Hannah Rose

Listen to trans people - Series 1, Episode 5

In this episode of Queers & Co., I’m joined by Hannah Rose, a non-binary trans woman of colour and London-based activist and event organiser.

We chat about activism, marrying three men and a dog, the lack of trans POC representation, procrastinating as a form of self-care, how to create safe and supportive community events, how to be a better ally to trans folks and some of the hottest events on the London queer scene.

If you haven't already, be sure to join our Facebook community to connect with other like-minded queer folks and allies.

Find out more about Gem Kennedy and Queers & Co.

Podcast Artwork by Gemma D’Souza

Resources

Hannah Rose’s Instagram

Book recommendation: Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard, Rick Riordan

London Bi Panda’s Three men and a dog wedding action

LGSM - Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants

London Bi Pandas website

London Bi Pandas Instagram and recent campaign, 50 Ways to Leave your TERFer

The Outside Project

Aisha Mirza’s Instagram

Mental health collective and sober club night, Misery

Queer Masala food popups

Healthy Filth plant-based catering

YouTube channel, Trans 101

Travis Alabanza’s article, “Why does every achievement have to be a ‘first’ to matter?”

Other nights in London: Them Fatale, Inferno, Crossbreed, Pxssy Palace, Bar Wotever

Full Transcription

Gem: Hi Hannah. How are you?

Hannah: Good, thank you.

Gem: Thanks so much for taking part. So if anyone who hasn't come across your work before, it'd be really great if you could introduce yourself and a bit about what you do.

Hannah: Yeah, sure. So I'm Hannah Rose, German-born, London-based, Iraqi, trans non-binary, woman of colour, neurodivergent. I think that's all the intersectionalities so it's a long list and it's quite a struggle. I do a lot of work in organising activism and queer spaces here in London, and in some other places like occasionally Berlin and yeah, my goal in London right now is just to help the queer community as much as possible and bring as much positive political change about as I can.

Gem: Yeah. And how did you get into and be involved in activism?

Hannah: So, it all started with Bi Pandas actually. Bi Pandas is this London based group. They started off last year. They were at pride when Monroe, who's quite a prominent drag performer and use to be a DJ. I was like, Hey, there's no proper bisexual representation, actual queer, bisexual representation at pride. Let's change that. And them and their partner Max, they did so, so, so much work. And spent so much money on getting a float for Pride. And it was just amazing. It was the most queer thing. The pictures from there are so amazing. We're going to do the same thing this year. So you'll see us around pride. And, Monroe was looking on the Bi Pandas page, they were running a visual for queer and specifically bisexual refugees, and I am a queer refugee, and I'm a child of two refugees, and they were looking for speakers and I didn't do too much public speaking before that, I use to do theatre so I use to talking to big crowds but I never did much political speaking. But I was like, yeah, sure, I'd like to do that. And I wrote something up and I don't know why, but I think I just had like, I don't want to play myself up too much, but I think I just had a natural talent for writing speeches because it was honestly a very, very moving speech because obviously it's issues very much related to me, made multiple people cry, which I think is a good guideline on how good the speech was, how many people did you make cry? And people loved it. [inaudible] especially as I said, that speech was amazing. Phew. LGSM (Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants) were like "Oh you should speak more" And it’s kind of just escalated from there. Just trying and more groups. Got more opportunities to speak. People started actually knowing me and inviting me to things to speak there, like here. And I just love it. Like I just left preparing it. I just love putting all my heart and soul into speaking these words. Convincing people and making people emotional.

Gem: So, it's really not long at all. Like it's not even a year since you've been doing that? I didn't realise.

Hannah: I moved to London four months ago.

Gem: Oh really? I thought you'd been in London for much longer than that? Okay. Wow. So this is all really recent then?

Hannah: Yeah, I'm very quick and everything.

Gem: Yeah. Very efficient. Clearly. So what's that been like for you? Such a kind of rapid change and increase in doing all this political work?

Hannah: So back in Germany. I did help out. I used to live in West Germany. In a town called Essen, it's near Dusseldorf. It was like 500,000 people town, so not too big. And I did work with the local, LGBT groups there. We did a little thing for our pride parade, a little tiny float with a speaker. So, I wasn't completely new to it exactly, but my life did change a lot in like the last year. My political opinions, I don't want to say use I d bad political opinions, but I did.

Gem: I think we all did at one point until we realised otherwise, right?

Hannah: So, that's changed a lot and I've always advocated a lot online. On social media and chat groups, about my political stances. And this was just kind of bringing it on paper and then bringing it, using my voice. And obviously the theatre actually helped quite a lot because speeches have a lot of similarities to acting.

Gem: Yeah, absolutely. And I don't want to spoil for anyone what might be in your speech if they go and watch you. But I wonder if you could share maybe like the main themes that you talk about when you give speeches.

Hannah: The last one I did it made the news quite a bit. It was 'the three men and a dog wedding' by lesbians and gays support the migrants. So there was this Boris Johnson quote , about yeah, gist of it was, Boris Johnson said that if we start letting same sex couples get married, we might as well let three men and a dog get married. So that's exactly what we did. So we got a whole band to play wedding songs. We got a dog and three guys, one wearing a Boris Johnson mask. We got a pagan Satanist priest to commemorate the entire wedding and we wed those three men and a dog and then we walked down Downing street and we stand at the Tory HQ and then marched down Downing street, block the streets off there and then did speeches there. So, I did a speech there for LGSM and a bunch of other people from Bi Pandas who did speeches there. And that was basically about being trans in this country and how it affects me. How the whole Brexit thing is affecting me. Just talking about how hard it is to get hormones here. How the UK ignores my German trans diagnosis. How I might get kicked out of the country or not get hormones anymore after Brexit. Because there aren't a lot of trans women around in activism, sadly, a few prominent ones are, obviously a lot of people have heard about Lucia Blake, Emily Cricket, two of them, they did trans pride, they do quite a lot of stuff. But you don't see a lot of activists. You don't see a lot of trans women around in a lot of cycles, sadly. So I always try and put that at the centre front, the trans experience, and to talk about and to educate people about it. I think that's the most important thing right now because that's the most important thing I can do because there's just not enough trans voices out there.

Gem: Yeah, and when you said that those speeches are really well received, I guess when people from the community are around. So like London Bi Pandas people, for example, who are awesome. How have your speeches travelled further than that? And what has their reaction been to that?

Hannah: So I did, as I'm sure a lot of you still remember, the LGB Alliance, when that started out, we did quite a big protest called LGBT with a T, and I did a massive speech there, which is like, I personally think it's my best work. I'm extremely proud of it and it's basically about how we need to stick together. How trans woman started the started queer rights. The first brick was thrown by a trans woman of colour. And that made it on to Diva mag, which is quite a big lesbian magazine. It made the rounds on Twitter and people were destroying me. Like people hated me. I didn't mind in all honestly, I thought it was quite funny because the picture of me was, I held a sign that Monroe made, which said, 'too cute to be cis' and people were very annoyed. They were like "Oh, this is cis- phobic". "This is horrible". And like just mis-gendering me and calling me tons of names. I didn't know about it. One of my friends from the Netherlands of all places was like, "Hey, I saw you on Twitter. People are really shitting on you. Other than that, most of the speakers I do, which I think is also a problem is, in front of other queer people that already agree with me, so preaching to the choir, obviously, but that's not always the point. The point is also to inspire people. I am speaking, I'm not sure if I'm allowed to say it, but I'm speaking at citizens advice in two weeks. I'm giving a speech on trans activism and activism in general, so we'll see how the reception there's going to be. They've been great, honestly. Like they were asking for my fee and I named a quite cheap, like 40 quid and they were like, "Oh no, we usually pay people way more, let's pay you that" And I'm like, Yes please. Other than that, I haven't had much negativity surrounding it. Obviously it's always going to be critics, but this is a pretty good community in London.

Gem: So, I know you said that that it didn't bother you so much and hopefully I think quite often when we're doing activism, people try not to read the comments anyway. Right? Cause it can be pretty soul destroying. With that in mind, like how do you look after yourself and I guess it's not just looking off yourself when there's negativity from people outside of the queer community, but in terms of doing your activism and getting the energy for those big speeches that you're delivering, how do you prepare for those and make sure that you navigate or try and navigate burnout in some way?

Hannah: Honestly, my speeches, I think it's just procrastinating. I feel like procrastinating is a form of self-care, a good amount of speeches I have just like a finished writing while we're setting up or on the train there. A very good amount. If I'm getting paid for something, I will take a week or two weeks beforehand to prepare and research, But if it's something like Bi Panda so are one of my groups, then I'm just kind of going to wing it because these are very emotional topics, and the approach that I go with speeches is just put emotions in and use good rhetoric. So make it interesting, make it captivating, not make it too long. So, I don't worry too much about my speeches, which is I guess part of self-care and sometimes just taking a break. So I've, I'm doing, the London Bi Panda float for pride, probably going to be doing stuff for trans pride this year too, and talk to people about that. So I've been taking a break off some other groups. I've been taking a break from leftist organising, so Antifa and that sort of group after taking a break from that and I've been going to meetings. It is allowing yourself too rest. So I know I know Monroe works a lot on activism. What they try and do is just live the most comfortable life they can outside of the activism and then go very hard on the activism. So hence sleep, treat yourself to some food, treat yourself to Uber back home, but then also spend four hours a day on activism. I think I'm quite resilient in terms of how much work I can do and how much stuff I can take. So people always say I have quite a lot of energy, which just seems to be correct. I can manage to do quite a lot of stuff without burning out.

Gem: So, we actually spoke to, and people would who know Monroe under their Bae Sharam name. I interviewed Monroe last year for the zine. So if anyone's wondering or wanting to find out more about Monroe, then they can go and look in zine two and they'll find out all about them.

Hannah: Monroe is a great and amazing person.

Gem: So, we've talked a bit about self-care, and it sounds as though you're getting this not only for yourself. Self-care is really important, but you organise these amazing other events where mental health and self-care is a big part of those. It'd be great to hear about those as well.

Hannah: Let's talk a bit about self-care at the protest themselves. For the LGB with the T one, we had the outside project at the outside project is an amazing group led by a few friends of mine here in London. They do a weekly sober meet up event. It might be monthly. They provided accessibility and ramps and they provided noise cancelling headphones. In case the noise and people got too much for someone. They could just have noise cancelling headphones and talk one of our welfare officers. So you had a bunch of welfare officers walking around and wearing hi-vis vests that are purple. So I was one of them, so people could just come up to me and be like, "Hey, I'm not feeling great" and we'd just go off to the side. I had water with me. I had oranges that I was giving out. Um, little easy peelers. I loved doing that everywhere. Water's a very important one, especially in the coming months when it's getting hotter. You just need to have water and be giving that out constantly. So, about the events I run, I help run an event called 'misery', which was started by the amazing, amazing Aisha Mirza or @uglyinahotway on Instagram. It started out, them and a friend were like, "I wish I could go out to places more, but I feel like I don't fit in anywhere" And it's like, okay, let's make a space where we fit in then because there's not a lot of queer POC spaces and that's especially no queer POC, sober spaces. So what we focus on is, on a sober aspect, the POC thing and then mental health is a big part. People always love the parties. They always say they can they just feel so comfortable there and like they can be their authentic selves because we don't pressure people to do anything. So a lot of other club nights, always the focus is on dancing is always also quite a big flirting thing, which can make some people feel uncomfortable. Obviously we have DJs, we have a dance floor, but we have so much other stuff. So the most amazing part, what I think is we have a therapist right on site, a trained therapist, who's also queer and POC. And you can book a free a half hour session with them to talk about whatever you like to talk about. Any problems you might be having, completely free of charge. I should also mention that the event is completely free of charge. It's completely based on donations. So if you have the money to give, help us run it, then amazing. But if you don't have the money that you can just come anyway. We have activities. So last time we did it at the yard, at the art theatre, if you know the venue? We had an art corner so we had a little thing of suggestions of stuff you can draw, And like colouring, and we had a ton of zines around in a reading corner that you can do. We had a friend of ours do nails, pay what you can nails. So it was a sliding scale from like two to ten pounds for getting your nails done, which is incredibly cheap. Tattoos also on a sliding scale. We always serve food. So we usually have 'Queer Masala' which is a queer Indian group of people who make amazing food. Last time we add 'Healthy Filth' who are also queer vegan group. Everything's vegan obviously, who caters food. It's very affordable food compared to anything else you can get here in London. We have chai at every party we've had tea cause you gotta have your tea. I've never seen a party with people walk around with tea. So that's our thing. Obviously we hide all the alcohol. The bar only serves non-alcoholic cocktails and you can do whatever you want. There's no pressure to dance. There's no pressure to socialise. You can just sit there and draw and if that's all you wanted to do on that night, then that's completely okay. Everyone's. always so friendly to you. Like you can just go and sit down with 10 strangers and make 10 completely new, awesome friends.

Gem: That's incredible. And how does it feel to create that kind of space for people?

Hannah: It feels very rewarding. I feel like at this point I enjoy creating spaces more than I actually enjoy going out. I know Aisha loves after the party or the messages we get on Instagram like, "Oh, it was so amazing. Thank you so much for hosting it" And yeah, it's just their self-care, talking about self-care and organising. That's their self-care going through all the messages we get and replying to them and seeing how much people are loving it and just seeing on the night people enjoying themselves. It's just amazing. I always go around to people "Hey, how are you finding the party? How is it? How are you feeling?" It's just a very captivating feeling and a very rewarding thing to do.

Gem: Yeah. It's revolutionary as well, isn't it? To create those spaces where, you know, money is just used in a completely different way. So it's accessible to everyone. There's all kinds of resources that people might need and the chance to build community with people that they may not have met before.

Hannah: Yeah, exactly. Especially with the money part cause as queer POC people, strictly queer, trans POC people, we struggle a lot financially. So I think it's always important and I think we as a queer and as [inaudible] and as a whatever else community, can improve on that lot, although it's very good right now, a lot of parties have - if you can't afford this, please message us and you can come in anyways. But that's not always the case. Stuff like, Club Verboten, which is supposedly a queer space where it's like 30 pounds for a ticket, people just can't afford that.

Gem: So with that in mind, there may be, and there will be lots of people potentially listening to this who won't be aware of their own privilege and the fact that they're able to attend events, that cost money, but also events that feel safe to them as say queer or straight passing cis people or white people who don't have those considerations to take into account that a trans POC person may. I just wondered, you do a lot educating around trans history and, trans activism and I just wondered if there's anything where would those people start? What would be useful for them in order to educate themselves around their own privilege and how they might support trans folks better?

Hannah: I think the best way to always learn is to talk to your trans friends. If they have trans friends, then always to talk with them. Obviously there's tons of articles online. There's a lot of YouTubers online who talk about trans issues, There's a trans 101 series it's a little, seven minute video that people can just watch to get basically the world of transness and I think an important part to remember is always listen to what trans people say. So I think that is the most important part. If trans people say this feels like mis-gendering, so what I've heard a lot is like, "dude". So a lot of people will say, Oh no, dude is gender neutral, I use it gender neutrally, but if a trans person tells you, "Hey, sorry but this feels mis-gendering to me" then it's something that you have to respect that you have to be like okay, this person feels uncomfortable with this, I need to stop doing that. It's always important to listen to the actual marginalised people.

Gem: Absolutely. And the same with "guys" as well, right? Like people do use that and think it's a gender neutral term. But it really isn't. A lot of people find that a really uncomfortable term.

Hannah: Obviously you can use it if you feel comfortable with it. But I at least always try to avoid gender language because it's quite an easy thing to do. While we're plugging our own groups, London Bi Pandas actually did a thing called '50 ways to leave your TERFer' So for 50 days every day, well, not consistently, but we tried our best. We've posted one thing you can do to support the trans community in something that's actually achievable. So something like request sanitary bins in the male toilets, or request that all toilets be made gender neutral and have sanitary bins in every toilet, because the example I was specifically thinking of is Chiyo Gomez, who is quite a prominent person. I don't know if it was a post or they were telling me about it, but they just begrudgingly took their tampon and threw it on the floor. Started littering because there wasn't any sanitary bins. But it's like, fuck you. You don't give me a space to put my goddamn tampons in.

So, I'm just checking all our posts. They all look amazing. So definitely check it out. Just on Instagram, @londonbipandas, all the stuff is there, just simple stuff like adding pronouns to your email signature. Trying to support trans people like educating yourself and if you hear someone say something that could be transphobic, even if there's no other trans person around, educate those people. Say "Hey no, that's not okay, you shouldn't say that". Because we are a very, very tiny portion of the population. We don't have accurate numbers because it's very hard to get numbers like that, but it's probably not more than 1% to 2% of the population is trans. So we can't always be there. We don't always have the energy to correct and educate people because we have to do it constantly. So do something like citizens advice, book a trans activist to come and speak at your event, pay them well, respect them, respect their opinions. Flood your Facebook feeds with stories about trans people with what actually happens to us. Speak up about mis-gendering even when that person's not there, incorporate more gender neutral language so use "they" if you don't know someone's pronouns. Ask someone's pronouns with their names, I think that's always a good place to start. Like gender neutral stuff. It's quite easy.

Gem: Yeah. And it takes a little bit of getting used to maybe if people haven't come across it before, but once you get the hang of it, it's not that difficult and it's such a small adjustment that people can make in order to make trans people feel accepted and understood.

Hannah: Especially with our non-binary people. We don't do this perfectly out of the queer community. Non binary people get mis-gendered a lot. Even in supposedly our community where that's supposed to not happen. Obviously, mis-gendering's going to happen, you can’t completely eliminate that. While we're on mis-gendering, what I see a lot happen is people making it about themselves. If you mess up someone's pronouns and making it a big deal. So if I mis-gendered someone, So if I'm like "oh she" then I just stop, correct myself, "oh they", and then continue on with my sentence. Don't bring it up later. It's not something that needs to have a big deal made on about it.

Gem: Yeah. Quite often people feel the need to kind of, "oh, I'm so sorry I didn't mean to do that. I know that you use that pronoun and I use the wrong one"

Hannah: Yeah, I'd feel like most of it is still very awkward there. I mean that's the whole thing right when people say like, "did he just assume my gender?" but I don't think I've actually heard a single trans person say that. Trans people do not get mad when you mis-gender them. Trans people are just scared to correct anyone. I've never seen anyone scream or shout when they get mis-gendered because we're just, a lot of us are quite shy. So that's why I tried to always step up. I don't think I do it aggressively, but I'm always like "THEY" cause a lot of people it's hard to stand up to their own mis-gendering because it's how we're socialised with, which can be quite scary.

Gem: Yeah, absolutely. So you mentioned earlier on about where you first got involved. When you said about LGSM that you were first kind of giving a talk through them?

Hannah: Yeah, it was Bi Pandas and LGSM.

Gem: So, I wondered what the experience of being an Iraqi refugee and having parents who are refugees as well, and now we'll say living in London. How does that kind of play a part in your journey?

Hannah: Well, three things, obviously difficult with Brexit coming up too. But I don't think it defines me that much. Obviously I think it's not the refugee part that defines me. It's more my history and my culture. Obviously being a Muslim, I don't know if I'd call myself a Muslim, maybe an ex-Muslim, religion isn't that complicated. Obviously coming from a Muslim background, you need perspective, especially growing up trans and I transitioned in my teenage years with quite unsupportive parents, which taught me quite a bit. I think that really defined me as a person. So my Muslim background and the trans thing, mostly, the refugee part. So learning how to fend for myself, learning the fact that doctors aren't always the smartest people and don't always know the most about your issues. A lot of how to navigate the world at a very young age without any support. I think that's what redefined me. And obviously now I can speak about these issues and I can educate people on them because queer Muslims aren't the most well-represented group. We've got Muslim pride this year actually, which is going to be very amazing. This is the first Muslim pride and it's going to be happening this year. Black pride is obviously also very Muslim because it's very POC. Black pride by the way, is generally POC pride, we just call it Black Pride. I think it just sounds better than POC pride. Yeh, so it's made me the person I am now especially, in terms of maturing a lot quicker. So people always assume I'm about seven years older than I actually am. Which is always quite funny to see the look on their faces. And, the reason I'm even in England was just too escape my parents actually. So that's the only reason I'm here. I didn't choose to come here, but I like London, but to fair it's not the best country to be trans or POC or refugee in. But I still love London. I'm very glad that I moved here, I'm very glad that as I'm found such a supportive community here.

Gem: Yeah. And so that literally only happened four months ago that you moved to London.

Hannah: Four or five, times very complicated, but I only started out in the scene about four months ago.

Gem: And so, what next? It sounds like you're already doing so much and you're so busy with giving talks and also workshops and organising spaces for other people. Where do you go now? Are you going to carry on with this or what else?

Hannah: So, I don't actually have my own, I haven't actually run my own own pie yet. I'm in collectives. I help run them. I work out a lot of places. So what's next? I've got two projects in the works right now, one of them completely my own, the other has more of a collective objective. One's called 'Transfusion' So I don't want to slack off the parties we have right now because obviously they're my friends, I love them. But we don't have, I think, a good trans club night. So there's them [inaudible] which is run by the amazing, amazing Lewis G Burton, which you should definitely get on here. They also run Inferno, which has been running for five years now. They're a trans icon like they're an artist, DJ and Inferno was one of the best queer nights here in London. It's just a space where you can be completely yourself and see some awesome performances and listen to some amazing techno. Them [inaudible] the problem is, it's a great party. I love other people there and I love going there, but it's in a club called Dalton Superstore, which is a main street and right on Dalton on the main street, a club. And obviously, so it's going to be cis people, a lot of cis people coming there, not even cis het just like cis people in general go there, which can make for quite an uncomfortable atmosphere. So what I'd like to do is make a space which was just completely trans focused, so I'm not completely bar cis people from it, but make it a space from trans people for trans people with majority trans people. So basically I want a misery, but for trans people, and for POC people. I know another group, they are @therightlube on Instagram, they've been running a biweekly, bimonthly, trans social and they're also planning a trans party right now, a smaller one. And that's really awesome. I do love the space that we have right now. It's like parties, like 'pussy palace' and 'inferno', 'cross-breed' other stuff like that. But as a trans woman of colour, especially the trans part, I still feel quite 'othered' there. Like anytime I go, usually it's the majority of people downstairs. It's not uncommon that I am the only or one of like a handful of trans women are there and it's just quite isolating and 'othering'. It just feels like, hey, you're still different from these people. And obviously being trans, being non-binary, I am different. I'm not, I'm not a cis women, I'm never going to be, I don't want to be. But it still feels uncomfortable being neurodiverse too makes the whole thing more complicated. And the other project that I'm working on is, there's this workout, called 'crossbreed'. It's like a queer kink rave. And what we're planning now is that, but basically just for trans people, for queer people, for femme people. So basically anyone who's on the trans spectrum anywhere, identifies any way. A woman will be welcome there because all I want to do is create the spaces that don't exist yet. I don't like saying stuff like, Oh, the first X, X, X. Actually Travis Alabanza, very popular and very amazing person to be around and work with. They released an article recently about 'why does every achievement have to be the 'first' to matter?' It was in the Metro lifestyle. You can Google it and, I generally agree with that, so I don't want to be the first to do it. I just came here and noticed, hey, this is lacking. I want to fill the gap with my work, with something that I can contribute with something I can achieve. Obviously the writing part is difficult and expensive and draining, but it's doing a service to the community. And someone is going to have to do it, if you want to try it. Oh my God. Okay. Don't want to slack off my friends but trying to hire people to do work can be quite difficult, especially if it's a new party and nothing has been started on yet. It's quite easy to tell people to do one specific thing like, okay, hey, do social media. People can do that. But if it's about creative processes and figuring stuff out, it's a lot more difficult, especially when you can't meet physically a lot. But I'm working on those two things, they're going to be middle of this year. Probably. One of them has an Instagram which is @transfusionparty. There's nothing on it yet. I've got to design a logo and do a post about what it is. I'll maybe try and do that today or tomorrow. And yeah, that's my passion projects right now. There's obviously other activism stuff that's happening right now. So on the 8th of March, there's the women's march, also partly sex worker thing. One of my friends helps run it. So actually no, they don't like being in the spotlight. I'm not gonna mention their name. They are running, night pride, which is basically 'pride is a protest' kind of thing. They did one last week in Austin where we marched down and had speeches and then went dancing and we have tea. We're gonna do one in Vauxhall too. And then in Soho. And basically just bring back the spirit of pride is a protest. Because at the moment it's quite commercialised. I've actually missed the city hall meeting regarding pride because I overslept, but what I heard is that they are trying to make it less, commercialised this year. So hopefully that'll come into fruition. And there's going to be sex worker pride, trans pride, there's black pride, Muslim pride, all those are obviously going to be activism based and run by queer people.

Gem: Yeah. And hearing that, I mean, again, I know I've said it before, but you've been here for four months and you've built such a community already. What has that meant to you kind of finding that community here?

Hannah: It's just been, okay, so I'm not going to delve too deep into it, but I was living with my abusive ex when I first moved here, I remember being at a rave. When someone in the Bi Pandas group chat was like "Oh, is anyone else going to this rave?" I was like, "yeah, I am". And they saw me there. I was like, "Oh, you're from Bi Pandas?" "Yeah" And we started talking. They also happened to be German and I don't know I got talking to her, but they found out about my living situation now. And they were like "Okay, you're not going home tonight. You're crashing on my couch" Actually they crashed on their couch. They gave me their bed. Maria, you're probably going to be listening to this. And I would not be here right now without them. Like they then helped me find a squat. I was squatting for a while. They helped me find a place to live and then paid my first month's rent and deposit because I was a sex worker at the time. And working was quite hard because I was squatting and living in free homes. So working was quite difficult. I wasn't doing it full time as I was doing online stuff, but it was still quite difficult to work from there. So I wasn't making a lot of money. They paid my deposit; they pay my first month’s rent. And they didn't even know me. They just met me at a random rave and were like, okay, I'm helping you. That sense of community here is just so, so amazing. Everyone wants to help each other. Everyone wants to be there for each other. Everyone is there for each other. If someone's like, "Hey, I've gotten kicked out, could I have a place to crash?" I can guarantee that if they have the queer community on Facebook or wherever, people are going to responded back. Yes. Here, come here, have my couch, my bed, have all my food. And the other amazing people like Monroe, who helped me get into this whole scene, helped me get into activism. Aisha who allowed me to work on amazing, amazing things are the people, are my friends here who are incredibly supportive and put up with all my shit and put up with all my invites to the 10,000 parties and all the activism stuff from protests. All these amazing people that I hear about in London. People like people like Chiyo, people like Travis people. Icons. Supporting the idea of you can be whoever the fuck you want to be. It's your right to choose. The amazing drag community here. We've just seen so many amazing communities in the queer scene. I know people don't like the word queer scene sometimes, but, I generally think we are one of the best cities. We're not perfect. We're lacking in a few aspects obviously, but we still are such an amazing city to be queer in. And I'd say the best city because we have the largest queer friendly city. New York is smaller than London and all the other cities are, outside of Western Europe, so they're not safe.

Gem: It's so funny to think, isn't it that queer community in and around London feels so, so special and it's hard to imagine that that doesn't exist in other places as much. I know it's obvious that it doesn't exist everywhere, but it's such a shame that that isn't a thing that everyone can access.

Hannah: Yep. When I first moved to England a year ago. I lived in Loughborough with my best friend. So he was the one who helped me get out of my parents' place and we were living together then. And yeah, there was no queer community. There was just nothing happened and it was just quite depressing because there was just nothing to do. Cause it's a small midlands town, even Nottingham. I'm friends with the entire Nottingham queer organisation community because it's one person, if you're listening to this - Queer Noise Club in Nottingham. It's the only, it's the best queer night in Nottingham. I know talking to them, it's quite difficult for them hosting it because their needs are very hesitant because obviously they're gonna make less money because less people are going to come and queer people are poorer. So even larger cities like Nottingham, like Birmingham struggle and there's a lot of arguments about this. But either London or Berlin are absolutely the best cities for queer stuff. At least from what I know. I haven't been to New York personally. I hear it's quite nice. But you know, America not the most ideal place.

Gem: So, it sounds like you have a lot going on as it is. Are you planning to stay in London for the future? For the time being do you think or do you have any plans to go to any of those other communities?

Hannah: I know some people here are considering moving some out of the country, some to Manchester. I hear Manchester's quite a nice community. I am definitely staying in London. Well if I'm staying in England, I'm staying in London. Let's see if I can actually get settled status. If not, Berlin is another city because I'm travelling and I'm a native German speaker, so if I'm not going to be in London, you'll find me in Berlin. Obviously Berlin is a very similar vibe to London with the alternative scene, but just less sleep. What's licensing laws? I could not get used to stores closing so early. Closing stores closing at 5:00PM was insane to me.

Gem: So, when I speak to guests before the podcast, I always ask if there's anything that they're really enjoying at the moment that they'd like to share. And it can be absolutely anything. I just wondered if there's anything you'd like to share?

Hannah: Yeah, so some amazing entertainment, I've been consuming, that's a very weird way to say that. It's quite an old book. But if you enjoy fantasy, Rick Riordan, the author of the Percy Jackson books, he's still doing books, his 'Magnus Chase' series features a gender fluid character and they definitely got a trans person in to help write it. Pretty much guarantee. It's like the best, trans representation I've seen in basically any piece of media. But pretty much, yeah, basically any piece of media. They are gender fluid, child of Loki, very much like a "fuck off. I'm trans, I'm gender fluid research it yourself" kind of person, which I think we all know, which I love. So it's a great book. series. Quite an easy relaxing read if you have the time on the tube. Events in London that I've been enjoying. Bar Wotever, it's every Tuesday at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern. Every Tuesday performances start at 8:30PM. It's a weekly drag performance night. And I do tech for them often. We get amazing people there. We have Shakona Fire who's a resident performer. Travis is a resident performer. Chiyo performs there quite a lot. Travis, their first drag performance was in Bar Wotever. They hosted a night two weeks ago and, don't tell the venue management, but we were like 50 to 60 people over capacity. It was packed. I was talking to Travis beforehand and they were like, "Oh, but what if no one's going to come?" And I'm like, "You know who you are? So yeah, there was a lot of people. So that's every Tuesday. So it's very easy to get to the Vauxhall. It's amazing. It's amazing spot of space plus the people who run the Ingo and [inaudible] are great people. So definitely check it out if you have the time on a Tuesday and I after work.

Gem: Just the name of that book again. I'm sorry, I didn't catch it.

Hannah: 'Magnus Chase' Generally all of Rick Riordan books are great. There's a quite good representation in all of them. So it's very good. Strong female presentations. Very good gay and lesbian and general LGBT representation. Also the earlier books people got very mad about it because like, you can't show that to our children, Rick Riordan was like, yes, I can fuck you.

Gem: That's awesome. Yeah. I can't believe I've never read them before. They sound great by great. And I was just going to say, is there anything else that you'd like to say before we come to a close?

Hannah: Donate to trans people's fundraisers. Pay your sex workers. Pay all your queer people fairly. Give as much as you can. So now that I'm in a better position, I'm quite passing it on. So what Maria did to me, I'm now trying to do for other people - helping other struggling queer people who are maybe in a bad situation or sex workers. Financially, emotionally, I think is a better use of my money at least, rather instead of using it on whatever other useless shit I'd use it on. So yeah. Help donate to causes like Bi Panda. Donate to individual fundraisers for surgeries. Surgeries are very expensive. Hormones are very expensive. Just support your local queer community. You don't have to donate, attend drag shows made by actual queer trans people. If you have money for a Netflix subscription to watch Ru Paul, you have money to support your local drag community. Support your local events. Buy a drink there. Well one drink. The hire fees are lower if the bar makes more money, don't tell anyone. Yeah, that's pretty much it.

Gem: Yeah. That sounds like great advice. Thank you so much.

Hannah: Thanks for inviting me.

Gem: Not at all, it's great to have you.