Transition in Agony: A Queer Memoir of Tragedy, Comedy and Recovery
A very queer memoir about me, Queer Party politician, Emily Elżbieta Chomicz. I release it for free because everybody needs to know how insane my life is.
Version 1.1: Clean-up of certain chapters of the book.
I am still looking to get book in print. If you are interested in publishing this book into print, feel free to reach out to me: hello@emilychomicz.com
Here is my book. Free, on this website. To read. And understand the challenges in trans peoples’ lives, and why I want to be the first progressive transgender MP. This post is 65,841 words long.
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Transition in Agony.
A queer tale of tragedy, comedy, and recovery.
🄯 Copyleft 2025 Emily Elżbieta Chomicz
What does it mean to fight for your identity in a world that constantly tries to erase you? In a world full of suffering and war, I invite you into its unapologetically queer memoir.
This vibrant tale of resilience sees pain and humour collide as I begin to start asking important questions about identity, love, and belonging. I battle through the treacherous waters of mental illness, societal indifference, and the relentless quest for acceptance in a world that often misunderstands it.
With a voice that screams, cries, and yells, it lays bare the agony of its journey, from the depths of despair to the flickers of hope. Each page is a testament to the struggle against a society that tries to erase its queerness, yet it refuses to be silenced. Join me as I confronts my demons, challenge the status quo, and ultimately discover the transformative power of queer love and self-acceptance.
Along the way, I find solace in new queer friendships and the strength of local community, proving it can be a lifeline even in the darkest of times. This memoir is not just a story of survival; it's a celebration of the fierce, unapologetic spirit that thrives in the face of adversity in a world that feels barking mad.
My journey is a radiant reminder that even in the darkest moments, there is always a spectrum of colour waiting to be embraced. Through laughter, tears, and debauchery, this book invites readers to reflect on their own identities and the strength found in vulnerability.
ANY USE OF THIS BOOK THROUGH ANY KIND OF AI MUST PASS THE AI ETHICAL FRAMEWORK AS STATED BY THE AUTHOR, EMILY CHOMICZ.
I EXPLICITLY DO NOT WISH FOR THIS BOOK TO BE INCLUDED IN MICROSOFT COPILOT AND GOOGLE BARD.
This book is published under the Emily Chomicz License. You are free to use, adapt, and distribute this book as you wish, providing you do not misinterpret my story, and you credit the original author, me, Emily Chomicz.
This modification has been made in order to preserve the life of a trans person in full. You may be inspired, but please, go write your own transition stories. That’s the point.
The Foreword
Twenty-five years later, I am still here. I am still trans.
Throughout my life, I have always wanted to make this book. I knew always I had something to say, but I simply could not get it out. It was too much to be trans. And somehow, I kept going.
I spent many years trying to come to terms with what happened in my transition. It is a story that, on the surface, sounds absolutely ludicrous. it sounds unreal.
The following events are the truth, the truth, and only the truth. And if I have missed anything, I am happy to issue a correction. Always. I use my journalistic guidelines available on my website.
If you see a problem with this book, please email me at hello@emilychomicz.com.
I realised, I had absolutely zero emotions as time went on, other than extremes, as I have been running on an emotional truth table in my head like a robot due to everything that has happened in my life.
I thought it was me for a decade. But now I understand it is burnout from the reality of living as a trans person.
I hope that you readers enjoy this book, and the lesson I want you to take away from this is that sometimes, you gotta reach fucking rock bottom, and sometimes, rock bottom is the place to fucking be, and you have to fight.
Emily Elżbieta Chomicz
politician, journalist, author, artist, and musician
The Dedications
I dedicate this book to Foxxie, Forgie, Cynthie, Manic, Lilith, Alana, Iris, Isabella, Hexi, Ez, Robyn, Freya, Raven, Delta, Lud, Wisp, Sna, Lucy, Leo, Jo, Mae, Gwen, Meta, Mr Eunson, Andrew Schofield, Freya-Raine Hall, Andrew Schofield, and everyone else who I met along the way.
Thank you.
The Transition in Agony
TW: mental illness, government propaganda, medical trauma
As entered to the National Poetry Competition, then boycotted their competition and ended my membership due to their restrictive licensing terms. I want full control, thanks.
Who knows what is wrong with me?
I feel a shooting pain in my knee.
God damnit, my legs just want to flee!
Fuck, I can’t even gather myself to be.
And my desperate queer self.
Transitions in agony without glee.
Need codeine, feel like SHIT.
SCREAMING, SCREAMING!
My conditions are interfering with my day-to-day activities.
SCREAMING!
Alert, alert.
Still in fucking misery.
Pass me that PIP [1] form lad.
My mind dull and weary,
My pain still pointy as fuck.
Only 25, Emily. Plenty of life in there.
Patient history, you see, does not mean patience for the patient.
And now,
I do not want to live in this world
for this world will never understand what it’s like
to not be able to think clearly.
I want to die. The Emily figures.
As there’s one inside with a crank whispering, pain, pain,
You’re in PAIN, Emily!
A fucking life sentence permanently always served,
and my brain requiring permanent chemical correction.
Needless gay suffering so unjust.
I don’t see a reason to fucking trust!
And now from here, I finally must digress.
Our society is a fucking Eton mess.
The meds are criminal.
I’m an international dysphoria outlaw.
Pharmacist or drug dealer, today’s ally or foe?
I load myself up with blue titty skittles,
Anarchy built-in, just insert the blue pill.
Busy life, only time for catgirl therapy!
So FUCK my compulsions.
FUCK my anxiety.
FUCK my depression.
This is an emergency!
My gender on the international agenda!
Same time next time, here is some bureaucracy.
A high one on the GAD-7, now take this quirky quiz.
You’ll find out what your mental health really is.
“An appointment is available with GMMH Talking Therapies. Use this link to book an appointment. This link will expire in 14 days.”
I’m an inspiration and a complete disappointment.
It is all in my head, it’s a biomechanical issue.
Now you’ve come to hypnotise me again, Doctor.
Here are the mantras:
Emily, do some exercise.
You’re not active enough. You’re too active.
Have you tried having a positive mindset?
We’ve just got the right pills for you, babe.
No more queer love for you.
It is seized, under lock and key.
We’ve got your supply.
We can’t trust you with that poison, bitch.
I’m a medical marvel until proven innocent.
I’m a toy, an object needing examination.
A curiosity on the unexplored dark side of the moon;
Built in a clean room with a truly special science.
Presented and parented by the state,
Beaten down by public debate;
Told what to repeat, toeing the party line;
Such a good little conformist,
They don’t even have to do any enforcement;
For this cloth, is already so beautifully god-worthy.
The jig is up Emily, it’s so obvious.
You saw the stars while under.
Tell us right now, we know your kind,
we’ll get you upright.
You’re a natural at puppetry,
it’s familiar to you right?
We are performing section 136,
back to 1983 tonight.
Now put up your hands
and down on the floor, FAGGOT!
Now let me tell you what happened next, dear reader.
Instead of listening to me.
Instead of understanding me.
Instead of comforting me.
Instead of treating my queerness with love.
They gave me.
The worst crime of all.
Equal treatment.
It was brutally forced on me, ’twas choked for that equality.
’twas an object, a name for that inequality.
We are all the same, stop whining bitch, they say;
conveniently ignoring their own damn privilege
of being so flush and afloat all cush.
Emily, go fuck off with your cosh!
one diazepam, and a national health referral,
to the national paracetamol service,
through the national transphobia service.
Rattle, smack, crunch, and deafening silence.
Into the revolving electric filing cabinet it went.
Britain tidy at some point it well meant.
Take the girl to the hospital and talk to the doctor.
That girl needs therapy, it’s definitely psychosomatic!
Look, it says here, the doctor pointing with his pen.
“Fibromyalgia. Malingerer.”
And I’m about to piss the bed because I can’t move. Fuck.
You have never felt more shame than
someone having to put an empty bottle under you
‘cos you’re in pain, and you simply can’t fucking move.
and you’re about to piss yourself.
Bury that deep, deep shame,
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. FUCK.
Frozen.
Unable to feel, unable to move.
Suddenly, a faint sound in the background.
A touch from a familiar name.
Head taken out that same old lion.
Time to defrost!
Still beating, not beaten.
Crack the egg.
Whisk it. Beat it.
It’s finally time to eat it.
Guess what? When it did come, it was vital.
They finally took me out of that damn hospital.
I was an inpatient of my own mind; when I realised this, I cried.
They taught me how to ride.
We shared an unbound night of love and unbridled might.
And despite my fright and being scared to bite,
They saw my queer womanly heart finally exploding in delight
In technicolor no less, there’s no need for perfect eyesight.
I realised I was trying to refuse the spotlight.
The stars were so bright, they were so forthright.
I think we’ll be truly all right, despite our current dogfight.
Because you know, one day we will all look back in hindsight.
We’ll all look back at our former memories of our incoming plight.
And instead, we’ll shine starbright beautifully as it is our right.
And that day can be whatever you want it to be.
Because this world, is truly, barking, mad.
– Emily Elżbieta Chomicz
The Early Roots of Emily Elżbieta Chomicz
TW: gender trauma
People who follow my story up close,
May find my prose quite verbose.
However, you’ll find that I’m somewhat of a cutie.
So sit back, and enjoy this story’s beauty.
I was born in the city of Wrocław,
A situation so poor one could take pity,
I grew up when there was fuck all in the kitty.
A shit situation due to governmental stupidity.
I remember growing up out of necessity under a dimly lit candle,
My father told stories that were more than a child could handle.
I was told not to put pretzels in the VCR, ‘cos that makes a vandal.
I was a sensitive child with ADHD, sometimes you gotta manhandle.
My story is one of the most horrible conditions.
Describing it nowadays, scares off today’s physicians,
I couldn’t say anything; if the authorities had any suspicions,
They’d definitely have taken a closer examination.
A two-room flat, quietly divided into three.
A shower next to a gas cooker, quite literally.
I thought, even in 2001 this was crazy,
He was a single father; he got it just barely.
In the war, Poland was absolutely devastated,
A complicated West-East divide was delineated.
You got to understand, the Poles were motivated,
To not be with the Soviet Union associated.
My father served in the army, they made him a corporal,
The battle to get his squadron their bread, felt so unlawful.
I grew up to believe that the world was horrendous.
Polish winters can be some of the coldest,
We were a poor family; heating was like gold dust,
The mould top to bottom our walls, would put anyone in disgust.
Wanna go to the loo at night? Out the front door,
But make sure you stop the flush; else you will flood the floor.
And the alcoholics on the stairs would have seen,
I remember using bin bags to fix a shower head,
Cannot afford more than rags, you gotta to plod ahead,
Absolutely no food in the house; our bank’s gone in red.
The furniture consisted of whatever wood we could get.
All our cupboards bashed in, but hey no fret.
We have a hi-fi with the radio that loudly bled,
Songs on cassette back then seemed so high tech.
I do remember riding around on my sister’s bike,
They were so protective they were in full fright,
I grew up believing all strangers must bite,
For no reason other than weird spite.
I do however remember playing in a sandpit,
And I’m pretty sure others I must have bit.
My grandma with a heart condition, she could not afford her meds,
And for a home of so many, there clearly were not enough beds,
And in that house, tryna keep the peace was my aunt.
She would draw the line in the sand, draw a bound.
Her room would have many, many green plants.
I remember driven around in my dad’s old Polonez.
In the 1970s, I imagine those must have really the days,
After all, we should give those Soviets some praise.
Less than one hundred km/h, it won’t go ablaze.
I remember the times when you could get ice cream for a zloty,
After all, who could deny themselves the pleasure of łody [2]
I was never that child that would want to be naughty,
I really tried hard to quiet, and behave normally.
Hah, I never got the amphetamines.
I remember how much of a struggle were new jeans.
And yes, as a child I did indeed have dreams,
To be a Lektor, which I will now explain what it means.
A Lektor is a type of guy who was on the national television,
Foreign movies he would read out loudly with his throat.
But despite his power, he delivered his message without a bloat,
To me he was a poet, in a state of destruction a sanctuary moat.
Six o’clock every night, I’d end up in a faraway land,
Ducktales or Tabaluga, I wonder what was planned.
And as a child, on the top of the sofa I would headstand,
To see what was going on today, on the waveband.
But what I did not know about the Lektor is that he inspired me,
He knew what he was doing, he encouraged poets to be,
He would restrain his emotions; yet somehow words were free,
He would act with extreme professionalism; yet show his glee.
A Polish David Attenborough, he would take his job seriously,
A voice of a nation and yet somehow unrecognised, curiously.
He did his job under a regime that ruled fucking dictatorially,
And he did so because it was the right thing to do, morally.
Remember the days when copyright was 25 years?
I miss that; the traders in the electronics exchange were without fears,
And now, these anarchists were the hit with the full Kodeks Karny [3],
All because those lot were tryna bring us Photoshop, and Barney.
That was the extent of what I have experienced of Poland.
It was hardly a land of opportunity, it was hardly grand,
Many people in this country in this period did nothing but drank,
I want to make it clear; nobody was making any sort of bank.
My parents eventually moved us to Northern Ireland for a job,
They thought they could come home after earning a few bob,
On a coach I went, I said goodbye with a sob,
On a coach to London, and then to Dublin, and we were off.
On this three-day journey, I remember being scared,
My parents told me nothing, I was not prepared.
The food was different; the air was light and pure.
And no longer did Polish UHT milk I had to endure.
The language that these people were talking, was so obscure.
What they thought about us at the time, I’m unsure.
I remember the local corner shop; it was Vivo.
And seeing on the TV, Finding Nemo.
I got an education in bilingualism through and through.
And so these two worlds further apart eventually grew.
Who was that girl on the British TV with the tractors?
The words they speak are different, but they are still actors.
On all our electronics we needed travel adaptors,
And what is this, a hob with a working extractor?
The difference between these experiences could give whiplash,
We did not have to worry that someone would come and give our tyres a slash.
This government would not turn on us, and do a fash,
Nobody would have a problem with us here, nobody would give our heads a bash.
The British induced me to new ways of doing things as a child,
The idea of central heating was absolutely fucking wild.
And I remember: when I left for school, our neighbours smiled.
In this country, I found that decorum must apply.
My parents did tea the old-fashioned Polish way,
Black, with no milk, and usually an Earl Grey.
So when my teachers realised this, they
Showed me that in this country we put milk in thee.
Unfortunately, I went through Catholic school; it was fraught.
As you can imagine, from those lessons I remembered nought.
The approval of God in every lesson, the teachers sought.
The little theologists thought our beliefs could be just bought.
We learnt the songs from the stupid God book Alive-O,
It was so important to show us with a clear halo.
I remember my first experiences of gender, I was baffled.
There were so many things the teachers needed to tackle.
Gendered loos were a concept I struggled to grapple,
And of course, I have ADHD. It was gonna be a battle.
I thought, what is the difference between these four stalls?
After all, they’ve all both got the same damn four walls.
These four unmarked toilets, all down the same hall?
Where does this invisible gender divide line, fall?
I kept using the women’s toilets anyway.
Something I still worry about doing to this day.
My teachers thought this was all a bit of play,
As nobody in Northern Ireland would suspect I was gay.
They asked me, would you like a cardigan to don?
I thought to myself, why not; that sounds like fun,
But trousers and a t-shirt on me were forced on,
And thus our society’s gender roles were thrust upon.
I remember hearing all those insults thrown about.
You are a gay, you are a poof, without a doubt.
Go back to where you came from, they would shout.
That was my experience of school throughout.
I played with the girls, I was a kid, after all.
I loved just how silly we were, their skirts’ they would twirl,
I did not have a skirt, for many insults would have been hurled,
And some of the abuse I saw, would actually make you hurl.
I was sensitive, bullying commenced thus.
Every fucking day I would get pulverised on the school bus.
I was a kid, I did not want to make a fuss,
If I could make it through the day, that’s a plus.
At home, my aunt taught me how to fight,
You see, with the countryside and the sciences we must bite,
That is the best way; there is really no reason to rehash that old tripe.
Violence? But why?
A walk around Lough Erne gives you more might.
– Emily Elżbieta Chomicz
The Tradition
Since the dawn of time, the country of Poland has been amalgamated by other countries, and our lands and her native peoples’ have been asphyxiated over continuously. For no reason.
The Polish people have at the forefront of warfare through Central Europe through history. If there are any people who know that fighting for the sake of fighting is not the answer, it is us. And most of us are some kind of strange and outspoken, so I do not think the concept of a Polish queer is as far away as it may seem.
The current multiculturalism has stemmed as an end result of the Holocaust is not the usual state of affairs, and is actually unusual for the nation’s history. You will actually find that in the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth, Poland extended as far as Wilno and Kyiv, it was massive. It was one of the most liberal democracies in Europe around the sixteen century, and was an example of early democracy when most countries were still practising serfdom and fiefdom as a way of life.
We seem to in the West have this sort of nebulous concept of the renaissance – that it is something that came and went, just like the Middle Ages, the Black Plague, the Fire of London, and the Invasion of Poland. We do not stop actually stop and think about the people who made much of the modern world possible, though.
I do not have enough space to write out all of them, but here are just a few examples of famous Polish people throughout history and how they have influenced the world. I have picked my favourites based on how much they inspired me as a child, and I think a lot of Polish people reading may relate to these people:
Lech Wałęsa – it’s hard to believe he is still alive at the age of eighty-one. But he was the guy behind the Solidarity trade union that eventually brought down the horrific Soviet rule in the country. He was arrested time, and time again, but every time, he would stand back up, doing what he believed was right. As a result of his and others’ resistance efforts, the Berlin Wall finally fell in 1989.
Marie Curie-Sklodowska – she is not Marie Curie; you got to use her full name. She was such a badass she discovered radioactivity and then proceeded to oversee radium with her own bare hands. Obviously, she did not know how deadly her work was at the time and that may have indeed caused her untimely demise. She an example of just how wonderfully powerful Polish women can be.
Adam Małysz – oh my god. This guy. This guy was the ski jumper that we all saw on the telly growing up, no matter what we thought of the Olympics. Despite our country being just a footnote at the time, the nation cheered his performance in the Winter Olympics every year, myself included. And he was so fucking humble! A true testament to what can happen if you genuinely believe in yourself.
Andrzej Sapkowski – we all know this guy, but if you are not familiar – he is the guy behind the Witcher. I remember growing up my father actually bought a copy of the Witcher to play on the computer, and let me tell you; the combat has massively improved in the 2nd and 3rd instalments of the game. Turns out not my cup of tea, but this guy single handedly gave Poland a gaming industry.
But I think to me, the most inspirational were the bands that came about as part of Polish resistance efforts.
Oh my god, Lombard. You look at Szklana Pogoda, and what you see is this beautiful unflinching butch woman talking about the weather and how people unwind after they get home. Or that is what the censors thought at the time. In reality, it was a 1983 war cry with a simple message – stop mindlessly consuming the Soviet propaganda on the telly, get the fuck out of your homes, and fucking fight for your human rights.
Oh, and Przeżyj to sam,’i.e. ‘Live it yourself’ is just a giant obvious fuck you to the at the time regime to try putting yourself in a Pole’s shoes for even one fucking day. Now THAT’S working-class resistance.
Or you remember the beautiful, gentle soul that was Marek Grechuta? Another national treasure, he sang a song that translates to ‘important are only the days that we don’t know yet.’ It is a poignant message that resonates with anyone, no matter who they are, or what struggles they may be facing.
His song was sung in the 1970s; those times consisted of some interesting contrasts to look at – sure, Poland was becoming somewhat more prosperous; at the same time, the Polish people were more aware of how fucked things were thanks to the West’s improving technology and innovative ideas. Several riots and a lot of unrest happened. I have been told about the horrific stories about the Milicja Obywatelska, the state-run Soviet paramilitary, and they sound absolutely horrific.
I could go on, but to fully understand what people went through in Polish communism, which is not my book to write. I am not going to pretend that I know what it is like to live a life under that hammer and sickle, nor the joy of looking at PEWEX looking at Western goods that one could not afford, or the rationing and queues that took place for basic good.
For that, you would have to ask my father. Maybe one day he’ll write a book about it. But him being an oral historian is also OK.
I can talk about the strange end effects of Soviet occupation though. For example, the fucking Lektor. It sounds objectively ridiculous to people in the West to just have this deadpan guy narrate all your foreign movies and shows instead of dubbing them over with proper voice acting, but by looking at it that way, you are missing the point.
The Lektor symbolises a form of resistance. He could have very easily in my opinion given in, and translated things according to party lines. But he did not, and he knew that if he, he would be misusing his power of authority to millions by not doing his job correctly – to spread some ideas of freedom to the populace.
I remember watching the segments on Top Gear where they got a bunch of old cars from the Soviet area and them laughing at them, and the thing is – a lot of people see this as laughing at the misery and poverty but even back then we also knew the cars were shit. But we just duct taped them back into place with whatever we could and hoped to fucking God they wouldn’t break again. I do remember my father having to crankstart a Fiat 126p in the freezing Polish Winter for about 15 minutes – now THAT is definitely an experience confined to the past.
Top Gear was obviously a parody of what it means to be British. But it’s important. Why is flying the Union Jack a sign of being a nationalist? I fly my Polish flag without thinking about it. I’m not a nationalist. I’m queer and part of the radical left. They were trying to inspire some pride in this country. Even if Jeremy was a nob.
I want to end this short social commentary on a positive note. It was clear even in the 2000s things were getting better, despite the complete chaos of the 1990s, where state-run corporations simply went bankrupt, and everyone was scrambling for their own fragment of wealth people were trying to get for their families and communities.
Those people were hungry for change, and they did not lose sight of the horrors of communism. Today, if you go to Poland, it is unrecognisable from what I have seen as a child. You see modern skyscrapers, you see proper workers’ rights, and you see the impacts of modern capitalism for better or worse. And I don’t have to line up for my loaf of bread with my ration card like my parents had to in the communism period.
And that, is what makes Poland special. A country that bounced back from the impossible.
I still relate to the national anthem – Poland is Not Yet Lost. And I think modern-day activists could take that lesson to heart, that there is still time to fight back.
After all, it took Poland fifty years, but it did get there at the end.
The Zombie
TW: religious rhetoric
If you are fleeing from persecution, divide and conquer tactics and financial worries, I am not sure it is the wisest move to move to Northern Ireland.
I later learnt when I moved to England that there are some things that Northern Ireland, and by extension, Ireland, do a bit differently. Some things are obvious, for example the English aren’t as obsessed about Guinness, and St Patrick’s Day is sacrificed for… well, nothing really. We do not really celebrate English traditions with the bank holiday; we just see it as a national indifference. Unless it’s to get out of work, of course, at which point you show yourself as an ardent patriot, even if it does not make sense.
I went from this struggling but beautiful, and busy metropolitan city, to a village in the middle of nowhere called Enniskillen. And despite having lived there for years, I still have few memories of the place because in Northern Ireland, unless you live in Belfast, nothing happens. It is quite literally not a newsworthy place. Except the G7 summit. And the Clinton Centre. It is in the middle of nowhere. To the point that there is no gas supply to most houses, you just get a big bottle of gas every Winter delivered to you to heat your home to the boiler in the shed, and you hook it up yourself.
Nothing really happens in Northern Ireland. Growing up, it was difficult to see people who were so friendly and warm, but at the same time their people have been through generations and generations of being fucked about – in some respects, quite similar to what Poland went through. Every Northern Irish person I speak to says the same thing – that simply living in Northern Ireland is a trauma. That’s why the neighbours were so quiet to us.
The IRA did not form out of no reason; it was out of desperation. There is only so much you can abuse people, and England did exactly that. There is only so many times you can quite literally starve a population out of their only foodstuffs before they start getting a little angry and fighting back the people that are enslaving them.
And yep, when you have traumatised, starved individuals who are desperately trying to grieve, you are gonna see some violent, problematic behaviour on religious and nationalist lines. I am not, in any way justifying what the IRA did, or did not do. I am in this regard, completely politically neutral in Northern Ireland’s and Eire’s politics.
But I do agree with The Cranberries; they are all fucking zombies.
One day my mother came home and casually said, ‘oh yeah, there’s been a car bomb in Omagh, fucking hell,’ and moved on. I find it so interesting that my immigrant parents did eventually absorb the emotions and politics of the Irish despite having no stake in the system.
My parents were hounded by the school for choosing not to baptise me. I remember my parents being brought into mandatory meetings about why I wasn’t baptised yet.
And boy, did we go to Church. Every other few months we’d go on a trip to Church to listen to the priest talk something about God or Jesus every time we went.
I thought to myself at the time – did I not understand English all that well yet? Because I cannot understand what this preacher is saying. So I’m just gonna stare off into the distance bored, looking at the absolutely beautiful stained-glass windows in the church while sitting on the pews.
It was while authoring this book I was told: no, Emily, there is a reason you did not understand any of it. Catholic mass is held in Latin. And holy shit, that leads a queer child like me to a complete condemnation of a religion over time. Because I wanted to learn from others, but I was not allowed to.
That kind of Christianity is about conservatism. Some Christians are good people, and I know many good Christians, but this was in my mind, stupid. It felt like the whole religion was about not allowing even a single inch in official interpretations – those are left to the Pope, after all. And God forbid if you are in any way queer or do not fit in. It lies to its own believers a lot, as well.
Later in my life, this later led to a clash of values as I became increasingly queer. I grew up watching ‘kabarets’ (televised theatre performances) which decried the state of the Catholic Church. And on TVP, which in today’s times would sound absolutely mental given the state of Polish state media recently.
But it is true. The TVP is not the enemy. It is only a struggling national broadcaster that was taken over by the fascists. But it has always come back from the dead. The Polish people are incredibly difficult to silence.
It was delivered with humour, satire, and style, but the queerness had to be severely restrained and curtailed for a society that was not ready for it. In the same way that Britain was incredibly socially stifled in the 1960s after the war, so too, was Poland in the 2000s.
A bunch of actors on the screen, making weird noises. Dressing up as priests and pretending to be conductors at the bus stop checking tickets. Because finally for the first time, there was freedom in the press, and people did not know what to do with it. Just how the fuck do you make art under capitalism?
Northern Ireland is beautiful, and so is its sibling, Ireland. Both of them share a culture and the two have such comparable stories, but both of them have unique traumas that make them clash sometimes. I was shown by teachers growing up Derry Girls obviously as it is of course a state religion at this point, but more importantly documentaries by the BBC about the Belfast peace walls, and I still do not know what to think.
Is there really peace to be had building walls, like the ones in Belfast and Berlin? You can visit them, and nothing has been dismantled, it is still how it was. I suppose it is a kind of peace when you put up borders and walls and you enforce them, but it is not the peace I think anyone in their hearts wants.
People do not listen to John Lennon because he was seen as a troublemaker and a hippie, but I do not think he is wrong to imagine a world without borders and without countries. You may think it is not necessarily achievable with all our histories, cultures, and the human tendency to fight over resources, but his lesson was that we can all fucking share the limited resources on this planet. Was it worth killing him for that?
Look at the current state of the world. We have a US President that is currently trying to become more isolationist by kicking out all the migrants and putting up tariffs. We have a conflict in Ukraine, and Poland’s trying to desperately keep Europe together. And Keir Starmer, we call him in the trans community Sir Queer Harmer for a reason.
These people are descending into becoming neocolonialists. They do not stand for the British people, nor the Americans, or the Russians. The people of these countries are struggling in wars that they never wanted to be part of, for the benefit of their leaders.’ A tale as ancient as time.
My father did sit me down and have the War is Terrible talk as a child. And I fully understand why. He was after all, in the military.
I spent years trying to figure out if my parents were good or bad people. And to this day, even though I am assured by others that what I have been through is child abuse, and yes, there is absolutely no excuse for that. I managed to come to that conclusion, and escape.
But other trans people are not so lucky. Some parents start off with hate, and will hate trans people no matter what you tell them. And it breaks my heart that some trans people will never have a parent to talk to, because of their parent’s hate.
My parents at least were imperfect people, working in imperfect frameworks, without a proper education. After all, the Soviet system did not allow for luxuries like ‘higher education’ and ‘parenting classes with textbooks more modern than the Victorian era,’ trying to desperately raise a child on the cheap.
One of the problems I have with the way we talk about estrangement from families in this day and age is that many of them become anti-natalist, and start believing that it is stupid to raise children if you can’t afford them, or to treat them well. That parents ‘should have thought about the consequences’ before having them.
And this is deplorable and a denigration of the generations that came before. We need new people, and innovative ideas. I get that without overthrowing the old for the sake of being old, we will not have progress. But those people should be reminded politely that their new radical ideas are in fact, built on ideas of other traumatised people who tried to do something radical too.
I was also in the stifling conformity of Northern Ireland, despite the fact that I am sure my village has never fact seen a queer. It is interesting because in Britain, Section 28 was in fact abolished, but you stop believing in that once you see Northern Ireland. Because of its relative isolation in the world, old attitudes and practices continue.
I used to see all these political posters growing up in Northern Ireland I saw Senn Fein, I saw the Democratic Unionist Party and all the different independents proposing their own solutions. I did not know what any of that meant obviously. I did not think it mattered either at the time because it was the same old shit. And to this day, the tensions in Northern Ireland continue.
It was not that long ago that Stormont collapsed for several years over on the outside, petty squabbles. At the end of the day, they both want the same thing, they want their own identity. We will pass your bills if you pass our Irish language bill, they say.
It may seem like a conflict from 30 years ago. However, it is still relevant. There are many conflicts in the world that remain like this, for example, the Arab Israeli conflict. Both sides are just trying to forge their own identity, but just like Northern Ireland had had the rest of the Union, one side has massively more resources to do so than the other. And this is what we call a power struggle, which leads to the abuse of power.
The Egg
Would I have known any better?
If I was not already born this way?
Didn’t like bell pepper,
So take away her play.
Take away her gae,
Did she benefit? Nae
She wanted to be a little fae.
But gender roles she must display,
Internal demons have come to stay,
They have come to ruin your day,
My brain now wants me to pray.
Or there will be hell to pay.
Skies are complete with grey,
I’m not at all fucking OK,
Cannot go to a fucking café,
I would be considered a stray,
So all I do,
Is sit here and lie flat as prey,
Survival; there’s just no fucking way.
Sitting here, doing nothing but weeping,
Do not even get a break while I am sleeping,
Inside, I am bleeding.
I am not succeeding.
End this nightmare,
I am fucking pleading.
Into the online world, I am receding,
I don’t know what the fuck I’m feeling,
Any form of control, I am ceding,
My life’s a complete judicial proceeding.
You are a fucking faggot, a dyke,
And you need to see a fucking psych,
Merely a lifetime of dissociation,
My death it will hasten.
My every thought must have a redaction,
My every thought must have a correction.
To the male gender I never had a reaction,
I needed to transition, and put it in action.
– Emily Elżbieta Chomicz
The Betrayal
TW: Brexit, xenophobia, queerphobia
This is really hard to discuss even today, years after the vote. But someone has to do it.
I remember 23rd June 2016. It was the day of my GCSE Physics exam. I remember doing extremely badly on it, as my mind dissociated all the questions away. I did not get a retake.
I thought Britain is my home. So what the fuck happened? And I even welcome here? I hope so. Because this, is all I know.
I spent many, many years thinking about it. How could such a powerful, socially progressive nation just turn its back on the very people it invited in in the first place?
And the answer lies in what my parents did for work in this country. My parents were factory workers, working for a company called Quinn Glass, which later became Encirc. They worked twelve-hour shifts, on a four on, four off shift pattern.
Of course, this factory was full of immigrants, such as Ukrainians, Lithuanians, and Poles. For 14 years, my father’s job was to drive the forklift, pick up the glass that was ready, and stack it together, like a game of Tetris.
Whereas, my mother’s job was more on the ‘cold’ end, to look at glass bottles that may be defective and mark them according to their defects.
I did once in fact see the conditions they were working in. It was a very loud factory, where you had to use earplugs as hearing protection.
No earphones were allowed, though my parents did risk it at times. Absolute rebels.
And they were absolutely gonna be on the lowest wage the company could get away with. And that is why no British person was willing to do this job unless they were forced by the job centre, and they had quit in four weeks.
But my parents had no choice. They did not know that much English when they came here; they didn’t have any demonstrable career skills in the UK aside from looking at bottles and driving forklifts. I cannot imagine being confined to fourteen years of doing the same thing as he did, over and over, and over again.
For a man who seemed to have led such a crazy, chaotic life in Poland, it did not make sense. How can this guy settle down into factory work like this? Sure, he had visions of starting his own photography business, but now I understand to do so, one must go through the motions. There is no shortcut to success.
I knew at an early age I did not want to do that, and I wanted to do something with my life, and Britain was certainly willing to give me that opportunity by letting me, a poor working-class student, into a decent school.
But in exchange, Britain seemingly wanted one thing. After Brexit.
It wanted me to assimilate.
Forget about the values you have previously held. Become British. Forget about your heritage, your people, and your language. Do give us your pierogi though.
And we’ll enforce that with xenophobic abuse all throughout school and all the friends I made on the internet.
I was called a ‘fucking Polish cunt’ all the fucking time in school.
I have been told that my parents needed to go to work in a forced labour camp (of course, they did not know that my parents were immigrants when they said this) and many, many other things that would make your blood boil now.
The problem is that this kind of racism was, to a certain extent, state sanctioned as a way of covering for the government’s mistakes. And this does not just happen for immigrants, it happens for asylum seekers, it happens for queer people, trans people, Black people, anyone who does not fit the mould of a typical English person.
Unfortunately, these gammons have been here throughout Britain’s history. The British Empire I am sure was absolutely chock-full of prehistoric gammons trying to enslave Black people.
And they never evolve their views, and they keep going about how the 1950s and 1960s were better with as they try and recollect their nostalgia, with their colour televisions in their seaside resort in Blackpool and how they beat their wives as they come home.
So anyway. The Tory government needs a scapegoat after Labour allowing millions of people into the country to fill legitimate skills shortages. And then the Great Recession happens, and millions of people lose their homes. And the answer is… demonise the people who make Britain actually work.
Yes, Brexit was a middle finger to the establishment. But if you want to shake things up, you do that by voting out the Tories and ending austerity, not by ripping the UK out of something that keeps Europe together. Eventually, the UK figured that out and kicked them out.
The only problem was: It was eight years too late. Austerity had murdered the country’s hopes and dreams, all thanks to an elementary spreadsheet error by George Osborne. Great.
The “Life” of My Male Self
TW: gender trauma
In my secondary,
A teacher governed our understanding of arts,
Home economics, textiles, the making of lemon tarts,
Hoping that this was some way into our hearts.
I was a boy, so I couldn’t do anything delicate with hands.
That is because nobody knew that I was in fact, trans.
Every lesson, I struggled to cook,
Just a little more effort, it would have took,
Instead, I was forgotten, aside I was pushed,
In my head, the Catholic education, the old repetitive tush:
You are the gender of a boy; do the subjects for the boys.
That is my friends, how you build a queer persons’ grudges.
In response, I still and make every so often some fudges,
For I made a mistake with a sewing machine once,
I stabbed myself; I screamed in pain at the top of my lungs.
You are not meant to be good at this,
Unlike the perfect students, who happen to be chicks.
I went to CAMHS (ugh!), and I got my autism diagnosis,
But that didn’t explain my feelings.
I personally thought I was psychotic.
Why do I feel inside so robotic?
– Emily Elżbieta Chomicz
The Child Who Left Home Because Nobody Understood
If you ask my parents, I left home because of a disagreement – I wanted to go to university in the UK, and not in Poland.
If you ask my Head of Sixth Form, I left home because I was being abused by my parents.
If you ask my sister, she will tell you that I left home because I wanted to become independent, start living my life and get an office job; she fled home at 18 because she also did not have a particularly great childhood either.
But the real reason I left home?
I was trans.
My parents just didn’t know what to do. How do you parent a trans kid without a manual?
I did not even know it at the time. I did not know it.
I fled home on 7th February 2018.
Right when the Beast from the East came.
T’was minus three in the night.
I slept at my friend’s house.
In a room near a broken window.
With nothing but a small, thin blanket.
I put that coat on top of me for warmth.
That saved my life.
The School Found Out
The head of Sixth Form saw I was deeply suffering,
When she heard about my story, she went white as a sheet,
She told me, become here and take a seat.
I’m gonna ensure you can fucking eat.
I went to the food bank, some Weetabix I got,
It is a cute little cereal bar, I must have thought,
Took a bite into it, without milk, on that Winter’s Day
‘Twas like the Sahara, I didn’t know why they were that way,
When I entered the homeless shelter, a door and lock.
I was still in my deadname, oh my fuck.
So I pretended in my previous gender I could talk.
But nothing to worry, I’m emotionally numb as a rock.
It was a life where I was always very bored,
That is the first time I have smoked weed, oh Lord.
Universal Credit, two hundred and fifty a month
And whatever was in the petty cash school fund.
I tried to cook ready-made rice without any water,
The staff laughed at me, and said ‘You absolute plonker!’
I had nothing but my habit of fags,
And to wear a few old rags,
An overdraft of five hundred pounds,
It happens if you wanna move towns.
To university in Birmingham I wanted to go,
The shelter staff said you are truly a pro.
On the computers you just seem to know.
Except that is the reason I was here,
Finally, some life opportunities were near,
My mental health difficulties really were sheer,
Every day, I would shed more than just a tear.
Unfortunately, I did not exactly get the grades,
The university did at least, offer me a way into the trades,
At least, I could get on a foundation year,
And for now, I would finally rest my long-standing fears.
Every day, I would cut and often self-harm,
I would sometimes even swallow some pharm.
A desperate cry for help from this eighteen-year-old,
Writing out messages to the ambulance people in bold.
And finally, when it was time to say to the shelter goodbye,
I really did start believing in the ‘taught by university’ lie,
It was because with gender I did not want to comply,
I really did think at the time, I’d rather go homeless and die.
– Emily Elżbieta Chomicz
It was a near death experience. That is what I experienced. All because I never could describe my feelings of being trans. Because there were no trans people that I could talk to. And no understanding of trans people from anyone anywhere whatsoever.
I felt that I had to lie to them to transition. I hid that I wanted to go University in Birmingham and live in the same city as my big sister for an entire year, thinking that my sister would help me if something bad happened. And as a child, you do not know what the consequences of your actions will be, as you have absolutely zero life experience. And that’s why I lied. Because I was scared was of the consequences of telling them I’m trans.
Of course he was a completely, and utterly ruined man, and the next day he drove me to school, asking me repeatedly in desperation me why would I do such a thing. He just wanted to understand.
They never asked me at any point what I wanted to do with my life, keep in mind, and they were completely expecting me to uproot my British life experiences, friends, and fish and chips to go live in a country that I had zero experience of.
My mother trapped me in my room, asking me why I have done this, while I still heard glass being smashed downstairs.
And then, I realised. Fuck. I need to get out. This isn’t safe.
I contacted a friend. He believed me immediately. He initially thought this was a disagreement, instead of outright a domestic. Once I shared the audio though, he told me to get the fuck out.
It was an insane situation, because I was still sheltered from reality and frankly deluded because I did not any better. I asked him if I could use a torch to signal out SOS for someone to see me from the street level and send help.
For context, I lived in a tucked away cul-de-sac in Ellesmere Port. It was not happening.
Finally, he convinced me to leave even though the situation was incredibly volatile. By this point, my sister intervened in the situation, and while she did not know what went on exactly, she did call the police. On the way to his house, in my mind I joked that the two cop cars were to my family’s house.
That’s exactly what happened.
The police told me to come back, but I refused. I pressed on, and they arrived at my friends to tell me that no further action would be taken, and I can go home after spending the night there.
This kid refused to go home. This kid had enough. I was inconsolable at school, and once the social worker understood the situation, I did not have to go home any more. The kid wanted to be trans. But still didn’t know it.
There was however, just one tiny, minor problem we just did not predict.
Cheshire West and Chester Council disagreed. They said it was safe to go back home. I obviously disagreed with them.
If I did not have that autism paperwork that was being completed RIGHT AS I BECAME HOMELESS then I would not be considered for rehousing priority, and I would not be eligible for help.
If you are wondering why I even got an autism diagnosis at 18, I was referred to CAMHS a few months before by school ‘cos I smashed a window in desperation. I got sent for an autism assessment, and miraculously I got the information from my parents I needed to fill it out several months ago.
Oh, and I also needed a National Insurance number; because I am from the European Union, and I had a part-time job growing up, so I never got one.
It was my housing advocacy worker who had saved my life. When she saw that the council was gonna put me twenty miles away in a B&B in Liverpool, she understood me when I said no. And when I finally opened up about my story, she cried. She could not believe that social services did not intervene three years earlier given some of the things I was saying. It was comforting to know, but not particularly useful for me in the three and now.
I missed an offer of housing because of this utterly idiotic administrative nightmare that was unfolding for a child. I could have lived in Chester in a nice area instead of Ellesmere Port.
And the clock was ticking. If I couldn’t figure out how to get to a place near Liverpool on a train from Ellesmere Port, keeping in mind this autistic child was too scared to go round their local park at the time, I’d end up with thousands of pounds of debt from the supported housing place as they couldn’t get me on housing benefit.
I remember that scene vividly. Liverpool Lime Street. I thought at the time it was absolutely massive and the biggest train station that ever existed. Of course, my only comparison point was Chester’s train station, which was objectively tiny. And for the first time, I went on an Arriva train headed towards a place called Manchester Air, as the little displays could not fit enough characters.
Manchester Airport. What an unlikely place for me to end up seven years later talking about it in my journalism, living in a queer little household in Manchester, and being at the forefront of the trans movement in Manchester.
My life was indeed, about to begin. The sad part is, if anyone knew that I was trans at this point, it could have saved me a lot of trauma in my life. This is why an understanding is so important.
It was the most stilted appointment with the Home Office one has ever seen.
‘[deadname], do you have an email address?’ ‘Yes.’
‘What’s your email address?’
I gave them my Gmail in my deadname.
‘And do you have a home address I can write down?’
FUCK. I did not know what the fuck to do. So I broke down and cried and told them I just fled my parents, and I do not know how to do anything for myself.
And the guy told me it was fine; I can just put down a friends’ address.
I ended up staying at my friend’s address for a few days, but eventually, I self-harmed once again, and I was told by my friend’s mother I was no longer welcome to stay there because she was scared for her kids.
That, I think was a mistake to tell a child, and completely sent the wrong lesson to me, unfortunately, in a time of vulnerability and pure naivety as to how the world really works.
I get why one may react like this; but especially, as an 18-year-old is still a child, is this reaction justified? I do not think so.
I stayed with another friend. But I was too scared to ask for help that night when it was minus three, so I almost killed myself because of my trauma. And for whatever reason, I ended up sleeping on their sofa, next to a broken, ill-fitting single pane window, with just my coat and a thin blanket covering me.
I think there must have been some kind of miscommunication, as my friend would not have let that happen if they knew. I still have not told them. I think they will find out only when they read this.
Near death experiences are interesting, as they profoundly change how you feel about the world. At the time, I truly did think I was going to die from hypothermia as I was shivering, and I did not want to ask for help because my abuse told me that I did not deserve to be helped.
But there was something in me that told me to not give up. That if I got this far, I might as well continue. And so, I figured out that a coat can be used as an improvised blanket, and I slept through the night, as ice formed in this unheated living room and the snow continued to fall heavily on the quiet suburb of Bache.
You know how boomers will tell you they walked to school in the snow no matter what the weather? That is obviously a lie that they use to harden up the young generations, but for me, it was literal, I couldn’t afford a bus fare to school.
Eventually, my school noticed the fact that I was walking to school in thin clothes in the cold and eventually gave me money from the school’s petty cash fund for a bus fare and some food.
I had a unique prospective that few people have. Throughout these periods where I have stayed with all these families, I had to see how other families live by necessity.
And it was very strange.
On one hand, you had my friend’s father whipping their child with a tea towel playfully, and the kid did not seem to mind, which was strange. On the other hand, this other mother was in fact using this weird pen thing and seemed to inhale on it every so often.
And she would do this a LOT.
No, she would not allow me to have a go on her vape, for some reason. I wonder why.
I remember at one point, the council ran out of places to put me while waiting for supported housing, so they booked me into a four-star hotel.
And folks. That is when the story goes from already quite fucking mental, to insane.
IT HAD A POOL. AND A LUXURY BED. AND I WAS A HOMELESS KID.
OF COURSE I WANTED TO USE THE POOL.
It may have only been a Premiere Inn to most, but to me, and, to me today, this represented Buckingham Palace. I could not believe I was so lucky to stay in that hotel.
The next place I stayed was a B&B in Chester, and that was when my £100 which was a combination I saved up from school, and the little that I managed to finagle from my parents and my sister, really started to run out.
You have never seen true poverty, until you’re in the aisles comparing cheeses in the supermarket by their weight, and taste and kind becomes completely irrelevant. I remember that block of Red Leicester, which was the cheapest most disgusting shit; at that point it became a mission to get as many calories down me as possible using a set of forks and knives and a microwave.
This was fucking survival at its very core.
But at the very least, this closeted trans fem had a crappy music player and headphones. She had her Paramore. She had her Panic at the Disco. And she sure as shit had her Fall Out Boy on her shitty little mobile phone with her little wired headphones.
There was just something about Hayley. I wanted to be with her.
I wanted to be h-
So anyway, I did end up going to a food bank. They gave me pasta to cook. Not exactly useful in a B&B, but as a vulnerable homeless child you did not complain, you would find a way to make it with a kettle. And who could forget the Weetabix story…
I made it out. I got my flat. I got my freedom. And soon, I was off to University of Birmingham to join my sister in Brum, doing the subject that I was known to be good at. Computer Science. Computer Science was how I tried to escape pure fucking poverty.
It was a Hail Mary into the unknown for a kid who up to this point, has not seen anything more in life than their front door up to this point. All because she was trans. Imagine if just for a second, someone talked to me about being trans.
And that folks, is the danger of a lack of education about trans people. That is the living proof that trans people exist. I got dysphoria without even knowing about trans people.
The Man
TW: toxic masculinity, substance abuse
This may sound like an absolute clique but, I really did not understand the concept of masculinity. Or femininity, in fact.
I do not think I have had a typical education experience. It was all a bit weird. Out of sheer luck, due to an inability to sort out schooling after moving to England for work related reasons, I did not go to the shitty comprehensive in Ellesmere Port.
Instead, I went to Upton-by-Chester High School, a state school that was in a little council-posh village near Chester. It was a refuge for me – a bunch of teachers who really cared, a well-stocked school library, mostly well-behaved students and everyone was there mainly because they wanted to learn. The underfunding was always a problem, but the staff made the best of it.
Ellesmere Port was definitely not council-posh, far from it. When I became homeless, the homeless shelter was ironically in an area called Westminster, next to the railway station. And I quickly discovered that just like the namesake place, it was full of rapists, murderers, and drug dealers.
I think my experiences with masculinity can be explained by that time better, than any of my schooling experiences.
In the shelter, there was me, an 18-year-old, and another resident, who for the purposes of this book we shall call Ginge, a 17-year-old, sat outside at 2am in the morning.
We were bored out of our god-damn heads because what can you do on a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound allowance from the British government?
So this guy comes up to us, and sits with us. He enjoys our company, and we speak for hours, and it seems as though he had this irresistible charm around him. He invites us back to his flat just a few streets down.
In there, we realise, something is not right. He was really evasive, and he keeps insisting that Ginge has a drink, and Ginge becomes really uncomfortable I don’t know how to really describe his behaviour, other than he tried what I interpreted as a strange ‘male-to-male’ communication. And nowadays, I would interpret that as wanting to rape her now that I have more experience in the world.
And it was also implied that this would be swift, and easy, and nobody would know the wiser. I did not know exactly what was happening, but me and Ginge had to work very quickly while he was out of the room to get out, by me distracting him in another room while she tries to get out.
It works. We are safe for another time, another fucking stupidly dangerous adventure.
Like the time we went down the empty streets of Ellesmere Port in a shopping trolley, absolutely fucking trolleyed, high off our fucking tits, sitting in there, holding a Wii remote out of all things.
Yes. We were dumb kids. And that was OK. We were all young.
Another time, I remember walking late at night down the road from Asda, and this guy on a bike just comes at me for no reason other than I looked at him the wrong way and pulls out a fucking knife.
He comes dangerously close to me. Thankfully, I was able to call his stupid bluff before he even tried anything by negotiating with this stupid teenage terrorist.
Getting that understanding that this was also a part of society was absolutely insane to someone who has never experienced it themselves. You can try and describe it, but it will never be the same as actually experiencing the fear yourself.
Seriously. This has to be the roughest area for an 18-year-old to be. And this insanity continued. It was here that I got addicted to baccy, vaping, and my personal favourite – weed.
It is crazy how, despite us having absolutely no money between us, any amount of a monetary token used incorrectly could become a power structure in of itself.
For example, we used to steal mugs from the shelter’s reception, and we would make it a competition to see who had the most mugs, and that would the person at the top of the hierarchy. This was absurd, but to us, a serious competition.
Even the fact that I inherited the earlier residents painted feature wall and the rest of them were not allowed to paint their own flats, was seen as me having the ‘posh’ flat, even though all the self-contained flats were the exact same otherwise.
I saw a guy climb up a drainpipe one day while watching TV. He was banned from the place for crime related reasons, right in front of me.
I saw the same guy later on smash our front door to our building.
I saw a guy who kept going in and out of prison for the same assault charge, over and over again.
And my personal favourite, the guy who moved in next door, who decided to threaten me and try to torch my door’s spyhole all in twenty-four hours. At least that guy got removed from our building pretty quick.
I saw how broken masculinity is in many, many homes, and I wondered to myself, do I really want to be a part of that?
It got to the point where the boys did not want to unload the girls’ laundry to put their own in, because God forbid, they may accidentally touch underwear that has just been washed and cleaned by a GIRL.
I was still this masculine-presenting closeted trans woman in ragged clothes from my parents’ inability to parent a child. She liked women. Not men. I never really liked men either.
I think Ginge understood when she met me that I was a lesbian, as she did not see me as one of the boys in the building. She saw me as an ally, although she herself came from a broken home as she needed respite from her mother who had Type II Bipolar.
Together, we would watch shows like Supernatural and I would be really interested in her makeup, and GOD, I remember spending nights playing Mario Kart Wii in her friends’ council flat alongside Ginge.
Turns out I was in fact, that third-wheel lesbian in what was fast becoming their relationship. I am glad that they are still together to this day, although I do hope that they calmed it with the quite frankly excessive drinking.
Ginge has told me about the stories of her working in the local pub underage. She would somehow have memorise every single cocktail on a menu, and act mature enough so that none of the patrons’ bat an eyelid over the minor working the bar. And at that age, I achieved… absolutely nothing it felt.
It is interesting I think how different her childhood was from mine. She mentioned how she would sneak in vodka into lessons and into exams, and she did admit to me later that, that it was really not the smartest idea.
But she did not care, as her life was already fucked, and there was simply no way she could keep up being her mum’s carer AND at the same time develop an actual career.
And we were all really entrepreneurial. Faced with no other framework for life other than the capitalism we saw from our parents, we would do trades, like going to the shop to get your baccy without getting ID’d. In exchange, you will roll me some cos I cannot roll for shit. And she would in fact, pay for some of the vodka. In exchange for using my ID, of course.
At that point, I realised the importance and value of identity. It was strange to me at first, how privilege works. Despite being a year younger, she got ID’d every time, and I did not. Identity was a commodity to be traded, just like any other.
The fact that I am able to do certain things that she, in fact, would be questioned about, for a price. At the time, I looked and presented myself to the world as an unkempt, full bearded cis white guy, and so of course nobody’s gonna question me.
And then I broke. I couldn’t do it any more.
The Girl on the Horizon
I am the cute girl with the ThinkPad,
Probably got a config file open in Notepad.
Girl, I just want to be kidnapped,
See me at work in my thigh highs,
I laugh at the CIS building that’s sky high,
And I got dem big, thicc, titty anime thighs.
Blahajs?
Got about five of them.
I am just a little adorable femme,
I am subby as fuck, but I still cause mayhem.
I am six foot, and want to be small,
I have got so things I wanna explore!
I am a transbian [4] through and through,
I just really love my cute little shoes!
I wish for pink headphones with cat ears,
To be able to go out without any gender fears,
I went and bought my A-line off Amazon,
And to me, university was like being in Babylon.
I was the goth girl that argued with the Tories,
And her life used to be on the surface boring.
In reality, I spent all my time whoring,
And forgot university lectures the next morning.
I have Garfield’s tiredness, it is absolutely true,
I want some girl juice [5], don’t you?
Load me up with that coffee IV,
I am drunk with too much cider already.
I was so brave, and so naïve at the time,
That transition was simply a lipstick and skirt.
And that’s how it showed how society I can upheave.
And gender norms I will on my own secede.
I walked in, I was twenty minutes late,
My desk on the other side, just my fate,
January 2019, I remember was the month,
Constantly tryna announce my faggotry.
The room goes quiet, as I stumble,
In my bag for my laptop I desperately fumble.
Between the seats I hear a mumble,
Look guys! She really does mean trouble.
I sit down on my flip out seat,
I turn on my laptop without skipping a beat,
The lecturer asks a question; how do you bleat?
It is me, Emily; and I’m finally all chique.
At Birmingham, I found a bunch of cliques,
My prospect of making friends was bleak.
That did not stop me from putting on lipstick.
And I was strong and independent, I hated pricks.
I met up again with Ginge, I bought some makeup.
That was important to me, I after all, just wake up.
My egg’s cracked, it is a complete gender breakup.
I have got so much fucking time to make up.
I was a desperately poor student,
I got excited by nineteen pence cola,
I downed Frosty Jacks by the litre,
Barely on the edge I did teeter,
I became an alcoholic sadly,
I drank before a soldering seminar,
Why the fuck did I stoop to that bar?!
I moved to Manchester to meet queers and furries,
Packed three suitcases and all my fucking worries,
It’s a brand-new adventure, Emily said all starry.
I held up the bus, and got on, just barely,
I got all my life’s belongings on a Pacer [6],
Birmingham’s pace is in comparison glacier,
And I guess queer is just my Mother Nature.
The things that convinced me to move to Manchester?
First visit, nitrous oxide canisters everywhere on the tram,
Second visit, a guy in the Arndale threatening to go bam,
I went, wow it is lively here, god-damn!
It is said that Brum has more canals than Venice,
Unfortunately, Brummies are a fucking menace,
Even if you count every bit of lake,
That claim’s a complete fake – it is actually the longest length of canal in Europe, oooh let’s see them quake.
Brummies don’t understand how to be gay,
They have hidden their queers away,
There are like two gay bars, which is not a display,
I hope that the situation has improved today.
I went into Canal Street,
I saw it was defaced as Anal Street,
My first real world experience in our culture,
Finally people who I would describe as counterculture.
Went from one queer group to another,
The drugs and alcohol definitely added some colour,
A horny kitten, I wanted the love and attention,
Not a healthy thing, on some more modern reflection.
I took whatever toys I could inside of me,
More and more, that was the plea,
Stuffed and fucked mindlessly is the way to be,
There was very zero self-respect left in me.
And then in Manchester, Covid became endemic,
My lectures became so utterly boring and generic,
Lockdowns have become the chronic, a distinct panic,
Felt like the world has gone absolutely manic.
I remember them introducing the rule of six inside,
If you go dogging, you can get your fix, we chide.
I’m sure all the lesbians enjoyed eating out to help out.
There were some great memes at the time, without a doubt.
I believed that one of the furries was a prat,
As my existence was labelled a politically pointless spat,
I said, fuck that, I am starting a new chat,
It became twenty-seven cuties, and a really annoying cat.
I lived in the Northern Quarter then,
For a video blog I bought a pack of penne,
I thought to myself, I will be a YouTube star, but when?
All I knew was how to add fucking cayenne.
I explored the North properly,
I saw the pockets of true awe and wonder,
My little YouTube videos, so were adorably scholarly,
I was still learning; after all, I was still holding my camera improperly.
– Emily Elżbieta Chomicz
The Medical Bureaucrats
TW: medical trauma, disability abuse (Department for Work and Pensions)
I once saw an NHS psychiatrist, a screw.
Diagnosed me with bipolar disorder, type II.
I wondered if he would finally get through.
Turns out I am mentally ill, that is true!
He gave me his choice of drugs in his car,
Outside the university campus from afar.
Here, come and I’ll heal from your many scars.
And tell me your trauma, your tired memoir.
Three shrinks were sent to my cell-I mean dorm room,
Benzodiazepines only served to make me go VROOOOM!!!!
I wonder what drug’s next doctor on the menu,
‘You’ll find lamotrigine™️ [7] at my dealers’ den.’
Gotta give you a script for those sweet amphetamine,
To go alongside her ridiculous, and copious use of nicotine.
But the side effects were completely forgotten and unforeseen,
Her mind went absolutely wild, she at the clinic she was seen.
I asked once what a medication did,
I was yelled at and scolded with hatred,
You are not in medication compliance Emily,
Discharge her from her care doctor, now.
She thought she was the service’s queen,
She thought she will rule supreme,
I decided to protest back and scream.
And so Emily was under the team seen.
And then I was sent to Birmingham, Lozells,
Quite frankly the rest of the details are fuzzled,
I felt like I was dodging bullets every time I went,
Absolutely dodgy as fuck, like trying to complete a quest.
Trying new drugs like aripiprazole,
After that one, time for omeprazole…
Get your script through the NHS by faxing it.
With a high enough dose, I will feel I am making it.
Sertraline makes me suicidal,
Vortioxetine does for me fuck all,
Citalopram was an absolute mistake,
And escitalopram. oh my.
Sent to the hospital with serotonin syndrome,
Turned me into a nasty, horrific sweating gnome,
The GP had to call the ambulance on the phone,
The cause of this reaction? Completely unknown.
And when I arrived at the hospital,
I was screaming, I need to be sectioned!
Please help!
This system is completely and utterly recessive,
Any queer would agree; it is so oppressive.
Every therapy session a new obsession,
Put your thoughts in a plastic bag Emily,
And leave them outside the door at night.
And then finally, they will not give you a fright.
It is then I found myself discharged,
For the audacity to have simply remarked,
This ain’t it chief, I would have tried your advice.
But I think your advice, mate, is just a bit shit.
A motorway bridge is unfortunately familiar,
The police held me in their car as prisoner,
About this I am still really fucking bitter,
They took me for only a filthy sinner.
Over the years we have had so very many tensions,
How your department runs deserves some questions,
And we get some fucking apologies and confessions?
Despite my pleading with you, I scored zero,
Look. This ain’t a fucking game of bingo.
I later learnt you had to know the lingo,
Make yourself sound a proper weirdo.
And then came the second assessment,
I was once again sent to another judgement,
Some backpay to me was a Christmas present.
But my dissociation at this point was so thick,
Because these people are fucking PRICKS.
Every THREE YEARS this stupid paper I must see,
Universal Basic Income, come already and set us free.
– Emily Elżbieta Chomicz
The NHS Drug Dealer
Trauma aware, or pill peddler?
Writing my prescriptions with a No. 2 Staedtler,
I swear my doc’s called Heather,
They say moods can be cured, but Emily’s not better.
Every time I go for an NHS appointment,
I have to say in a prose so poignant,
That I do not just simply I do not want an ointment.
Every time I go, it is a disappointment,
Do not medicate me simply because I am flamboyant,
My mental health is completely poisoned,
A different alternative reality to me is so buoyant.
Endless waiting around, for waiting list, to waiting list,
That’s how patients in the NHS get fucking missed,
Surely a manager that clearly needs to be whipped,
Because their decency has completely slipped.
These medical standards are so deadly,
Politicians’ promises are utterly empty,
Don’t let the hope of the NHS odleć [8].
Because right now, it looks like a sketch.
– Emily Elżbieta Chomicz
The British-Polish Transition
TW: medical trauma in the first half
They lied.
The mental health nurses.
They just simply lied.
They did not refer me to the Gender Identity Clinic. As my GP months later angrily found out after calling up the mental health team directly.
How could the Birmingham Home Treatment Team lie to me? After all, these were the mental health professionals. The people who are deeply and expertly trained on all things related to the brain. Surely, they could see that my queerness was the problem. If I felt like a ‘real’ woman, my problems would all just go away.
God knows what happened. But somehow, I ended up being on suicide watch again. And once again, those three shrinks were in my space, prescribing me weird things like ‘antipsychotics’ and ‘benzodiazepines.’
I am mentally ill, she thought.
I need drugs. I need these drugs to get better.
And indeed, they told her that these drugs would make her feel better. It was so important that Emily did not question the fucking drugs that she being prescribed, to the point where this was enforced by a discharge from the mental health service for asking what clozapine did. They told me that it would need regular white cell blood monitoring. And that, to me, was the point I twigged that they were taking the piss. And they kept misgendering me. AND deadnaming me.
I remember those pointless meetings. Saying the same thing over, and over, and over again. I want to be a woman. I want to be well. And I want to feel safe. But to them, a kind of weird psychosis where I was outright delusional.
But the problem is that nobody understood. She had a home, and some lovely flatmates, including one well-read disabled masters’ student who was in the same flat as her at Elgar Court.
She was studying a course that should have given her entry to the most prestigious subject at the time in the country. Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence.
She even had her eighteen pence cola (that is all she could afford.)
Yet, she seemed deeply, deeply unhappy for some reason.
As I did not get all the grades I needed due to my situation at home, I was placed on a Physical Sciences Foundation Year at the University of Birmingham, with a view of moving me over to the Computer Science course if my foundation year grades were decent. I had minus five hundred pounds to start the year as I needed to give the university a housing deposit. I moved into Oakley Court, and it was the first time I experienced living with twelve other people in the same flat.
Oh my god. That was not an enjoyable experience. I remember feeling like every movement I make will be judged by someone. Everything I do not do will be criticised. And it was everyone for themselves, strictly enforcing those boundaries without a fucking inch for anyone.
I remember the fights over the fridge. And I remember being accused of stealing a guy’s milk. And the absolute mess that the kitchen would be in after a night out.
But to me, that little prison cell of four metres squared represented freedom. It was a chance to start a new life, and forget about where you have come from. After all, the guv ’mint’s paying for it, so who cares about things like human decency or not making yourself look like a complete and utter disaster. I was in there for at least four years. For me, I also went to university because the student loan system meant that I had three-four years to figure out what I wanted to do in life. Computer Science was a surefire bet, as I have had shown interest in it, and you can make the big money. It was a surefire way out of poverty.
And during this time, my mental health really, really went downhill. The traumas that I experienced still lingered.
And then I faced my main trauma. Being trans. More accurately the effects of not knowing a single trans person at all. I was transitioning purely with the help of the internet. This is kind crazy if you think about it.
It was during this time that I met a bunch of trans people on the internet. Hi Julian. You are reading my memoir right now, and I still don’t know how I beat you to hormone replacement therapy.
I remember when I first met Julian. We both ended up doing exactly the same thing to cope, and that is reaching to mental health communities on Discord to try and cope with our fucking lives. And the things that we saw were absolutely mental.
I remember my first Mental Health discord server, I joined. It was called The Haven, and it was an American 501(c) non-profit that was absolutely massive at the time. As in, it was the place you went if you were young, had no place to go, and needed mental health help.
I remember the server owner. She was frankly a nutcase, in the best way. Over the years we developed a close working relationship. It was never clear to me what her story was, but I do remember her talking about her diagnosis of borderline personality disorder publicly, and how she has had ECT multiple times in the past.
But the most important thing about her is that she would show endless empathy to people and just wanted to make the world a better place. She was a person, who truly meant well. I remember at one point actually becoming a moderator for the 13-17 Discord server. And oh my god, if you ever need more moderation experience fast, go moderate a server full of kids. That should either really confirm your moderation skills, or more realistically, that you ain’t fit for the job.
And now imagine all these kids having issues at home, family problems, and mental health issues. To say it was hell, is an understatement, and the concept was flawed which means it did not survive for long.
The Haven was great, and Ginge and I spent hours talking there as well before I left university. But I wanted something was a little bit more personal, a little family from home. Because I had no family. No friends aside from Ginge, who was slowly fading away from my life as I was less and less able to see her. I had nothing at university. Nothing, but minus five hundred pounds to my name.
It was there that I saw the Island of Misfit Toys. And somehow, that server still exists. It was the first place I went to that was very openly trans accepting. There, I could see people from all the world. America. The Netherlands. Germany. Sweden. India. Everywhere in the world you could think of. There, I met Julian.
Julian was a few years younger than me, so he still had some things to figure out. He wanted to go to university, but was being abused by his parents. He was a trans man locked in stifling conformity, but like me he too had a knack for wanting to help people. He has actually gone to graduate a Psychology degree, and I hope he goes on to do whatever the hell he wants with his life. Probably fighting for trans rights, I’d imagine.
I got very friendly with him, and sent him a message. And there, he explained that he was trans. I did not know what he initially meant by the word trans. And once he explained that gender and sex are not the same… I was like a fish to crack cocaine.
I hated gender. I could not stand gender. I fucking HATED gender. The fact that I was horrendously fucking bullied for being a feminine soul. The fact that in school, I was assaulted by my classmates casually while trying to go to PE [9], because I was seen as effeminate.
My gender was nothing to me. I felt deeply uncomfortable with the very concept of traditional masculinity. And I wanted boobs. I couldn explain why.
‘Twas Dr. Swallow, my new GP. Dr. Swallow actually referred to me to the GIC. Something that the mental health team spent six months covering up because they thought the whole trans thing was just a psychotic episode. It was an Emily trying to come out.
They wanted my social and developmental history. They wanted my clinical needs and expectations. And they wanted history of significant mental health disorders, because clearly, she must be fucked in the head for even trying to become a transsexual.
Because transgender was still young language that we, ‘new’ transgender people were still trying to implement, and it was common to hear Male-to-Female (MtF) and Female-to-Male (FtM) in the common parlance.
Crossdresser (CD) and Tranvestite (TS) were terms more something you saw on places like Susan’s Transgender Place. It’s archaic; trans people don’t use these terms any more.
Here is something you do not see often. My actual Gender Identity Clinic referral email. To show you just how painful this process is.
It feels now as an almost legal defence to the medical system for the crime of transitioning. It really, really does. Why did I have to do this? Who is this process really protecting me from? As if I didn’t know my own body? That is what we call medical misogyny.
I think it’s worth printing this email in full, to really understand what many trans woman feel they have to say to the medical system to get the hormones and surgeries they need. It’s so fucking intrusive.
Subject: Re: Bournbrook Varsity Medical Centre – Request for Info
Mon, 22 Jul 2019, 09:43 [10]
Hi [redacted],
I will try to fill out more of the information when I can, but for now I will send this information as I am aware that they need to have something. I am not sure what to put down for 'Social' and 'Developmental' history - is it possible to ask Dr Swallow about that? I do not know how much or what information they specifically need from me. It is also quite difficult to talk about something that is difficult to describe because it is so plainly obvious, so a bit more guidance may help me a lot.
Significant mental health history:
ASD, Gender Disorder, Anxiety, Depression, PTSD. A History of trauma, from both parents (I am estranged from my family) and other events. I’m currently not on medication. Historical self-harm and suicide attempts. I’m being seen under Forward Thinking Birmingham for mental health, although I’m having problems with this service.
Description of gender dysphoria:
Gender Dysphoria has been affecting me my entire life. Mixed in and accepted within preferred gender groups, puberty being a tough time as it leads to the growth of masculine features, being completely ashamed of my body, features such as facial body hair, affecting dysphoria, always struggling to accept my genitals, etc.
I have socially transitioned for a year – my pronouns are she/her; I identify as a woman; I adjusted my clothing to match. No social problems, aside from the odd random transphobic person on the street every now and then. I was unable to come out earlier due to family & significant external problems before coming to university.
It is something that is really hard to put into words, but I have a woman's brain trapped in a male body, which causes me real discomfort and makes me really upset. Transition has been socially accepted & has eased dysphoria very slightly, although this has not helped in terms of physical features, which obviously need clinical intervention.
Clinical needs and expectations:
Hormones, to help with the physical shape and form, development of breasts, emotions, etc. I have been trying to get bridging hormones, as at points my dysphoria got to the point of depression, however this has been proven to be a challenging task. When possible, sex reassignment surgery, although I do understand this may take many years. An environment where I can safely talk to people, without any prejudice.
I sent an email to the Polish consulate a few months prior, because I wanted my Polish ID changed. I figured it was just as easy as doing a deed poll like it is in Britain. Nope. It’s fucked. It’s a multi-year visit to urząd after urząd after urząd [11].
If you need help with this, let me know and I’ll help you. My email for any trans-related inquiries is trans@emilychomicz.com. Let me help.
Essentially, if you are Polish in the UK and you currently want to change your name and gender, you must:
1. Fill out a deed poll in the UK.
Then you must carry your old passport in your previous deadname and your deed poll anywhere you get ID’d. You will be discriminated against hard. I was in fear the whole time. Because every single time I applied for a job, a house, a loan, I was actually turned down a lot of things because they kept insisting on seeing my photo ID in my new name which I couldn’t do because that required me to go through the Polish process which then I wouldn’t be able to use ‘Emily’ due to Polish naming laws. It’s all a bit fucking weird.
I will call out Three as a company for being especially bad at handling this situation, you transphobic bastards. Twice. Discriminated against me, and in the past against my friend with their stupid approach to trans people. They need to get their shit together on that, and get some trans people working there. I went next door to Vodafone instead and they said ‘why the fuck is this a problem to them?’. And this is what happens when you are transphobic. You actually lose customers over stupid transphobia.
2. Obtain a Gender Recognition Certificate.
This is a monumental process where you have to apply to the courts in Britain, the Gender Recognition Panel. You need to have evidence of your title and name for eight sequential quarters of your life basically. This is a very silly requirement obviously. You will need go and get this signed and a report attached by your Gender Clinic and your GP. There are trans friendly GPs in your area. I promise. Oh, and this needs a statutory declaration from any notary public. It should a fiver.
3. The Gender Recognition panel must clarify on the decision letter it is a final decision, it is not appealable any further, and it’s settled.
4. Apply to the Urząd Stanu Cywilnego to which you are comfortable with for an administrative change of name, a PESEL change, and an addendum to your birth certificate.
Here’s my wniosek:
W związku ze zmianą płci w Wielkiej Brytanii został złożony i poświadczony notarialnie przez praktykującego brytyjskiego radcę prawnego akt notarialny zmiany nazwiska, który wymaga zmiany imienia w Polsce na imię używane w Wielkiej Brytanii na 'Emily Chomicz' od [poprzednie imię i nazwisko]’
Dodatkowo wnioskuję o wpis wzmianki dodatkowej w akcie urodzenia na podstawie art. 24 ust.2 pkt 1 ustawy prawa o aktach stanu cywilnego. Zmieniłoby to moją płeć i wymagany byłby nowy PESEL.
Do wniosku załączamy:
Decyzja Panelu ds. Usnania Płci w Wielkiej Brytanii (ang. Gender Recognition Certificate), apostille i tłumaczenie..................................................................................................................
Potwierdzenie Zaświadczenia o uznaniu płci z sądów brytyjskich, apostille i tłumaczenie......
Zmiana imienia w akcie notarialnym (ang. Deed Poll), apostille i tłumaczenie…………….........
Some people prefer Wrocław; sometimes you may get told you need to apply to your local, some have had success in not their local one. It’s a bit confusing. They will give you the necessary documents required for the process.
5. Make sure everything you’ve sent them by the way is translated by a sworn translator, and apostilled (and these need to be translated too). Give these to the embassy.
Wait about three months. Done. Get a new passport.
It took me six years to do this, because of everything I was doing, but because only transetytrans on Reddit seems to have gone through this. I want to know more experiences of people who gone through this.
At least in Poland they tried to fix their stupid process there by making you no longer go into court to sue your parents in 2025. Yay for Anna Grodzka, Poland’s first trans MP!
The New Girl
I think that everyone who is in IT and chronically online goes through that same trans girl phase, the same type of performance.
The A-Line skirt.
The memes about pickles.
The mandatory trip to IKEA where you will find a basket of about seventy of them.
The programming socks, and discovering that they do not mesh together with the rest of your socks at all.
The memes about headpats, and catgirls.
The submissiveness.
Becoming obsessed with Linux.
This transition is now so painful to look at. On one hand, you can see Emily finally trying to make a life for herself, enjoying herself in her newfound world.
But on the other hand she was still living life amongst people who were profoundly and painfully for the most part, straight. She was trans, but without a trans community in real life.
And I know someone at Birmingham who told me that my face was cute, but it would be even cuter after facial feminisation surgery did not mean it. I know there was no language or framework for most people to understand trans people. But it still hurt.
My university life was really, really strange. I was scooped up by the Liberal Democrat society when I was super drunk at freshers on the first week. They got me just on the correct topic, obviously – Brexit. And they simply just asked me if I was happy with Brexit. I was not, and being highly suggestible through intoxication, I did become a member.
And later on, I became the woman who broke down in The Goose after a heavy night of drinking with the Liberal Democrats after going to a Hustings and debating the other political societies.
Picture this: A slightly too confident curly-haired trans woman sitting in a conservative club, dressed in dark lipstick and a polka dot t-shirt she found on Amazon a few months prior, passionately debating with the Liberal Democrats why the porn ban was a terrible idea, and why they shouldn’t bother implementing it as the kids will get VPNs.
And guess what, Labour has done it anyway in 2025. Oh well. I will just have to use a VPN now. And use a VPN for Bluesky for work, because the fucking age verification refuses to recognise my own face as real. What the fuck?
I was fighting for hormones on my own, trying to use the ‘will commit suicide without’ exception. That exception has been since pretty removed as I understand it – nowadays you have to threaten and actually DIY before they consider you for bridging.
I still remember the giant stack of paperwork I gave to Dr. Swallow to help him prescribe estradiol to me.
I gave him the WPATH guidelines. The NHS Charing Cross guidelines. And to his credit, he did end up doing his bedtime reading, but at that point, I had enough of Birmingham.
My experience of Birmingham is that it was a city of differences. And that, is great. You have all sorts of people living in Birmingham, and it is a fantastically diverse and interesting city.
My sister used to live in Birmingham. When I first came, she warned me against telling people for directions’ sake that I was on Hagley Rd, as you may be as well telling people you are on the M5.
But on the other hand, at the time Birmingham was a city that didn’t celebrate those very differences particularly well, especially if you are a new minority.
The Gay Quarter is cramped as heck in comparison to the Gay Village in Manchester, or Soho in London. And the inner-city areas like Ladywood or Lozells were so utterly deprived of any funding or hope at the time. I hope this has changed since.
I do think my Brummie flatmate said it best:
“Birmingham is a shithole. But it is my shithole.”
Manchester just seemed like it called for me. It was not Oasis that did for me. Or Joy Division, though I have since been to the bridge were they shot their album cover. Or the football teams, of which I would like to make it absolutely clear I support Wythenshawe Town FC and not any of the national Manchester teams.
No. It was oddly meeting someone who goes to a fur meet that did it for me.
I have heard of furries before, and they seemed pretty neat, but up until this point, I have never seen a ‘furry’ in person, or at least anyone who I knew was furry. Or people who are ‘plural’.
I was never opposed to things like furries, or plurality. I have always thought to myself that I was incredibly weird, so to then meet others who were weirdos was par for the course. After all, if I am a queer, I cannot exactly call others out for being weird!
And so, one day, after realising I’ve had too many chemistry classes for what is meant to be a Computer Science pathway ultimately, I hit up university applications on UCAS.
I packed all my belongings into three suitcases, and annoyed the hell out of everyone on the bus as I attempted to throw three monitors, a computer, and a bunch of electronics onto a luggage rack using a shit Amazon suitcase.
I was so absolutely full of electronics that the station guard had to help me – and even helped me get ripped off at WHSmith’s. Apologies, I am deadnaming her as she is currently transitioning to TG Jones (Transgender Jones) for a bottle of water.
Then I proceeded to be absolutely cooked in the middle of summer on a two car Pacer that was so cramped that I thought I’d suffocate. And finally, there it was. Manchester. I stepped left Manchester Victoria with my life’s belongings, and I had no idea where I was.
I took a taxi to my halls at Victoria Park. I was ready to start a new adventure at a Manchester university, now finally studying Computer Science.
And what happened next, was beyond my wildest imagination.
The Healer in the Field
TW: brief mentions of abuse
I had really, absolutely nothing,
So, how can someone so ill,
Still make some kind of difference,
And show such persistence?
Built a health charity,
The NHS being in austerity,
A hell of a thing to contrive,
So many lectures to skive.
Being a child of neglect,
I managed to re-connect,
My views made more correct,
By taking the time to reflect.
Met a veteran from Iraq,
Would have flashbacks on the clock,
For 19-year-old me, a shock,
I am not the only one, fuck.
You can imagine my mind, a headfuck.
Came in like a fucking battletruck,
A natural disaster, bad luck,
Helping those the terror-struck.
Trying to sort through the bloody muck.
Met a queer from Canada,
They seemed to have run out of stamina,
Indeed, they ran away from home,
Doctors felt ‘twas some kind of syndrome,
But their place, was a fucking catacomb.
At home, the resistance is a fucking megaohm,
Their parents even blocked Google Chrome
Without any real alternative,
And getting quite irate,
They said good luck,
On the plane, chuck,
Come to the UK, duck.
To the United Kingdom they could go by luck,
They ran so far across country and state,
Their partner, a new roommate,
Cannot wait to go on a date,
And finally, the last of the fucking hate.
I kept this up for two years, which was enough,
Moving toward in life was actually kind of tough,
And I volunteered, for people whose life was rough
I saw more trans people, and to me, that was enough.
We had a small queer group,
We called it the ‘Cheese Toasties’ to suit.
A little refuge in the storm of housing,
For which everyone at the time was browsing.
Went to Myco, the co-op mushroom collective,
Now of little mushrooms, I am a protective.
I got some to take home, which was positive,
They went everywhere; that was destructive,
I mastered my art of photography,
Putting an emphasis on quality,
At least, it finally was an escape into fantasy,
A way to keep, the last of my sanity.
– Emily Elżbieta Chomicz
The Transition in Name
TW: bureaucracy, sexual assault, institutionalisation, brief mention of police brutality
My transition has to be in name,
‘Cos the system’s absolutely lame.
To become Emily is for me, is
just simply an absolute necessity.
My parents were not the best.
Really, my childhood felt like a test.
I was expected to sue them, nonetheless.
‘Cos Poland thinks I can also cross-dress, I guess.
So as the Pole in Britain that I was,
I found my identity, I found my cause,
I believed England would give me some rest,
After all, aren’t we supposed to be left?
However, what I found was drama,
Really, all this to give me some trauma?
Lie to the GIC, tell them what they wanna,
I already know I am some kind of Madonna.
Give me my hormones now, doctor,
I’m bent as much as a fucking protractor,
Finally, an allied doctor, a hack,
Indeed, has my fucking back.
I am trans I say to the law practice,
They look at me, like some of fucking cactus,
Swear on my nan this information is truthful,
A step forward for Emily, a whole boatful.
Time to live like a criminal in the meantime,
No proper photo ID, my mental state declines.
Moving from shop to shop for some kind of understanding,
I’m trans, I’m not doing the fucking moon landing.
Denied a loan, denied a mobile phone,
Queers like you we cannot condone.
Come back with your government gender,
You absolute fucking BENDER!
Then a stat dec, an envelope, and a stamp from the Queen,
Oh shit, the postie’s already been.
Tomorrow, to the gender recognition panel it goes,
Eight quarters of my life on the paper it shows.
Quick, my gender’s in the post!
Everybody, completely come for a toast,
My gender’s all official now, I will have you know,
This is a pantomime, it’s all a fucking show,
Now, off to Poland we go!
A translation so sacred it must be sworn,
And a secret post-it note to enter the consulate.
– Emily Elżbieta Chomicz
The Landlady and Handyman
Lived in a flat, full of mould,
The landlord just would not fold,
Tried to go to the council, which was bold,
I was wrong about the situation, I was told.
Eight degrees inside is all right,
What is a bit of cold, but only a fright?
I was tried and treated like a parasite,
Recourse? You have absolutely no legal right.
Are you a prostitute, miss?
Handyman’s attitude, Swiss,
He leant forward to give me a kiss,
Consent has clearly gone amiss.
The problem is me, the tranny,
Everyone is expecting I have a fanny,
I try and keep a resemblance uncanny,
Some people even called me granny.
This life for me is like being under complete tyranny.
I feel like this really has happened cos a friend of Dorothy.
I know, it feels like another world, like I have opened a portal.
But a landlord’s word in this today might as well feel immortal.
– Emily Elżbieta Chomicz
The Queer for a Bribe
TW: domestic violence, rape
I am queer for a bribe,
I have done things I cannot describe,
I hope that you will get the jibe,
As these words I will now scribe.
I moved in with a queer,
My first time when I had no fear,
And now, sometimes it feels like last year,
When I have a flashback, I shed a tear.
At first, the perfect enby [12],
I used to message them daily,
Did not think they were too shady,
I just wanted to be played with maybe.
I met them at a university society,
My brain was giving me plenty of anxiety,
I made a mistake in my inebriety.
I was not aware about their notoriety.
They wormed their way into my life quietly,
I was too busy fighting NHS psychiatry,
They would call me cute names reliably,
Their actions they could justify justifiably.
I left my old Northern Quarter flat.
Blind for love like a fucking bat,
Moved in like some kind of household cat.
Did not listen to anyone. I was a fucking brat.
I looked after their dog, she was so fucking cute,
Out of all the dogs in the park, she was a beaute,
I went to the vet when her health was acute,
Two buses and a long ass route.
When I saw what they did to that dog,
I screamed at the top of my lungs, ‘Babe why the fuck?’
That treatment has been since long outlawed.
Please understand trans people also can be flawed.
It is ridiculous to show dominance to a canine,
In bed a true submissive with an A-line.
At work they thought they were on Cloud Nine
But really what they needed to do was to resign.
Living next to a rail line,
Tryna escape being chronically online,
Wishing that time, I could rewind,
Before the housemate agreement was signed.
Every argument I would drink more gin.
My self-esteem was truly in the bin,
My life felt like it may as well not have been.
All the possible happiness I have already seen.
Our bins had the biggest rats in Eccles.
I was scared, I was not tryna be a rebel.
They did nothing while the situation settled.
Why trust the girl with the freckles?
Blame the poor girl for her own fear,
Those rats I did not want to come remotely near,
Disagreements I would get up the fucking rear,
Every day was a life in complete drear.
Try and live with a mother’s child I swear.
At some point it just becomes too much to bear,
Their moral choices remind me of Tory Blair—
An authoritarian prick that would give anyone a scare.
I used to be into computer programming,
But all this abuse in my head they were cramming,
All my work they were just fucking slamming,
Their behaviour was simply damning.
I remember when I was debugging [13] my code,
They would give me criticism by the shitload,
Any bit of confidence they would completely erode,
Their inability to manage stress they would offload.
They once met Boris Johnson, God, what an anus!
Thinking that seeing the Prime Minister makes them famous,
I can believe the claim; they are both completely heinous.
I know it is popular these days to be an ignoramus.
They told me they wrote the app for Covid contact tracing,
I do not know if that’s worthy of any kind of clout chasing,
That stupid pandemic app was not amazing.
My review: Their incompetence was devastating!
They once met coke-snorting Michael Gove
I do not know how to describe that one in prose,
At this point it all feels like some kind of show,
What manner of nonsense will this expose?
Despite them being well off and somewhat rich,
They behaved like an absolute bitch,
Their stupidity even made that poor dog twitch,
This idiot, I must simply ditch.
Not every queer is on our side,
Some of them are happy to be living the lie,
That will be all right if they just wear that bow tie,
And go kiss their little queerness good-bye.
They will change yourself and your personality,
They do not wish you look like an abnormality,
They will take you regardless of your sexuality,
They’ll use for evil purposes your whimsicality.
One day I looked them in the eyes.
Saw a head full of these invented lies.
I wish to live a life as a queer with no compromise.
Even that that means shopping in Iceland for French fries.
I ain’t writing this out of spite, like a tabloid.
Merely, I want to see this fucker come out of their void,
You cannot behave like an arachnoid,
Of any personal space and boundaries you were devoid.
Spoke to my university to see a counsellor, a trans man.
They realised, that queer from the society needs to be banned.
This is domestic violence, he said to me bluntly,
Get all your stuff and put it in a van.
I had nowhere to stay, I was homeless again,
That day was so grim, and I ended up covered in rain.
– Emily Elżbieta Chomicz
The Bureaucracy’s Forests
TW: bureaucracy, medical abuse
The university put me up in a hotel.
I was completely stuck in my shell.
I was so deeply, deeply unwell.
In that tiny room, I was experiencing hell.
The next day, I got a phone call from the department,
They must have finally brushed off their parchment,
You are not eligible for help Emily, they were ardent,
We are not gonna help you find a new apartment.
You would think that Manchester would be rather metropolitan.
These new buildings next to the university are cosmopolitan,
The people who live there like their pizza Neapolitan,
This city is also one that tries to be European.
I tried to live in a flat with someone with OCD,
I thought I would be OK with them, we’ve both got ASD.
Every other day they told me I was a femoid.
God, I just could not stand this boy.
I swear to God their four walls they wanted to destroy,
Everything I did to them was some kind of ploy.
I gave away my amphetamines for survival,
Their constant requests turned me suicidal.
The way they approached any issue was patriarchal,
They wanted to be a landlord and earn money bone-idle.
Everything would be covered in germicidal,
Their OCD would turn them homicidal.
I wish their bed could have seen a spermatocidal,
And they saw my psychiatrist as some kind of idol
I said, I cannot live like this,
A normal household here is really amiss.
Misogynistic as fuck and hatred that I am Miss.
‘The sooner she is gone, the sooner the bliss.’
I moved back into university halls,
Absolutely embarrassing, this is how Emily falls.
I tried so many house viewings, I made so many calls,
Just to try get some peace and four walls.
The university hated that I was here for summer,
And when I thought things could not get dumber.
She realised that she was all but a number,
Why give me only a months’ contract, I wonder.
The finance department thought I was too much bother,
And with my protests, I was bringing the institution dishonour.
So they put a condition upon her:
You protest, and we will make sure you will be a goner. So I protested anyway.
– Emily Elżbieta Chomicz
The Classic Swiss Cheese Problem
TW: bureaucracy, medical abuse
I cannot believe the university saw me suffering, and waited for so long to act. I am certain that the incident was absolutely traumatising for everyone involved, and I really do hope that the university has given staff counselling after this incident. It’s not really an incident where you really can ask that question, ever, though.
If you ask the organisation directly, you will just hear the same ‘We train our staff members in Mental Health First Aid’ and ‘we have university counsellors on site.’ But it is not really possible to audit its effectiveness without causing upset to the people who try and give said counselling or mental health support, as the person receiving it.
I remember at one point it got so bad that the North West Ambulance Service refused to take me to hospital. That should have been a hint that it is not just a regular mental health crisis. There were legitimate problems that were solvable by an organisation by a university, instead of piling it on to the NHS. I do not know how many times the university called an ambulance on me, and I refuse to ask the university.
The university did not consider how emotional domestic violence could be, and tried to enforce its standard policies on fiscal responsibility and equal treatment. This was definitely not the right move, especially when someone needs a little compassion rather than the stick. The university did start giving me very short-term rental contracts to try and pressure me to get out of their hair, and not deal with the growing problem of Emily. They prioritised the people who were in the university accommodation (halls of residence) for summer conferences held at the university, for profit-making reasons. Never mind the struggling student.
The only help they provided, aside from a handshake argument to wipe the mounting halls debt that was building up, was signposting to accommodation that I clearly, as an estranged student, could not afford, and to other halls they had. I needed a fucking place to live and to be my queer self. And I could not just end up in a straight house share. My limited experiences told me that I would be genuinely in danger to myself if I lived in a straight house share. At least the university agreed here with me on that one.
I tried to walk off from a circular argument with a staff member at this point by trying to walk into the street and a staff member physically blocked me, thinking I was going to commit suicide. The university became so risk averse, that I could not even cross the road on my own without being considered a safeguarding risk!
The Emily Chomicz
It’s like the trans version of what happened to George Floyd,
I realised, the officer who saved me from suicide broke the law,
How could someone do this, especially a ‘peace officer.’
Following the rules? Tell me, why should I bother?
Into the ward, out of the ward,
The psychiatrist being the godly sword,
The only who could traverse the ford,
By my story he was absolutely floored!
During my first therapy appointment
I get a phone call; it is the Polish government.
My therapist, in complete bafflement
Fuck, it’s one for judicious case management.
My legal arguments, absolutely sublime,
Written in a broken Polish, past its prime,
The tranny argues she should be free,
Just one more step Emily and they will let you be.
And finally, seven infuriating years later,
I have an identity, I no longer feel like a faker,
Seven years a fucking nightmare,
And as a result of all this, I’m on the welfare.
Seven years of being misgendered,
By the institution, the state, I am transgendered.
Designed by the cis, nobody should have to do this,
My god, a lot of hassle for the sake of my fucking tits!
This is the first time I had a true psychotic break,
I think anyone would, there is only so much one can take,
I cannot remember much, I was not awake,
But from what I have been told, it sounded like a mistake.
I ended up going on a police chase round the city,
I hid behind a plant pot on Portland St, I likely felt witty,
But for young Emily, I just feel complete pity,
The truth of the matter is that this is honestly really shitty.
At this point in my life I was so low,
I always felt my problems did nothing but grow,
I felt that everyone in my life was a foe,
So I fawned, and fawned, a hurt doe.
Obviously police were to me were never really fab,
But I never knew they would be this absolute dog crap,
My views came through though and I finally cracked.
The mistake was asking the officers of the law for help.
I yelled, please help, here is the hand I have been dealt.
Maybe these figures of authority are rather well meant.
After all how many other people every day do they see vent?
And these bastards did nothing but ignore how I felt.
Instead of giving me compassion and love to cure the welt,
They pulled me off the ledge on the bridge, and then threw me.
and I had absolutely no idea to this day what I did to get pelt.
I was trying to get them off me, I was scared.
Pushed down onto the floor, no mercy was spared.
Kicked, cuffed and hair pulled while the university watches on,
Face down, prevented from breathing for having free thought.
I definitely wouldn’t have been treated the same if I weren’t trans.
This felt like a conversion therapy attempt, at the state’s hands.
Silenced and gagged and thrown to the back of a van,
So you can understand of the police I am not a massive fan.
To this day I have flashbacks and nightmares about this
When they happen at work, that is rather piss,
I find that so much of life I now end up amiss,
Because my mind is always sent to that abyss.
At the picket the residents of Hulme honked at me,
They have told me their stories, they told me ‘And also me!’
How can the university be that level of mean?
The crimes and horrors have finally been seen.
– Emily Elżbieta Chomicz
The Tax Evasion
TW: sexual harassment
Suddenly, there was an agreement.
Quiet informal compensation for your maltreatment
The university told me there was no disagreement,
They were doing a good thing, they were vehement.
A housing charity’s tryna find me places.
Desperately tryna cover all my bases.
Manchester City Council, off their faces
They just told they had too many fucking cases,
They told me there were no more spaces,
We’re just completely out of places.
Unfortunately, with me not supporting any kind of homeostasis,
They ended up bribing a landlord on a cash basis.
Turns out this letting agent accepted crypto,
Around paying HMRC taxes they would tiptoe,
The landlord’s an upstanding citizen, ditto
Their building’s safety standards out of the window.
And meanwhile my windowsill is falling off,
Walls so thin I can hear the neighbours jerk off,
Rent set low, so honestly, I couldn’t really scoff,
Suddenly, the construction group shut down, oop.
Now a change of landlord, whoop whoop.
Then a housing group became a property group.
And the property group became an investment firm.
A security guard invites me for a nosh up,
End up having a ciggy, ‘the landlord’s a tosser,’
He’s not a security guard, he is a guy working cash in hand,
A high vis vest and a clipboard, he is true a one-man band.
Squirrels under my bath having a shit,
Hearing them squeak at night made me wanna quit.
I couldn’t what they saying to me even one bit.
A girl kicked down next door, a complete wombat.
She told me grab the CCTV, but I was a rat.
I called the police, but I needed was a pat.
All over some kind of boring old drugs spat.
The GMP wanted a statement and that, was that.
An elderly neighbour moved in; he was a farce.
He wanted from me at the bus stop, a cock up his arse,
I did not think the GMP would treat him too harsh.
And indeed, their measly response was rather sparse.
That neighbour was not gonna be put behind bars.
When I was moving out, they were building a shed.
It was such a ridiculous idea that it amused me dead,
The building was holding on by a thread,
I think with housing officers, they must have been in bed.
– Emily Elżbieta Chomicz
The Impossibly Queer Standards
TW: abuse at work, abusive work practices
The phone rings.
It is the same fucking ringtone as always.
The sound of which gives me nightmares.
You run to the phone in eight seconds.
You realise your laptop is locked, you login.
The laptop freezes up and your heart starts racing.
Fuck, is my boss going to scold me for not picking up?
She remembers the Key Performance Indicators; she panics hard.
She scrambles for her headset, knowing her job is toast.
She lowers the microphone, oh crap, the Bluetooth is not connected.
She frantically turns the headset on and off hoping it will.
The caller suddenly hung up, thank fucking god.
I can rest.
I can hide in the bathroom for an hour.
I’m having a panic attack.
Here until some other caller calls in.
Or my boss notices I am not at my desk.
And that I have been using a mouse jiggler.
I am trying to not do a wiggler out of there.
But this environment, is more than I can bear.
– Emily Elżbieta Chomicz
The Full-Time Nine to Five
TW: witnessing threatening behaviour at work
Pick up the phone, your call is in progress,
Gender at work, it is a truly a process.
She is tryna gain approval of the bosses,
She is fighting for far too many causes.
Trans women like me, go into IT,
Do not question ethics, what about money?
A way to escape poverty? Ridiculous, if only.
It is a job that can also be so utterly lonely.
Why must we create yet another stereotype?
Thought we were supposed to be breaking them down.
Not speeding ahead, like a car on the Autobahn.
Shit like this, really does make me frown.
Being the only woman on the team,
Can be harder for a trans fem than it seems,
Sometimes, that fact can make you scream,
For another colleague you really do dream.
Yes, I did in fact sometimes see other queers at work,
But the queerness seems to be limited to them using a spork,
Today this blue screen error seems to be the fourth,
It seems like I am having to go back and forth.
There is absolutely nobody to relate to.
The same day every day will make you blue.
The only joy you can have is to sniff glue.
And think of dimes and dollars on the loo.
Any time she tries to change a thing,
On her Teams chat she hears a ding.
She always loved her coworkers, she shared a struggle,
Social relationships between cis people she must juggle.
At her bosses’ jokes she must chuckle,
When she goes to work, her personality uncouples.
She worked three jobs.
Firstly, for a finance company,
Everyone in the sales floor spoke all funny,
And the competition ended up very bloody.
Her job was to reuse and wipe down five-pound headsets,
You cannot give an IT department too much excess.
Following down the path that other men set,
She attempts to pierce systems together like a chess set.
She worked so hard, she already knew some things,
When you are young, a lack of decent pay stings.
I just want to go out there and finally spread my wings,
And have enough money to go on more queer flings.
But two months later, I was then made redundant,
Look, in the company the money isn’t abundant.
Of course she got fired, she was not incumbent.
And to change their minds, they were reluctant.
She wept as her safety went away in a stroke,
She wept so hard she made herself choke,
Surely, this must be some kind of sick joke.
Hopes and dreams were overnight in smoke.
Her girlfriend comforted her, gently they spoke.
This company made no effort to make her cope.
Her bubble was eroded, and so did her hope.
At that point, she wanted to hang herself in rope.
Leave university without parents, you are fucked.
The lack of a safety net absolutely sucked.
It leads to this young person tryna self-destruct.
Get another job, so I can try to reconstruct.
The second job was in a standards organisation,
Two hundred years of IT stagnation,
‘Make your mark,’ that was the company slogan,
Clearly written by the marketing expert Logan.
If I left for 7 minutes to go for a piss,
My boss would tell me, where are you, Miss?
I was late to work today by 8 minutes, he hissed.
I really do not think you’ll last long here, sis.
I faced discrimination, I was not allowed to work from home,
Because I fucked up once or twice over the phone,
That tranny clearly cannot be left alone.
Even though her brilliance she has at times shown.
He knew that she could not get in five days a week,
Because my bones and legs are really fucking weak,
But money I need so I decided to stay meek,
Just tryna get through the fucking week.
And then finally I broke.
I had to quit.
I joined a video call with an employee having a rough time.
And I swear to God I saw a crime.
I saw an IT technician being an absolute slime.
And on the call, I had to look all professional and fine.
The employee was clearly quite distressed.
She cannot find her 2FA [14], she confessed.
She was worried, she did not want to be a pest,
An easy mistake to make, at best.
Instead this guy gave her no sympathy,
He screamed so hard she recoiled visibly.
His body language showed violence visually.
And I froze. Frigid.
I wish I could have intervened.
But I had no power then, it seemed.
And now in my nightmares, I always scream,
If only I did something differently, I always dream.
– Emily Elżbieta Chomicz
The Perfectionist
And finally she went to support a housing crisis in the Lakes,
In a proper IT career, it at least somewhat decently paid,
But it was so boring, though, she spent most her day in a daze,
You could see how it broke her, just by looking at her face.
Her boss had just like her, a diagnosis of ADHD publicly.
Both of them acted the same way, impulsively.
That sounds like a recipe for disaster; what’s the productivity?
He is the replacement; the first boss quit a week in, troublingly.
The company was chaos, there was no rhyme or reason,
And I would try to fix things on the off-season,
But I remember when the CrowdStrike incident had arisen,
Wake up early, get your brain on, and into ignition.
I got the troubleshooting steps down to an art,
I could walk a 60-year-old through it off by heart.
Six minutes timed from the very start,
You can type commands, even if you are a tart.
There had been months when she did not work,
A week’s fine, maybe that was a quirk.
I tell people now; I give them a smirk.
Try that job; you would go absolutely berserk.
Forty hours a week and no less,
People go ‘oh that’s a shame, oh bless.’
Try being disabled on top, a true stress,
As she casually ignores her own distress.
I was so overworked, I was clearly troubled,
It was then my issues would continue to bubble,
Despite that, she reduced her head down to rubble,
As she would find a way to find her workload double.
On her project many colleagues she would battle.
At some points it felt like they were chattel,
And if legacy procedures were rattled,
The senior to the boss would tattle.
That senior was cynical; he had given up.
He just wanted his retirement, what was the hold-up?
Never seen without holding his coffee cup,
Avoiding any kind, of departmental shake-up.
And the other guy would do absolutely nothing,
He was loved, but I wish he did literally anything.
He valued his life over being a thing,
But for me only more work did this bring.
I do not know why it is so hard to express.
You do not need to do this, you can transgress.
The housing crisis causes you to obsess,
And into your shell you begin to regress.
This woman at work is trying,
But spends most her day crying,
Please help me, I’m fucking trying,
Am I going to end up fucking dying?
She cracked.
For real this time. She had to resign. She couldn’t take it anymore.
Back on Universal Credit.
And a P45 in the post, from Universal Square.
Suddenly, I cannot thrive.
A CV on my flash drive,
I’m just tryna fucking survive.
Down the memory archive,
Take a mental health nosedive,
How my career will I revive?
I need to somehow stay alive.
My Universal Credit arrives,
My head’s completely on fire,
Things feel so completely dire,
It feels like my life’s on a wire.
Everyone’s tryna conspire,
Job centre’s gonna try her.
Having a Menty B,
Soothing it with a minty tea,
Drag myself to the DWP,
The point of which I cannot ID.
That day, it felt that like my mind,
To emotions it fully became blind.
– Emily Elżbieta Chomicz
The Landlord
TW: rape, landlord
I signed for a flat, it seemed fine,
A little maisonette, it was mine.
Better than a criminal mastermind.
Finally I could leave my old life behind.
I moved into a flat in a fancy village of Bramhall,
I thought to myself a quiet life may be worth the gamble,
A train an hour would probably be ample,
I wrote a nice letter to the landlord to set a good example.
Soon she noticed the trivial things that were broken.
Like how Flat 11B was Flat 11 with the B unspoken.
Or how the garden was all but a concrete token,
Nevertheless, I stayed in my choice unbroken. (even though it wasn’t a choice, I had to move in. I already broke the old agreement. I’d be homeless.)
Then I discovered my water was shared with my neighbour,
When we both used it, the flow was merely a vapour,
And the shit cheap laminate had dips as big as a crater,
Nevertheless, this place somehow to me seemed greater.
Then I realised the walls had no insulation.
So occasionally I would hear the bar at night in frustration.
The trains did not run on a Sunday; I was stuck in isolation.
And soon the buses stopped turning up, a correlation?
I pressed on, out of a contractual obligation.
Could be worse, hardly worthy of a termination.
And then it happened.
The Winter.
Imagine having the heating on at full blast,
Hoping every bit of your savings will just last.
No matter what, this place could not heat up very fast.
It just to me seemed like absolutely enormous impossible task.
Twelve degrees inside is alright,
What is a bit of cold, but only a fright?
I was tried and treated like a parasite,
Recourse, you have absolutely no legal right.
I complained to my landlord,
She said turn up the heaters, maybe.
Get working more and stop being lazy,
Spending all your money on heating, is not that crazy.
I complained and complained.
At one point I apparently was making her divorce worse.
She was on antidepressants; her mental health had burst.
And throughout all this, the flat was absolutely cursed.
She eventually relented and sent in her handy,
Initially, everything was fine and dandy.
Handyman’s attitude, rather Swiss,
Unfortunately, he leant forward to give me a kiss,
Consent has clearly gone amiss,
What the fuck is this?
I tried to report this to Stockport Council
While at the same time she was threatening me with legal counsel.
Had to sob and cry like some kind of damsel in distress,
They gave me a HHSRS inspection three months later under protest.
The situation was clearly fucked.
Yet the council’s response absolutely sucked.
That inspection was absolutely cocked.
According to Stockport Council, 12 degrees is absolutely prime,
Come on Emily, stop complaining and just spend the dime,
Even though it was not possible to heat the house all the time,
A Handforth Parish Council special unfolding itself in real-time.
– Emily Elżbieta Chomicz
The Rapist
TW: rape
I try and kick into gear, oh dear,
Help, I am fucking queer,
Been assaulted by a fucking peer,
Back to square one, oh dear.
She used me at my worst.
At the same time I played someone who I liked,
After all, in all this I am still a fucking dyke,
Me and her were so nicely alike,
While I was played with; I felt all cat-like.
Very quickly, this turned all manner of wrong,
Her motivations and intentions seemed weirdly strong,
She seemed far too eager to get into my thong,
And she was really pushy with her tongue.
One day, when the handy came there was a situation,
The handy and the cousin shouted at us, we were an aberration,
And that was when,
She decided to conduct her predation.
She came on so strongly, I could see the red in her eyes.
For a while, she had her eye on the prize – nice.
The handyman provided a convenient excuse – that was her rise.
And so begins the story of Emily’s eventual demise.
I cannot bring myself to put her actions to print.
Quite frankly, I do not think they are worthy of a reprint.
But it was, dear reader, a form of rape.
I do not know who would do that, some kind of a fucking ape?
She has always wanted some kind of power,
So… you got to make some queers cower?
Every last little bit of my fucking being you must devour,
And my entire body you have decided to overpower.
Fuck you.
I am on a three-year waiting list for a St Mary’s Hospital for therapy.
It is like yesterday, the fear,
Holy shit, I am worried always she is fucking near.
She kept saying to me, she doesn’t drink beer.
And later on I found out she supported the genocide,
You are fucking trans dear, to do that, that’s fucking suicide.
She needs more than a fucking kick up the backside.
She needs her brain to be turned on the right side.
How could you be such a proponent of war?
She is from a posh private school, she must have heard of the Boer,
I cannot believe that she was a Tory through the backdoor,
I would not ever date any kind of conservative ever, I swore.
A flashback in my mind afire,
And then sleeping in conditions so dire,
The complete inability to get the authorities’ ire,
But if only they knew that I was alive live and perspire,
Social services for this would have gone absolutely haywire.
But somehow.
I survived.
How can this queer even remotely survive after what she has been through? Nobody would have been surprised at this point if she got a gun and just went, pew.
But something else happened. A miracle.
The Wonderland
This is a private party, welcome to the scene,
Queer’s policy, purity is obscene,
Upstanding citizens, but we ain’t clean.
So tell me I am cute.
Tell me I am wonderful,
Tell me I am worthy of love,
Tell me what I want, what I really really want.
I want to fuck you so badly,
I can wait hardly.
In love with you madly,
You are SO dastardly.
So come here and give me a kiss,
Give me a name, miss,
I fucking want this,
Your body is so bliss.
Give me your gorgeous boot,
A pretty dress to suit,
Oh baby, you can take root,
You are so fucking cute.
I am in the business of misery,
It is a complete chemical romance,
You better not close that door,
Else there will be fall out, girl.
All my queers are heathens,
A lifetime of wishful dreaming,
Called a creep, called a weirdo,
You cannot say it ain’t so.
Felt like a zombie,
Feel like a woman,
Become a slut to my mistress and fuck my life,
I need my goddess to love bite,
I need to calm down and worship your feet,
Part covert optimism, part overt hedonism,
Destined to be bound to be together, forever.
To come dronify my soul and love my hole.
You make me show my poker face,
Make me play a game of telephone,
Baby, I was born this way,
Born to be at the edge of glory.
You are delicious like sour candy.
And maybe you’ll give me a handy.
I cannot see straight anymore.
Treat me like your pocket calculator,
Use me like your cheese grater,
Turn me on like your computer,
And dice me up with your pizza cutter.
Now, take me to that chvrch,
And show me that art is dead.
I will not simply fade to grey,
We will go listen to Enola Gay,
You will always be on my mind,
I will not ever forget about you.
How did I get so lucky,
I will never be alone again,
And never, ever, ever,
Never will I hear again,
The sound of silence.
– Emily Elżbieta Chomicz
The Mean Lesbians
TW: medical trauma
And guess what, fuckers,
I have a fucking cycle.
A period is not merely vaginal,
And pain they cause is downright primal.
Twenty-eight days a grumble,
Every four weeks a trouble,
It is so sudden, it is a tumble,
Every time I have to fumble.
Cannot get out of bed, aside from Ben and Jerry’s,
Cannot do anything, I am sitting on the ladies.’
A true and vile aliment, a case of the Emily’s.
She really is yelling multiple profuse obscenities.
And yet if you asked a gender shrink,
They would think you are too much risk,
They definitely would not fill your next script,
So deep down buried it goes, into the crypt.
Medical misogyny needs to crumble,
To us it is a complete obstacle,
We need to make our voices audible,
We know our bodies, we are not gullible.
Anyway, now I am all hot and bothered,
I gotta somehow quench my thirst,
Get me a vibe before I simply burst.
My god, I am a princess, I am so cursed.
I am in agony; I am in full fucking lust.
Proggies [15] do not just increase my bust.
Even though I do enjoy them being crushed,
It simply just turns my depression into fairy dust.
Oh Sappho, I need to be stuffed,
I would quite like a cutie that is all buff.
Show me their exterior that is all tough,
Even though we all know it is a complete bluff,
The bottle I give a little huff,
It’s lovely; gives me a nice buzz.
Poppers are fucking nice drug,
So are you, there is no rush,
We gotta put me first in cuffs,
So when you fuck my guts,
I will go absolutely nuts.
And if I scream, that is a plus,
Deep inside me you thrust,
Your hand fits inside me like a glove,
Slap my cute, wonderful nuts.
Do whatever a puppy does,
I am a trans girl, you gotta muff [16],
Show me your skills are up to snuff.
I want more, it is not enough,
Who’s gonna stop us, the gov?
Show me, and get me to eat your butt!
And call me a cute, beautiful slut.
Let us go and wreak some havoc,
Please play with my little gock,
Oh shit, that is really hitting the spot.
On your command I will drop,
I cannot hold it in, I am going to flop,
I am only a princess, do not mock.
What on earth have you done, oh my fuck,
You are so absolutely gorgeous and hot,
To take in, it is simply a lot.
– Emily Elżbieta Chomicz
The Law is Fucked
Start a protest, start a picket,
Maybe, that is the ticket!
To them it is a game of cricket,
And all of us, are sick of it.
Stonewall after all was a riot,
They’re never gonna make me stay quiet,
Twenty thousand stickers given out in protest,
Find ‘Trans and Cuddly’ and stick it atop your breasts.
To organise queers is like herding cats,
They all just want some fucking headpats,
Everyone turned out on that Friday, regardless of class,
We had a realisation we had to do something, fast.
We could not let the TERFs win,
We want to tell them to get in the fucking bin,
Being trans is absolutely not a sin,
And that realisation must come from within.
Ten minutes before and there seemed to be no plan,
We gotta figure it out before shit hits the fan,
I realised this and then with ideas I just ran,
And then finally the mics turned up and we began.
I spoke, in an old-fashioned way, of perfect gender equality,
Saying the issues, loud and clear; a speech with clarity.
We are all here for the same reason, fundamentally.
We all plagiarise each other, accidentally.
We marched on Oxford Road,
Blocked the buses; and so, the city bowed,
I was in front, tryna not get done by the police,
Officer! I’m just fighting for some fucking peace!
Despite the crisis, we had seven hundred,
Will this cause change, we had wondered?
We yelled that trans rights are human rights,
Not today fascists, the trans community bites.
We had a legal observer, we had our anarchists,
We have had our queers; we have had our satirists.
We had the press, and no gender fucking psychiatrists.
After the protests, the community had a test,
Our anarchist protest leaders were not the best,
And soon, their unity, became less and less.
It seems strange since the legislation is enshrined,
But being gay nowadays, still sadly feels like a crime,
Though you don’t get pelted nowadays for being out of line,
The fight for trans rights and equality is still, indeed, mine.
– Emily Elżbieta Chomicz
The Not So Free Press
TW: bigotry (Piers Morgan, Rupert Murdoch, Nigel Farage)
The Onion was an interesting place,
Where people face the most difficult,
The most utterly heartbreaking journeys,
A transition not too dissimilar to mine.
We both try and escape our pasts,
Traumatic memories we have both amassed,
A war in and out of our fucking heads,
It is going to rip us to sheds.
Every day, a news article,
Our possible involvement, a fucking particle,
Knowledge, you have an absolute fraction,
To go and support a faction.
From Palestine, to AIDS,
You’ll find hate has been going on for decades,
It fills me with utter and complete fucking rage.
How can this happen today, in this day and age?
You can tear my art out,
You can tear my heart out,
But you will never tear our
FUCKING OUR PEOPLE APART.
We are all the same creed,
We all need the same feed.
So why, do we need,
To plead to be freed?
We are both from the same cut of clothe,
When we are sick, we turn to our brothe,
My god, you and I are worthy of love,
Even if you do not believe in the Dove.
There is absolutely no bravery in hate,
Why bother, you cannot control your fate,
Found that one out a bit late,
That life is actually quite ornate.
So then,
You need resistance.
Protect the god-damn trans kids,
Otherwise, they’ll tear them to bits.
Resolve the war with words,
Not by tearing up worlds,
There’s still time, a future still to be formed,
One that’s not created by men with large folds.
There is some light,
For justice we fight,
Our basic human rights,
We will get them all right.
There is no point in rage,
There is no point in rape,
Let the thing unravel,
And get them under the fucking gavel.
No need for a fight,
Go and fucking look at the blight.
Maybe then you will hear a voice,
That political warfare is a fucking choice.
The families in the Onion,
Were affected by deep poverty and hunger,
In 2025, how I wonder:
They are running away from a warmonger.
It is like popping a fucking zit,
Those people, to the asylum how do we admit?
I do not know how they could possibly be fit,
This situation these pricks seem to habit.
The truth of the matter is,
Just give them a bit of quiz,
And realise they are staring down an abyss,
Of simpler, more primitive times they reminisce,
It is easy to see what side is right.
It is the side that has naught left.
From a war, they would be absolutely effed.
So, fuck the apologists.
They need a neurologist.
I am hardly an ideologist,
But their gang needs a psychologist.
Give young people back power,
So at least we do not have to cower,
At least give us one fucking hour.
My depression is so fucking sour.
My acquaintances in the press,
I ask of thee, to not repress,
To share the story nonetheless,
Losing your job regardless.
Many of you are pioneers,
Holy shit, you do not have fears,
But lots have had too many years,
And some like Piers and Nigel grind my gears.
Watching their stupid fucking hate brings me to tears.
You toe the broadcast line,
Thinking maybe, you will be fine,
That is how you become swine,
All you do is fucking whine,
A life to which you are so blind,
Your followers are pretty kind,
But all you do is fucking lie,
And from yourself you hide.
Into a war of words we constantly slide.
Their brains seemingly made out of lead,
I do not personally wish them dead.
I hope a state with enough sense,
Sees they are all totally dense.
And funds an impartial broadcaster properly.
After all, we do pay a TV license.
– Emily Elżbieta Chomicz
The Miracle on the Porch
My trauma, therefore, is being trans.
I ain't detransitioning. I’m fighting.
But regardless, I must admit,
That I did not ask for it.
Why is the Goddess so cruel?
Why must she make me this way?
It is not a boy or a girl.
It is just a queer abomination.
I realised with the help of a queer,
There was truly nothing to fear,
And that help is finally near,
Hope brought me to a tear.
No longer did I abide only by social norm,
No longer did I have to fit into a form.
I was rehomed by my adopted family.
I we will survive, more than amply.
All the things that happened to me are simply a result,
of a world that does not understand me yet.
After years, I understand that being trans is beautiful.
Being trans is nothing to be ashamed of
We call ourselves trans, because we are proud.
Of the flag we wield and the ideals we have
I hope that someday, you meet and love a trans person too.
And hear stories of our queerness. And maybe… you’re queer, too?
…now what?
That one acknowledges their pain.
Doesn’t mean one knows how to fix it.
Merely, that one understands they are in agony.
And one has to eventually make something of it.
I do not know, dear reader, what this life will look like
I hope for a,
A life of mystery and wonder
A life of love, and romance, to grow fonder.
A life of company, safety, and much blunder.
I am done pretending to be who I am not.
I am not ok, I haven’t been ok, and that is ok.
I will now say only how it really is.
An emotional, sensual lesbian
Now ready for this beautiful world
I have so new many things to discover.
I have got the whole damn place to cover.
It may seem like dramatic flair.
In which case, sorry, I will get out of your hair.
I’m just really glad that I got to see my depression through.
I came here for a life of queer joy,
And here it is, in the room next door...
– Emily Elżbieta Chomicz
The Maxisexual
Once upon a time I was ace.
I really did take on its face.
This diagnosis was made in haste,
I came to my mistress shamefaced.
So train me on a Malteser or two.
Tell me that I need to respond to Mistress’ commands.
And tell me I am such a good girl, and I am so cute.
Once I was stoned and pissed like a bitch.
The acts: you could make that a list.
Degraded in every way you can think.
Suffocated in that closet, and now I am in kink.
How the fuck do you plan for an orgy?
The dastardly girl doesn’t even have 4G!
Mario Kart is absolutely my bitch.
Baby, I am such a switch… too.
So let us play the whore.
You will get on the fucking floor.
The bimbo, the cat, and the bitch
You are a mean one, Ms. Witch.
Wrap me like a snake wraps its prey,
And as we watch the sunset happen,
Dressed in vinyl, my mistress yearns for me again.
She is cute, my heart flutters and skips,
I submit to my mistress, and she owns me,
And she owns me too, and that is how it should be.
– Emily Elżbieta Chomicz
The Queer Little House
There’s wallpaper on the ceiling.
I do not understand what they were feeling,
And now two decades later it is peeling,
Why the fuck is the boiler overheating?
The smoke alarm’s loudly squealing.
The plumbing has simply no meaning,
In the little shed you have just kept tinkering
Every screw and nail we’ve been keeping,
Every paintbrush we have been squeezing,
Every tool we have been wielding,
Every fuse we have always been needing.
The electrics are mental!
It feels like a rental,
Every knob’s accidental,
Every socket’s experimental,
Any maintenance we have been slacking,
The asbestos in the ceiling is simply nerve-racking,
Although more likely me lungs with smoke will go hacking.
And the plaster in the kitchen has just started cracking.
All the extension cords from the wall are ripping,
Hardly a chair outside to sit in,
The toilet is barely suitable for pissing,
Every cable and wire we be always tripping,
The nails on the carpet have gone missing,
The green kettle’s in the house is hissing,
I’m still moving, there is no time for living.
The stopcock we have been completely forgetting,
The state of the shower is quite upsetting,
The taps are slightly leaking,
And the floor is always damp.
And every window has a fucking draft.
To me, this symbolises a new beginning.
A fox, and a squirrel look on, grinning,
Emily, your story does not need binning,
As a book it could be quite award-winning.
An Ethernet run up the wall,
Careful on the ladder there, you are gonna fall,
I am sure that eventually we will all go to hell,
I mean, it sounds like a place I will fare well.
Every shelf is slightly ajar,
Although you cannot see it from afar,
Nailing eighteen nails to the corkboard is bizarre,
Okay yes, my work is only slightly subpar.
So I slap a maintenance sign, ‘absolutely fucked,’
Every hole with Polyfilla for the winter we plug,
My paint job absolutely sucks,
And the house is constantly in a state of flux.
Welcome to the house of a cat, a dog, and a fox,
Where we are constantly afraid of the cops,
But also, we are losing all our socks,
We need to put soil in all our pots.
House chores to do absolutely lots,
The cupboards I forgot to gloss,
I am hardly Bob fucking Ross,
But it is clear, I am not doss.
Yes of course, there will be a few, minor flaws.
Between ourselves we have fought many wars,
A wardrobe, I was trying to remove by force,
We have to negotiate; it can’t be enforced.
At the end of the day,
We work and we play,
Arguments are just the price of entry we pay,
We really just hope that our hair will not go grey!
– Emily Elżbieta Chomicz
The Trip
I tripped in the garden once,
It felt like I was dropped on my bonce [17],
From my neighbours there was no response,
Which was great, ‘cos for me it was a renaissance.
I sat outside the garden that day. Here is what I wrote:
We have lived here for a thousand years, Nay we’ve live for a thousand more.
This is our little imperfect world, and this is what we queers do.
Sometimes, people think that we are more than we actually are.
Think of this as a queers’ ode to maturity.
My life has taken taken a different turn.
But here I am, still in my fucking garden.
I find it absolutely comical, that growth and recovery is my full-time job.
It is an adventure to behold that is for sure, but it is not a new story.
I am sure there are many thousands of me.
That have walked a thousand years prior.
I wish I could talk to my neighbours about what I’ve been through.
It is hard though, sometimes, people just want to be left alone.
Sometimes, you just got protect yourself.
We all know things are not symmetrical in this world.
Things are not right at times, I see it too, and that is hard.
You cannot sacrifice your own pawns.
It’s like two philosophers’ playing chess,
You gotta eventually pick your strategy.
– Emily Elżbieta Chomicz
The Mind Wonders
I had employment, and lost it thrice.
My destiny feels like a roll of the dice.
It felt like my life had no spice.
I clearly needed some advice.
It certainly made think twice,
For every decision, there is a price,
But your being does not need to so precise,
After all, your life is only but a slice.
Every insect, every bee
Is buzzing around with glee.
Every butterfly, every flea.
Just wants to be free.
Rewilding is rather chic,
It keeps me at least upbeat,
Because god-damn, I am a fucking NEET [18],
I have nothing to do, but to weed the street.
The area’s getting gentrified,
My art forgotten, I fear,
Working class people they may sneer.
That’s the price we pay, it’s so dear.
You gotta keep moving in spite of it all,
Just keep creating in the current lull.
It is what happens when there’s urban sprawl.
You get a middle-class family with a Vauxhall.
But at least my canvas is my backyard,
Even if mind at this point rather gnarled.
Making good art is really hard,
When inspiration requires a bank card.
I am hardly William Shakespeare,
I am only a bit queer.
I am a willing volunteer,
For this weird academic year.
They always do this; they price us out.
Move to our area for some bloody clout,
Queers and gays, I rather doubt,
I reckon they are mainly just sellouts.
– Emily Elżbieta Chomicz
The Poetry Class
I am in a poetry class, and I have come full of sass.
The alcoholic cider is giving me tons of brass.
Thinking to myself, I have written a bunch of doss,
My words are all tangled, and in a criss-cross.
It is now only now that I realise what I have escaped,
And in this class, I sat there gently baked,
I read my silly poems; I expected it to go pear-shaped.
So when I got roaring applause; my mouth simply gaped.
And so, I wrote some poems, I wrote the whole lot.
Wondering to myself, what will this Reverend have thought,
As after all I was late to the class, fifteen minutes to the dot.
I do not understand what people see in my work; it is nought.
I feel like if I ask my friends, their opinions can be bought.
When they give me compliments my stomach gets a knot.
I have quit my job to become a writer; I gave it a shot.
But holy shit, to rise to the title is a fucking lot.
I am an author, and I am chained to my desk.
And with this feedback, I seem to be blessed.
Every time I promote my work it gives me stress,
Every compliment turns me into a fucking mess.
And despite my work being good, I am STILL on the fence.
I know it is not right, but I still feel like I am dense.
Every time I wait for feedback, I feel so tense.
How could this queer mess have any sense?
I know it is part of my history, the abuse,
This is the first time I have really let loose.
But a lot of the stuff I am writing really is not news.
And some of my earliest work will really make you snooze.
I live with a writer, their work is far better than mine,
They keep insisting that my work is absolutely fine.
Emily, sometimes you really need to grow a spine,
You really are in your fucking writers’ prime.
In the class someone asked how to be a feline,
And so I passed them a poem, to me it was a lifeline.
They took a picture and DM’d it; they found a goldmine.
Maybe, I am indeed an artist in the pipeline,
And maybe, art is indeed in my bloodline,
And maybe, my lines really are sublime.
And maaaaybe, I could make it big time.
But my rhymes are bovine!
And so I keep trying to improve,
I give myself no downtime.
I starve myself, even at mealtime.
Because darling, this is fucking wartime.
I am on benefits, I am gonna get into debt,
And it is so hot that the weather is making me sweat.
I am struggling; for about four hours today I have slept.
And my mental health is barely hanging on by a thread.
I’ve been told that poetry is best from the heart,
All you need is a delightful story and some kind of spark,
And it does not matter if that story is slightly dark.
It is important that you come and make your mark.
So that is my message to you, the queers.
Create art, so that you can entertain your peers,
And even though not everyone will be all ears,
In these times, you really gotta be proud and fierce.
As the Editor-in-Chief would say,
If it works, it works, no need to be so harsh,
You do not have to go on a five-hundred-mile march.
Your work does not have to be as good as a Roman Arch.
Doctor Who started on a budget of one hundred pounds,
For more they really did not have the grounds,
But least some of the producers at least liked how it sounds,
And it became really popular, after a few rounds.
I felt so childish,
I felt that I do not deserve success,
I feel that I have not struggled enough.
I felt like my life needs to be absolute hell.
But Emily, you do deserve a bit of success,
The audience you just simply have to address,
And these truths, you will finally confess.
– Emily Elżbieta Chomicz
The Personal Manifesto
TW: polarised politics
As a child, I have seen the true face of the far right. I have first-hand seen people online tell me that immigrants should be sent to concentration camps (and no, they did not know I was an immigrant). I have seen what they do, and who they abuse and why.
Abusers abuse, because they cannot confront certain truths about themselves, and here they are:
There is no way to escape death.
You cannot control Mother Nature.
You cannot control others, unless they want to be controlled.
Time moves on, no matter what.
Things change, and atoms become dust, and from dust become atoms.
That their fixed beliefs will not survive the test of time.
That devotion to money and capitalism aren’t the salvation that some think it is.
A middle-class household really means nothing, and it just adds an extra step before homelessness they would have to go through.
A disability can be obtained suddenly; it is the easiest way to become marginalised.
Religion is going to die as a concept, and nobody sane takes about a book written two millennia ago word for word.
People have the ability to do good in this world, even the people who you think can’t.
Prescribed psychotropic drugs can numb you to reality but often only the fun drugs can reveal it.
Drugs may help you do the most devastation in a war, but they will not make you win it. They need to be part of a bigger strategy. [19].
True wealth is only obtainable through an open mindset and a permanent curiosity for life. Anything else is a distraction.
The mentally ill are mentally ill because you refuse to fucking do anything positive about their mental illness.
Homelessness is a problem that can just be eradicated. We have enough homes, and land. We just need a fair way to distribute our resources we already have.
Being an authoritarian prick will not get you remembered in the history books. At least not for the things you want to be remembered for.
Abusing your power is satisfying for a bit, but after your discretion you become increasingly numb to it and you need a higher dose of it; then, you become a prick.
Climate change is the ultimate equaliser. You cannot hide from the weather, no matter how much you try. It will change you. It will make your life more miserable if you try and oppose efforts to fix it.
Cutting disability support to disabled people means higher taxes as it means more financial support needs to be given to disabled people in the longer run.
Being prejudiced against other people means that you will turn down original ideas and opportunities in life.
Following the societal path that you are told to go down does not yield happiness. It is a 1970s version of happiness. And it of itself was a response to a national trauma. Because the concept of gender born from trauma. Enforced gender norms are a response to the atrocities in war.
You see, Germany was not the only country that had fascists. Britain did too, in the 1970s and beyond.
I remember bumping into the English Defence League by accident when I first came to Manchester. I was wondering what the shouting and yelling was about, and then soon I found myself unwittingly having joined the English Defence League march on Market Street.
A trans woman. In the middle of a fucking English Defence League march. And these people had fucking union jacks and anti-Islam propaganda. And these people were mad.
Fascism is a fucking scourge, and it never quite seems to die no matter what we do. When the Holocaust happened, we rounded up doctors and other accomplices and brought them to the Nuremberg. And that was that, supposedly.
There were no more fascists, and that we could all live happily ever after, as long as we believed in the values of capitalism set by the Americans. The problem is that they are still here. We did not get rid of them.
The problem with engaging with fascism, or working alongside fascists by the way, is that unless they renounce their fascist tendencies and truly show an understanding of the harms they inflicted in people, they’ll just go back to their fascist tendencies later in life.
But there are some good news.
The fascists are quite literally dying. Look at Vladimir Putin, and all his cronies. He is seventy-two. And now look at Donald Trump. He is seventy-nine, and somehow still fucking alive.
They do not have much time left on this planet, so they are trying to trash it on the way out, because that is the only thing they know. Hate. They are scared of confronting themselves, and the fucking horrible people they have become.
Because they know stopping now would involve prison time. It would involve a national apology. It would involve people having an inch of introspection for once.
At this point, they know they are hurting people, and yet they look at the people they are hurting, and they are absolutely numb to it all. And to me, that is what I would call fascism; steam-rolling public opinion with your own dumb opinions instead.
I joke about English people visiting Poland primarily to go to Oświęcim (Auschwitz), but that is only because they focus so much on the actual camp. But they do not consider the fact that Polish people fought for Warszawa for sixty-three days, despite no fucking outside help coming, because the Americans and the UK did not see the rising fascism as a threat.
But people on the ground absolutely knew, and I am telling you that trans people know what fascism looks like, in the same way that an SS officer standing over a Jew over a gas shower is a clear and obvious historical mark of fascism. The people on the telly calling for the death of trans people are fascists.
But yet, despite knowing the truth, I still live life feeling like an imposter, because I do not know the answer to how to solve this mess. But if there is one thing I’ have learnt from years of unsuccessful therapy, and my queer experiences is that it’s important to talk about these things.
We need entire teams of people. And there are far many more trans people working on liberation than there are these pesky scumbags.
I had a choice to make. A real one. Not the kind where they try and get you out of the Jobcentre Plus as fast as possible by giving you a call centre job.
The Career Change
I am unable to continue a straight career in IT for health reasons. I now must choose a brand-new career from this shortlist I made:
Trans journalists – The work I have seen from trans journalists shows a return to form to proper investigative journalism you cannot find in mainstream media. To the point sometimes, where you wonder about the journalists’ mental health while writing some of these horrific tales that the most marginalised in society suffer. Just look at what The Trans Safety Network or Trans+ Voices have achieved. I would expect them a Pulitzer eventually whenever they get their work recognised.
Trans historians – Look at the work of the trans activist Christine Burns has produced with Trans Britain, describing the human rights abuses repeatedly performed and over again on trans people, including electroconvulsive therapy and everything. Look at the work that Kit Heyam has produced with Before We Were Trans, which was about how gender variant people have been essentially abused for fucking centuries and millennia all over the world by cis-European colonisers.
Trans frontline workers – These people help challenge stereotypes on a per-individual level. Every call taken in a call centre by a trans person where a trans person gets to exist and do their job is a success. Every time a trans person can be helpful in customer service and be enabled to succeed in their job, that’s great. We must not forget about the people who work in pubs, in restaurants, in customer service and so on.
Trans medical staff – There are currently trans people working within the NHS. This might sound absolutely insane, but it is true. There are trans people actively currently are trying to challenge policies that are discriminatory towards minorities within the NHS, and putting themselves at risk.
Trans policy researchers – These people look through research papers at a pace that terrifies me and wonder how much sleep they are really getting every night. These people are the ones who usually then go on to debunk transphobic claims, bad government policy, and lay the foundation for other trans people to be able to work on top of their work.
Trans organisers – They are the community builders. They try and make sure that differing community ideas do not cause infighting. They are the people who rally people, and inspire them through good leadership.
These are the people who have to make complex decisions, often on their own, and sometimes in large groups, as quickly and accurately as possible. This work often goes unspoken, but it is so key to resistance and finding each other.Trans information specialists – These people can find a solution that works given two lengths of string and an hour. These people are key to making systems of information that are resilient, such as information security specialists, software developers, system administrators, database administrators, and webmasters, as well as more traditional jobs as librarians and archivists, and these lot also tend to be data hoarders.
Trans educators – Help our side and heal our wounded. Help the other side, and offer a message of hope to others showing them the wonders of gender liberation, and how it too, can help liberate others. These people can be therapists, they may be teachers, they may be sex educators. These people are important, and they are usually heavily underpaid and have the patience of a fucking saint when it comes to teaching people how love transcends hate.
Trans artists – A trans person comes with many emotions that a cis person cannot experience as they haven’t experienced marginalisation and minority stress. As a result, trans artists can offer a unique perspective in their art.
Trans photographers and videographers – These people capture the moments as they happen. The little moments of joy. The trivial things that give euphoria. Nothing escapes the photographer, and despite many attempts, nothing can dethrone the power of a picture, moving or not. These people spend hours setting up that moment to capture the emotion behind it.
Trans tradespeople – Seriously, fuck plumbing. I tried to plumb a mixer tap to a shower and to this day, it still leaks. But there are trans people out there giving out advice to both cis and trans people alike about how to do proper repairs. These are the computer technicians, who know that the driver needs uninstalling from Device Manager. These are the electricians and plumbers who learn their trade by hanging out in queer hacker spaces and later telling other people what they have learnt for free.
Trans advocates – These are the people who help other people do their best. These are the trans social workers who do their jobs and duties despite a fucked system and a completely fucked legal and governmental framework. These people are social workers, disability advocates, advice centre workers & firefighters. These are the people who have a very deep understanding of what it is like to be in that situation and can share a way out using their own emotions and experiences.
Trans designers – Trans designers have a unique perspective on the world as they can see how inaccessible the world is to other people. As a result, trans design work is some of the most innovative, that focuses on accessibility, inclusivity, and overall general flamboyancy first. Trans designers are not afraid to do something a little different.
I could go on. There’s so many trans people doing amazing work.
Fuck. I still cannot choose. So I decided to chose all of them. But fuck me, that’s hard.
The reality is that trans people get so excited about the possibilities in the world, that there are just not enough of us. We need more people to feel comfortable to come out as trans so that they can work on new, existing problems, instead of reinforcing the same old theories and the same old stereotypes that are blatantly not true when you look at them.
Trans people are inherently anarchists. But they are not anarchists by choice, but rather society makes them become anarchists because of who they are. They are Radical. They are Feminists. They are Counterculture. They are Coming for Your Christian Household to try and breathe some fucking love and life into it.
In reality, we are a bunch of very heavily overworked and stressed individuals that are trying to save the world from fascism. And because there is so few of us, sometimes the people in the movement feel like imposters, because they cannot just focus on one thing due to resource constraints.
We have to be careful too. Some of us get into careers that merely perpetuate power and hierarchy, completely defeating the point. What is the point of joining a high street bank? Or worse… becoming a landlord? What ground are we really breaking here by merely just perpetuating more capitalism?
The Mental Break
TW: mentions of transphobes
Fuck it.
Burn it all, the fuck down.
BURN IT ALL, THE FUCK DOWN.
🔥 🤯 🤪
I am done pretending to be things I am not.
My opinions cannot just be fucking bought.
At this point, I seen the whole fucking lot.
All this absolute fucking rot.
I am fighting, I am speaking out loud,
I am not gonna wait for a time when I am next aloud,
I am done with my head being a thundercloud,
My anarchy I have now publicly avowed.
Isn’t it funny, having a mental breakdown?
On my thoughts I will no longer crackdown.
And no, I will refuse to leave my hometown,
All for the sake of some fucking pronouns.
I have been given the fucking runaround,
With societal problems I have been drowned,
A sob story you will find inbound,
My life’s completely fucking aground,
I have nothing left to lose,
But this is hardly fucking news.
It just took a little adjustment in my views.
To finally beat those melodic blues.
Oh look she has got a few screws loose,
By doing this she is hanging her own noose,
Gone, completely lost her roots,
Maybe had a bit too many fermented fruits.
Well guess what.
I am DONE WITH THE FUCKING ABUSE.
I will fucking refuse.
To numb this FUCKING PAIN with BOOZE.
AND MAYBE YES, I HAVE A SHORT FUSE.
But queers the world must not misuse,
We’re trans, we’re clearly not the same old fucking dudes,
LOOK AT ME, I AM ALL FUCKING BRUISED.
I AM NOT FUCKING AMUSED
WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS? YOU’RE SO FUCKING CONFUSED!
That wizard lady needs stronger therapy,
She would change her crap views maybe,
Her understanding of the world is so shaky,
But her social presence seems to be so weighty,
And I see that knighted Sir Queer Harmer on the telly,
To change the law and protect us, I’m afraid he won’t,
There’s hope in him, he’s a lawyer… just maybe?
…oh get out of Parliament, you’ve fucked it already.
I have been seeing these twats lately,
It’s making my people go absolutely crazy,
And leading to them breaking their own sense of safety,
And do you know what? This hurts me greatly.
My people are not perfect at all.
But we cannot slow progress to a crawl,
This political life is so hardcore,
But we have been here before.
In 2014, we legalised gay marriage.
And some of the fear-mongering was quite savage,
But it’s always the same old fucking garbage.
It’s always the same old boring adage.
Oh look, another fucking guy in Parliament with privilege,
A Tory MP tryna restrict benefits to citizens, what a cabbage,
The Tories have blood on their hands, a whole load of baggage,
So many trans people have PTSD, and we must self-manage.
Is there anything these bastards won’t touch?
Reform’s policies are a bit fucking much,
I looked through it, same old boring trudge,
It’s like walking through a field full of fudge.
I mean, what are these fucking amendments and proposals?
It’s like being in Germany, and the minister is the Stasi.
A sex registry is a solution that would come out of a Nazi.
A final solution that does not need to exist.
Do not accept these peoples’ lazy excuse for politics,
Politics is to talk to each other, not build a wall of bricks.
There is no dignity in using a hacksaw from Wickes,
You do not progress humanity by using a cheap bag of tricks.
Here is my proposal – we are left alone.
Look, we do not even care about getting the throne,
Just stop the transphobia always on my phone.
And let me listen in peace at home, to Chappelle Roan.
I sit here in my home, with my Anglepoise,
With the hum of my speakers as ambient noise,
The quill and ink are not some meaningless toys,
Even though it feels like a club for the Etonian old boys.
Despite my best efforts I will never make the press,
My head-space is just too much of a fucking mess,
And keeping up with journalism is just constant stress,
And to keep myself safe my moves have to be a guess.
Some of these MPs do just display incompetence,
But their decisions come with a consequence.
For every law signed does affect the entire populace,
And that is how you make people become populist.
And this phenomenon also continues abroad,
In the US, the current president is a tight-wad,
Using power in ways that very obviously outlawed,
Their real purpose really is to commit some fraud.
The populists are not on your side,
£350 million for the NHS they lied,
And now what? That number was never bona-fide,
We all knew – at the time, trans people fucking sighed.
First, they came for the communists,
The poem was forgotten, and we have become more conformist.
Defunding of the education system is the consequence,
And now these kids are once again growing up with violence.
My English teacher in high school,
I remember him giving up on the class,
He had a mental breakdown; he ran out of gas.
This is what happens when you burn out teachers en masse.
How can teachers be having breakdowns in classrooms?
I can imagine how bad the crisis is in staffrooms,
The national curriculum is so stifling, there’s simply no room,
Teach these kids gayness and your career will be in the tomb.
The education secretary’s gonna come and hit you with a broom.
We had section 28, it is still implied the queers can groom,
And that faggotry comes right from a defect in the womb,
In a busy inner-city school in Brum,
The kids are not dumb, but forced to grow up as scum,
Because these poor kids are sitting there, without a mum.
– Emily Elżbieta Chomicz
The Rape Definition
TW: eating disorders, past police incompetence and brutality, all past abuse in the book, and the failures of the NHS mental health system. Incompetence and cover-ups in the Manchester kink community.
I would strongly recommend that any victims of rape or sexual assault be mindful of their triggers and please, do not force yourself to read this chapter. You may also want to skip the next chapter where I actually go and report the rape to the police, and the bureaucracy does not understand that trans people exist.
If you wish to skip this chapter, all you need to know is that I tried to report rape to the police, and then again to the Manchester kink community, and it was completely ignored, and I got heavy backlash for doing so. Unfortunately, this happens all the time to survivors.
Survivors are not the audience for this chapter. This chapter is for those people who have do not have repeated negative experiences with the police or the mental health system.
I know some people will still not believe me. I am writing this in the hopes that you will learn some things about this country, and learn that people who sit on the fence to sexual assault are fucking naive to reality.
One of the most frequent questions I always got about my past abusers was - 'why doesn’t she report the rape to the police?' And, yes, it was rape.
For the purposes of this chapter, I legally have to say that it is my opinion that what she did was rape, because it fulfilled the legal criteria of rape; but it was clearly meant to take away from someone who had so little to begin with.
It happened on the cusp of the cold spell in 2024 towards Winter. We know this, because later on, a few months later, it dropped to minus six degrees, and I went absolutely berserk, and my partners could not figure out why. No matter how much they tried to comfort me, I seemed inconsolable, and I was chatting absolute fucking shit, about monsters and hallucinations about trams and earthquakes in Wythenshawe, amongst other things. That’s PTSD with psychotic features.
That, my friends, is what we term a trigger. I have post-traumatic stress from the incident. This, combined with my other triggers, which are plainly obvious to anyone who spends a whole five minutes talking to me. I have had complex post-traumatic stress before due to my complex life, as some of you may know, but there is a clear distinction here and a clear and obvious new set of symptoms.
And do you know when I had the similar problems? When I fled domestic violence and went into university halls as I had nowhere to live. It was equally as traumatic. And indeed, my abuser there did also rape me. And still is free.
And then later, when I tried to prove they raped me, I ended up giving up because they hid their tracks so perfectly, in plain sight.
I would like to redefine rape for the sake of this discussion. Yes, the legal definition of rape is ‘penetration by force,’ but it currently has a problem in that it does not consider the power dynamics and the difference in experiences in relationships strongly enough I feel.
In my book, we see a difference in abuser tactics, and there are four of them:
Do nothing. Follow procedure to avoid liability. That’s usually the type that large institutions fall into. The CYA culture can become abusive in of itself. You’ll see this theme repeated with The Institution and The Sanatorium further on in the book.
Rape in plain sight. ‘Rape’ as in ‘rape and pillage.’ This is taking away the very few things a vulnerable person may have. This type of rape is possibly the worst, in my opinion, because not only is it legally rape, but it is also a rape of the morals.
Rape covertly. The rape slowly happens over time. This is what the domestic violence was like for me. Over time, you begin to be brainwashed. Things like starting to notice that you’re installing a Root CA Certificate [20] on your PC. Do not fear. I am a good, god-fearing trustworthy queer, honest.
Rape from lack of awareness. That’s arguably the rape my parents did. This form of rape causes a complex form of PTSD. This is a relatively new diagnosis, and is a result of generational trauma. This one is honestly just bad luck, and while you should learn about it, there’s limited lessons for the future from it.
It is such a new diagnosis, that when I got diagnosed with Complex PTSD (CPTSD), it didn’t exist yet as the ICD-11 had not come out just yet. Imagine going to the doctors and being told you have got the super-AIDS equivalent of PTSD that is going to be called CPTSD. It is like the AIDS crisis has come back, but this time it has come for the brain.
I want to talk about two of them, specifically, in this chapter: Rape in plain sight and Rape covertly. In my mind, these to me are the two worst ones that you could do to a human being.
The problem with raping in plain sight is that the psychological trauma it does is immense, but also it creates a complete lack of evidence, despite the traumatised person being right in front f the person judging their credibility.
This happened with the Manchester Kink scene. Everyone could see that I was an injured, scared woman. And at the same time, people told me I needed to submit even more, and more evidence as it wasn’t ever enough.
I could not believe what I was hearing. That I let it happen. That I should have negotiated a better dynamic – I wasn’t in one. That it is a matter that’s impossible to prove. That I need to prove a lack of consent from myself at the time. How? That literally goes against the very nature of what consent is.
I was clearly showing symptoms of PTSD from the rapes. Doctors, job coaches, and others could clearly see she was absolutely distraught, and it did fit the profile of rape. Even if, on the medical system they must legally put ‘alleged victim of rape’ because society was fixated on proving that it was her specifically that gave me PTSD, as opposed to what she needs to heal from it.
I got zero empathy at all from the scene organisers. They decided to Do Nothing. It was not a rape from lack of awareness. They were aware. I believe that deep down, they know that she did it. There is zero other explanation possible for reacting in this way, especially that they are in positions of power and they’ve been there for several years.
The reason, is because the default kink scene that people go into within Manchester, actively harbours abusers, but also hidden transphobes. This is an absolute tragedy, and they have just gotten too big for their feet. To the point where they are unwilling to engage as community leader at all. They are still hosting munches [21] and helping dungeons that they once upon a time seemed new and exciting to them, but have since lost the spark completely.
You do not have to be a mental health professional to notice that I was traumatised. And yet, at the same time. they still tried to diagnose my abuser as having borderline personality disorder, despite having zero qualifications to do so. In my opinion, even if supposedly she did have a personality disorder that was magically rescinded when she spoke her version of events, they have forgotten about the victim’s needs.
How about being fucking human and speaking to me about my feelings or maybe even talking about it round a cup of tea like a sensible human being. It was crazy how much they thought they were some kind of weird court, as they kept saying ‘this is not admissible as evidence.’
They literally have the power to kick anyone out of their events as they please. To put me through hell was deliberate. I was so fucking broken as nobody would believe me. And I completely destroyed myself because of it. I almost toppled myself, multiple times. I will never do that again.
I finally cracked, and called the Greater Manchester Mental Health hotline which considering how much the NHS has fucked me over, really, really says something about how truly desperate I was to feel better. You can see how desperate I was on my Bluesky.
For the first time, they actually picked up. I was referred to a Sexual Assault Referral Centre, such as St Mary's Hospital, and they were there to get me some help. They are the mental health professionals that obviously will know what they are doing, and the kink scene is not placed to give any advice, which is what a qualified, skilled therapist is for.
Even though she only needed compassion from others.
I desperately cried for help, Any help. And to fucking reach out on a public social media platform, that means I was truly well and suffering.
They were absolutely fucking lovely, by the way. I was told that I was eligible for help, and then gave me a date for an assessment a few months later. Which was rearranged. The NHS will never change.
Our NHS is completely broken due to decades of underfunding and awful policy making that prevents people from getting help. The domestic abuser literally met government ministers and senior servants through the backdoor over the years, and was able to have a conversation with them. They now hold a position in the Cabinet Office. It shows you just how easy it is for abusers to keep abusing, as they just keep taking advantage of people like a shit sociopath.
I would argue that the likes of Boris Johnson, et al, are at the end of the day vulnerable people too. After all, they were brainwashed in childhood by that Eton boarding school into believing that abusing your power is OK. Just like my second rapist went to a posh private school too, and refuse to acknowledge the problems with their education.
The education I received was flawed, too, but at least the state schools I went to taught me dignity, respect, compassion, and love for others. I do genuinely believe private schools should be abolished, and or at least they should be forced to teach the National Curriculum in full.
Because if everyone were taught values of dignity, respect, and compassion, society would not let it become a THREE YEAR WAIT TO BE SEEN for such a heinous crime.
Please take a moment to let that sink in. I've just told you I have been raped twice in approximately two years, and it will take THREE YEARS for me to get help. This book will be published, and I will be still on that waiting list.
This is the reason I had to quit my job. I had to start writing this book. I couldn’t do my IT support job as I was so fucking traumatised. I literally typed in I don’t think life is worth it any more in a Microsoft Teams chat at work. Imagine your colleague going through that at work. How would you even begin to respond?
I’m now on whatever benefits I can get which everyone knows will barely keep you alive while you wait, and arguably they don't even do that, until I get seen. I cannot afford private therapy. I probably have to wait the three years. I cannot ask the bank of mum and dad, either, because of what my life story is.
This is what PTSD is. PTSD is really about people experiencing traumatic experiences, and not being able to talk about them because it is too difficult to talk about the emotions involved, until years later, when they crack. And they lose everything when they crack. Everything they’ve worked for. They hit rock bottom, and they need protecting when they are in that state, not further brainwashing.
And that, is what she did to me.
When I was at my worst, she sat with me on the pavement, outside my new home. And just kept trying to split me apart from my new queer family. Trying to tell me how it all won’t work. Telling me about how she has seen it before, and how I should just really move in with her, where I would be completely isolated from the world. I am not medically allowed to drive, and there is no public transport. Such a fantastic opportunity, it’s almost Dragon’s Den worthy.
The domestic abuser tried to do the same. They were talking about moving away somewhere in places nearer to little villages. It is so weird to think that there are politically and socially conservative trans people, but they absolutely exist, and they are a danger to the trans movement. They didn’t take being trans seriously at all. They only cared about the roles it got them at work. And the inexperience shows with how they tried to promote trans issues in the Civil Service later on. It backfired, because of carelessness in their activism.
There is a reason I haven't gone to the police for the rapist. Because I already have tried to do so in the past for the domestic abuser who had also raped me.
I ended up with the council having to finally make me a direct offer on a place to live. They treated me as a Band 1 case, and I had to repeat an entire year of university, to the point where Student Finance England gave me an extra loan because my situation was accepted as 'compelling personal circumstances’ for an additional year of funding.
This is an exceptional situation. Student Finance England does not normally do this, because that's £20,000+ of free money in a system that doesn’t have any money to give out. These exceptions are made when only when things are really fucking bad.
And I am glad that this stopgap exists for people like me. This procedure, and the system of sick notes were designed for people like me. That, people do not have to abandon their dreams, because someone took advantage of them. Unfortunately, I was a student, so this not that useful to me as someone on a Student Loan at a time.
And to be a properly urgent case in this housing crisis, that truly, truly means something was fucked. I am still not fully OK today and I still have flashbacks and nightmares. I sometimes still find it hard to accept these things happened, years later. I think it’s OK to never fully accept these things, as these things should make people angry, not numb.
I ended up going from charity to charity, organisation to organisation, begging for help. And nobody could help me, because of the state of housing in this country. Not their fault, obviously, but it still affects victims of rape like me who desperately need the help.
I’m not the first to experience this. Minorities, such as cis women, Black people, and trans people just get marginalised, taken to one side, and told it's not our problem to sort out, because the scene doesn’t care about promoting enthusiastic consent and diversity and it likes to pretend that because it didn’t happen in a dungeon, it never happened. That’s fucked.
I hope that the people running the Manchester Kink scene realise that this is not the right way to do things. You cannot harbour these people. If you do, you are condoning this behaviour knowingly. I hope that this book is a wake-up call, and it may be naïve, but maybe this is the book that convinces them to finally start paying attention to predators in the scene.
It is a quiet national scandal, really, the Manchester kink scene is not the only scene who that these problems nationally. Even local sexual health clinics are aware of how bad the problem in these communities, but are powerless to intervene because scene organisers refuse to collaborate with people who can help. The majority of people in communities themselves are not the problem, they just want to enjoy and learn about kink, bondage, rope, domination, and everything in between. And kink itself, is extremely healthy. It is an amazing teaching tool about relationships, sex, and consent.
It's the old guard that are the problem. They’re actually called swingers, and attitudes have moved on since the 1970s. Especially the attitudes that certain kinks must come from trauma, for example with adult diaper fetishes, caregiver fetishes, degradation and so many of the ‘extreme’ fetishes that are in fact against the law to film in this country, frustratingly.
By the way, you can thank the Conservative Party for making online porn so fucking straight. I can’t stand porn filmed under the male gaze. It is often quite disgusting. And not just because I am a lesbian.
My final ban from this organiser’s events came when I meowed like a cat in a bar in the Gay Village and played with a dog clicker (in front of the organiser who said nothing), something that I and others have done at these events for years.
Next, I think we’ll be banning clicky pens, Doc Martens, and chains from gay bars, just to please these straights. And they are straights. They may be gays, they may be trans, but they still act practically as straights. Enforcing the same gender norms as always.
And one more thing – stop kink-shaming people. As long as they’re safe. People in kink are not there because they’re supposedly trying to recreate some kind of fucked up past dynamic with my parents. Sigmund Freud really fucking broke psychology.
I am not psychologically damaged for liking kink. I am a human being, and to queer something is to play with it. Gender expression, personality, interests, you name it. To say so is quite literally kink-shaming victims.
So let’s stop judging victims of abuse. Start listening to them instead. Do something about the safeguarding failures of the Manchester Kink scene. Be a leader, not someone who acts in submission to abusers, or you will be forever remembered as a footnote in history, as we finally get to queer the scene.
The Not So Vulnerable Young Adult
TW: mistreatment of victims
That’s a question I have been trying to answer myself for myself though. Why the fuck are people always trying to abuse me?
And then I realised the answer was staring in my face all this time, after one of my housemates pointed out a behaviour I did around food.
And pointed out, that I am a victim of child abuse. And that abusers pick up on the little behaviours that I do due to having experienced child abuse, and exploit them.
That is a fifth type of abuse. Raping someone of their self-confidence and justifying it because they experienced bad luck in their life, and they do not know any better, is deeply, deeply problematic.
They may see how I responded later on, because of their warped moral framework that does not have any understanding of how trauma works, as abusive, and so have taken the action of excluding me from half of the Manchester scene.
I should not be excluded from things I love just based on that, nor should I be expected to now explain to you how I have been abused as a child, and that’s why it she was able to do it. Proving rape is a deeply, deeply intrusive process for the victim, and the abuser can often just veto anything the victim says.
I get that it’s uncomfortable to admit that one can be just straight up wrong. You may very well be thinking and yelling at your screen, 'but Emily, this means you are a vulnerable young adult, stop being in the kink space, you'll just get hurt'. I have seen this said to other people in the scene.
I’ve been hearing this all my life. Social services. Councils. Schools. Therapists. Psychologists. Anyone who has been trying to help me, officially speaking.
Yeah. I will get hurt. Because nobody is protecting people who need protecting, the built-in transphobia in the system, and due to the vast failures of austerity to protect victims.
And these victims are mounting up, because in this country, social services are failing. Police departments are failing. The NHS and charities cannot pick up enough of these cases fast enough.
And these kinds of community leaders, we can now safely say, are complicit in allowing predators in communities that require spaces of safety for people in it.
Ours are complicit in transphobia. Ours are complicit in ejecting victims of sexual assault, and rape, because I’m far from the first to come out with this kind of story. These people need to be ejected from positions of power.
My abuser took advantage of me, looked at my vulnerabilities from past abuse, and saw it as a quirky thing to exploit, and dead on said to me in conversation, 'nobody will ever fucking believe you, Emily', which sounds like a soundbite that’s obvious to say you’re being raped, but that is how not rape works.
These people are also doing the exact same thing as my abuser, by not listening to me, and forcing their own views on rape on me because they do not want to resolve conflict. What a fucking joke, I thought these people were supposed to community leaders, and setting an example, because that is literally what a scene organiser does.
It then turned out they proceeded not only to ban me, but ban six other trans people for siding with me. WHAT?!
Fuck them. Maybe once upon a time they cared, and maybe once upon a time they were open and accepting when they were young, and they were still trying to have fun. But these people have grown too complacent, too cynical, and demoralised. They are not having fun, they’re now they're here because they have the power, the status, and the money.
Let’s build our own dungeons in homes. Build our own kink queer communities. And celebrate each other no matter who they are. I don’t know about you, but to me that sounds like a healthier scene.
There’s no point talking about Risk-Aware Consensual Kink (RACK) principles, and consent, if in reality the moment people try and use those frameworks they are seen as problematic.
The Muzzle
TW: defence politics, inclusivity and assimilationist politics
Why the fuck is Raytheon allowed at pride?
No, on your fucking rockets I do not want a ride.
Queers, just get the fuck out, stop sitting on the side.
If you think BAE is an answer, I think your queerness has died.
All these corporations, always changing names.
They all have LGBT branches with bold claims.
But all of them are the same corporate games.
Thought by an inclusion officer named James.
And you see, I get the point of inclusivity in employment, but when
you advance tools that can destroy; I cannot see the queerness.
Fighting the enemy with rockets, not words is a form of cowardice.
The UK gov’s gonna ban the porn,
Can’t be having queers go on the horn,
This is an early sign of fascism, I must warn,
For you see, the early internet I will mourn.
The internet used to be playful, free and wild,
‘twas a scary place, but as a kid I did not mind.
Looking back at old forums now makes me just smile,
But now, they are trying to ensure the internet finally dies.
The net is a complex place, I have more PTSD,
I’ve seen the Deep Web – it fucking scares me.
The stuff I've seen on there is extremely heavy,
To see it, to a growing teen, it’s really unhealthy.
Big corporations are not the status quo.
The internet does not have to controlled by a tech bro.
You are not protecting the kids doing this, you hoe.
You just are trying to surveil the Average Joe.
This government has truly gone rogue,
Fascist ideas, are unfortunately in vogue,
I fear that the Online Safety Act is a prologue,
Get yourself VPNs, so that there’s no log,
A price worthy paying for a bit of fog.
Let’s hope that this stupidity at some point ends.
A government that’s pressed, eventually bends.
Bring your spraypaint to a protest.
We’re being straight up oppressed,
Even if it’s rolled back, it’s just a test.
Laws will be made to implement the rest.
So now you can see why banning the porn is bad,
I get it; They’re tryna curtail the far-right lads.
But the implementation is not iron-clad.
Instead, all it does, is make the public mad.
And this is how bad governments lead to regression.
And the military complex going to Pride is not a progression.
With this plan, they are gonna lead the UK into a recession.
By limiting the whole country’s online expression.
Because the conservatives do not like broken purity,
They see abstinence as some kind of weird maturity,
It seems to provide their insecure minds some security,
But their ideas really need to be faded into obscurity.
What is the conservative lifestyle but existential dread,
To keep the illusion many lies you must be fed,
But eventually, this will come to a head,
When poor people run out of bread.
You can’t cut people’s pay forever.
The Labour party is not very clever,
The common folk will react with terror,
Their opinions you will not be able to censor.
The British Empire’s policy has been to keep people barely alive,
For five hundred years wealth was the only drive,
Starving your people is not very fucking wise,
For those atrocities you will pay a price.
But the worst part is that you cannot blame most cops,
As I wrote this chapter, I spoke to a queer ex-cop, they said.
‘The job’s fucked mate, the system is just so fucked’
And by trying to change the inside, the system enforced its weight.
A Nottingham police officer for four years, they quit too late,
What they saw sometimes brought them to tears
They spoke to the most violent criminals.
They told me that these people just have aggressive fears.
The force says police officers just like us, concerned citizens,
They just try and protect those young vulnerable adults.
I swallowed my pride and asked questions,
They said their £26,000 annual pay is not enough given the tensions,
Cops go through hundreds of traumatic incidents they mention.
To me, figure seems to me way, way beyond comprehension.
Drink, bottle it up, smoke it away, or do some exercise,
The copper has to somehow got to stop their demise,
And for all this, you will of course get a prize:
Handcuffed emotions and a broken mind.
A violent guy causing a dangerous commotion?
I’ll talk to them to stop an emotional explosion.
I’m not really here for that sweet promotion,
I do not know why I am here, is it devotion?
The cop once saw a woman jump out of five floors,
Who knows what happened, did she run out of doors?
Not every policing action involves starting wars,
And so the case becomes another one for the chest of drawers.
The problem is the system, you see,
And this is where one me and this ex-cop agree.
I see their point of view, in their eyes, they’re trying to help.
But is a police officer with a baton and stab proof, really our best?
He told me, we are sending out cops without specialist knowledge,
Only theoretical experience, that they learnt in that police college,
Everyone has a different skillset in life, we must acknowledge,
Or else policing, will undergo a complete and utter stoppage.
The media is fucking us over too, saying not kind and caring.
And when you’ve got a press so fucking overbearing.
And officers do not even know how other officers are faring,
Just because they work together does not mean they are a pairing.
Where the FUCK are my staff?!
There are not enough bobbies, you are having a laugh!
It’s an extremely hard job, they’re just trying to fucking last.
There is Response Policing, so that’s call-outs for a crime,
And then there is Reactive Policing, where they can spend time,
But I reckon you need somewhere in-between to get rid of grime,
You can’t police in complete contrasts and pretend everything is fine.
And the life of a police apprentice is stupid,
Survive for two years or you’ll be booted,
Money from the system has been looted,
Their training has been all but diluted.
Why the fuck are police even overseeing mental health?
It is a higher workload for them and yet more austerity by stealth,
As soon enough, they will be responsible for a mentally ill persons’ death.
I do not hate cops, what’s the point in hate,
A power dynamic as you can see, can be easily abused,
So these powers sparingly must be used.
I still think that the policing can be done when you are not a cop.
But if you’re gonna be a cop… at least do not be a nob?
My criticisms of the police are not a form of creating a lynch mob.
Just that I have seen too many cops where power above all, throbs.
– Emily Elżbieta Chomicz
The ‘Ethical’ Policing
There is a problem with the ex-copper’s account, which may not be obvious on the first read.
For you see, throughout my journey, I have learnt that the human experience cannot be quantified in ‘good people’ and ‘bad people.’ There are only shades of grey, nuance, and objective reality.
The problem that coppers have is that their job is completely fucked because of their supposed nature of being able to tell good from evil. They are supposed to be the people applying the law, and there is some discretion that is supposed to happen if the person has just truly fucked it.
Policing was designed in this country to be compassionate, and by consent. Except that has never happened in the history of this country. Ever. We had a British Empire after all.
What ends up happening is that poor people get overpoliced as a result of current policy. And by that, I do not mean that there are more cop cars or more files kept on poor people. But rather, the people in poverty self-police themselves so that they do not end up in prison, because prison is a worse fate than death for many of them. Trans people are one such group.
I used to worry every fucking day about going to prison, because in effect, it’s still illegal to be trans. I am also a trans activist, who goes to protests. My protest rights are being curtailed. I worry that they will put me in prison for merely protesting, because I might make mistakes in understanding the law as a layperson of the law. If I make a mistake, I’m not only going to prison, but I am going to experience being a trans person in prison. Let’s just say I am aware of V-coding [2]. And I’m terrified.
I am more likely to be targeted by transphobia, and I am more likely to be maliciously reported to authorities if I make the wrong move. I am scared to even use a VPN or encryption, because this country, we have the Terrorism Act which means that you can’t even encrypt your own files and forget the password to your laptop through legitimate ADHD, and in a court of law you’d be just assumed to be guilty by ‘not cooperating’.
Some of the laws on our books are ridiculous, and are designed to target minorities. The government programme Prevent is used mostly for harassing Muslim minorities. It does nothing to actually stop the real far-right. We know who the far-right are. Talk to trans people, and we’ll be happy to help.
The Police Interview in the Hospital
TW: bureaucratic incompetence when reporting the rape of the domestic abuser, substance misuse (alcohol), sectioning, running away from the domestic abuser
I revealed to the Manchester kink scene as well that this is what happened when I tried to report my domestic abuser to the police after entering a mental health crisis, and ending up in a Section 136 because I was a threat to my own safety as I tried to die by suicide.
I was at this point, drinking about half a litre of gin daily to try and cope with it all.
Half a fucking bottle of gin!
That is proper alcoholism that went on for months, it was a proper cry for help. It is especially noteworthy as I promised to myself, I would never become like my father.
My friend noticed I was just… gone. He noticed that I had not really done anything for myself in months, other than just to serve this prick as a stay-at-home housewife. I reached out to him when I was ready. And he fully believed me. And told me to come to theirs as nighttime was falling, with any important valuables I had, such as my fucked ID, deed polls, and anything that held on to that fading dream at the time that was being Emily.
The abuser did not like that. They threatened to kill themselves if I went.
I stayed at Lud’s for a bit to sofa surf, and proceeded to have a complete psychotic break. I was so scared, that I ran into Oxford Road and then Princess Street, trying to evade the officers who were looking for me as I left screaming, barefoot; I just shoved one of my friends out of the way in pure terror & almost ripped their shirt trying to get them off me.
They were trying to help, but I was too scared to notice this. I could not trust anyone. My trust in people was completely broken at this point.
The police interviewed me in the hospital. I remember one of the questions they asked me very vividly.
'Is your offender male, or female?'
Choosing not to undermine the concept of a gender spectrum that day, as I also identify outside the binary, I answered,'non-binary', as this was the correct answer.
The next look I got was a look of absolute fucking bewilderment, and dread. The form clearly only had options for 'male' and 'female', and at that point, I realised this thing will never be successful at trial because society does not understand the needs of trans people. How could I trust a potential jury to come to the right conclusion?
The abuser that raped me later, is also trans. And guess what, that form will probably still be there, in its complete problematic existence, because the police do not understand the needs of trans people at all and as such, we refuse to engage with the police where possible; for our own safety to not end up in prison, due to a misunderstanding or bigotry, not out of a personal ‘fuck authority’ slant.
After this complete fucking nightmare where the officer kept insisting that they didn’t understand: they had understood correctly I was the victim, but couldn’t still see the obvious problem in front of them,
I got a letter three months later. I remember it so vividly because it was a mimicry of being a police officer:
The low-quality, grainy Greater Manchester Police force logo on top of the letter.
The letter is written in the default Microsoft Word font.
A date is missing from this letter, so it could have been sent at any point, so it is hard to hold these fuckers accountable.
Dear Emily, we have been trying to contact you about the Rape.
A signature was missing from this letter. There was no name for the detective.
I couldn’t believe what I was looking at, and then, a detective then called me a few days later, asking:
How can we help?
And do you know what I said?
Where the FUCK were you three months ago, when there was still evidence that you could collect?!
And that, my friends, is why the conviction rate in Manchester is only 2.4%. And that statistic, obviously, is from cases where people have braved to speak out. I’ve concluded that the Greater Manchester Police is not fit for purpose. It needs to be completely rebuilt from scratch.
I’ve seen it fail in mental health casework too. It was ultimately the reason I shut down my mental health charity because I couldn’t do my job properly any more if I couldn’t rely on the police to do their jobs properly.
I once investigated a thirty-something trans man’s living conditions as part of my charity casework, and I have found that their mother was abusing them because of hoarding tendencies, and the situation got so absolutely grim that I saw maggots. I will spare you the rest of the mental imagery, but suffice to say that I was not prepared and I shouldn’t have gone in without some kind of personal protection equipment.
The conditions were unbelievable; inhumane and illegal, even if it were obviously from a mental health disorder on the mother’s side.
And what did the police do? I thought that reporting it to the police was the right thing to do, because it’s a crime against humanity. And what I got a complete lack of response.
He went up to the house, he took some notes, and he got back into his car. It was another incident. Adult social services weren’t even called. On the backlog it goes, without a fucking emotion in sight.
And that, is the danger of Do Nothing. You ruin people’s lives.
That’s my message to the Manchester Kink scene:
The police does not protect me, you, or anyone you know. They are useless.
I have spoken to multiple victims of the kink scene. Nobody believes them because they all believe the police will sort out the problems, and that it’s acceptable to make compromises in your morals with the aim of ‘keeping things fun’ & ‘we don’t want drama.’
Holy fucking shit. To tell victims that the only way to be believed is to go through that, is disgusting in a way I cannot describe to you.
I am going to be OK. I have worked in mental health myself for years, I have a very, very supportive network of friends and people on the scene, I have a stable place to live in now for the long term, and being low income for years to come will absolutely fucking suck; we would really like to be able to patch our leaking ceiling, but three disabled people going round with Polyfilla is quite frankly a tall ask. But we will be OK.
I am unable to go back to my IT career, because both of my abusers were from an IT background, and it is now too triggering to have a career in IT. I think unfortunately, this is more or less permanent, as I have absolutely no desire to go back. I prefer my life as a writer anyway.
The Sanitorium
TW: medical abuse, misogyny, and bigotry.
Oh god. Who can forget The Hospital. It was a multi-part saga that nobody wanted.
I have suffered from what the doctors think is chronic pancreatitis three times, and have been sent twice to Wythenshawe Hospital, and once to Manchester Royal Infirmary.
It was here when I started writing Transition in Agony, formally, as a book, as I wrote that poem when I was waiting for an ambulance. I waited for an ambulance during one of these episodes of pain, and it was going to take two hours to arrive. I actually thought I was dying because of the extreme stress, and it was at that moment my body gave up.
What happened? I don’t know. It could be an actual physical health problem that was happening, a medication reaction to corticosteroids, or it could just be really severe panic attacks. And there were some spurious bloods, too.
Not knowing what’s wrong means you need to investigate harder, and try and work with the patient, instead of assuming the patient is wrong, and making them feel like a hypochondriac and therefore hiding the information from the doctors because they’re scared that they’re making it all up. And yet what the hospitals did instead was:
Fucked up by giving me the medication overnight that supposedly sent me to the hospital in the first place.
I was interrogated about my sex life by a straight person, as they kept implying it might be the PrEP [23] I took at the time. It was the fact that I said I am OK stopping this medication, and they kept implying that I would get HIV as I would have unsafe sex without it. Twat.
I yelled for pain relief for an hour, and I was ignored, because there were no nurses and doctors available. When it was raised, it was ignored. I suspect some misogyny was involved, especially as they implied that my friend who is non-binary, and is to the outside world mostly fem presenting should do my MRSA rectal swab because it is easier for the nurse to do, and not us. What?!
Repeatedly, refused to give me any reasonable adjustments for my autism, because it was not considered a ‘clinical need.’ Then what is the point of a diagnosis?
They implied I will not get reasonable adjustments if I do not fill in a massive form for low-functioning autistic people about every single need I may have. I was twenty-four when it happened and I am a fully grown adult. The way that they implied that I was incompetent due to autism was disgusting. And due to ‘NHS policy’ I had was pressured to fill it out every time I went stayed at a hospital without my consent, despite me saying No repeatedly.
Moved me in the middle of the night, for no reason. No reason or explanation was ever given. I suspect it was a complaint from a patient on the ward that did it.
In one case I was not given a meal at all, because I was wheeled over to a scan. They just straight up forgot that I needed food and then they protested about having to feed me. Guess I’ll just die of starvation then.
My bed was moved up and down by a nurse without my consent, crushing my spine while I was already sick. The nurse couldn’t understand why I might have been pissed.
The hospital gave another patient my morphine, complete with the instructions for this elderly patient to take an overdose, effectively. They had to report that one.
My friend tried to make a hospital complaint against this hospital. They rejected every complaint, except the last one, where instead they opted for a series of half-arsed apologies where they found the nurse responsible to then go bollock.
And this, is rape by doing nothing. They just did not care. Policy is policy, and policy is law. Because policy could never go wrong., because the NHS runs on policy, and therefore the NHS can do no wrong, either. It’s a state religion at this point – people do not criticise it for fear that we will lose it if we do. Not talking about its challenges is how we do lose it, though.
They did this to my housemate, too. It had turned out that their treatment for their stroke at 18 had not been reviewed for twenty years, because if it works, do not touch it. And they repeatedly refused to give reasonable adjustments for anticoagulant appointments despite their obvious autism.
It is because we are trans. They treated us like an alien from outer space, instead of giving giving normal medical care like to would to everyone else. There is no other explanation.
And I was relying on them to save my life at the time. I am OK, but it was deeply unpleasant to go through that.
The Mental Patient
TW: graphic account of abuse of medical institution due to mental illness, abuse of power by the police
I almost got arrested because of an ‘NHS Trust Violence Reduction Policy.’ This is absurd.
I have plenty of anger absolutely, but the fact that I had to write an entire book to express it and had to spend 25 years trying to work my courage up to it because of my severe trauma, should be evidence that I am in fact, a people pleaser if anything, and not a violent person.
I was given serotonin reuptake medications for my Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. It put me in hospital. It is my belief that it was either Serotonin Syndrome, or it was some kind of weird adverse, possibly allergic reaction to escitalopram that did it. Either way, we already knew that SSRIs were bad for me, but the GP was forced to prescribe them anyway because my Community Mental Health Team referral wouldn’t move forward unless I tried yet ANOTHER medication.
The reason I finally got diagnosed by my GP for my GP was because I was so absolutely miserable. I could not even talk about my struggles with OCD before this point because I was convinced that I was a bad person. I spoke about it, because I could not hide my difficulties any more as they were completely overwhelming.
My OCD made me think that some of the things I have done in my life were actual crimes, that I deserved to be raped, and that I was responsible for seeing things as a child I was never meant have seen. And because of how it played out, the police said that I had admitted to I assaulting someone at the hospital, which it turns out I did not do. I checked the legal definitions and everything. I later realised, I was the victim in all this.
My GP tried to prescribe a medication called escitalopram, a serotonin reuptake inhibitor-class medication, usually used in depression, but really, they are just all just drugs to modify the amounts of mood, drive, and motivation chemicals in the hopes that you hit the right one. Unfortunately, I had extremely severe side effects about an hour after taking them. So severe, in fact, that my GP actually called an ambulance after I came back to the GP very, very unwell.
I was really, really sick. I had two tablets of propranolol as my heart was absolutely pounding just before coming back to the GP, and it got even worse. And it was not the anxiety kind of heart pounding; whatever this was, made me extremely queasy.
I was sweating so much that I could literally feel the water coming off me as I was ferried through the hospital. I drank approximately five cups of water while we were abandoned in the A&E waiting room. And my housemate was trying to get me help because it was so fucking scared. I was vomiting.
I remember being in a wheelchair, and being in a fight or flight response, trying to get the attention of any nurse who would help me, as I was clearly unwell.
I told my housemate to push through the double door in a confused, delirious state and to turn left, and here I saw a nurse. I screamed for help. I didn’t know what was going on with my body, and to this day, I still don’t know what was causing this physical reaction. But what I do remember, is the guy telling me that I needed to wait to be seen and that I was being abusive for not waiting.
I don’t remember what happened next, but my housemate tells me that I gently pushed the guy away as part of a fight or flight response. Numerous mental health professionals outside the hospital, have told me it would not be an action that was in any way, shape, or form punishable, because there’s no criminal intent, just human emotions.
The nurse who I pushed said it was assault to the security guards. The security guards continued to pressure me out of getting help and then told me to leave the building. I remember being very, very scared.
I yelled for help. I was still in a fight or flight response; I was worried these guards were going to kill me, because of my experiences with police brutality, as well as my complex post-traumatic stress disorder.
I pushed a security guard away by shoving them away with my hand because I did not consent to them touching me and my consent by that point was broken so many times because of problems in the earlier admissions.
Where, at one point, a doctor who should have known better, poked me extremely hard to evaluate my startle reflexes, apparently. So I didn’t trust anyone at the hospital after that at all.
They took my hypervigilance from my PTSD (as well as from the fact I was sick, and the natural impulse to not show weakness to strangers who are physically tackling you) as aggression, where there was clearly none intended. This would have been obvious to any psychiatrist on site.
The hospital was aware of my PTSD diagnosis in all this.
And so, as I’m screaming, and in a complete state of delirium from this medication reaction, the cops arrive.
I stated to the cops that I have ADHD and autism up front to try and make them talk to me with clarity, and I was really worried that I wouldn’t be understood. Because by this point, I am fucking scared of the cops.
The police officer kept insisting a lack of mental capacity was not an excuse to assault someone, that I was a dangerous criminal, and I needed to accept a community resolution order.
And now, on top of everything that’s going on, the mental illness, the physical illness, the temporary state of confusion and the screaming staff nurse and the scared security guards you now have… the law getting involved.
This was completely unnecessary. The police tried to force a confession that I punched someone because I screamed ‘oh fuck I accidentally punched someone’ while in reality, I pushed someone to move them away.
The written police records also show this version of events as well. Assault requires a criminal intent, a motivation, and an actual threat of danger. I was delirious and confused due to the side effects of medication. Yet somehow I am now on police systems!
I got read my rights, and then after had a very heated conversation with the police, in which in quite the police were downright rude to me, and saw me as the criminal the entire time; of course, they also made no allowances for the fact the situation that might be different from what they think it is.
They were only going off the hospital’s account and making their story fit, because that’s an officially sanctioned authority and I am just a mentally ill person.
My mental illness is not enough to say that I was at any point in all this, an actual threat. The staff nurse though, did make a threat to me by calling the police because I was to him ‘abusive’ by raising my voice. But everyone ignored what I had to say, my voice completely vetoed as the copper kept talking over me.
It is my belief that this is a training problem within this hospital and the wider NHS trust, that staff are not trained in basic consent, and mental capacity decisions. The letter even states that sometimes nurses may use ‘implied consent’ as if it is in any way acceptable in 2025.
It is well known that Greater Manchester Mental Health as a similar example, is rated Inadequate by the Care Quality Commission, in part exactly because of this. This is why they’ve ended up on Panorama trying to explain themselves out of abuses of power in broad daylight.
And therefore, this hospital in my opinion practices abusive practices. Every time I went there, and when I was hospitalised, they violated my consent several times, every day.
And that, to me. is the same attitude as my rapist. Rape of the vulnerable in its worst form; in fucking broad daylight with the everyone at the hospital watching as it happens.
I said yes to everything the cops told me to because I was scared. And so, I signed a false confession by doing so. I needed to go to another hospital, as they gave me a Community Resolution Order and I needed to leave the hospital for 24 hours. I wasn’t going to another hospital because I was worried, I’d get arrested there too.
I was still in agony. My quick actions of taking blood pressure pills and drinking about five cups of water seemed to dilute and weaken the medication, and so no harm did come to me thankfully. That, is not acceptable, that shouldn’t be how we resolve this matter. I was literally forced out of getting health treatment.
I was absolutely inconsolable, because I legitimately thought I went against all my ethics and morals, and started violence for no fucking reason. Once I was escorted off the premises, I tried to throw myself into an oncoming car, because I was so convinced that I assaulted the guy, and that was against the type of Emily was.
I was forced out of treatment, because the nurse had no understanding of how consent works, because I had literally zero mental capacity at the time, because I was in a fight or flight response.
That’s a monkey brain response. And not a cognitive response.
The hospital is wrong. And I hope one day, it admits its mistakes, because otherwise, it’s going to happen to another trans person with complex post-traumatic stress disorder, or rather, cause it. All this happened, due to the prejudiced views of mentally ill people.
This banning order is so severe, that I cannot visit the hospital for anything but cardiac arrest, and they will enforce this by calling the cops if I step even a foot near the hospital. Even if my friends and relatives are sick. Great.
Do you know how ridiculous they’re being? I am meeting with the Head of Security at a different hospital to organise a screening of the security footage and the guy’s having to scrub out faces one by one.
For fuck’s sake. Is this a productive use of time for anyone?
How about the hospital just admits fault and changes their policies to include trans and disabled people?
I’m not interested in taking money of the struggling system. I just don’t want to be abused in an emergency. That’s all I want.
The Fear
TW: domestic violence, controlling behaviour, failures in policing, mentions of rape
The domestic violence that I experienced I think is very atypical. My abuser went by they/them pronouns, and presented with traditionally masculine presentation.
When I first met them, they were charming. You wouldn’t know any different, either. Not in a million years. There were no red flags. They seemed to be attentive to my feelings, and made me feel special at first sight.
I have since met people who have met me feel special on the first sight, and I’m now on really good terms with them. So clearly, that doesn’t make an abuser either.
They worked at a job that they couldn’t tell me about. And I went OK, cool, you are clearly working for some kind of high security organisation, but this wasn’t a problem. Lots of companies require security measures.
I’ve worked at a company after this where I have seen information relating to radioactive supplies as a result of doing my job; and there, I discovered that engineer who was assigned to work on that, stored his passwords in plain text…
But anyway. They invited me round to their flat. One date became another. They had money. They were a senior software engineer. And that to me meant that they were successful in life, they had their shit together.
I wanted to be a software engineer too at the time. I was flirting with the idea of quitting though, and becoming a network engineer.
Had I not met this twat, I would have actually probably have probably eventually settled on being a successful Network Engineer. I would have enjoyed my career, and I think I would have been really good at my job.
But they insisted I must become a Software Engineer because money is the single most important thing to be happy. And not love, joy, and all the natural emotions that everyone feels. Money was the only thing that mattered to this person.
Money, and power.
I tried to introduce some reality to this twat, but quite frankly, it was a waste of time. I quickly learned that sometimes relationships really, really don’t work out. In this case, things got so bad that Agent Purple got to the point of being abusive. Agent Purple forcibly raped me, just like my future rapist. They both refused to respect consent.
Agent Purple supported the Tories who forcibly made everyone use the COVID-19 contact tracing app, no matter how shit it was.
They spoke to Michael Gove, and they portrayed him positively, despite the fact Michael Gove famously amended school education without anyone’s consent whenever he felt like it. Agent Purple’s employer was a military contractor. Because Agent Purple did not understand consent, Agent Purple actually came uncomfortably close to spilling actual state secrets to the people they hooked up with, and let them very casually know they were working on a large-scale metadata collection problem.
I asked Agent Purple if they were OK with this, in light of the well-known NSA and Edward Snowden revelations, and I got a complete non-answer. It’s because they didn’t know. And so this was also a problem for whatever project they were working on too I imagine, as you can’t have someone working on these things who is morally bankrupt. Not all of these projects are for bad, you know.
For the purposes of national safety, I cannot reveal the organisations that were involved, or their operational practices, but it really does raise concerns as a citizen, about who these organisations are employing to develop their systems. Things you see in hindsight.
And once they decided they wanted to rape me, they raped me in everything I did. I was not allowed to do my own coursework for university, without being screamed at that I was doing it wrong. I was not allowed to go outside without letting them know.
They developed the ability to check my internet use. To this day, I have no idea if they actually used it, but they set up the home internet connection in a way where they absolutely could. And because they were a senior software developer with a degree in Computer Science and an interest in IT, there’s no way you do this by accident.
They owned a house, and I know they had a very affordable mortgage as it will be affordable when you buy a house for £120,000, but made me pay basically the entire mortgage under the guise of ‘it’s cheaper than market rent’, and made me promise that I will never try and take over the house. I was strictly, and only a lodger, and maybe they would consider it in 1-2 years’ time adding me on the deeds, essentially if I showed good behaviour.
My other rapist was like that, too. She tried to mould me into fitting her shape, rather than working with the shape she had in front of her, and celebrate our differences. Both of them were jealous that I was different, though even they themselves were different too, and in a positive way sometimes.
The Bank of Mum and Dad seems to very much enable these abusers. In both cases, these people lived very sheltered, middle-class lives where choosing between a state vs private education becomes a choice, rather than unaffordable, like it is for the rest of us.
We have them to call these awful people out; it’s important to call them out, because most trans people are good people.
I have met other people in my life, too, that have come from this kind of background. The person I lived with who also had Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, also came from a background of privilege, and he refused to acknowledge it.
But with him, I understand. It was a (dodgy as fuck) business transaction to him as we were barely acquaintances, and we were never compatible with each other in the first place, forced by the circumstances of the terrible decisions made by the government in lockdown.
Rape is a terrible thing; true love cannot be forced. Sex, at the end of the day, is about love. Sex without love, is a bit like trying to masturbate with a kettle. It doesn’t make sense as a concept, you cannot separate love out of intimacy.
So fuck them. You deserve love. You deserve intimacy. And don’t let these pricks decide how you live your life. And there’s still time if you’re stuck in this situation.
Please reach out for help if you need it. Don’t suffer like I did. Please reach out for help as soon as you can, and it’s OK to reach out for help. And you’ll be surprised who is able to help.
Escaping abuse is the hardest thing you’ll ever have to do in life. I ran away from home at 18, and kept running from abuse. And none of the abuse in my life was my fault, and it wasn’t a ‘victim mentality’ that I suffered from.
Rather, it was a lack of positive experiences in my life, because of the repeated abuses by others. There was no way in between all the abuse to suddenly gain an understanding of why abuse happens.
There’s no impartial observer for crimes committed by trans people, and is the tragedy of being trans. Because the trans victim, and the trans abuser have to figure out which roles they occupy themselves in a crime, because the police, can only decide for the average cis-hetero-normative person. How would they understand trans people when they don’t listen? So we don’t involve the police.
Finally, some that some cops do know when abuse is happening. But they can’t help those in need, as the system insists on being an impartial observer. Eventually, they become numb to all the abuse they see, and ignore it. That’s how abuse repeats.
The Dog
TW: graphic account of abuse of medical institution due to mental illness, abuse of power by the police
On 18th July 2025, I was a victim of a hate crime in Peel Hall Park. It’s a fucking tragic event, but not for me, but for the guy who did it.
I went to the park that day, as it was a beautiful day. I remember taking all these wonderful pictures of me walking in the river that was being affected by a draught.
I was in a wonderful part of nature. The overgrowth over the river turned a concrete jungle with little trees and bushes into something beautiful. Isn’t that we all want? To have a bit of nature next to our homes that we can all hide in when the world gets a bit too much.
I was happy that day. I was listening to Weather Systems by Anathema, in the anticipation of the thunderstorm that the Met Office forecasted that day. I wanted it to rain. I wanted to feel the warm summer rain on my skin.
As I played Sunlight, I got up as the sun beautifully glistened into my surroundings, and I wanted to absorb the beauties of life into my heart and soul. I saw a cute cobblestone bridge crossing over the park, and then I saw that dog.
I love dogs. I love petting dogs. I have raised a puppy before, and I can confirm that dogs are the biggest joy in life anyone can have.
I asked the guy – is it OK to pet the dog? The dog is so cute and so irresistible. And oh my god, the guy said yes. I can pet the dog!
It then happened. The hate crime.
I tried to take a picture of the cute dog, as I have done thousands of times with other people’s dogs. Dogs are really cute, and owners love to show off their dogs because they’re an absolute joy to their lives!
I put my headphones back on, and then I blissfully went back to Weather Systems. It was such a beautiful, poignant day, and the tree cover was lovely.
The guy came up in front of me, and started yelling:
‘WHY ARE YOU TAKING PICTURES OF MY KIDS?!’
I froze. I quickly took off my headphones, and then he screamed at me again.
‘WHY ARE YOU TAKING PICTURES OF MY KIDS, YOU PAEDOPHILE?!’
‘I was trying to take a picture of the dog because it was so cute!’
‘PEOPLE LIKE YOU SHOULD BE LOCKED UP; YOU PEOPLE SICKEN ME!’
‘HEY YOU, CALL THE COPS NOW!’ he gestured to someone in the park.
I was fucking terrified. I didn’t know what to do. I have had this happen to me a thousand times before, but every time it happens, it still makes you freeze.
What the fuck do I do?
I decide to plead with him. I keep trying to re-explain over, and over again. That this is a misunderstanding. That I am not interested in his kids at all.
But he keeps insisting that I am a paedophile. I look at his face and I see the absolute fear and nothingness on his mind as he doesn’t know what to do with me, the person who he believes a criminal.
Something strange was happening though. The criminal wasn’t acting like he thought they would, they shouldn’t just shrug it off. The criminal shouldn’t try and act with reasonableness. The criminal must FIGHT.
And the projected criminal in his mind, I suppose did fight. I showed him my phone and showed the dog photo with the intention of deleting it no matter what it was. And unfortunately, because I am disabled and I have stood up a little bit too quick with my cane, I got a fraction of his kid in my photo.
And oh my god, that’s when he really kicked off. He started intimidating me, saying he’s gonna call the cops over and over again.
Then he started yelling:
‘STOP TAKING PHOTOS OF MY KIDS, YOU PAEDOPHILE!!!’, to everyone aloud in the park.
I realise something: How the fuck do you run away safely? This man is clearly off his fucking head. I cannot reason with this man. Surely, there would be no problem if I just have been a reasonable person in this entire scenario.
But I’m arguing with someone who is objectively irrational in his fears. He’s scared. He isn’t on the same plane of reality.
And I get it. I have trauma, too. I get what it’s like to be in fear of everything, thinking it would hurt you. But there’s a difference between me and him. I chose to not let me fears hurt people consciously, while he never did. And that, is what separates us.
I was really scared, and I could have just run off without ever trying to help him. But I stayed there for longer than I should have, because I still believe people can change.
Maybe that makes me stupid, and maybe you can call me names, you can call me an empath. I don’t care. I have seen the far-right change. It’s possible.
I have as part of my charity work met registered sex offenders for example. They are heinous individuals, but they are still human, and all humans have the capacity for change. I have seen things you wouldn’t believe.
You have to understand though I need to leave for your own safety. You can’t be there for everyone as they recover in their own journeys. Sometimes, it’s just too dangerous.
Despite the situation, I felt compassion for this man. He literally has his own kids, his own dog, and I am pretty safe in assuming that he’s got a wife. He’s probably got a house, and he’s probably got a nice car he drives to work every morning, and he has worked his way up the corporate ranks, and he has gotten himself in promotions at work.
I’m sure he has achieved the success that he wanted in life, and he does not deserve to be killed or harmed as a result of what his life has been.
This man is a victim, too. He’s a victim of never having had experienced true love.
A lack of love growing up will put you into two camps. Either you’re like me, and it will make you want to chase love at every opportunity, no matter what it is or who it is from. Or you become this man.
A bitter caricature of a sad human being. You function as if love doesn’t exist, and anyone who may show that little bit of love is a threat.
Any love that is shown is dangerous. Love is transactional, and love must be given in exchange for goods and services. Love must be earnt. Love must be bought.
I was lucky, unbelievably. Because of my aunt. She gave me love when nobody would.
My childhood was a fucking disaster. I think I have made that point clear. But there was one person who really believed in me.
My aunt.
I wish I could contact her. But I am too estranged from my family. I wish I could. I really wish I could. But there’s no connection at all, I have Googled, I have tried, but my sister doesn’t come from that part of the family.
And that is the fucking tragedy of fucking family estrangement.
I want to go back to that beautiful place in Enniskillen that she took me. The endless rolling fields and the swings on Tempoo Rd, the time that I fell off my bike and she caught me because my parents never did.
I’d do anything to go down Chanterhill again and look at the Lough again. Go down to the Erne down near Ardhowen Theatre and look at the precious fields of cattails and sunflowers once again.
Don’t we all want to just be one with nature, surely?
Hate stops us from doing that. Hate stops us from experiencing our lives normally. Hate only breaks communities, and the fighting rages on, and on. I know that hate has been going on for a thousand years. I know that eventually, hate will start up once again, because of some insignificant perceived difference.
But you, you can make that difference too. And this goes for cis and trans people. The less power we give to the ones that hate, and the less we engage with them, we can have peace last just a little longer.
It’s important to find the ones who truly do hate, and those who are misinformed but are willing to learn. With the rest, we do not engage.
That, is a story that so many of my queer friends end up in, with broken families, because their families have fallen for this endless fucking hate. As of the time of publishing, I am currently helping yet another queer homeless friend. This is a fucking travesty.
I was a former charity CEO of Project Inklings between 2019-2021. Trans people in Britain face immeasurable challenges with safe and accessible housing. I sat in Bolton, and I pondered on how I am going to rehouse yet another trans person in 2025 who is fleeing domestic abuse, and I once again dig out Microsoft Word and write those letters of support again, as the Greater Manchester housing stock keeps ever-dwindling and options become fewer, and she is scared about being able to survive.
This has become the reality of living as a trans person in 2025. You get to see your friends, acquaintances and everyone else struggle for a safe home, for a place to live where you feel safe, loved, and accepted for who you are.
This problem doesn’t affect trans people equally, you see. Namely, we must talk about the wider hidden epidemic that is happening in the country.
I became a charity chair at the age of 20. Britain’s institutions are not set up to support trans people at all; that may be sounding the alarm on the obvious, given the rise of transphobia in Parliament and the courts.
I set up Project Inklings initially as an all-purpose mental health charity after having too many negative experiences with the NHS, but it ended up being a charity that mainly supported trans and queer people to try and get them out of awful housing situations. The working environment that we were faced with was possibly the grimmest out of any charity that has ever existed. We had six support workers, four grand in our charity account & about five hundred active service users at any one time. That’s eighty one people per volunteer. EIGHTY ONE!
And as we clearly weren’t masochistic enough, we also decided to run this operation internationally. We had people from Australia, India, and America all asking for support with their housing, their mental health, and also how to navigate difficult discussions regarding their sexuality, gender, and reality.
Some of these people were in such desperate situations that it truly was grim and may be part of the reason why I have nightmares every fucking night.
Nobody really prepares you for being a charity CEO, and especially not at the age of 20, when you have just fled home and you’re doing a degree in Computer Science. That’s one way to get a fast-track education for sure. I was the worst student, by all accounts.
My attendance was so shocking that I was called in for multiple attendance meetings by my university, mostly to check that I haven’t died in the interim. They understood that I was disabled.
They didn’t know that I was also running a charity full-time as well; it’s why I had to miss Intro to Formal Logic multiple times, and why I came in so late. It’s because I was too busy saving trans people, who were fleeing from the most awful situations all around the world.
Let me tell you one of the cases it will horrify you. Something needs to change, because this is not acceptable for people in the 21st century. We deserve better living conditions than this, and too many of us end up in a situation where the parent of the house has decided that the child is too much of a problem, and enough is enough.
This case is ultimately why I am still helping people today, and I why am continuing my casework through the Queer Party I started. Even though we may not be in any kind of power, doesn’t mean we can’t still help people as we see them.
The Hoarder’s House
I was not prepared for the hoarder’s house. Oh my god.
A thirty-something year old trans man was struggling with their mother regarding familial domestic abuse. It was something we were unfortunately used to seeing, and, as they lived in Manchester, I chose to investigate personally. I collaborated with Disabled People Against Cuts, a fantastic organisation fighting for basic rights for disabled people across the country.
What I saw, my friends, is something that I cannot bring myself to recall. I remember the soda bottles in every room of the house. I remember the maggots on the bins, as well as the cat shit everywhere. I remember the UN Human Rights calendar on the wall, to add insult to injury to all this.
The guy didn’t even have facilities to wash himself, because everything was so contaminated. The more that I walked around the house, the more terrified I became for my own health. And I cannot describe to you by text the stench.
I had no PPE. I was entirely on my own, and I only truly understood what it was like to have a hoarding disorder that day. It is a truly, truly devastating disorder for the entire family. His mother was clearly suffering.
I remember in the next few days, still having some hope in the Greater Manchester Police, calling the police, hoping that they could talk some sense into her, or at the very least be able to call the right services who could help.
There was however, one problem. It became apparent that she would immediately recognise me from my previous visit, which would make matters so much worse, as that would potentially put me in danger as well.
So I did the only thing I could. I hid around a corner, hoping that when she comes out of the house to talk to the copper, that I can talk to the person I was supporting straight after, while making sure that my notes can be as true to the events that had transpired in front of my eyes.
That was the day when I lost faith in the GMP, as this was filed as a police report as if it were another day in the force, as if the policeman was completely emotionally unfazed. And you know what the worst part is?
I was contacting council safeguarding teams for weeks before I even resorted to all this. The psychological abuse from their mother was that bad, that on its own merits it would warrant rehousing the person. Seriously.
The problem is that psychological abuse is quite a tricky one to ‘prove’ to the authorities. For you see, in an ideal world, the housing workers would be psychologists, and they would be able to tell if a person has experienced trauma in their lives. Unfortunately, we don’t live in that world. It’s tragic.
Nowadays, with the homeless person I am currently supporting to find housing, I am absolutely spoiled for choice when it comes to evidencing abuse. I have a Zoom H1n recorder, a phone that loads quickly, and I’m a journalist, so I am able to interview queers with ease about their experiences.
Back then, I had none of those things. It was just me, and a team of queers.
The authorities were simply not interested. I remember presenting them to Manchester City Council at close to 9am, and running through the entire homelessness assessment. They still use the same domestic abuse checklist as they did five years ago, I remember the quite frankly, idiotic questioning.
“Has your abuser ever tried to drown you?”
Half of the assessment was completely irrelevant. It looks like this question is no longer used, but it’s still abundantly clear that the system wants you to come out with bruises. And it’s shocking that victims have to get to that point.
Because they slept on people’s sofas, the council kept procrastinating. They kept using every excuse under the book to not house this person. I could not believe that they were going to classify them as intentionally homeless. Until I stood up and asserted their rights as a human being. I cannot remember the exact words I said, but she was offended by what I said. And then started to take me and the person I was supporting seriously.
I could not take any more. After hours of quite frankly intrusive questioning, I had enough. And you know what the worst crime of it all was?
The housing worker was Polish. We spoke Polish while filling out the assessment. It could have easily been me in another life sitting on the opposite side of that desk, approving and rejecting emergency housing.
To this day, I still don’t understand how you could call a person who has escaped from a hoarder’s house ‘intentionally homeless’. I don’t understand how can someone sleep at night, rubber-stamping at work another homeless person as another case of ‘intentional homelessness’. This should not exist.
It was wild. We tried everything before we got to this point, but because of bureaucracy, it was impossible to progress.
The News Cycle of Abuse
The problem is that in this case, it was a lack of understanding that safe housing isn’t just about being abused in the classical sense, but also that the abuse extends to the local community by letting it go unabated, such as in the media.
She really did not recognise that the state of the house was actually life-threatening for not only the low-functioning autistic person, and the person I was supporting, but also herself.
And that is the tragedy of abuse. A lot of the time that comes from past generational and trans-national trauma. For a trans person to then try and work with that trauma, as well as to come to terms with our own traumas of society not in any way understanding minorities such as trans people, is a lot to ask for one person.
You have to understand that society’s framework of morality is very weird. At the end of the day, we live in a society where certain social norms are expected, but which norms are normal, and which ones are detrimental to society? At what point is it acceptable for the community to intervene, and, importantly, would the community be even be successful at an intervention in this case?
She was a member of her local church, and took community seriously. And yet in this time, I doubt she ever opened up about her struggles to the community. And that is how suffering and quiet desperation can build up with time.
That desperation can lead to some people doing things that are quite frankly, suicidal for the human race. To give a relevant, recent example, I am currently watching the far-right demonstration in London unfold, and holy crap, the reporting was so bad, that I actually made a complaint to the British Broadcasting Corporation.
Dear British Broadcasting Corporation,
I am writing to raise a formal complaint regarding the live reporting of the article "Thousands taking part in 'Unite the Kingdom' rally and counter protest". I observed that the BBC initially ran with the headline "'Unite the Kingdom': Thousands gather for Tommy Robinson Rally", which was subsequently changed to "'Unite the Kingdom': Thousands gather in London for protest".
These two headlines strike very different tones, and the initial version was highly problematic. By centring Tommy Robinson’s name in the headline, the BBC risks platforming and amplifying a far-right figure in a way that could legitimise the event in the eyes of the public. The later correction was more accurate and impartial, but by that stage, thousands of readers had already seen the first version.
As a journalist myself, I recognise the challenges of live reporting. However, accuracy and impartiality must always come first. The BBC Editorial Guidelines make this clear: “Audiences expect the BBC's news and current affairs and factual journalism output to meet the highest levels of impartiality and accuracy.” In this instance, I believe those standards were not upheld.
The BBC has a responsibility not only to inform but also to avoid inadvertently amplifying extremist movements. Headlines matter greatly in shaping perception, and the BBC’s reputation depends on avoiding precisely this kind of misstep. As a licence fee payer, I believe I am justified in expecting higher standards.
I therefore request a full response detailing how the BBC intends to ensure that similar incidents are prevented in the future. This should include an acknowledgment of the prior error within the article itself, and an outline of any new safeguards, such as in-house training for staff on reporting within contexts of extremism. Such measures would demonstrate that the BBC takes its responsibility seriously; I would be satisfied with such a resolution.
Fox News. Robert Murdoch. News Corp. That fucker.
He is the true source of fucking evil. He kills thousands of people every year by allowing his fucking hate to be published.
In my eyes, there is always still time to fight against these bastards. It’s so difficult to abandon the principles with which you’ve been raised. It’s the hardest thing you’ll have to ever do.
But maybe one day, we can take that guy to a field and show him the cattails and flowers too. The butterflies. The little bugs. The grasshoppers hiding cutely within the flowers.
And the buzzing bees that go round and round you as you play.
And the flies and the frogs that appear in ponds in the rain.
Blow on those little puffy dandelions as they come in the spring and blossom into flowers in the summer and rebloom over, and over again.
Nature is beautiful and comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes. Some of it is scary. Some of it you have to avoid for your own safety, but I’m not afraid to walk in nature barefoot.
And see the cute little ducks in the pond, up in the Round O, with all the really interesting boats that go by, and feed the duckies as they all line up to try and get some bread.
My childhood experiences in nature are actually now rather uncommon nowadays, given that people are wired to screens and algorithms keep people hooked into wanting more and more.
Some people I’m quite sure are absorbed into this matrix so fucking hard that I’m fairly sure they’d love to have Alex Jones beamed directly into their fucking skulls. I mean, Elon Musk is trying that with his brain-interface projects, isn’t he?
We are humans. We are all humans. Fucking deal with it.
I did get to pet another dog since, and take a picture of it, without being accused of being a paedophile. I petted a puppy that won a best-behaved puppy competition in a pub! It had a little brooch and everything!
You will not stop my queerness.
We are here, and we are near.
We are in your homes whether you want it or not.
Fuck you, you pieces of shit.
You will not get an inch of my attention.
And so we invade your homes.
We invade your media.
Because guess what bitches, I’m fucking fabulous.
I’m fucking beautiful, I’m in your fucking brain now.
I will hypnotise your little brains and wire them for love,
And not some kind of creature from above.
And so, we live.
We live because we must.
We live, simply because we have to live. Because we are creatures of hope.
We live so we can shape the future of society. For the future of this earth. So the generations ahead of us can shape their future too.
- Emily Elżbieta Chomicz
The Past Self
MAJOR TRIGGER WARNING FOR SUICIDE SURVIVORS.
TW: suicide, transphobia, police brutality.
People always ask me why I have a semicolon on the side of my arm that I’ve tattooed on myself. It’s because my story isn’t finished just yet.
On 23rd July 2025, I revisited the site. It was the site where the police officer had brutalised me, and did a heinous crime in doing so as I tried to die by suicide, for which rightfully I feel he should be held accountable.
I have never had a closer call as I was climbing the fence to jump off that bridge.
I went there when I went to get advice to fill out my Work Capability Assessment from Mind’s Advice Centre. For those of you unaware, this is the form you get if you’re on benefits and you’ve signed off on the sick, AND the DWP has decided to send me my PIP renewal form at the same time.
And I wanted to know more about what happened that day. So I checked back on the Subject Access Request that I made to Greater Manchester Mental Health the other day, and holy shit, the doctor was transphobic.
The one treated me after the officer that brutalised me. The one who he kicked me and pretended not hear while I was stuck at the back of the police van.
And here, published in full, is the NHS referral that was made to the emergency duty team, aka the three mental health workers that broke down crying after hearing my life story.
And would you look at that, despite having literally tried to commit suicide, I still get misgendered and they use the wrong pronouns even though it literally says Female at the top of the form.
Disgusting.
It reads, after I correct all the officer’s pronouns:
‘Ms Chomicz is a single 22 year old student. She reports that she is transitioning to be a female. She is a third year student studying Computer Science’. She lives in student accommodation but has been asked to leave. She is estranged from his family and reports that he has no contact.
She is not known to mental health services, but is under the university mental health services. No previous admissions to hospital. She has reported that he has been subject to domestic abuse in the past.
The university (MMU) have reported that he cannot return to his accommodation due to her behaviour and have disclosed that has been verbally aggressive to people.
Today she was informed that she had to leave her student accommodation so she went to a bridge stating she felt suicidal and was placed on a S136 due to [her] running away from the police and initially [she resisted and refused to] to come with them.
She was placed on a S136 and brought to MRI. Mental Health Assessment requested.
Assessed by [redacted, a NHS approved mental health practitioner], and [redacted, a NHS psychiatrist] who were of the view that there was no evidence of a mental disorder. She was discharged from the Section 136.
There are no current risks to her own health and safety. There are no current risks to others.
She was assessed by two doctors, and the duty approved mental health professional, myself. Two police officers were present, we introduced ourselves and explained the purpose of the assessment:
The citizen was dressed in female attire and was calm and engaged well during the assessment.
She explained that she had only gone to the bridge because she was upset about being made homeless.
She blamed the university for this situation and they said they had given her notice to vacate the accommodation.
She said she has a Centrepoint [supports with accommodation for people 16-25] worker trying to help her to register as homeless, and they have liaised with Manchester Cty Council.
She could not explain why she had not planned any future accommodation, but appeared to be reluctant to pay for her own accommodation. She was advised to book into a hotel until suitable accommodation has been arranged. She denied any current intent or plans to end his life. She said she wanted to sort out her accommodation and being played on a Section 136 had delayed this.
The Team were of the view that was no evidence of any psychotic or affective symptoms that warranted a hospital admission. She was discharged from the Section 136. So then I called 101. I asked, ‘What were the names of the two officers that attended the incident on the 10th of August?’
And now I have the two Police Constables who were involved in assaulting me almost to death on that day: PC Edwards 07781, and PC Keech 07824.
The Journalist
TW: Transphobia (JK Rowling)
It was no longer she. It became it/its/it’s, to educate the public on how to use pronouns. It also became a trans journalist. Yay!
Journalism allows me to explore the world. Journalism allows me to be free. Journalism means I get to speak to real people on the ground.
How the fuck will I survive as an investigative journalist, hopefully going to places such as Gaza?
I don’t know.
I hope that some of the skills that I picked up along the way helped me to make this journey:
Early on, I made videos and Let’s Plays on my YouTube channel, trying to figure out how to edit videos and how to use Adobe Premiere Pro and other professional tools.
I’ve spent a whole decade trying to tinker with technology. I touched on Software Development, Linux, and a thousand other different techy subdisciplines. Hell, I even went out and bought a whole bunch of Cisco network equipment at one point just to see how it all worked.
I’ve spent years researching topics over, and over again, for hours a day, trying to absorb much information about the world as possible, trying to find out truth in the world.
I went to university for what ended up being five years and I ran a mental health charity as a managing director while balancing studies while trying to do university life, which is just mad.
I have been trying to build little community things since I was ten. I helped the spread of information wherever I could. I built things for other people.
I believe in the open-source ethos. I believe anyone should be able to audit what software developers write. I believe in humanity, not artificial intelligence.
I spoke for the poorest in society, no matter how few resources I could give. I spoke for the most marginalised, and the ones who really need help. I believed in fairness and equality for all since the day I was alive.
I never cared for judging people’s views. I believed in the free market of ideas. I believed in empathy, that people can change, and that humans aren’t all stupid blithering unintelligent buffoons, but people of circumstance.
I never believed in the mental health system because it’s unfortunately so primitive and understaffed. Psychology is a recent profession, and I hope that it gets better over the next few decades, especially with new psychedelic drugs that have the potential to change how we conduct therapy.
Traditional therapy never worked for me, because it couldn’t fix my circumstances, or my life story. There is nothing mentally wrong with me. Society still unfortunately doesn’t know how to understand many of the dreadful things that can happen to people.
The therapy that works for me is making things through writing and music, and being able to help people in their trans experiences.
I was a victim of extensive bullying, and abuse. There is so much trauma I could write about still, but at some point, you have to move on with your life. I publish this book in the hopes that someone in their recovery will find it useful, and relatable to my struggles.
My message to you is – everyone’s recovery is different. And I can’t imagine what it’s like for you. But one thing is in common with all recoveries, that no matter the circumstances you come from, if you try really, really hard, and take every opportunity you can take, you can find a loving home.
It's so difficult for queers. Some of us spend Christmas alone every year. I remember doing that when I was at university. I felt like I was pathetic. I couldn’t even have something as simple as a family. You can build your own family of queers. You can find people you love. And you can have your own adventures that are not the typical adventures one is expected to have!
I remember when I was referred to my Sixth Form Careers’ Advisor. He helped me navigate my university application forms to university. He understood the situation I was in, and what potential I could have, and personally intervened to make sure that the Headteacher of my secondary school wrote a letter in support of my circumstances in respect to my university application.
Everything that has happened in my life in my childhood you could see as child abuse. Or, you could see it another way: people doing the best they could, with the resources they had. It was child abuse.
Transition in Agony is a real-life tale. It shows what happens when you can’t pursue your passions because hate gets in the way. I didn’t want to become a writer at first, because I saw how writers such as Joanne Rowling abuse their power as writers.
Writers, I think, are people who truly do have special powers. A writer can rewrite a story however they seem fit, but that level of power becomes with a certain amount of responsibility, and writers need to be held accountable to what they write.
The victors are the ones who write history. We, trans people are the victors, and there will always be a place for us, too, as well as everyone else who doesn’t fit in society. There’s still time to create these spaces and create mutual aid groups where people can feel safe no matter who they are.
As a kid, you try and fit within the mould. It unfortunately is the case today for trans kids that they are forced to police and self-censor their own language and even the very vocabulary they use.
We have to protect the trans kids. We can’t let my story happen to any other trans kid. I will try and do my best, through my journalism, to fight for these trans kids.
This is the 21st century. Trans people are here to stay.
We will not conform to fascism. We will resist. And we will fight back. And we will all, eventually, feel brave enough to fight back against it.
All it took to write this book, was my sanity, my childhood, my Computer Science aspirations, my straightness, a loss of my brother, and the sheer trauma and simultaneous joy of having eleven different mental health disorders as a result and about twenty people inside my head at once to try and educate cis and trans people.
The lesson cannot be forgotten ever again, and our course of our human history must continue. I ain’t the first to say it, but it’s absolutely true.
Trans rights are human rights.
Trans rights are human rights!
trans rights are human rights
Trans Rights Human Rights
trans rights human rights
TRHR.
TRHR
Trhr
trhr
tr
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I wish I could end this book here. Unfortunately, in this country there is one group of people who get even fewer human rights than trans people, and even the UN is concerned.
The disabled.
We, disabled people, are subject to abuse on a daily basis.
I will always be mentally ill, no matter what happens. There is no magic solution to PTSD. You can’t be cured of it; you can only manage it. You can absolutely go into remission, but the memories are still there. And they will always trouble you. Because they should trouble you.
People who think that trauma is entirely up to the victim to manage, are effectively abusers .They do not understand why certain behaviours may be abusive. And if you don’t have a sense of morality and you refuse to gain a sense of morality after being informed and explained about what you’re doing is problematic, you’re probably an abuser and I have been hurt by you.
I’ve suffered as a result of not having a childhood. I’ve suffered because the people who were supposed to protect me didn’t. I’ve suffered because of media portrayals of mental illness and disability.
I don’t believe that new work by big corporations should continue depicting disability and mental illness the same way we’ve seen over and over. That there’s a struggle, and it’s eventually overcome by things magically getting better. It’s a form of whitewashing the disability experience. And it leads me to throwing stuff the wall because once again, my lived experiences are just ignored in favour of ‘good cinema’.
I am sick and tired of this. I am sick and tired of my voice being excluded because it’s not ‘good cinema’ or ‘good reporting’.
The truth is, there’s no magic in disability. It just sucks.
It’s this kind of magical thinking that leads to the abuse of disabled people, that magically we’ll find solutions to our problems without being given the resources to do so. As if we could just "inspire" our way out of poverty, disability, or any other misfortune in life. As if we’d magically grow back the brain matter that abuse destroyed, without effective medical treatment.
Three million people are currently waiting on NHS waiting lists and haven’t received a single treatment since they were referred. One million are currently waiting more than 18 weeks. These numbers are not shifting, despite the Labour government’s efforts, because they fundamentally don’t understand how disability works or what disabled people need. And anyone can become disabled at any time.
The abuse of disabled people, including cutting the last bits of support we get from PIP, Limited Capability for Work and Work-Related Activity, and making it increasingly hard to access disability benefits, is just straight-up abusive. I think Keir Starmer is personally responsible, in my opinion.
Because he should know better. He’s a human rights lawyer. Why aren’t disabled people his first priority?
We are the ones who’ve spent years understanding the threats to the vulnerable. We are often working people, trying to work and help others in spite of our severe disabilities. And yet, we’re treated like fucking shit. My poem Transition in Agony is still relevant right now.
This may make me deeply unpopular, but I do still believe in degrees of disability, for example. I don’t think the government or a doctor should decide this. I think it should be entirely self-determined by the person’s level of distress, and that should be taken into account when the NHS prioritises people for therapy.
People should be allowed to say how urgently they need the help, not have this decided for them. Because this, leads to waiting lists that fundamentally do not work, as they become completely arbitrary.
Some people may have the same conditions but aren’t as affected because theirs aren’t as severe. Unfortunately, the NHS still relies on a 1960s model of equality. And if you don’t agree with it, doctors just tell you to go private.
When disability support is being cut, it’s an answer that may as well as be hurling abuse at the disabled person. To me, it’s a form of violence, just that it’s not socially acceptable to punch disabled people in the face to make them go away and stop bothering you in the doctor’s office as you can’t help them and you have no resources because the government never gave you any resources.
I don’t understand how doctors and nurses can go into work every day, thinking that this is OK. I support the resident doctor’s strikes because these people can’t go into work every day believing everything is fine, even though it leads to current care getting worse.
I support the NHS staff that leave the NHS for this reason, because it’s at least the honourable thing to do. I tried asking my local hospital, Wythenshawe Hospital as well as several Greater Manchester hospitals, for help with my mental health several times. Every fucking time, I’ve been sent home.
I have self-harmed. I have tried to end my life. I’ve even had the police called on me. I now have an informal police resolution, a Community Resolution Order, all because I committed the crime of being mentally ill. I am challenging the police on this, but it’s going to be a long wait, because the courts and legal experts are also underfunded.
Do you know where mentally ill people end up when we don’t talk about mental illness out of concern for “the mental health of healthy people”?
Prison.
One in four people in prison have undiagnosed ADHD. And prisons are bursting, with mentally ill people who shouldn’t be in prison, but should receive mental health support.
Prisons have become the modern asylum, and no longer house real criminals. Since it’s no longer politically acceptable to run asylums, we’ve rightfully adopted the community care model. But the underfunding of this model was entirely intentional, designed to punish the mentally ill for being mentally ill.
We know this. Progressive people have been saying these things for years. But the current Red Tories in power don’t care. They see mentally ill people as an obstacle, not an opportunity to lead.
It’s the same shit. People avert their eyes when they see suffering, because why should they care when it doesn’t directly impact them? It’s an abuse of power when you have the authority to fix our lives, but you choose to not to do so, for your own self-gain.
The reality is, a lot of disabled people end up becoming counsellors because so many healthy people won’t. We have to help each other because no one else will. And we’re so tired. We’re increasingly under-resourced, and we’re getting worse.
So please, forgive me when I say that healthy people (or people with very mild mental health issues) are awful. That’s my lived experience. And you will not invalidate my experiences.
They should know better. But instead, I’ll just be told what a travesty it all is at the next NHS mental health appointment, while I wait years for therapy that the system never intends to give me, as they make another excuse such as ‘you’re now under a different trust’, or ‘you are too mentally ill’ or ‘you need to not have ADHD so that you turn up to appointments, oh and we also won’t give you reasonable adjustments because everyone’s mental health struggles are the same’.
When it’s a pattern, it’s hard to not feel that this is all intentional. That this is a way to kill off the most severely disabled.
When you go to an emergency department, a heart attack patient gets seen first. Because they’re about to die without any treatment.
So why is it any different for mental health? Because that would involve recognising that we’ve been abusing the mentally ill all this time, and that’s politically impossible because why would you acknowledge publicly you abused your power if you’re in power?
And that is why I am doing journalism, despite my disabilities. Because I want things so desperately to change. But that change won’t happen unless the healthy people advocate for me too, even though it’s hard and capitalism is stressing out everyone.
But it’s worse for us. It just is.
I am not ashamed of being disabled, but I am ashamed that I have to live in this society.
The Realisation
TW: Disability abuse, brief mention of self-harm, no graphic details.
It may seems rather absurd that a 20-year-old can hold effectively two full time jobs – running a mental health charity to help amongst everything, trans people, but also study for a Computer Science degree at the same time.
But it’s true.
I spent the first two years and a bit of my university education helping to try to get queers safe places to live and to try and stop them from toppling themselves.
Every day would be a new adventure. I have to this day very minimal formal mental health training. The only ‘training’ I had was to be willing to listen to people, and a ton of other people willing to help me out. But slowly, over time, we were at the forefront of understanding people’s mental health.
How?
I just listened to people.
As the years have gone by, I realised more, and more that one of the greatest problems of the 21st century is the complete inability to understand the mental health problems that creative people face.
Just before writing this chapter, I relapsed once again. I broke my ten years of not self-harming. I couldn’t take it anymore. I watched a 2025 media representation of mental health, KPop Demon Hunters.
And it broke me. It wasn’t intentional. They wrote it for their audience. It made me realise that there are still people that do not understand the true scale of mental illness, nor what people go through. Even other people with mental illness who have beaten it.
I have received formal training at the NHS Recovery Academy for Active Listening, and I’ve been on other training courses, too, because not everybody’s recoveries are the same. And sometimes, it does take that mentally ill person to write the handbook on how to heal from mental illness.
I think this may explain why I became that charity CEO while at university. I saw the state of psychology after what happened, and I realised that the field is still very, very primitive.
My story is really unique. Nobody really knows how to treat my PTSD. I think it’s an important story, because there needs to be more awareness of the level of disability in many trans people. And this needs to change. We, disabled trans people, do exist. And we need help.
This is both a message for other trans people, as well as other cis allies. Please support your disabled queers too. Because we struggle the most out of all queers. We sit at home, writing books, trying to plot domination; we try and go to protests whenever our bodies allow us to, and we try and fight for human rights where we can.
I cannot believe I’m still alive. I thought I’d be dead by twenty at 18. Just one of my traumas could be enough to traumatise someone for their lives. And yet, I have experienced several major and vile traumas at once, and came out of it stronger.
For some of us to recover, we need peace and quiet, and we need advocacy and people to fight for us. But for others like me? I can’t sit in peace. I have to keep fighting because I don’t know any better but to keep trying to fight for civil rights. I find there’s fucking meaning in the fight.
What else would I be doing, but fighting for disabled trans people, as a disabled trans person? I considered retiring from activism that I have been doing since the day I have been born, but I can’t.
I don’t have a choice but to fight, as a queer, disabled, trans person. I have to fight. And if you can, please consider it too. Join an activist group. Write to your MP. Educate yourself on trans issues.
I hope this book acts as a wake-up call to both cis and trans people alike, that we need to fight the fascists now, and kick them out, in whatever way we need to. I am completely overworked. Please do not rely on me to have all the solutions to the problems in activism. Because I don’t know. And if I think about certain problems, my head will explode.
But here’s some of my ideas, at least:
We need to fight for a formalised Universal Basic Income. Universal Credit is basically that if you stop gatekeeping it to disabled people only. We should in all likelihood implement a Wealth Tax. We need to codify flexibility at work to work a 4 day week so that people don’t have to work forty hours a week if they don’t need to.
We need to not means-test pensions and benefits. We have to stop the war on the common person, because we are all unhealthy individuals; we’re human, disabled or not.
The attitudes of yesteryear cannot start creeping in. We have to fight for our democracy. And now it’s more important than ever. We have to start having conversations.
You know what makes me different from a bigot?
I correct myself, after an extended period of reflection and as I try to patiently understand people’s experiences. Sometimes, that period of reflection can be extremely long because there’s a lot to think about. And that is valid too.
For example, I do not believe that the person who raped me is part of the far-right. I do not believe that the person who treated me badly at the university is a fascist. I do not believe that the Christian charity who helped me escape homelessness are a bad bunch of people, or that the Manchester Trans Liberation Assembly is filled with terrible people.
I just don’t think they are really addressing the root of the problem. Capitalism. And I suppose that makes me unique, in that I actively want to try and document the problems with capitalism and trans people, and don’t find it problematic.
After all, we are anarchists, whether we like it or not. We can stealth it, we can hide it, but at the end of the day, we all upend society by simply existing. I just want the Manchester Trans Liberation Assembly to not give up because that’s how these fascists get us.
I want to love the Manchester Trans Liberation Assembly, but right now, it is not effective. We may be all gay, but I end up arguing all day. I understand wanting to work with this government, that’s OK, but we have to keep politics clean and not cause in others a complete mental breakdown.
All trans people deserve love and respect. Get your heads out of sand.
Let’s work together. This manifesto, is how, we believe, we can all fight the fascists.
The Manifesto
The UK is in a deep political crisis. Our politicians seem to have no ideas on how to fix the country. And people are starting to lose hope. But there is still time.
We want to create a new political movement, and an additional Queer Party to go to a grand coalition with all the left-leaning parties. We are a new, progressive queer-led movement in the United Kingdom. We want to give people hope that polarised politics can change for the better, and we want to implement proportional voting.
We, the Queer Party, want to combat the dangerous individuals posing as “concerned citizens” acting in bad faith in our shared society. We believe that we will do this together.
These people do nothing but sow fear, uncertainty and doubt. They add nothing to the conversation but divide and cause chaos in order to return to a repressive society and to curb civil liberties, under the pretext of concern.
We all want to minimise harm from these people as much as possible, no matter who we are. They are still people, but they harm knowingly no matter the intent, and they must be stopped from harming others.
We think that the evidence & the work of queer people speaks for itself in fighting this.
We aid discovery of these facts that already exist out there and bringing them to light.
We celebrate our differences, show the best of humanity, and leave our egos at the door.
We are a collaborative effort by all of us, ordinary citizens. We are not affiliated with any political movement, or left-wing politicians.
We are ordinary people that understand. We want to show that this is a fight related to all our wider human rights, and that queer people are amongst the first dominoes in a rising tide of dangerous individuals. If we are knocked down, all other groups will follow.
We have to bring people who are ambivalent towards queer rights, but understand the concept, to show we are not the only at-risk group, and we need allies from the general public. We have to get language and approach correct; we can’t counter dangerous overtones with violent language or terms that alienate those who are unsure and need reassurance and compassion.
We understand that the anger felt by trans people towards these dangerous people and at recent developments that have been made against us is very real and we do not seek to undermine or re-write the experiences of anyone. Our goal is to minimise hurt for our community and to speak to those who are as yet undecided, and hate and rage does not aid us in this goal.
The Queer Party consists of working class librarians, archivists, journalists and whistleblowers. We collate evidence and knowledge, and we can all, no matter who we are, share this knowledge to our communities to keep us all safe, to spread the message of love transcending hate, and to contribute to making the case to the general public who have to understand these people impact them as well too.
Even normal, ordinary people in stable jobs, in stable housing, and in a stable position in life, can be affected by these dangerous people.
For people who align themselves with our fight and insist upon hatred despite having knowledge, or who cannot be helped, we use self-preservation, and we dissociate from these people
We are all humans. We are all unique, and we all face the same struggles with this current government. That's what unites us. You likely disagree with government policy, and the majority of us also disagree.
You also almost certainly agree that no person, no matter who they are or what their background is, should lose the right to their own humanity
If it’s seen acceptable for one group to lose it, they’ll come for you too. History tells us that means we also have to interact with you, and you may be part of a group we, the Queer Party, don’t often talk to. We are all worried about the spread of hatred in our society by the misguided, misinformed, and bigoted press that platforms hate and promotes conservatism by as an institutional default, without giving it a second thought.
By that, I mean the narrative that people are inherently lazy, don’t contribute to society and should be forced into unsuitable jobs that don’t make sense. Spreading fear about sex and gender, because they don’t understand it, and they think it threatens the traditional status quo.
Being tough on desperate, vulnerable migrants, on the basis that this will somehow help the economy and totally not just hide the problem by fiddling the statistics. Releasing violent criminals way too early on the basis of overcrowding only, which effectively threatens our collective safety. The non-violent offenders who make technical violations of the law when the law is deliberately not enforced are unnecessarily imprisoned.
The inability to get an operation that you desperately need. Supposedly the only productive demographic is sat in traffic giving money to oil companies, in the name of profit, not humanity. Meanwhile, our public transport systems are falling apart, and the big corporations, who benefit from the status quo, are not forced to pay tax, who funnel people’s hard work into their pockets, in return for kickbacks and bribery, and are failing to protect them from influences such as Andrew Tate, and harms from social media, and coming up with shitty laws such as the Online Safety Act which we have said, as activists, multiple times over the years, that’s not how the internet actually works.
Our children are being failed by a failing education system, that is underfunded, and their parents being failed by being forcibly put into extreme poverty through our broken benefits system that doesn’t work for anyone. Pensioners are being scapegoated and forgotten about, the people who built this country, and can share so much wisdom and joy to others.
The economy and country need improvement, and the wars need to be fucking STOPPED, and maybe we wouldn’t need more cuts on the bloody elderly. It’s important to show every single instance of these things happening, and prove them, with citations and receipts. We must hold them accountable.
This playbook used to marginalise groups that people don't necessarily agree with due to lack of understanding, such as trans people, asylum seekers, and disabled people, borders tyrants of the past and has led to widespread atrocities by people such as Mao Zedong, Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, and many more.
Women becoming targeted for their ability to bear children to then recruit into the dangerous movement, without any regard for their health, emotions, views or circumstances. Women inevitably get reduced to child rearing units. Banning abortion. Repealing discrimination laws that protect everyone.
Worming their way into state institutions to work for their political aims. Influencing the Supreme Courts. Influencing the civil service, charities, politicians, thinktanks, forming influential pressure groups. Cutting the size of government, with the express intent of cutting aid to vulnerable people. Make this politically palatable thanks to marginalisation and division. A deliberate misinterpretation of religious texts.
A complete loss of our rights, liberty and freedom. Power via fear. As a result, they have power in elections due to the fear, uncertainty and doubt they have stoked over the years in people deliberately. It sounds familiar, right? That sounds like America.
But how can that be? America is supposed to be one of the good guys.
We have seen this before in queer history, and also in black history. The voices that called for Jim Crow never really went away. They just hid. We want to highlight what is happening to us, so we can show that these people don’t act in good faith, and need to be stopped. We give hope that we can do this, and in modern times as well.
As a concrete example, Poland drove these exact awful people out in 1989, which hid behind a political movement; also in 2023 again, when they tried unsuccessfully to grab a tiny bit of power. It didn’t work, and while honestly the Platforma Obywatelska has problems, the fact that Poland has a proportional voting system means that fascism cannot get into power. Because fascism would have to beat democracy, first. And as long as we believe in democracy, we can beat the fascists. We must work in solidarity.
We believe as trans and non-binary people, the Polish people have given us the tools to fight this threat and have shown us it’s possible. They have done it over, and over again as their country has fallen and risen time and time again.
Our allies are being othered and marginalised so Labour can pursue a certain agenda thinking this will win the 2029 election. But all it will do is just make the problem worse. We can see how the Winter Fuel and the Disability Cuts have backfired and spread even more fear into vulnerable people — the fact we spoke up about the winter fuel cuts means the government is quietly thinking of dropping the policy.
If you agree with the above in principle; you are an ally to trans people. If you are not trans or non-binary, you are what we call a “queer ally”, a person who is comfortable in their experiences of gender. We do not use this as a slur, and we do not wish to use it to divide. We merely want to identify you as a person who has the potential to understand our struggle and who could spread this message further.
We have to be accountable to our mistakes as the Queer Party.
We will be and responsive when it’s needed, but to practice self-preservation where necessary.
We have to be assertive and visible, but acknowledge and listen to others’ needs, no matter who they may be, even our enemies.
We have to be inclusive, empathetic, and compassionate to ourselves and others.
Display emotional restraint in decision-making — being flexible and staying to the spirit of who we are, but firm and honest with ourselves when it’s needed.
We will highlight these human rights abuses to you through our hard work and dedication as this fight is a fight for our existence; and with this information, you can act, however you feel is appropriate.
So please, write to your MP to show disagreement. Attend protests that matter to you, not just trans resistance protests, although we love trans, non-binary people and allies attending them. Change your vote. Let the government know we exist Speak out at work. Help queer people be visible.
Speak out against people you disagree with.
Vote Queer Party, or any other left-leaning party, such as the Liberal Democrats, Your Party & the Green Party, but please, do not vote Labour. They’re as bad as the Tories. And obviously Reform is the fascist right attempting to come into parliament.
We will support you no matter what actions you take, or don’t take – as long as you don’t sit on the fence. Everyone needs to strive to make sure our message is one of love, and to not promote hate.
We will hold people to account who do harm, both inside and outside our communities, and prevent them from doing so. We will listen to you, and hear you out, and engage in legitimate dialogue and discussion should you want it.
We want to show that Love Transcends Hate in parliament. And that's why you should join our party. This is our plan to defeat fascism, through a free press, and a return to politics of respect.
Sign up for the newsletter, join the Discord, and we will join support other movements too, as long as they are compatible with the principles above
The Mental Health Services Don’t Work
I am done staying silent. It’s important that people know the truth, despite the risks involved.
I am a survivor of what I believe was state-sanctioned conversion therapy, carried out under the supervision of the NHS. This was not decades ago. It happened in the last decade. The National Health Service will never admit it. They will try to convince me it was my fault. They already have tried to deny it several times. My story is not unique. I have already tried to go public on my Bluesky, and I have already had a trans person talk about how they believe they’ve been abused by the NHS too.
But the NHS will still try and deny it happened. I am done staying silent. Before my book comes out, people need to know the truth. As a journalist, I aim to tell the truth, the truth, and only the truth. The NHS, in its current form, is not a functioning health service. Parts of it are still stuck in the 1940s. Waiting lists are at record highs, with over three million people not being seen at all. For trans people like me, the system is actively harmful.
The doctors and nurses are not the problem. It’s the attitudes of the people who run the organisation. And those attitudes are directly linked with politics. Itompletely misdiagnosed My childhood issues, as a result. I left home at 18, already deeply confused about my identity. I knew I was not a man, because I never had been, as I am trans. My childhood had been traumatic, but instead of addressing that or supporting my gender identity, the NHS became the main trauma.
My first mental health referral was to CAMHS (Child & Adolescent Mental Health Services), after I smashed a school window in fear. At home, things were unsafe, but nobody in the NHS ever asked me about my home life. Instead, I was diagnosed with autism, sent an “autism alert card,” and left without meaningful support. My struggles, including bullying, sexual assault by peers, and complicated childhood trauma, were ignored. My GP gave me antidepressants in a ten-minute appointment. No safeguarding. No questions. Nothing.
I became incredibly depressed as I increasingly suffered abuse from peers growing up, and I was increasingly dysphoric. I was even sexually assaulted by other kids in school on a daily basis. I was subjected to all kinds of verbal abuse and told my life was worthless, repeatedly, from primary to secondary school. I told the NHS about these things in my CAMHS appointment. And I was told it was because of autism.
I still do not think I am autistic, or if I am, I have mild autism, and it is not an explanation for my childhood. I believe I actually have ADHD, autism and trauma.
The Mental Health Team in Birmingham
I went to university in Birmingham in 2018. Because of how difficult my childhood was, I ended up in mental health services. That was when the abuse from the NHS broke me.
Forward Thinking Birmingham is a mental health service that I believe needs to close. I was progressively sedated with more and more antipsychotics, benzodiazepines, and mood stabilisers to try and “reduce my symptoms of psychosis” because I did not know I was trans at the time and they thought being trans was the disease.
As an intelligent individual with independent thought, I went along with it. I even helped the psychiatrists by researching what could possibly be wrong with me. I was unwittingly helping my abusers who did not believe I was trans. They ignored me when I told them and pretended I had never said anything about being trans.
Three psychiatrists ended up in my dorm room prescribing me quetiapine for my “psychosis” and I was threatened with discharge if I did not accept clozapine. I was then discharged for not accepting clozapine under duress, an incredibly serious antipsychotic that needs blood monitoring. I clearly did not need the drug. I was an 18-year-old struggling with identity, being trans, and childhood trauma. I was not schizophrenic. I DID NOT NEED TO BE CHEMICALLY SEDATED.
I was literally handed drugs in a shrink’s car outside the University of Birmingham campus. I was constantly asked if I was feeling better and told I was experiencing fewer symptoms of psychosis.
I do have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, but that OCD would never have formed if the NHS had not made me constantly doubt myself over whether I was feeling “better” with the new mental health drugs, essentially inducing a new disorder into me by questioning my own sanity at every step.
The complex PTSD from my childhood would not be disabling if the NHS did not force me to engage with family trauma at every opportunity, only to pull away support services every time I started talking about it because I “lost eligibility.” I was not given a full CPTSD assessment. Instead, I was diagnosed with three questions.
The ADHD I think is the only thing that has always been “wrong” with me. And there is nothing wrong with having ADHD. But I was treated like a drug seeker when I requested ADHD medication.
I was denied stimulants, prescribed an SNRI (serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors) despite known previous adverse reactions to serotonin modifying drugs suicidality and mood issues amongst other things), and I was made to travel to Birmingham in person to complete the assessment after I had moved to Manchester without reason other than NHS policy. They were still reluctant to give me the treatment.
I have been on approximately thirty different mental health medications. You would think they would stop after five. They did not. And who knows what permanent side effects these drugs have given me. It is probably part of the reason why I am so damaged now and unable to work full-time.
I have read through my Greater Manchester Mental Health records and it is disgusting how I have had to explain my life over and over again, only to be judged by mental health professionals, nurses, psychologists, and psychiatrists, and be told I’m wrong for feeling the way I do. I have been told by multiple mental health nurses that I have a personality disorder as a way to get rid of me and to mistreat me. I believe I have been mistreated in hospital repeatedly and have repeatedly experienced transphobia within the NHS.
I was forced to attend appointment, after appointment, to create more paperwork without any treatment progress. I was given so many broken promises. My Greater Manchester Mental Health record is about 500 pages long combined. If you include my mental health files from Forward Thinking Birmingham Mental Health Team, and the Countess of Chester Hospital I reckon it’s probably closer to 800.
Therapy was denied to me under the guise of ‘moving out of area of the trust’ (in full knowledge that this would put me at the back of the waiting list), being too ill for services, not being ill enough for services, underfunding, and every excuse under the book.
I have counted 13 therapy referrals since 2018. Some of my favourites have been:
A man who clearly did not understand the challenges behind being trans and my background, who genuinely tried but I was forced to stay with him because of zero other choice in the system.
A woman who was lovely, but I had to explain the very basic concepts of CBT to them. To not provide me a proper therapist with an actual working understanding of trauma despite supposedly being there for trauma is abusive.
My personal favourite, the therapist who discharged me from his therapy for “being unable to leave my overthinking thoughts in a plastic bag outside at night” by session two.
And finally, a therapist literally worked with me on the serious problem of leaving “twenty sponges in the sink because I don’t know how to clean dishes” as an OCD behaviour. He came up with a treatment plan and everything.
Does the NHS even have qualified therapists at this point? Or have they all left for private practice?
This is institutional abuse. I have even had the police give me sympathy after hearing about my experiences with the NHS. The police. Given my experiences with the police, the police have honestly treated me better than the NHS. Which given how I allege that they have assaulted me, says a lot.
During suicide attempts, I was misgendered repeatedly by AMHPs and other professionals in writing, and I believe it was clearly deliberate. There is no other way to interpret it. You do not write “Female” and then continue to use he/him pronouns on the same form, alongside “the citizen is wearing female attire,” unless you are trying to be actively transphobic.
I was abused during mental health assessments and told it was my fault for not “trying hard enough.” The few psychiatrists who listened actually cried and said the system had failed me. And still couldn’t help me. I have been in a Section 136 (a mental health detention) in a hospital right next to where my domestic abuser lives. I was ignored when I raised concerns.
I have had many safeguarding alerts put on me by the few supportive NHS staff, only to be ignored by others. Most NHS staff never read my records anyway, and I had to re-explain my life story. I have tried to commit suicide many times because of repeated, inappropriate medications being prescribed to me that made me feel drastically worse. I have tried to commit suicide because I was denied help so many times for trans issues.
I have been told I was ‘verbally abusive’ by the NHS repeatedly and a ‘violent patient’ over the years, all because I was deeply vocally unsatisfied with their services and I called them idiots for bringing me to A&E, making me wait for eight hours on an uncomfortable chair, and then being discharged home after a suicide attempt with no help, expecting me to somehow get better with a leaflet to the Samaritans.
It was not even worth printing, and I stopped accepting these leaflets years ago. It’s just a complete insult. How about the NHS actually gives me therapy than burdening a stretched charity for no reason?
All this is at the taxpayers expense. I paid taxes while I worked despite all this going on. And this is the level of service I received.
It’s not good enough. And there’s no No Care in Trans Healthcare.
I was lied to by Forward Thinking Birmingham about being referred to Nottingham GIC. I spent six months believing that lie. It was only a trans-friendly GP who caught it, and I have never seen a GP scream so hard over the phone since. I was then referred to Sheffield. I was never seen under Sheffield GIC either.
To this day, I still have not been seen by a GIC. I have been seen by Indigo, the new Manchester GIC pilot, but they have repeatedly failed me:
They refused to prescribe progesterone due to a so-called “lack of evidence,” despite the fact that I have developed breasts and a sex drive while taking it. Apparently, my own lived experience is just placebo, and clearly I know nothing about my body. That’s medical misogyny.
They denied funding for an extra session of laser hair removal because I missed an appointment while I was homeless. This policy is heartless and there is zero human decency in this.
They are nearly impossible to contact, unless you count sending an email into the void and praying for a reply as reasonable communication. They have no phone number. Nor any physical presence I can go to.
They refused to put me on the co-production panel for services, even though I have highlighted serious flaws and I objectively have the expertise to help fix them.
They failed to maintain meaningful communication with me outside of annual reviews.
They tried to deny me surgery because my T levels were 3 instead of 2.5, the supposedly acceptable range, until my GP stepped in to overturn this nonsense.
I felt forced under Indigo to come out as a trans woman instead of non-binary because they were using the same gender psychiatrists as the GICs, and it is clear they still practice gatekeeping to this day. Recently, Transcend, who are a Cheshire gender pilot, tried to suggest my partner, who is a non-binary AFAB lesbian, are “just a lesbian with body dysmorphia,” delaying the top surgery referral.
It’s completely sickening. You cannot trust a gender psychiatrist with anything. Not even to make a cup of tea, because they would probably find a way to gatekeep the concept of Earl Grey as well. Who is NHS Policy, and how can I meet her?
I had to go into hospital recently in 2025, and I believe have been abused there too. I have made a complaint, but the Chief Executive of Wythenshawe Hospital has declined every part of my complaint except for the medication error that literally cannot be ignored as it breaks the law.
I was literally starved in hospital because I was so unwell. I was denied appropriate food over, and over again. Because of policy to only feed patients at meal times and if they miss meal times, they aren’t allowed to eat. Deranged.
I was told to complain to PALS. PALS didn't care.
I was left screaming for dear life for close to an hour in A&E because of insufficient pain relief. And the staff were aware and chose to do nothing. I cannot imagine how traumatising that was for my partner who was there to advocate for me; if I was alone, I’m pretty sure the NHS would have left me to die.
I was given a form for my ‘autism’ that was mandatory to fill in. I did not consent, and the hospital put it on the system anyway, claiming policy. This was clearly designed for low-functioning autistic individuals. I did not want to fill this in. I just wanted to speak to the nurses like any other person. I felt like they used me not filling this in as a shield for any miscommunications and it was clearly a way to manage liability for the hospital and NOT to help autistic patients.
I have had my trans housemate in 2025 go through the NHS and be repeatedly denied reasonable adjustments for their disabilities in hospitals, because of policy and Greater Manchester Mental Health has misgendered them on the refusal letter for an ADHD assessment.
I was touched without my consent, repeatedly. I was told that was standard policy. I had my ‘startle reflex’ tested by being suddenly grabbed without my consent, despite being clearly conscious but in pain, and despite having a PTSD diagnosis on my system. The doctor couldn’t see the issue with this. It was just routine to do this.
I was interrogated about my sex life by consultants. I was asked inappropriate questions that made me very, very uncomfortable as a queer person. I felt dirty and I was pressured to explain my queerness, while high on morphine.
I was moved in the middle of the night from the womens’ ward to a separate room. There was no seeming clinical need, and I was never given an explanation.
I’ve had the nurse move my bed up despite me screaming out in pain that she was crushing my spine.
I have had a nurse laugh about putting the call button out of reach.
I could go on, and apparently these things are not real complaints. The best they did was hunt down a few nurses in this completely dysfunctional environment and harass them for apologies, whereas it seems half of the managers in this hospital should be fired.
It’s not good enough.
I then was in the same hospital again because I was prescribed an antidepressant for my OCD despite my objections, as it was the only option for the GP. This medication caused me to feel so unwell that the GP called an ambulance.
The GP did not consult with the on-call psychiatrist as it was impractical to do so, and the GP was left to prescribe medication for a patient with a complex history without any support.
I did not want an antidepressant, I needed therapy. Despite this, I was told that ‘there needed to be some actions on the paperwork’ to be reconsidered for a referral a Community Mental Health Team, so through coersion and desperation, I agreed to take yet another medication that I knew would have an adverse effect on me.
It not only turned out that the Community Mental Health Team, which was responsible for the mental health of some of the most unwell in Manchester DID NOT deliver trauma therapy, BUT ALSO was refusing my referrals over, and over, and over again, because I did not fit the criteria, despite me being eligible under the Care Act. They refused to budge at all.
I ended up being actually banned from this hospital for 12 months and given a Community Resolution Order by the cops because I was screaming for help because I was deeply suffering (sweating profusely, vomiting etc), from this incorrectly prescribed medication, and the hospital called the cops instead of recognising it as a mental health crisis and incapacity caused by the medication.
I was then told that I had assaulted someone when this was not the case, and I believe I was forced to sign a false confession. I never got medical help. I was told to go to a different hospital, but I didn’t, because I was too scared because I was treated like a criminal for trying to get healthcare.
I survived, but this is not an acceptable standard of care.
I was then not allowed to explain later what happened from my perspective, because I am literally not allowed to even step on the pavement of the hospital, unless I am literally in cardiac arrest. This is literally what the letter says verbatim.
If I go to hospital, this is the first thing doctors see too on the system. This totally does not prejudice my future care at all, and totally doesn’t lead to more doctors mistreating me.
I was given no support from the hospital, no advocacy, and no referrals. To this day, I still have appointments with Wythenshawe Hospital staff, and they have to book me into other buildings in the trust, inconveniencing me and them. This ban is entirely and utterly fucking pointless, put in place beacause of a Trust Violence Reduction Policy, and this doesn’t even ‘protect staff’ from ‘being assaulted’. It’s a complete joke. But the NHS managers are happy.
I am not the only one. The NHS has a serious problem with abuse and neglect in mental health and trans healthcare, as well as institutional transphobia. And when you challenge it, you get told it’s policy and to suck it up.
This is a system so broken that it consistently harms vulnerable people instead of helping them. I have been on both the patient and mental health worker side.
I support workers’ strikes in the NHS. I can’t imagine working in this environment, being heavily underpaid and coming into work every day wishing it was the last.
As a non-NHS mental health worker who started their own non-profit because their experiences were so bad, I was expected to wait with suicidal people for four hours because of a lack of ambulances. I saw first hand people waiting years for therapy. I was expected to accept that ‘crisis intervention’ meant that the crisis team would come out in three days. They literally redefined what the fucking word ‘crisis’ meant. And they didn’t see a problem.
They even redefined a therapy hour as fifty minutes! I think to redefine the well-established concept of time truly shows how far the NHS will go to save pennies, but completely sidestep treating patients.
I believe the NHS leadership needs to change radically, and more money given to the NHS will just be spaffed up the wall. I don’t think this is a money issue. I believe the system needs reform from the ground up. I believe the public needs to know this story so people like me are not forgotten.
And that’s why I’m sharing all this, despite the legal liability it may put me in. Because it’s important people know the truth of why I am so fucked up as a person.
It’s all because of NHS policy. So I emailed the chair of the NHS Greater Manchester Mental Health Trust. I am still awaiting a response.
Dear Tony Warne, Chair of the Greater Manchester Health Mental Health Trust,
I believe that the actions of the Greater Manchester Mental Health trust have now reached the level of violating my fundamental human rights, namely the right from freedom from inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
I am strugging from severe complex post-traumatic stress, as well as several other disabilities which have been diagnosed by the NHS, including OCD, ADHD, depression, anxiety and autism. Your trust is doing nothing to help me at this moment in time, other than providing me appointments for a mental health worker which are entirely pointless as we are unable to progress without a therapist in place who is obviously needed.
To begin, your trust has repeatedly breached the Equality Act 2010 by failing to provide reasonable adjustments for someone with a disability, for which there is no excuse as the NHS is a multi-million pound organisation, as well as continuously refusing to accept the Community Mental Health Team referral despite fitting the criteria under the Care Act 2014. Additionally, it turns out that my local Community Mental Health Team has no psychologists that are trained in mental health trauma healthcare. I must ask what the point of running a mental health team is without having any trauma therapists?
As a current patient of NHS Greater Manchester Mental Health, I have received inappropriate treatment, time, and time again. I have also been cut off from waiting lists several times as I have been priced out of my area, put on a waiting list, and then put back on the same waiting list I was on before, without any regard for the fact that I have been homeless four times in the last eight years. Additionally, I have been given in the past mostly time-limited therapy for eight to twelve sessions which is clearly inappropriate and quite frankly insane for someone with CPTSD and ten other mental health conditions
It’s a complete slap to the face when I have severe, and enduring mental health problems and I’m on Universal Credit, unable to afford private therapy, so I am forced to interact with the appalling levels of care in the NHS.
You may say that the trust no longer has an obligation if I move out of area for my local Community Mental Health Teams, but your Community Mental Health Teams in Manchester are split up into no less than six community mental health teams in Greater Manchester alone, which means that if you move house just even slightly, you lose eligibility.
My question is to you, who is this system helping? This is exactly how people fall through the cracks, and this system is inhumane if after eight years, I have still not received proper trauma therapy under the NHS.
I have been passed from Step 2, to Step 3, to Step 3+, and by the time I get seen, I am pretty sure your trust will invent a Step 4 and a Step 5 to prevent people from actually seeing a therapist. There is no point making me go through all these hoops if it is very obvious that I need intensive trauma therapy, and at one point, your trust actually never even submitted my referral to Step 2, requiring a PALS complaint to get further. I should not have to submit PALS complaints to get care.
I have been given so many leaflets for the Samaritans without any actionable further help that, quite frankly, you start wondering whether the NHS is actually solely responsible for the deforestation of the Amazon. It is unacceptable and inexcusable to keep giving me these things as a way of getting me out of the hospital without any further follow-up, which is what has happened in my case.
I have been abused in several hospitals by mental health nurses over the last few years. I have been repeatedly yelled at, ignored, belittled, and patronised by several colleagues of the NHS, who have proceeded to put down in my records that I suffer from Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder (several psychiatrists have confirmed that I do not) maliciously, and this is now permanently on my record.
I have Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. I would like an official apology for this, as well as a permanent correction on my mental health records. I also have several witnesses of the nurses’ behaviour taking place in the hospitals your trust operates in.
I have been given so many mental health assessments that have resulted in no help. I have been the subject of multiple multi-disclipinary team meetings, as well as multi-agency meetings. And somehow, despite me reiterating my history over, and over again, your trust still refuses to acknowledge that the emotional distress and pain that each and every one of the pointless assesssments has put me in. I have been in a very, very intrusive social care assessment with one CMHT, only to be told that they are not able to provide help at the end, and they knew that they couldn’t provide help at the time.
In addition, I have been illegally detained by the police in Wythenshawe Hospital following a suicide attempt, and there is evidence of this on paper on my medical records. Despite this, the NHS has taken no action to stop me from being illegally detained without a power in use. I am also taking action against the Greater Manchester Police as this was not a proportionate use of power. I have also been told multiple times that I was an aggressive individual for asserting my own rights, which in my opinion, is a type of misogyny.
In addition, there appears to be a culture of discrimination against transgender individuals. I have numerous pieces of paperwork where I have been misgendered and deadnamed by Greater Manchester Mental Health staff members, despite the clear and obvious Female on the top of the form that they are filling out. I have also seen my other transgender friends go through the same treatment. Could you please explain why these things keep happening in the NHS?
Finally, I have been banned from the local hospital, Wythenshawe Hospital, as a result of an adverse reaction to a medication, escitalopram, where this has caused me to enter a very severe flight or fight response, which was interpreted as aggression and the police were called, which resulted in a Community Resolution Order. Again, this will be challenged with the police, but my question to the trust is why was the GMMH team at Wythenshawe Hospital not called?
All the mental health workers have informally agreed that calling the police was entirely inappropriate and an abuse of the trust violence policy, and yet I am the one who now is in fear when a siren goes past, as I was tackled by the security guards and everything, despite literally having a diagnosis of PTSD.
As a result of this, as well as several other violations of my human rights by the NHS, in my book, I offer three potential resolutions:
The NHS finds me a therapist by 5th October, 2025, giving the NHS one month to do so. I would be happy with either an NHS provided therapist that is suitably trained in trauma therapy, intersectionality, and any suitable therapies such as EMDR but not CBT, as this is not an effective treatment for me. I would not take any further legal action.
If this cannot be arranged due to a lack of resources, then the NHS can provide me a private therapist at no cost to me in order to cover this clear and obvious shortfall in the service. This will certainly be cheaper than the thousands of pounds the NHS is currently spending on me ending up in A&E and requiring medical attention from my suicide attempts. I would also not take any further legal action against the NHS.
If all fails, I will be forced to take legal action against the Greater Manchester Mental Health Trust under the Human Rights Act 1998 under Article 3 under Freedom from torture and inhuman or degrading treatment, for the issues mentioned above, as well as me going through my 500 page GMMH Subject Access Request record and highlighting every problem with GMMH.
I really do not want to do this, especially given my mental health, and also it would be a waste of time for everyone involved; but considering that informal complaints, formal complaints, and PALS complaints have gotten nowhere, I would be left with no other option.I hope that you engage with my local mental health team to provide me the therapy I so desperately require, rather than me having to resort to taking the legal route.
I believe in the NHS, and I think that the NHS is important, but the way I have been treated by the NHS is completely, and utterly unacceptable, and the NHS must be held accountable for its actions.Yours sincerely and kindest regards,
Emily Elżbieta Chomicz
A copy of this letter will be emailed to you at communications@gmmh.nhs.uk. I expect your reply within 28 days, as this is a reasonable amount of time to give an answer to my letter. I will record your reply and/or lack of reply publicly on my Substack, excluding our personal data as per GDPR legislation.
The New Movement in Manchester
The trans movement in Manchester has severe problems of totally vacant leadership. And for some reason, trying to organise people into doing things seems to have exposed me to a ton of hate from other trans people. Why the hell would you do that?
I have found that cisgender individuals have been on the large, very receptive to my work. I have had respectful conversations, I have had tons of constructive feedback; my readers enjoy my articles and comment on them.
…and then you get to the Manchester Trans Liberation Assembly (MTLA), as well as similar groups that try and do trans activism, and they just don’t get it, which is really, really sad, because these are my people. Let’s give you a few examples of how my interactions with the MTLA have gone:
When the MTLA started, and the protests started, the first and second protests were quite frankly, a completely disorganised mess. Had I not worked with a team of anarchists on the ground on Friday, this protest wouldn’t have taken off. I want people to get better at organising protests.
On the third protest where they protested outside a closed courthouse away from the public street, the MTLA refused to let me speak, on the basis of ‘not submitting my application for the speakers list early enough’ despite this working absolutely fine for the first and second protests. A compromise was offered to wait for hours to speak as a disabled person who uses a cane and is unable to stand for long periods. Really?
I have been told that ‘I have a god complex’ and ‘I am arrogant’ for trying to help. I’ve been jumped on by multiple people in conversations & my ideas have been shut down. I am simply unable to speak to the MTLA without feeling like I’m screaming into the void and nothing gets done.
Despite months of being active, they have done literally nothing productive. There is currently no Code of Conduct, and the manifesto is out of date. When I offered to help draft the Code of Conduct, in order to avoid toxic politics and the fact I’m a journalist should have given some credence that I can indeed write. I was basically told to go fuck myself.
And it goes on, and on, and on. It’s not just the Manchester Trans Liberation Assembly, either. I have also had arguments with Trans Pride MCR.
I offered to speak at Trans Pride MCR several months before the pride. However, the organiser of Trans Pride MCR has simply ignored me, and proceeded to tell me it’s too late to add me in as all the timings were fixed.
The same organiser, of course, that decided to make the worst, least disruptive route around Manchester to do this trans parade, and proceeded to change the start location about five times because of fascists.
As we learnt from the first protest, it is not a good idea to change location, as you are just inviting fragmentation into the movement. And that, is how the fascists can actually splinter and fracture protest groups. Especially when you have one trustee.
I get that there was only one trustee for a long time. But I would have been happy to volunteer as a trustee, especially that I have charity running experience, and this comes to the crux of the problem. They never answered my request for help, and never acknowledged that fact. Many trans people are too suspicious of politics as the answer.
This is the crux of the problem. The left don’t want to be in power. But we have to be.
I have ran a mental health charity for two years, helping trans people get out of abuse and to improve their mental health, I have worked with the Albert Kennedy Trust on their Trans Pathway Programme, I have interacted with so many trans people that have been simply wonderful to talk to and work with.
But it was also a trans rapist that raped me, and a trans domestic abuser that abused me. And it's trans people that currently are giving me most of the hate for my existence. Trans people are not necessarily one solid block of good. There's bad too.
I get it. I have CPTSD too. Being trans in this society is inherently traumatic, as I've talked about in my free to read memoir. But would you rather do something about it, and make it less traumatic? I would prefer to.
I know that some of you may take offence at my assertive tone. But believe me, that’s exactly the kind of tone we need to actually get us some rights codified in law. Because the situation is so incredibly serious that we need to do something. And I say, get some progressive trans people into power.
Don’t believe me? Just look at the Rainbow Map. The UK is now one of the the worst at legal gender recognition in Europe, since the Supreme Court ruling.
My native country, Poland, has more legal recognition than the UK. And until recently, in Poland you had to sue your parents in order to get your gender!
Poland. You know, that country that has historically had politicians try and implement LGBT-free zones.
Imagine what we could achieve if we actually stopped the pointless bickering, looked at what was going on, the wider picture, and collaborated together. I have built the Queer Party to be exactly just that, but the Queer Party alone cannot save trans people. It is trans people that need to save themselves.
It’s not hard. The whole reason why I have been able to get momentum with the Queer Party, and get the entire left interested, is because finally we have some common sense policies that the majority of the country can get behind.
I don’t attack people. I will however use strong language to call out hate. Because hate has absolutely no fucking place in queer politics. Get rid of it. Here’s our actual top Five Priorities, I believe.
I believe that the DWP should be abolished, and replaced with a Department of Universal Credit. A Universal Basic Income should be established with the following high level structure:
The admin department should be responsible for verifying that the person exists, lives in the UK, and is eligible to receive benefits. The department also has discretionary power to refer any case to an investigative department should the income be abused on a technical level (i.e. trying to claim twice, etc).
The income will be universal, i.e. Everyone can receive it, including homeless people and foreign nationals, and the Post Offices can be used for serving people who don’t use tech.
We should also renationalise the Post Office. It’s clearly struggling. The amount I propose would be that the income is tied to the 50th percentile of national earnings, with Manchester and London weightings of 10% and 15% respectively. The national weekly median is £728 a week, so you end up with an effective income of £1,456 a month as a base. A worker earning minimum wage at 37.5 hours a week will earn £1,721.87 a month. I think £1,456 is a reasonable minimum to support a human being living in Britain. You can’t survive on £316.98 a month if you’re under 25.
In regards to disabled people, I propose that an additional amount is given. I believe that should be a bespoke package for each disabled person in the assessment, with a minimum benefit floor of £412 a month, which is the current rate for Standard Mobility & Daily Living Allowance. The existing child allowances on Universal Credit will be kept, and the two-child cap should be scrapped, because it causes massive poverty. In this system, we phase out Housing Benefit. I believe that Housing Benefit is unfortunately a tool where private landlords are simply able to exploit rents as far as they can go, but also I believe that people should be able to choose where they live within reason, and not be forced into unsuitable living situations. In the long-term, this will be resolved by the construction and addition of more social homes to the housing stock
I believe that this needs to be codified in legislation. Right now, the single biggest thing that is protecting all of us, is the current Equality Act legislation. And it’s not strong enough.
I would like it to be codified into law that every person in the UK has the right to self-determination, no matter who they are. Even the UN says this is important for human rights.
As a result, the Equality Act 2026 would allow for self-identification for trans people. We already allow people to change their names through a deed poll, including sex offenders, and we already have systems in place to stop the abuse of this system.
I propose that it should be as simple as a statutory declaration to change gender with a solicitor, and anyone is able to make that statutory declaration at any time, even foreign nationals. Anyone can also rescind this declaration at any time. There will be no restrictions, aside from people who have been successfully convicted and are serving serious crimes, such as rape, sexual assault, and fraud. The local police will need to informed about the change of gender in these scenarios.
This piece of legislation would require any sex data for anyone in this country, to be stored in a secure location. This effectively would move the gender field to a special category of GDPR data. The Data Protection regulations will also have to be updated.
This legislation also should codify non-binary people in law (so you can declare your gender as non-binary), as well as intersex individuals. This will give this group legal recognition against discrimination.
An explicit protection for all groups with protected characteristics for the right to receive medical treatment that is appropriate and proportional. A right in legislation for trans, non-binary, and intersex individuals to request and receive gender affirming hormonal treatment as needed from the NHS, with all hormone treatment to be made part of MedEx, and therefore free. As most trans people have to take these hormones their entire lives, it makes little sense to make them pay. It’s not really optional.
Implement Proportional Voting
One of the biggest challenges to break the Labour and Tory stronghold is that our voting system simply does not lead itself to coalitions.
Proportional voting works in Europe. Both Germany and Poland use it. And it allows us to do great things, such as left-wing alliances. A common worry is whether this will get Reform into power. This concern is justified, as indeed the far-right party Alternative for Deutschland in Germany has 21% of the vote share, and therefore the opposition to the government in Germany.
But is this actually a problem? After all, this surely means that the system is working. The right wing gets to challenge the left-wing, but has to do so in a way that is respectable. In other words, a far-left governement and a far-right opposition would get nothing accompolished. The system is designed here to stop extremism by design. It doesn’t seem to limit economic growth or social progress either. Germany is one of the most progressive countries in Europe. After all, they literally host BDSM parties in public in Berlin. And Poland is growing extremely quickly, at 3.2% in 2025 Q1.
First Past the Post is not fit for purpose. It produces unrepresentative governments over, and over again. I agree with Andy Burnham, the Greater Manchester Mayor. And unfortunately, the two main parties really don’t want you to change this system. So let’s pressure them.
Council Tax Reform. If there is one subject in this country that is seen with complete distain, it would be council tax.
It seems so bloody arbitrary. You pay taxes depending on how much the rented house you live in was worth in 1991? And why does someone in Stockport in a modest 1 bedroom converted maisonette pay double the council tax than a three bedroom house in Manchester? (this literally happened to me)
This can’t go on unless we want every council in this country to go bankrupt. Tie council tax to income after a certain income, e.g a household that earns above £50,000, with higher allowances in London and Manchester., Of course, this system will also account for kids and people with disabilities, by excluding the household from the tax if children under the age of 18 or disabled people are present. I believe we should use the same criteria as the mentally impairment criteria, but I would change ‘mentally impaired’ to '‘severe mental illness’ for more up-to-date 21st century wording.
We should do do a rebanding for the country, as the bands are clearly incorrect now for many places. Bands and discounts should be standardised across the country, and every council should have bands A-H across a national banding framework. This would make it easier to compare council tax between boroughs. There may indeed be some councils where the higher banded properties do not exist, and in those cases, the central government would provide extra funding.
Some of the money raised in this process can be put towards council household funds and council tax support to help the poorest. This solves the immediate council underfunding problems, too. It could also be put towards building social housing that is actually affordable, which is a real problem currently.
My longer term idea is a property tax paid by landlords on the m² of the property in addition to a percentage of income. Councils should decide how much council tax to charge and where, but there should be a legally mandated minimum floor to discourage councils such as Westminster from undercharging tax and then funding formulas for councils from the national government need to be revisited.
I'm aware that the longer term idea suffers from a particular problem that the New York Housing Authority has, mainly a big bill from the government for its own housing. To avoid this situation, social housing providers should not pay these taxes. This probably would be covered through the process turning council tax into a progressive tax plus a few other tax changes, such luxury taxes on yachts and supercars, a wealth tax for assets above £10m owned at home or at abroad, and public tax returns (with redacted addresses) like how they do it in Sweden.
Make Employment Work Again.
The UK is one of the worst countries in Western Europe for workers’ rights.
My policies for making employment work would be to:
Introduce a French-style Right to Disconnect. Workers should not beforced to work outside of their regular hours, unless they consent to it, and get paid at least a Real Living Wage for doing overtime. Currently they only get have to get at least minimum wage.
All office workers should be allowed to work from home. All workers should also be offered the option of four day weeks (where feasible) as they are proven to work, as well as true flexitime options which would help disabled people like myself, as we can’t even get Access to Work. Fund that too.
Introduce mandatory 45 minute rest breaks for any work day that lasts more than three hours. Currently, the standard in law is 20 minutes if they work for more than six hours a day. This disproportionally impacts poorer workers and leads to low efficiency in low paid work.
Change the self-employment start-up period on Universal Credit to 24 months, and disregard any earnings made completely in the first 12 months. Currently the system assumes you are earning minimum wage after 12 months. 12 months is not a lot of time to start a business, especially as it takes usually 2-3 years for small businesses to become successful.
Every workplace with more than 50 people must employ a mental health worker as part of Occupational Health programmes. This must be someone who is trained to deliver basic counselling as well as Mental Health First Aid. This would put pressure off the NHS, which is struggling with waiting lists and underfunding, as well as mismanagement.
Fix education. More funding for local libraries. Position the UK as the first country with an ethical AI framework and therefore a place to do business. Ignore Guardian editors that don’t have a clue - do in fact send more kids to university as well as all the other routes such as degree apprenticeships. And finally, ensure that every important town in Britain has a crisis cafe like the one in Manchester where people in emotional need can go, staffed with NHS workers, as a new mental health community model. And we make sure we never let the suicide hotlines ever run dry of funding ever again.
This is a difficult part of the book to write, because many of you are my friends, and many of you I highly respect and love. However, you have to also realise that politics is the way that we get power and therefore, change. You don’t have to necessarily agree with my politics. However, I do demand a basic level of respect and decent behaviour between all of us. We are ultimately all trans people fighting for the same goal.
I will not accept trans people who are conservative or pro-medicalism. These people stand in the way of progress. I also do not accept trans people who are assimilationists, unless it’s for health or practical reasons. If you have the ability to help the trans movement, help the trans movement. But simply yelling at people who are trying to help just adds to polarisation.
I literally posted at Andy Burnham to change policy. He will have read it. He’s a transport nerd. He gets it. I am working in the We Demand Change WhatsApp. So I had the Conversation. I spoke to Birmingham’s Lib Dems. And the Manchester Greens. And We Demand Change. And I want to speak to every single political party out there and movement out there that has an idea of what the hell is happening and wants to work together to change it.
The Hope
Warning: Reader discretion is strongly advised, as this chapter discusses the tragedy of suicide in great detail, as well as what we need to be doing to prevent more suicides in Britain. If you are a survivor of suicide, please be aware of your own triggers.
We can be stronger together. I am not Hitler. I am not calling for a riot, although that’s the name of my publication, Queer Love Riot. Instead, I want a National Conversation about a potential Equality Act 2026.
This, my friends, is where trans liberation really begins. For real. In politics. I wish to run for Wythenshawe Sale and East in the next General Election to make this happened.
Please help me get British Citizenship. I need to raise £1,735 in order to become a British Citizen. So that I can be the first transgender MP in Britain. I will start a Crowdfunder after I release my book.
I am not interested in political in-fighting. I want to get the job done. I have a lot of policies, and a lot of experts working on these policies. Some of these policies are truly mind-blowing. We will reveal them with time. And we will evidence every fucking penny.
This is a Queer Love Riot. I have just registered the publisher on Nielsen. We are trying to fix Britain. We can do it. There is still hope, for fuck’s sake. We cannot just let the same old ideas circulate. We need renewal. We need the queers. We need the greens, we need the Liberal Democrats, we need anyone who is willing to listen.
I’m inspired by the time that I saved a man's life outside of Manchester Oxford Road today, I want to remind people that not losing hope is important. Believing in humanity is how we grow together.
I was sitting outside of Manchester Oxford Station, when suddenly, I noticed someone passed out on the pavement… and they were bleeding out of their skull.
It’s crazy how quickly life can change. One minute I was chatting away to my friend, Lilith, and the next, there are ten people, including three station staff attempting to do first aid on the guy, with two of us trying to call an ambulance and use whatever knowledge we could do save this guy’s life.
The person is okay, and they have been transported to hospital on a stretcher. Despite the absolute chaos as this was happening outside a central station, we did manage to work together as an impromptu team.
Unfortunately, this is not the first time that I have attended to a medical emergency in the city centre caused by excessive drinking. I have once seen a guy passed out in a heatwave in the middle of Manchester with cans of drink surrounding them. I have seen people in Manchester passed out from the Spice epidemic. And I remember the homeless woman in Hulme during lockdown who lived in a tent outside of the ASDA. I used to talk to her a lot.
I’ve never looked down on people in need. I used to run a mental health charity, called Project Inklings, which helped trans and cis alike with their mental health, housing, and other life problems.
Unfortunately you’ll find that, many people in Manchester do just walk on when they see the homeless, for example. I refuse to. If they are not being aggressive, I do actually stop and listen to the homeless, if I have time. And some of the stories I’ve been told are objectively wild. A lot of these people have been failed by systems, over, and over again.
And today, as I was trying to get home, I see the dreaded thing that has now become now epidemic in our nation’s railways. This train has been delayed due to a police incident.
Ah, I think to myself, bloody East Midlands Railways. They keep cracking down on fare dodgers, and it’s become a bit ridiculous now. I once saw the British Transport Police hold up the entire network for ten minutes for the sake of making a point.
But no. The station quickly becomes a scramble. Train services keep getting delayed. And I worry about my ability to get home. I then learn that there are delays of up to two hours. What on earth is going on? That’s not usual for even Northern standards.
I was informed by several people who work on the railways that this may have been a fatality. While we don’t know what exactly happened and it wouldn’t be wise to speculate on what happened, it really did make me think.
In 2023/24, there were 1,937 suicides on the railway. I don’t think presenting this as a figure really does it justice though. That’s 1,937 lives lost to people who couldn’t take it any more.
The reasons why people commit suicide are complex, but generally speaking from my work working with suicidal people in Project Inklings, and having effectively an on-call suicide prevention team, one thing is clear:
Desperate people do desperate things. They do it when they see no other option. Nobody wants to die by suicide.
And for many waiting on that platform on their train, someone being hit by a train will be a footnote in someone’s day. But I refuse to see this person who died, whether on purpose or not, as a railway death statistic; because this death was undignified, and I believe everyone should die in dignity.
So let’s talk about my suicide attempt on the railways, because I am alive to tell what happened, and I think this does make me qualified to talk about the subject.
The Suicide Attempt in 2024
I was struggling in a converted high street flat in Bramhall that was twelve degrees indoors, because the heating was insufficient, expensive, and hopeless, and there was no insulation. I was renting from a private landlady, who refused to fix anything in the flat, including horrifying mould in the walls.
I calculated that, to heat the place 24/7, which is what it really needed to be a livable temperature, it would require more than I was paying in rent (£795 per month, which is outrageous) and I had no way out. I signed a twelve month contract, and the council was more interested in installing smoke alarms, than actually obligating the landlord to do something about the situation.
This is the result of chronic underfunding to councils, as well as a general lack of interest within the government to actually fix the Private Rented Sector. Skyscrappers are going up, but who is actually living in them?
I broke.
I couldn’t take it any more. There was nobody willing to help. I even spoke to Tom Morrison, MP in the Cheadle constituency. And he did nothing. And with my history of being fucked by organisations over, and over again, I have a lifetime of trauma from bureaucracy and being slightly outside the systems that are supposed to help.
I went to Bramhall train station, where many high speed West Coast Mainline Trains pass, and I stood there at the very edge of the platform.
I tried to die by suicide. I fell backwards instead of forwards because my body has mobility issues, though. And I survived.
The train driver saw me on the platform, and I assume that everyone on the platform thought that I simply fainted. I remember the vague conversations on whether I need CPR while I was in that mental health crisis, on the floor, not knowing what to do next.
I wasn’t meant to survive, Emily thought. Why am I still alive?
The trains were halted for ten minutes. And I was more concerned about holding up the whole of the railway network. That gives you an idea of how people, despite being in their worst state, still care about humanity.
The Suicide Epidemic
Suicide is a terrible tragedy that should be prevented. But so many people have tried to prevent my other suicide attempts in the past by simply ferrying me off to hospital, then home, and then not resolve any of the problems that I was actually having.
It’s understandable, it’s a hospital, and there’s only so many things that the underfunded, under-resourced NHS can do. And when the NHS does try to help me, I get misunderstood and sometimes even abused.
But the systems in the NHS don’t work. I have had many safeguarding alerts put on me, the social services informed, and so on. At one point, the social services refused to intervene in my case because when I finally fled that flat to a friend’s, I wasn’t in the area. It was a pointless bureaucratic charade.
And that is why suicide happens. Suicide is about society not understanding your needs, and not knowing to help. Suicide is about twenty people gathered around your attempt not knowing what to do next. Because what do you do?
It’s a tragedy every time it happens, because I could easily died right there and then, and I wouldn’t have been a journalist, artist, politician, or anything else I wanted to do in life. It would have been cut short at 24 there and then.
We have to help people in need. We can’t just walk on, and pretend everything is alright. Right as I saved that man’s life, I saw a Ferrari in the city centre. It made me think that person will never end up in that situation. But that person has other problems from being rich and probably famous, too.
You never truly know what’s inside someone’s head, and I’ll never know what truly happened today on the railways. Nor do I really want to know.
What I do know is that we have to help eachother out in need. Division only leads to people suffering. We are all, at the end of the day, humans. And we must help eachother, as well as nature, and anyone who needs that help.
I don’t like calling the Samaritans, because they are so stretched and I can never get a hold of them. But there are places in Manchester where one can go when they have an emotional crisis, and I use them a lot myself.
And my favourite two are, BlueSci@Night, Monday to Sunday, 5:30pm to 12:00am in Trafford, and The Recovery Lounge, Monday to Sunday, 4:00pm to 11:00pm.
And you only need to give them a call and a text that you want to talk to someone. You’ll speak to some of the best mental health professionals in Manchester who are willing to help, but also signpost you as needed.
Please don’t suffer on your own. Please let other people carry the burden, because to help people truly in need as one needs a whole village of people.
Housing advisors. Benefits advisors. Mental health professionals. Artists. These are people who have dedicated their entire lives to trying to make the world a better place. They do it because they want to help vulnerable people.
And I hope that, with my article, you too will reach out for help if you need it. Access to NHS mental health therapy is next to impossible for many like myself. These last few places, these few bastions of hope rely on people coming in for their emotional crises to get funding from the government.
So use them, and talk to people about your problems, because people do want to know. You are not a burden for being human.
And I do have a Project Semicolon tattoo; I did it myself through stick and poke. Because my story isn’t over yet, either.
Thank you.
I appreciate you reading this. Thank you. Please support me on if you can with my journalism. I also do photography hire as well as write books, articles, and also I hope that you see me tour with my new band, Queer Love Riot. Whenever I can. Because I really am disabled. And I need therapy. And money can be used towards mental health therapy.
I’m fucked. I need some help. And the NHS isn’t going to give me anything soon. I don’t do anything for free, so in return I will give high quality journalism, photography, and good music.
And please do look at the journalism. I am an investigative journalist. And I tell the truth.
Like about how the Online Safety Act is really, really problematic, and could be used as a tool for fascists.
The Censorship of the Internet
It seems that between the Online Safety Act, the continuing 5G rollout, the failing Royal Mail postal service, and their usual day-to-day work of protecting consumers, it is clear that the UK government wants to expand Ofcom, and regulate industry more than the previous Conservative government has done.
The bill is 353 pages! It’s so long that I’m not even sure lawmakers have read it fully and understood it. And I think that’s why it has so many holes in my opinion.
I have argued since my university days that censorship does not work. Censorship leads to more censorship. And the people who are determined to see the content they wished to see in the first place, will see it anyway, as they’ll use web proxies, VPNs, and Tor. What’s the actual point of all of this, when we have clear and obvious workarounds available to those ‘criminal users’…
The point is to make it harder for the kids to access the content, and indeed, this is the work of Michelle Donelan, the former conservative Secretary of State, and a parent herself.
She, of all people, should know that children get really curious. And the answer is not to stop them from crossing roads on their own and not teaching them how to cross a road. The answer is to educate children on safe internet use. And that responsibility lies in schools, and parenting, and both are currently under severe strain, so the responsibility seems to have been offloaded to businesses.
It is unclear what illegal content is covered under this section. Or what illegal content even is, as it’s not defined in this Act. Sure, there are some obvious ones, and the act specifically lists them suicide and self-harm content, and the promotion of eating disorders.
But past that? Who knows. Because this bill doesn’t allow for nuance when it comes to ‘illegal content’.
For example, a whistleblower could leak content in good faith to a journalist, who will then proceed to post pieces based on what was shown. A journalist now may have to worry about prosecution under the Official Secrets Act or being used as an additional justification for prosecution under defamation Their disclosures are in the public interest. And this could undermine democracy.
What about Theresa May’s illegal pornography laws? Are they going to be enforced under the Official Secrets Act?
Because as we all know, under the The Audiovisual Media Services Regulations 2014, porn must follow home video rules or it’s illegal. Here are some of the acts that the these morons could potentially put you in jail for producing porn under the Online Safety Act:
BDSM
Physical restraint
Peeing on someone
Facesitting
Fisting
Christ. For queer people, enforcement of this section would basically look like the return of Section 28.
But it’s all OK! Because the Online Safety Act includes a provision requiring platforms to consider freedom of expression—especially when handling “democratically important content.”
This means we’ve codified a narrow form of free speech into law, particularly for Category 1 platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and X. These platforms must conduct risk assessments, publish transparency reports, and ensure political debate isn’t unfairly silenced.
In practice? Platforms will probably overmoderate all sides of political arguments just to avoid Ofcom fines. The law was intended to protect public discourse. But ironically, it may literally do just the opposite.
So yes, the law technically protects your right to talk politics online, even with people you strongly disagree with. In practice, it’s now legally encouraged to engage with conservatives, whether you want to or not, and platforms might be reluctant to remove hate speech if doing so risks complaints to Ofcom.
Oh joy.
Not content with banning porn, and also breaking online debate, they are also breaking search engines.
Search engines must ‘identify, assess, and mitigate risks associated with illegal content’, and they must ‘empower users to report content’.
Google can’t provide a decent search experience most of the time as they’re too busy breaking their core functionality with Bard AI. And now, search engines are expected to take on the role of moderators and moral arbiters, despite already struggling with delivering reliable results.
No thanks.
This only happens in Britain. Everyone else in the world gets the unfiltered experience. Now, global platforms must bend to Donelan’s wishes just to operate in the UK. The law is so poorly drafted, it’s hard to believe she consulted any operator of a search engine or small business before pushing it through.
Of course there will be no option to appeal to large organisations if they got it wrong, because there is no established process for users to appeal decisions made by large organizations, leaving no clear way to challenge potential errors. Of course this will be a logistical nightmare. Of course there is again not a single definition of ‘illegal content’ beyond ‘it’s common sense, it’s obvious’.
And how will this impact smaller engines like DuckDuckGo, that rely on search engines such as Bing to give them information? Will Microsoft be forced to pre-censor their search index before they give it to other players?
This also raises concerns about how smaller platforms and startups will manage compliance costs and vague obligations. The law’s heavy burden risks stifling innovation and competition, only further entrenching the monopoly with the big tech players.
This is a shitshow, and will only stifle innovation. Not protect the kids.
The Online Safety Act requires all platforms hosting journalistic content to self-moderate, including maintaining effective complaints procedures.
In principle, I agree with this. There should be minimum standards for websites to police their own communities and handle grievances responsibly.
There’s just one problem.
The internet is anarchistic and open by its design. Just ask Bo Burnham. It’s kinda the entire point of the thing, to spread information, opinion and emotions to others, without prejudice or judgement. Differences of opinion should be allowed.
This provision feels less about protecting speech and more about policing fact-checking and misinformation.
But how do you define misinformation? That was the challenge that these lawmakers were supposed to fix in two years and yet, all we got was this stupid, broken bill. All this will do is cause users and outlets to self-censor, and prevent true free speech – speech that is often uncomfortable or controversial, without it being a crime.
Aka, THE TRUTH.
What the hell is this?
I can’t blame Bluesky for doing this. The age assurance provision in the Online Safety Act is written so broadly, it basically forces platforms to assume that every adult online is a potential threat to children.
Should we ban children from public spaces just because there’s a small risk of encountering inappropriate behaviour? Should we stop them from going to the park, the library, or the supermarket, just in case something uncomfortable happens, despite there being no widespread evidence of harm?
That would sound absurd in the real world. And yet, that’s exactly how the internet is being treated under the Online Safety Act.
It's clear what the intent was here: to prevent the kids from learning about dangerous, dangerous ideas. Which may be, for example, that trans people exist. Some interpretations of legality online could be used to silence trans voices or marginalised views, even if they’re lawful offline. Without clearer safeguards, this bill risks disproportionately harming marginalized and dissenting voices under the guise of ‘protecting the kids’.
I’m not self-censoring myself on the internet when I am talking to kids. And neither should you. I think it’s more important than ever for kids to know about topics such as politics, or safe relationships, or LGBT rights. The government doesn’t agree.
Kids have already gotten around it by showing photos in front of webcams for age estimation. It’s actually laughable.
If kids can get on Cool Maths Games in schools… then they can work out how to use a proxy or a VPN service. Kids in school prove that web filters are stupid, because in effect web filters become a challenge for kids to defeat.
This is the only part of the legislation that I like so far. It promotes user control over the content they see, requiring platforms to allow users to filter content related to suicide, self-injury, eating disorders, and hateful or abusive material concerning protected characteristics.
Requiring these controls for all registered adult users is a positive aspect, supporting content personalization and user choice. I think this is actually a step forward and one positive part of this act.
I think legally mandating content warnings and content filters as options for users is OK.
But why was there a giant pointless bill tacked onto this?
Kids aren’t stupid. They’re not helpless. If we focused on educating them to use tools like content filters, user controls, and critical thinking, instead of locking down the entire internet, we might actually build resilience, and not just a generation of broken kids told not to do something and due to their natural curiosity they get traumatised.
That would’ve been the smart approach, working with schools, parents, and educators. But instead, we got blanket restrictions, surveillance tech, and a default assumption that children, and adults, can’t be trusted.
And finally, at least for this analysis, there’s the matter of freedom of expression and privacy, which the Online Safety Act claims to protect. Category 1 platforms are now required to carry out risk assessments, publish impact reports, and show how they are actively supporting these rights. On paper, that sounds like progress.
But here’s the dilemma. Will this actually safeguard free speech, or will it become a shield for hate speech that masks as “opinion” and “being a concerned citizen”? After all, it’s just protected speech, mate.
Freedom of expression matters, it’s not freedom from consequences, or freedom to target others without accountability. The law doesn’t draw a clear enough line between harmful but lawful content and genuine public discourse, which leaves the burden on users like me to navigate this quagmire.
So yes, expression and privacy should be protected, but so should people. And right now, I’m not convinced the law strikes that balance fairly. The Online Safety Act may have been written with good intentions, but in practice, it’s a complete and utter byzantine mess.
It doesn’t protect privacy, it undermines it with sweeping obligations that encourage surveillance and risk-averse overreach. The sweeping obligations encourage surveillance and data collection practices that fundamentally undermine user privacy. It doesn’t foster innovation, it merely punishes it through vague rules and impossible compliance burdens.
And despite its constant invocation of "protecting children" it fails even there, opting for blunt restrictions over real-world education and more mental health support funding. This isn’t just a flawed law, it’s fucked. Patching or amending it won't help, the entire foundations of the law are broken. Trying to fix it by removing a few sections would be like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
The Act’s demands for surveillance and data collection, including collecting users’ identity documents, risk clashing with existing data protection laws like GDPR. This further complicates compliance and puts user privacy at risk. It’s just like Theresa May’s Snooper’s Charter all over again. Did they not learn anything from last time?!
The entire bill needs to be killed and rebuilt from the ground up, this time evidence-based policy by consulting with experts such as computer scientists, sociologists, and psychologists. That means splitting it into targeted legislation, such as for child protection, content filters, protection of news outlets, and so forth. It would likely be easier to pass in Parliament, too.
Here’s my independent, unsponsored recommendation to my readers - you should use VPNs such as ProtonVPN or NordVPN to protect yourself. They're not perfect, of course, but they offer a basic shield from our civil liberties in being violated in real life time.
The Future
I strongly believe we are now at war. But the war isn’t a physical conflict, it’s how to develop, or not develop AI.
I strongly believe we need an ethical AI research framework. As a computer scientist, I have seen first-hand the development of AI, and I have met researchers along the way that truly believe what they’re doing is right.
I remember being shown GPT-2 as a Large Language Model at university (LLM). It couldn’t do anything. It could just about string sentences together. And now, it feels like the technology is used by millions of people every day for who knows what reason. They’re not all academics. Why are they all using it?
Computer Science is a profession that I think has lost its grace within the general public, and rightly so. People are sceptical of new technologies, and I think this is actually quite a good thing. I sit here, as a computer scientist, and I look at what’s been created, and I can’t help but to scream. I think the public is right and we too, as computer scientists, are fed up of ‘AI experts’ and ‘techbros’ spreading misinformation, like Elon Musk.
We could have used this technology to help children in classrooms learn with local models tailored to what the teachers need. We could have used this technology as a very small scale local model personalised spell and grammar checker that helps you to not focus on how your message is written, only how it’s delivered. We could have used this technology to automate boring, pointless bureaucracy in regard to forms, which aren’t usually designed for a human in mind anyway and nobody should have to stuck doing data entry.
Instead, what we got, was complete control of this by a few companies. OpenAI. xAI. And I do genuinely believe that these researchers think that they are good in the world. But I can’t tell you, as a computer scientist, if they are.
I cannot go in and audit the source code of anything they do. I can obviously see the little bits of research, like local models, but I have no idea how these commercial models work. And when I ask it, it tells me all these AI techniques and algorithms that it uses.
But does it? Does it actually those? Because the LLM will just tell me what other people think about it. It does not know anything about itself. It doesn’t know its own emotions. It is merely a robot. And people forget that.
But who programs these robots? Who is responsible for feeding it data? Which workers? How are they compensated? What framework do they work under? How are they feeling about the work they do? Are they becoming AI engineers because they want to, or because they need to do it to survive as their jobs slowly get taken away.
I know that this may be buried under some more authoritative voices, but I am still a student of Computer Science for life, and that’s something nobody can take away from me.
Here's my personal thoughts about using AI such as LLMs, and these may change over time:
AI must be a tool for academic use and policy making use only. AI cannot be forced on people who are just trying to get by, i.e. people in entry-level jobs. AI use there must be freely consensual, and I do not believe that this is possible under a capitalist framework.
AI use must be sparing, and every query must be carefully considered. It must be the initial point of research, and not something that is a finished product in any way. I believe that there’s only two more ethical uses as a form of harm reduction. I do not think that using AI as it currently is, is ethical.
Initial research in a form of a search engine to see what other people are saying. You’re basically asking a librarian by doing so, as you are essentially using it as a form of a Google. And that, is how you should treat the output it gives you if you are not using it directly for AI research.
It’s a better Google. And you need to check our sources more than Google because it can absolutely tell you shit that isn’t real.
I’d rather you asked an actual librarian if you can, because they are heavily underpaid and underappreciated and librarians will typically know better than a search engine.
In order to keep yourself informed about AI research. You may experiment and test the current prototype. This is an accepted use of AI research as it is important to understand the current capabilities of the machine so that we know what the problems are with it.
AI research must be public research. Every part of AI development should be auditable and computer scientists like me, should be able to view the source code, no matter where they may be. This research MUST be Open Access – no matter how complex this web gets; there are some exceptionally smart people who could even use LLMs to understand LLMs.
Where possible, local models should be used. This allows for accountability of the resources used, since this is a measurable outcome. We must assume that the public models, until proven otherwise, are grossly inefficient and optimised so that they survive in a capitalist framework. We must assume they will feed us propaganda about the wonders of capitalism.
Anyone who breaks the rules, must be held accountable. If someone is caught blatantly stealing AI output, they must be stopped and they must be educated on the importance of using AI ethically. And while it isn’t possible to have consequences for bad search queries, much in the same way that it’s not possible to have consequences for bad search queries you type into DuckDuckGo, I do believe in calling people out for this kind of behaviour.
You should not pay for commercial AI. A major chunk of funding for AI is venture capital. By paying into it, you are perpetuating the cycle of resource abuse by being complicit in its use.
Consider if you need to use AI. Is there another option? Could you use some of the work that has been already done by others, and therefore saving resources. Do you need to train yet another model? Use what has been already done, and optimise your research as much as possible.
Consider how large your LLM model you’re using is. A larger model has more problems. But a small scale LLM model can be used to model behaviours in language just as effectively. You don’t need to use a big model most of the time, and that is where most of the resource concerns come from.
Those are my rules I’ve come up for AI research thus far. I think it’s an incredibly difficult problem. This problem is whether we, as computer scientists, develop the Manhattan project, the pending doom that will cause numerous amounts of suffering.
I do not think that AI inherently solves societal problems by allowing everyone to use it. As a computer scientist, I do believe in limited uses of ethical AI, such as in true industrial applications where automation will allow others to become creatives, and we can support more creatives in this world as a result.
But creativity must not become automated, for it stops becoming creative. To be creative is to be human. It cannot inherently help someone to be more creative, because all it will do is say the same things that everyone else has said, because it hasn’t got the ability to create new ideas.
Create nuclear power stations. Not the atomic bomb. That’s my message to my colleagues in IT. Please consider the impact of the work you’re doing and steer this bloody technology away from profit-making. It is not going to solve humanity. Please at least advocate for a Universal Basic Income and for the working classes if you keep developing AI technology. And consider whether you, personally, need to be the one working on it.
Thank you for reading my book, dear reader. I hope you have come away more informed. My next book will be called Transition in Ecstasy, and I will look forward to seeing you read it.
The Queer Dictionary
[1] PIP (abv.) – Personal Independence Payment
[2] Zloty (n.) – the Polish currency / łody (n.) – ice cream
[3] Kodeks Karny (n.) – the Polish code of law
[4] transbian (n.) - trans lesbian
[5] Girl juice (n.) - Slang for sugar-free Monster branded energy drinks
[6] Do you remember the trains with the bus doors that squealed around a corner and were inaccessible to the disabled? Yeah… those are the Pacers.
[7] An anticonvulsant used in the treatment of Epilepsy and Bipolar Disorder.
[8] Odleć (v.) - to run away.
[9] PE (n.) – Physical Education.
[10] a student up this early?
[11] The local governments.
[12] Enby (n.) – non-binary person.
[13] Debugging (v.): looking over computer code to see where’s the mistakes in it.
[14] Two-factor authentication (n.): It’s the number some websites send to your phone after entering your password.
[15] Progesterone, the natural hormone used in HRT alongside oestradiol.
[16] Muffing (v.): penetration of an inguinal canal in a sensual or sexual manner, used to stimulate a trans woman without/in addition to touching her gock, see: Fucking Trans Women by Mira Bellweather
[17] Bonce (n.) – a British term for one’s head.
[18] NEET (abv.) – Not in Employment, Education, or Training, used as a derogatory term often to signify ‘laziness’. No, I’m just really disabled. I wish I could work like normal people.
[19] An experiment in what happens when you give the German population amphetamines in the wars…
[20] The specifics here are not important, but essentially, by doing this action, you are trusting every site on the internet blindly, because there’s a machine between the internet and the website that’s intercepting all your communications. I was never asked for consent.
[21] Munch (n.): A meeting in a pub usually of kinky people. There are tons on FetLife (a kink social media site) to choose from. They are public events. They’re not all awful. Some are fantastic.
[22] Reader warning! – this one is particularly grim, it’s about how trans women, especially in America, get treated in prison. I suggest you understand it’s bad, but you don’t Google it. You can’t un-know this knowledge.
[23] PrEP is a HIV preventative. You take it 2 hours before sex or every day, and it just pretty much stops you from getting HIV almost completely. It’s available at your local sexual health clinic. I went to the Hathersage in Manchester, they were BRILLIANT.
It was an amazing read, very informative