather than trans being by raise on Detroit, if you like. I think I've probably got another couple of years before I want to just hide in the background and just get on with life. There's hope that you say in a couple of years time, the pressure changes, the direction changes, there'll be something else and society will move on. And much like being queer in the was, it's becoming normalised. We start to not see being gay or being black, because it wasn't so long ago that being black was the same language as being used.

And that's my point about in ten years time going that we'll have that period of revisionism, and then it will be that period of acceptance and the examples you gave then or given then are ones where that's happened and we've kind of come through that and that's where we are. And I believe in ten years we'll be there with this. But it's close to home, obviously, and it was close to home for millions of others while those events were happening in the.

Was going to leave it there. I think that's been a fantastic conversation and it's been really fascinating talking to you and hearing your story. And we talked about authenticity, we talked about vulnerability, and you've been both authentic and vulnerable. And I really appreciate your openness and candle around yourself, your life, your family, which I know isn't easy because you're always taking a piece of yourself and giving it to somebody else, and you've only got so many spoons and so many pieces of you you can give. And I feel quite honoured that you've come here today and shared that if people want to get in contact with you as a human being, where's the best place to track you down?

The best place. And the place I hang out is on LinkedIn, so you'll always find me on LinkedIn. And on LinkedIn I am very open about authenticity, leadership, marketing, but also gender issues when they're relevant and my own story, so give a quite rounded view of life on LinkedIn. I'm not someone that kind of has high bias towards just talking about things that are professional, talking about things on one particular topic. So it is my hangout space for social media. I've kind of not deleted, but I've stopped using the other platform. So LinkedIn is my preferred hangout space for sure. And it's definitely the best place that people can get in contact with me or follow me or create connection.

Fabulous. Fabulous. I know I follow you, and I'm sure you follow me, and I see a lot of what you're posting, and I probably remember those early posts when you first were open about yourself, first started talking about it. So, yeah, it's been an honour to not only speak to you today, but also follow. And I hate this word journey. Journey is such a crass word for me sometimes, but follow your life and how you've evolved yourself and it's been an amazing privilege.

Yeah, I think it's just picking up at the point of journey. I mean, people overuse the word journey of a journey for everything. But I love the phrase journey because I think we're all on a journey, no matter what it is, we're all on a journey of some form, right?

Yeah, I just find it with unprecedented, unprecedented. And journey is kind of like, when are things going to become precedented again? That's what I want to know.

There's definitely an overused term, but it's the meanderings of life either way.

I agree. I agree. Well, thank you, Lee. And thank you to you, the listener who's tuned in, who's stayed with us to the end, and I really appreciate your time. Hopefully, I'm sure you have got something out today. There's so much there to take inspiration from. If you're not already subscribed, please do subscribe and follow this podcast on iTunes or Spotify wherever you consume your podcasts. Search for inclusion bytes as B-I-T-E-S share the love.

Tell your colleagues, tell your friends. Reshare this when it's on LinkedIn or other platforms. I've got a number of other exciting guests lined up. I'm sure you'd be equally inspired off, and I've had a whole 95 others. If you haven't listened to this podcast before, then please do listen to the back issues. And of course, I'd love you to be a guest as well if you have something to say. So email me at jo.lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk.

Let me know. Talk to me. How can we improve? And finally, my name is Joanne Lockwood. It has been an absolute pleasure to host this podcast for you today.

Catch you next time. Bye.