Joanne Lockwood: Welcome to inclusion Bites, your sanctuary
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Joanne Lockwood: to ignite the spark of inclusion with inclusion
Joanne Lockwood: bites.
Joanne Lockwood: And today is episode 110 with the title
Joanne Lockwood: Queer stories across borders. And I have the absolute
Joanne Lockwood: honour and privilege to welcome Georgie Williams. Georgie is
Joanne Lockwood: professionally queer and what that really means is that, is that
Joanne Lockwood: they specialise in gender and sexuality diversity,
Joanne Lockwood: field research, platforming, voices and stories in
Joanne Lockwood: countries around the world. When I asked Georgie to describe their superpower, they
Joanne Lockwood: said that they made the shocking personable. Hello,
Joanne Lockwood: Georgie, welcome to the show. Hello, Joanne. Thank you so much for
Georgie Williams: having me. Pleasure. I've been looking forward to this for ages. Very
Joanne Lockwood: excited. So, Georgie, queer stories across borders.
Joanne Lockwood: Tell us more about your project and what you're up to.
Georgie Williams: So I started with Queer, which is my
Georgie Williams: little organisation recording stories of gender and
Georgie Williams: sexuality diversity around the globe back in
Georgie Williams: 2019. So originally I was supposed to start
Georgie Williams: my phd in social justice at University College Dublin.
Georgie Williams: I already had a background in gender and sexuality. I had a
Georgie Williams: gender master's from Lund School of Economics, and I had an undergrad in
Georgie Williams: psychology. And so I was very much coming at this from a
Georgie Williams: research perspective. And what I wanted to be doing with my
Georgie Williams: phd and couldn't do was create
Georgie Williams: an oral histories archive of gender and sexuality diversity
Georgie Williams: around the world that was very much steered by the
Georgie Williams: people telling the stories. My concern was that people are
Georgie Williams: very curious about gender and sexuality diversity at this
Georgie Williams: time, but when we look at it from a global perspective,
Georgie Williams: I often believe that people can be exploited by having
Georgie Williams: their stories told in a way that doesn't truly represent their culture and
Georgie Williams: community. And I wanted to be able to share these stories open source
Georgie Williams: as well. I didn't want people to have to pay to learn about these things
Georgie Williams: in the way that I'd learned about many of these communities in a lecture
Georgie Williams: hall with a lot of student loans to show for it.
Georgie Williams: So what I wanted to do was create this platform where I could share these
Georgie Williams: stories from my field research all around the world for free.
Georgie Williams: So I started queer and I went out into the field five years
Georgie Williams: ago now, and I travelled in the first half
Georgie Williams: of this project through the USA, Japan,
Georgie Williams: Indonesia, and then I conducted the lockdown episodes
Georgie Williams: in the UK and Ireland during COVID And then the second half of this
Georgie Williams: project I conducted in 2022 and 23
Georgie Williams: that took us through Malta, Turkey,
Georgie Williams: South Africa and Lesotho. So we're
Georgie Williams: still processing those episodes. The final episode of season two
Georgie Williams: will be coming out in about a month or so, which is
Georgie Williams: our episode looking at sexuality diversity in
Georgie Williams: Lesotho culture amongst Sutu people. And I actually
Georgie Williams: interviewed a very senior member of the Lesotho government
Georgie Williams: who works in gender about that. So I disseminate it all open
Georgie Williams: source as a podcast and transcribe it as articles as well. Fascinating.
Joanne Lockwood: I mean, I've spoken to you in the past around this project, and when you
Joanne Lockwood: say you're in the field, I mean, you have been in the field, haven't you?
Joanne Lockwood: You have been around meeting people in their homes,
Joanne Lockwood: in their communities, in a wide range,
Joanne Lockwood: diverse set of backgrounds and experiences beyond
Joanne Lockwood: just the white middle class view of
Joanne Lockwood: UK gender politics and gender identity. So what have you kind of, if
Joanne Lockwood: you had to distil it all down, what have you learned yourself
Joanne Lockwood: about your own sense of identity and sexuality
Joanne Lockwood: and gender from a global perspective, rather than just our blinkered UK
Joanne Lockwood: view? If you. So I think the thing that's been so interesting about
Georgie Williams: conducting this project and learning myself, as I travelled in the
Georgie Williams: fields, I entered the field as a specialist, but I have never
Georgie Williams: tried to market myself as an expert, because you can't be an expert in the
Georgie Williams: human experience. So when I was out there with the
Georgie Williams: stories I got to hear and the people that I got to collaborate with
Georgie Williams: in the field on this project, I very much came to understand
Georgie Williams: how gender and sexuality diversity
Georgie Williams: is part of what makes us human. That actually, no matter
Georgie Williams: what culture, no matter what time period, the ideas that
Georgie Williams: we had about gender and sexuality were actually quite broad,
Georgie Williams: I think, where the ideas we have about a male
Georgie Williams: female binary and about kind of heteronormativity
Georgie Williams: having those propagated in the west, particularly
Georgie Williams: in countries like the US and the UK, we believe it's
Georgie Williams: universal for several reasons. First and foremost,
Georgie Williams: through those ideas being exported in western media around
Georgie Williams: the world, exposing other communities to that, but predating
Georgie Williams: that as well. Colonialism had a huge influence on
Georgie Williams: spreading these ideas about gender and sexuality. But it doesn't mean that these
Georgie Williams: ideas emerged spontaneously in these environments.
Georgie Williams: Quite the opposite. I've worked in communities all around the
Georgie Williams: world who, some of whom have five gender, three
Georgie Williams: sex social systems, some of whom normalised
Georgie Williams: women having relationships with other women even when they were married
Georgie Williams: to men. Our ideas about
Georgie Williams: what kinship and what human connection and what personal
Georgie Williams: identity looks like, we've very much, many of us who have grown up in the
Georgie Williams: west, grown up with this very distilled, very reductive
Georgie Williams: idea that doesn't account for global human
Georgie Williams: diversity. And through that as well, it's given me a lens to
Georgie Williams: better understand my own identity. And I've had feedback from listeners
Georgie Williams: as well, who have used episodes to articulate their identities
Georgie Williams: to people in their lives. And that's been really encouraging.
Joanne Lockwood: There's a belief or a myth or
Joanne Lockwood: that we as a society have evolved to
Joanne Lockwood: understand around sexuality and family
Joanne Lockwood: values and our structure, our social constructs,
Joanne Lockwood: if you like, that we live in the rule set. We have. We consider ourselves
Joanne Lockwood: an evolved society where some of this queer
Joanne Lockwood: notion is we've evolved out of, but I think it's the
Joanne Lockwood: opposite way around. We kind of haven't evolved yet to truly
Joanne Lockwood: understand queer identities. So I think it's really interesting that you've brought in that
Georgie Williams: idea of evolution, because I think that
Georgie Williams: the arena of evolutionary psychology, the exploration
Georgie Williams: of human behaviour through these evolutionary
Georgie Williams: lenses, has often caused harm and
Georgie Williams: caused significant misunderstanding with regards to what is quote
Georgie Williams: unquote normal with regards to human behaviour and
Georgie Williams: socialisation. And the example I'll bring up, actually, is
Georgie Williams: something that I learned during my work in Japan was that
Georgie Williams: with regards to sexuality, during the Edo period of
Georgie Williams: Japan, which is around the mid 16 hundreds to early 18
Georgie Williams: hundreds, relationships between men, romantic and
Georgie Williams: sexual relationships, were very much normalised. And this,
Georgie Williams: I don't describe it as falling out of fashion, but was
Georgie Williams: discouraged by the japanese government from the point of the
Georgie Williams: Meiji reformation at the end of that period, where,
Georgie Williams: and this is unusual compared to some other countries I've looked at and worked
Georgie Williams: in. What happened at that stage is that Japan looked to the
Georgie Williams: west for what was in vogue,
Georgie Williams: I guess, culturally at the time. If they were going to be increasing
Georgie Williams: their trade connections and they were going to be connecting more with the western world,
Georgie Williams: then what were the cultural norms? And at the
Georgie Williams: time, one of the things rising in popularity was the pseudoscientific
Georgie Williams: field of sexology. This was popular
Georgie Williams: in, I believe, Prussia and the
Georgie Williams: UK, and I think France as
Georgie Williams: mean. Interestingly know, anyone could call themselves
Georgie Williams: a sexologist at the time you could be working in a zoo, behaving
Georgie Williams: animal behaviour and call yourself a sexologist. And the
Georgie Williams: consensus amongst these sexologists was, well,
Georgie Williams: animals engage in what was described as same sex behaviour at
Georgie Williams: the time. Humans don't because they're better developed than that, so we don't
Georgie Williams: do that here. And Japan looked at that and went, okay, well, the
Georgie Williams: relationships that we have going on right now between men that are
Georgie Williams: permissible, that is going to be unacceptable in a global arena.
Georgie Williams: And that led to this discouragement and
Georgie Williams: ultimately rampant homophobia within japanese
Georgie Williams: society. And obviously there's other contributing factors as well. These
Georgie Williams: things never happen in a vacuum of one specific cause.
Georgie Williams: But yet you talk about the idea of the way
Georgie Williams: we've evolved and the way that humans conduct themselves
Georgie Williams: in relationships and in society, and actually
Georgie Williams: pseudoscientific ideas about that fed the propagation
Georgie Williams: of homophobia in parts of the east. Yeah, because we are programmed from a very
Joanne Lockwood: early age around rule sets of right and wrong and
Joanne Lockwood: normal expectations. I'm a great fan of the
Joanne Lockwood: work defining the act like a man box, the gender box,
Joanne Lockwood: the rule set that we're given as a man, as a woman.
Joanne Lockwood: God knows where non binary people fit into those two boxes. There's no kind of
Joanne Lockwood: middle box offered in this rule set. And it's trying to figure out
Joanne Lockwood: how do we evolve people's thinking where these boxes don't
Joanne Lockwood: serve any real purpose other than to police people back into behaviours.
Georgie Williams: It's a great question, and I like that you mentioned policing,
Georgie Williams: because gender policing is something I talk about often, ways that we are
Georgie Williams: encouraged to regulate one another's behaviour, because if we align
Georgie Williams: with that, it creates this social currency. Right. We are
Georgie Williams: favoured by our peers, we are given advantages that other people aren't, as
Georgie Williams: long as we perform correctly within the box assigned to
Georgie Williams: us. And it's funny, I mean, I don't want to get too technical with what
Georgie Williams: we're talking about today, but there is a phrase I came across kind
Georgie Williams: of, I don't want to say early on in my research, but around the time
Georgie Williams: my masters, that describes the gender binary
Georgie Williams: between the concept of being male and the concept of being female
Georgie Williams: as we know it in the contemporary west as a
Georgie Williams: parasitic symbiosis. And if we break that down,
Georgie Williams: what it's basically saying is that these two identities
Georgie Williams: sustain each other by feeding off each other.
Georgie Williams: So in the sense that men are encouraged to recognise who they
Georgie Williams: are in the world by going, oh, well, I'm not feminine, I'm not like a
Georgie Williams: girl, I don't do this I don't do that. Therefore I must be a man.
Georgie Williams: And this is why non binary identities, if we use that
Georgie Williams: very culturally west specific term,
Georgie Williams: this is why they're considered so disruptive. Because if
Georgie Williams: someone's identity can be an amalgamation of feminine and
Georgie Williams: masculine behaviours, or male or female
Georgie Williams: coded anatomy, how does a person look at an individual
Georgie Williams: like that and go, well, I must be a man or I must be a
Georgie Williams: woman. But also that person has some of these attributes, and they're not a
Georgie Williams: man or a woman either. And it's disruptive. It's incredibly
Georgie Williams: disruptive. So, yes, those boxes are
Georgie Williams: still incredibly limiting in the west, even when
Georgie Williams: there's a lot that happened over the last hundred years in terms of
Georgie Williams: expanding the idea of what womanhood can be. You know, we talk about things
Georgie Williams: like fashion and haircuts and job roles, et cetera, et
Georgie Williams: cetera. But there is still a ways to go in terms of
Georgie Williams: dismantling those incredibly rigid boxes. You find that in
Joanne Lockwood: your experience, that a lot of misunderstandings
Joanne Lockwood: come from people's repression and self oppression of
Joanne Lockwood: their own identity. Maybe they're scared to explore who they are. Maybe
Joanne Lockwood: there's this fear of being finding out or
Joanne Lockwood: allowing themselves to consider they may be bi, trans,
Joanne Lockwood: nonbinary, and they're trying to hold it in, into this
Joanne Lockwood: little box with these rule sets, otherwise
Joanne Lockwood: it'll explode. And they don't know how to handle that. Yeah. And actually, there was
Georgie Williams: a really interesting documentary a few years ago on Netflix. I don't know if it's
Georgie Williams: on there anymore, but it was called the mask you live in, and it talked
Georgie Williams: about masculinity. And it
Georgie Williams: opens with this conversation about what it means to do
Georgie Williams: anything like a girl. They said, listen, if you want to
Georgie Williams: hit like a girl, behave like a girl, cry like a girl, it's rock
Georgie Williams: bottom, right? That means that you've ultimately failed at the thing you were supposed to
Georgie Williams: be doing. But to do something like a man is absolute
Georgie Williams: top of that bar, right? And it's also an
Georgie Williams: unsustainable achievement. To do anything like a man means you have to
Georgie Williams: continually prove it to yourself and others for the rest of
Georgie Williams: your life. And if it slips for a moment, your whole
Georgie Williams: identity as a man can be revoked externally
Georgie Williams: by judgmental outside forces. And
Georgie Williams: so, yeah, this idea that we have about
Georgie Williams: gender, especially when it comes to things like masculinity, it's
Georgie Williams: all so fragile. And I think there is this fear that
Georgie Williams: comes with asking those questions, because
Georgie Williams: what it means is that you can lose that currency, you can
Georgie Williams: lose that potential. That privilege, especially for
Georgie Williams: cisgender heterosexual white men, if
Georgie Williams: they question their identity regarding their gender or
Georgie Williams: sexuality, their social standing can absolutely
Georgie Williams: plummet. And it's incredibly daunting for many
Georgie Williams: individuals to ask those questions, because
Georgie Williams: societally, we haven't facilitated a safe environment for people to
Georgie Williams: ask those questions of themselves without risking something. Other
Joanne Lockwood: societies cope with these multiple
Joanne Lockwood: genders, a more fluid kind of
Joanne Lockwood: identity, not just one spirit, two spirit, three spirit
Joanne Lockwood: or five spirit, however you want to describe it. How do their societies cope
Joanne Lockwood: with those multiple identities in people? Because
Joanne Lockwood: in the UK, we seem to have this big culture clash. How does that
Joanne Lockwood: manifest in different societies around the world? So I'll add
Georgie Williams: going on to that. So two spirits are a very specific cultural
Georgie Williams: term that has been used specifically within native american communities,
Georgie Williams: particularly navajo communities. And when we think
Georgie Williams: about identities, they're always culture bound. Right?
Georgie Williams: This is why sometimes I take umbrage with using the acronym
Georgie Williams: LGBT for communities in the global
Georgie Williams: south, communities in Southeast Asia, for example, communities across
Georgie Williams: the continent of Africa, because very often
Georgie Williams: people in these communities already had terms for this gender and sexuality
Georgie Williams: diversity that predate the term LGBT. And so,
Georgie Williams: yeah, with some of these communities I've worked with, there is this.
Georgie Williams: I don't want to say perfect harmony, but a sense of balance,
Georgie Williams: that it comes from the fact that they don't
Georgie Williams: ground one's worth and identity
Georgie Williams: in innate biology, which can change. Anyways, biology
Georgie Williams: does change over time, and there's so many people whose biology doesn't
Georgie Williams: fit into a binary anyways. The sex binary was
Georgie Williams: very much an invention. It is something that was formulated by
Georgie Williams: doctors in order to determine what was the
Georgie Williams: correct male or female body, which often led to the
Georgie Williams: abuse of many individuals whose bodies divide those
Georgie Williams: boxes. I'm sidetracking myself. But within many of these
Georgie Williams: communities, I'm thinking in particular of my interview I did with a member
Georgie Williams: of the Bugis community, which is a community that
Georgie Williams: recognises a five gender, three sex social system in Indonesia.
Georgie Williams: The Bugis are an ethnic group who are
Georgie Williams: comprised of, I believe, 6 million indonesian citizens. And, I
Georgie Williams: mean, this is incredibly large country. I believe that
Georgie Williams: Indonesia is the largest muslim majority country in
Georgie Williams: the world. We're not talking about some tiny little
Georgie Williams: corner of the world that observes this. And there it is very
Georgie Williams: much held belief within the buddhist community
Georgie Williams: that, yes, all five of these identities are supposed to exist because
Georgie Williams: everybody fills a different niche. And it's
Georgie Williams: funny, when I think about this myself, I'm not even going to relate it to
Georgie Williams: gender and sexuality, but I spent the best part of last
Georgie Williams: year when I wasn't in the field doing research, working on a ship
Georgie Williams: as a crew. And it's funny because within the crew, every single one of us
Georgie Williams: took on different responsibilities. But if one of those people wasn't there,
Georgie Williams: then mopping up those responsibilities was difficult because we all held our own
Georgie Williams: role, we all contribute in different ways. And the Bukhas
Georgie Williams: community, I would like to draw a very loose
Georgie Williams: comparison, that everybody has different
Georgie Williams: responsibilities and contributions that
Georgie Williams: are not married to but aligned with their gender identity,
Georgie Williams: and it creates this sense of balance. It's, as
Georgie Williams: far as I can tell, relatively non hierarchical, or at least
Georgie Williams: not hierarchical in the way that a male female gender binary is. Yeah,
Joanne Lockwood: I'm with you on the LGBTQ plus II
Joanne Lockwood: AP Alphabet system. I think all it's doing is it's creating
Joanne Lockwood: more boxes and trying to stuff people into boxes. And
Joanne Lockwood: I'm a bigger fan of the word queer because I don't need to define
Joanne Lockwood: myself any more than just queer. I e,
Joanne Lockwood: not straight, not Cis, not whatever. I can exist
Joanne Lockwood: in this space that is me without having to
Joanne Lockwood: explain it. Because I think once you start mixing gender
Joanne Lockwood: identity and sexuality, it's not a linear scale,
Joanne Lockwood: it's a four dimensional model, and your little point within
Joanne Lockwood: that model can change and evolve and float
Joanne Lockwood: around from day to day. Who I'm with, what I'm
Joanne Lockwood: doing, how I relate to tv programmes.
Joanne Lockwood: I can sometimes relate in a more masculine way or more feminine way. Even though
Joanne Lockwood: I perceive myself as a woman and feminine,
Joanne Lockwood: I don't reject some of my traits and my
Joanne Lockwood: upbringing. And to queer really allows me to exist without
Joanne Lockwood: a border. Yeah. And I mean, I will say, regarding
Georgie Williams: the LGBTQ plus acronym, there are ways in which it can be useful. I
Georgie Williams: recognise the fact that having these specific terms allows us
Georgie Williams: to, number one, articulate ourselves, but also, number two, find
Georgie Williams: people of similar experience. Also, specific terminology is
Georgie Williams: incredibly valuable from a legislative standpoint in terms of ensuring
Georgie Williams: particular protections. That said, I completely agree in the sense
Georgie Williams: that recognising it as a reclaimed term,
Georgie Williams: I prefer to describe myself as queer because
Georgie Williams: I don't believe that I owe anybody an explanation of
Georgie Williams: the nuances of my identity every time I come out to someone.
Georgie Williams: Queer, for me, has been a wonderful catch all, where
Georgie Williams: it says I exist outside of the bounds of
Georgie Williams: heteronormativity and cisnormativity, and that's incredibly freeing. I
Joanne Lockwood: think I remember when we first met online, I think a couple of years
Joanne Lockwood: ago, maybe during COVID you were using both
Joanne Lockwood: masculine feminine and gender neutral pronouns, almost like
Joanne Lockwood: he, they, she, they, her, him, and you kind of
Joanne Lockwood: weren't prescriptive about how the pronouns are used, because sometimes,
Joanne Lockwood: again, that triggers people into trying to box you off again, doesn't it? It's like,
Joanne Lockwood: oh, it's so difficult. Totally. And actually, I now use they
Georgie Williams: them pronouns. And it's interesting, I have friends who will occasionally use he him
Georgie Williams: pronouns with me, but I retired using
Georgie Williams: she her entirely. Because the issue that I came across
Georgie Williams: is that when I listed my pronouns, especially, we're talking
Georgie Williams: Covid era, most of my work I was doing was online, and so I
Georgie Williams: would have my pronouns in my zoom tag. Overwhelmingly, people would look
Georgie Williams: at that, decide that because I was presenting in a feminine way, the thing that
Georgie Williams: made them the most comfortable was to just use she for me.
Georgie Williams: And I very clearly remember, and yes,
Georgie Williams: I was angry in this moment, but I actually think it was a really justified
Georgie Williams: anger. I remember in a meeting with some colleagues
Georgie Williams: mentioning that, yes, if you've noticed that my pronouns have changed from they she
Georgie Williams: he to they them, I want you to know that it's because I've revoked the
Georgie Williams: other pronouns until you learn how to play nicely with them, that
Georgie Williams: actually, at the end of
Georgie Williams: the day, my identity is a very. I
Georgie Williams: don't describe it as fluid, and
Georgie Williams: I don't describe it as complex either, but a
Georgie Williams: nuanced, non prescriptive thing.
Georgie Williams: And I want to know when
Georgie Williams: people are actually making an effort with my identity. I
Georgie Williams: am always incredibly touched when someone that I meet
Georgie Williams: isn't familiar with my pronouns and puts in a real concerted effort. And that
Georgie Williams: doesn't mean getting it right straight off the bat, but I can
Georgie Williams: tell when people are trying, and I can tell when people are
Georgie Williams: barely navigating their own discomfort and trying to avoid
Georgie Williams: doing something that's ultimately a very low level of respect for a
Georgie Williams: person. So, yeah, I use they them now
Georgie Williams: because for me, anyone can be they
Georgie Williams: masculine or a feminine looking person can be they. And it's the same for
Georgie Williams: the pronouns she and know. There are many lesbians in the world
Georgie Williams: that use he him pronouns. There are many gay men who refer to
Georgie Williams: one another as she or her. But where we're
Georgie Williams: know, especially in the UK, in terms of our
Georgie Williams: societal development at this stage, we still have incredibly gendered
Georgie Williams: ideas about the pronouns she and he. So where I'm
Georgie Williams: at now, they feels like the way to go. And
Georgie Williams: I wish that it wasn't informed by that external pressure. But
Georgie Williams: at the same time, our identities do respond to our environment.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, we're kind of hooked up with how people look, aren't
Joanne Lockwood: we? Yes, you've got this in your
Joanne Lockwood: pants, you've got this in your head and you have to portray
Joanne Lockwood: those to make me comfortable. As
Joanne Lockwood: you say, you identify with they, them pronouns, nonbinary or kind of
Joanne Lockwood: queer as such. But you look, as everyone would
Joanne Lockwood: probably say, traditionally feminine. And it's not that you aren't
Joanne Lockwood: feminine in some way, but your identity is
Joanne Lockwood: queer. And amongst that, and I remember you saying to me once that you really
Joanne Lockwood: love to take a little bit of testosterone and grow a little bit of a
Joanne Lockwood: moustache or a beard. And I thought that was fantastic when you said
Joanne Lockwood: this and I thought, wow, that amazing blonde hair
Joanne Lockwood: you've got, and a little bit of a moustache would be fantastic. It looks so
Joanne Lockwood: good on you. I still want to get to the moustache, Joanne, I really do.
Georgie Williams: I was on testosterone for about six months and then I think I
Georgie Williams: said to you that I had to stop, mostly because travelling meant
Georgie Williams: that I couldn't access testosterone easily. And then when I came back to the UK,
Georgie Williams: I didn't have the money for healthcare and trans healthcare
Georgie Williams: is treated like a luxury instead of a. Right. So, yeah, I
Georgie Williams: didn't take testosterone long enough to get that wonderful little moustache that
Georgie Williams: I still dream about. But the thing is that I'm acutely
Georgie Williams: aware of how choices I have made with my
Georgie Williams: appearance lead people to read me in particular ways.
Georgie Williams: For a long time, I have had long blonde hair, very blonde
Georgie Williams: hair, and people always read that as an inherently feminine thing. And I'm always like,
Georgie Williams: no, in terms of where my masculinity is at, I kind of want to be
Georgie Williams: like a slightly more muscular version of like, Legolas from Lord of the
Georgie Williams: Rings, right? Who has that fascinatingly
Georgie Williams: blonde long hair, right? That's where my masculinity
Georgie Williams: sits. But we don't read people
Georgie Williams: like that. And I recently did some training
Georgie Williams: for an organisation where I was actually
Georgie Williams: saying, when we look at people, we are inclined to
Georgie Williams: read things like, long blonde hair is feminine, right? Facial hair is always
Georgie Williams: masculine. Ignoring the number of individuals who
Georgie Williams: identify as cis women who have
Georgie Williams: polycystic ovarian syndrome and grow facial hair. We have
Georgie Williams: so many rigid ideas about the way a body has to look.
Georgie Williams: And yeah, I think sometimes people think non binary. People look
Georgie Williams: completely know, like Tilda, Sweden in
Georgie Williams: Constantine, just completely androgynous. Right?
Georgie Williams: That's not how it works. I've previously joked that being non binary for me means
Georgie Williams: that I'm actually gender greedy. I actually want to look really feminine and really
Georgie Williams: masculine at the same time. And that makes it harder for people to read me.
Georgie Williams: But I also think that our dependence on being able to
Georgie Williams: make gendered assumptions about people from the moment we see them across the
Georgie Williams: room is an unnecessary habit that many of us are encouraged to develop.
Joanne Lockwood: I'm just imagining you as Legolas, as a king of the elves and be
Joanne Lockwood: able to walk on snow or grass without leaving footprints. And that'd be a
Joanne Lockwood: real good upgrade to your superpower. Wouldn't say? You didn't know that
Georgie Williams: nonbinary people can do that. No, it's not in
Joanne Lockwood: the book. I've got. Obviously, that's a secret thing, that nonbinary people.
Joanne Lockwood: There's all these books, these imaginary books around trans people and
Joanne Lockwood: cabals and how trans people all keep in touch with each other. We get this
Joanne Lockwood: super connected power base all telekinetic
Joanne Lockwood: and you must know every other trans person in the country. You must
Joanne Lockwood: get this. Do you know so and so? No, I don't. Sorry. No.
Georgie Williams: Worst is when that happens to me and then I'll be like, well, listen,
Georgie Williams: we don't all know each other, but, yes, I do actually know that person. It
Georgie Williams: is always. I
Joanne Lockwood: just. I can definitely see you as an elf. So that would work.
Joanne Lockwood: Just maybe grow your ears slightly. Bit of a. But yeah. Legolas doesn't have a
Joanne Lockwood: beard, though, does it? So we're a moustache. No, I'm like a pirate.
Georgie Williams: Legolas. Yeah. I used to support a moustache for many years. I was in the
Joanne Lockwood: RAF when I left school and it was a bit of rebellion because
Joanne Lockwood: in the RAF the only facial hair you're allowed is a moustache. Very
Joanne Lockwood: stereotypical, kind of World War II pilot sort of twiddle
Joanne Lockwood: it type thing. If I'd have been the navy, I could have grown a full
Joanne Lockwood: beard, but I was able to grow a moustache and I had this from the
Joanne Lockwood: age of probably, I don't know, 1718, which was a bit mousy and a
Joanne Lockwood: bit kind of nonexistent. And then I shaved it off for a
Joanne Lockwood: bet in the year 2000 and it was kind of part of who I
Joanne Lockwood: was for a long while and my daughter really rejected me for a while after
Joanne Lockwood: I shaved it off because her whole entire visual image of me
Joanne Lockwood: was with a moustache and she had never seen me without it. But then when
Joanne Lockwood: I transitioned, I had the lot lasered off. If anyone's
Joanne Lockwood: ever had laser on their legs, try having it on your face, it's incredibly
Joanne Lockwood: painful. 14 separate occasions of.
Joanne Lockwood: So, yeah, I'm wholeheartedly hairless.
Joanne Lockwood: Wherever I can be, because I want to play
Joanne Lockwood: that game of gender. I want to play that game of. I want people to
Joanne Lockwood: clock me and read me without stubble. So, yeah, I
Joanne Lockwood: recognise that I am fitting into Cassidy constructs and it's hard not to. To
Joanne Lockwood: fit into that rule set when you want to be accepted for who you are.
Georgie Williams: I also think it's safety when advocating for
Georgie Williams: trans healthcare. Before, I previously said that one of
Georgie Williams: the ways in which it is as a life saving service
Georgie Williams: is because if people can't tell that you're trans,
Georgie Williams: you're less likely to get attacked on the street, like, you're less
Georgie Williams: likely to face employment discrimination, you're less
Georgie Williams: likely to be made to feel like a
Georgie Williams: second class citizen, that there are many people who I think
Georgie Williams: could comfortably live their lives as a trans person not
Georgie Williams: passing to a cisgender standard, because that's what it is, right?
Georgie Williams: We're talking about a cisgender standard of gender identity, not just a universal
Georgie Williams: one, but also people want to feel affirmed,
Georgie Williams: they want to be treated with
Georgie Williams: respect and made to feel safe, but they also want to be
Georgie Williams: recognised as belonging to a particular community as well.
Georgie Williams: And when I think we use aesthetic details as
Georgie Williams: an excuse to deny people the word I'm looking for, I
Georgie Williams: guess membership dignity to a particular group.
Georgie Williams: Dignity, yeah, but also membership to a particular social group,
Georgie Williams: like gender identity. It means people have to jump
Georgie Williams: through so many hoops in order to feel affirmed and secure
Georgie Williams: beyond how they felt about themselves in the first place. A lot of
Joanne Lockwood: people's safety and their fight, flight or fear
Joanne Lockwood: mechanism where they freeze is all caught up in very
Joanne Lockwood: historical, prehistorical kind of brain development. The
Joanne Lockwood: biases and the vagus nerve and our reaction to things. And in the
Joanne Lockwood: same way that trans people are trying to. We use the word pass,
Joanne Lockwood: mask, cover, whatever word you want to use to be read,
Joanne Lockwood: perceived as the gender they identify as, because it's a
Joanne Lockwood: very strong reaction in people who will fear.
Joanne Lockwood: Fear or discomfort around someone who
Joanne Lockwood: is of the opposite gender, for want of a better way of describing it, which
Joanne Lockwood: is a lot of the critical movement is caught up in
Joanne Lockwood: fear of men in spaces. And the perception that
Joanne Lockwood: a trans woman or someone who is identifying as queer is
Joanne Lockwood: actually a man or wolf in sheep's clothing is kind of the
Joanne Lockwood: argument. So how do we reconcile that fight, flight
Joanne Lockwood: or freeze mechanism that is being invoked by people who are not read
Joanne Lockwood: or pass in that chosen gender? Well, I mean, I think there's
Georgie Williams: a huge overlap with this conversation and
Georgie Williams: conversations around disability inclusion and racial
Georgie Williams: inclusion. It's that idea of person has to look a
Georgie Williams: particular way in order for me to respect them. And there's ways that we can
Georgie Williams: unpick those cognitive biases. I mean, this is
Georgie Williams: unconscious bias that we're contending with is so many of us
Georgie Williams: were taught from a young age that this is what a respectable,
Georgie Williams: normal person looks like. And if they deviate
Georgie Williams: in x, y or z ways, then there's something innately wrong with
Georgie Williams: them. I think in particular, what the gender and sexuality kind of
Georgie Williams: diversity community faces the most are accusations of
Georgie Williams: perversion, right? That actually there must be something inherently
Georgie Williams: creepy or predatory about you
Georgie Williams: if you flaunt these gender rules in
Georgie Williams: how you present yourself, and also in terms of what
Georgie Williams: relationships you navigate in your personal life. And I think if
Georgie Williams: I had an answer for how we confront and dismantle
Georgie Williams: these issues, I'd be making so much more money. But
Georgie Williams: fundamentally, it is about taking a step back and
Georgie Williams: questioning on what grounds do we decide
Georgie Williams: who's a person and who's not. I think
Georgie Williams: with disability, that's an easier conversation to have at this
Georgie Williams: time, instead of competitive with the trans community, because
Georgie Williams: disability is something that can happen to us. Lots of people don't want
Georgie Williams: to talk about it and don't like that, but it's a thing that can happen
Georgie Williams: to us. And sometimes the conversation around disability
Georgie Williams: inclusion, although it definitely isn't easy right now,
Georgie Williams: is sometimes about, well, if this happened to you,
Georgie Williams: how would it change how you felt about disability, and how
Georgie Williams: would it change how you wanted to be perceived? And
Georgie Williams: you're still that person. Your sense of self can absolutely
Georgie Williams: change, but you're still absolutely a human being. But people
Georgie Williams: don't like to think about trans identities in that way, because they
Georgie Williams: believe that being trans is completely alien to them as a cis person,
Georgie Williams: that they could never go through this process of
Georgie Williams: learning about themselves and discover that something they've been taught is an absolute
Georgie Williams: truth about themselves is not the case. So the touch point of
Georgie Williams: empathy can be difficult to get to, but it is about
Georgie Williams: saying, well, listen, what actually differentiates me from that person
Georgie Williams: hugely? Is it as simple as aesthetics?
Georgie Williams: Mostly, yes. The overwhelming majority of people
Georgie Williams: just want to be able to go about their lives without causing
Georgie Williams: problems for anyone else, without causing any extra stress for themselves.
Georgie Williams: And when we create gender neutral
Georgie Williams: spaces, we take a worry off of the minds of most trans
Georgie Williams: people. And listen, we could have a whole separate question about the
Georgie Williams: unfounded concerns about predatory trans people,
Georgie Williams: specifically trans women being demonised, not
Georgie Williams: being allowed into gender specific
Georgie Williams: spaces, and how so many of the accusations around
Georgie Williams: conduct just have no evidence behind them. But that's a whole separate
Georgie Williams: issue. And yeah, I think the conversation is getting better,
Georgie Williams: but it's definitely vitriolic at this stage. Yeah, I've had
Joanne Lockwood: conversations with people who are concerned about their own
Joanne Lockwood: personal dignity and their own personal respect for maybe
Joanne Lockwood: intimate care or using a toilet, and there
Joanne Lockwood: being a trans woman present, or the trans woman is
Joanne Lockwood: providing the service or the care to them. And they said, I wouldn't like
Joanne Lockwood: that if that person. Because in their head they're thinking this person
Joanne Lockwood: isn't a woman, they're thinking this person is a man. They can't disassociate
Joanne Lockwood: their assignment at birth with their identity and who they are today,
Joanne Lockwood: regardless. And I said, I just asked them the question. So if you didn't realise
Joanne Lockwood: the person who was treating you was trans, it would be okay. Then they
Joanne Lockwood: went, well, yeah. So it's down to how good someone looks, how
Joanne Lockwood: someone passes to gain acceptance. We would look at cyclists
Joanne Lockwood: I think someone's talking about in the news at the moment. We talk about people
Joanne Lockwood: in prison. If you couldn't tell they were trans, it's okay, then it's only the
Joanne Lockwood: fact you can tell they're trans because they look different or they're a bit taller,
Joanne Lockwood: their fingers are a bit larger. So you're using beauty
Joanne Lockwood: bias or perception bias around how someone looks. And
Joanne Lockwood: that's the challenge, isn't it? Which is why you talk about passing and living up
Joanne Lockwood: to the rule set. Yeah. And actually that reminds me of some reading I was
Georgie Williams: doing just last week. It was
Georgie Williams: some archival writing, I believe, mid 19 hundreds,
Georgie Williams: about health care for transsexual, identifying
Georgie Williams: individuals, but specifically with what we would now describe as
Georgie Williams: trans women, where sometimes their healthcare
Georgie Williams: physicians were denying them treatment because they didn't
Georgie Williams: pass enough. There was even an excerpt from a trans woman
Georgie Williams: talking about how I believe she had been permitted
Georgie Williams: treatment because the doctor said that as a heterosexual
Georgie Williams: man, he felt an emotional
Georgie Williams: response to her and therefore that must make her a
Georgie Williams: woman, that it was down to terms of this doctor's attraction to
Georgie Williams: her, which is outrageous. Can you believe
Georgie Williams: that that is still an issue that we face because it is
Georgie Williams: like we still have issues with people being denied trans healthcare
Georgie Williams: because it seemed that they're not putting in enough effort to pass as
Georgie Williams: the cis version of their gender identity? And can you imagine what it
Georgie Williams: would be like if cis individuals were being
Georgie Williams: denied health care on the same grounds of, oh, well,
Georgie Williams: I don't want to really treat you like a man, because as a female
Georgie Williams: doctor, I don't find you attractive enough to believe you're truly a man. Can you
Georgie Williams: imagine if that was happening? Yeah. Or are you sure you should have a baby?
Joanne Lockwood: You don't really look like a mother. That sort of thing
Joanne Lockwood: isn't there? And, you know, funnily enough, I've experienced the opposite with my own
Georgie Williams: health care. As someone who I have no interest in having biological
Georgie Williams: children, I am very much staunchly child free in that
Georgie Williams: regard. And I have had medical professionals make
Georgie Williams: very, very sweeping assumptions about what I want to do with my body.
Georgie Williams: I once had a doctor tell me, well, if you wanted to get this procedure
Georgie Williams: done, there'd be so few complications that you won't even have to tell the midwife
Georgie Williams: when you give birth. Emphasis on the when. And I just thought that that was
Georgie Williams: absolutely shocking. So, yeah, the way that
Georgie Williams: we police gender with people's bodies,
Georgie Williams: it's a shame that there's still, especially in this
Georgie Williams: country, more so in this country than in the rest
Georgie Williams: of western Europe, a pushback from
Georgie Williams: so many women about fundamental rights
Georgie Williams: and protections for trans people, because they've also faced the
Georgie Williams: same struggles with bodily autonomy and recognition for that.
Georgie Williams: And, yeah, we have more in common in our
Georgie Williams: battles than we have. Different, in my opinion. So in your adventures
Joanne Lockwood: around the world, talking to people and experience, at what
Joanne Lockwood: age do you think someone's old enough to know that
Joanne Lockwood: they're trans or queer or bi or gay? At what
Joanne Lockwood: age does that formulate? I think that that is
Georgie Williams: such a complex question, because for me,
Georgie Williams: that's like saying, at what point in your adulthood
Georgie Williams: do you know that you want kids or that you'd be capable of
Georgie Williams: having a child and raising them properly? And by that, what I'm
Georgie Williams: saying is not that young people don't know when
Georgie Williams: they're young that they're trans or queer, but that it is subjective to the
Georgie Williams: individual, and that there are many young people that absolutely
Georgie Williams: know who they are from a young age, and that putting a
Georgie Williams: hard line on it and saying you'll definitely know by this age, or you
Georgie Williams: can't know until this age is incredibly reductive.
Georgie Williams: I didn't come out about my sexuality
Georgie Williams: until I was 15, which is by no means late,
Georgie Williams: but I had been aware of it, in a sense, since I was
Georgie Williams: about seven years old. I didn't have the language to articulate it at the
Georgie Williams: time. Maybe if I had, I would have been able to talk about it more
Georgie Williams: freely. I have a younger relative
Georgie Williams: who first. She first expressed interest in
Georgie Williams: other girls the age of, like, six or seven. And
Georgie Williams: because it was a non issue, because this is a household that
Georgie Williams: talked very openly about gender and sexuality. There was no
Georgie Williams: discomfort in her expressing that. And now that she's a lot older, she
Georgie Williams: still very much feels that way. I don't like the
Georgie Williams: idea that gender and sexuality is something that you only
Georgie Williams: truly understand at a certain age, because I think
Georgie Williams: what that implies is that if you identify, especially if
Georgie Williams: we're talking about sexuality, if you identify as gay or
Georgie Williams: bisexual at a young age, it comes back to that
Georgie Williams: idea of perversion, that there is something sexual about that
Georgie Williams: child. Sexuality encompasses romantic interest. It doesn't
Georgie Williams: have to have anything to do with sexual interest, and especially not as a child.
Georgie Williams: You can have crushes on people in school in the way
Georgie Williams: that a heterosexual child would, and it doesn't have to mean
Georgie Williams: anything else. But we don't like talking about
Georgie Williams: gay children and trans children because we see it as something
Georgie Williams: inherently perverse. And it's not. There is nothing
Georgie Williams: abnormal or strange or predatory
Georgie Williams: about being a queer person or being a trans person. I think you picked up
Joanne Lockwood: on it there. The parents are loving, they want their child to
Joanne Lockwood: succeed, and suddenly they discover there's something
Joanne Lockwood: not the same as them. They no longer fit into
Joanne Lockwood: their dream and vision of how that child's going to evolve, grow,
Joanne Lockwood: have a family. They could become grandparents. Suddenly, all their
Joanne Lockwood: life's ambitions for this child have been shattered because they're
Joanne Lockwood: queer in some way. And that's kind of the parents almost
Joanne Lockwood: again trying to police their child back into the visionary box they
Joanne Lockwood: had for them and see them as broken or having a condition.
Joanne Lockwood: Some of that surely comes down to representation. If you're not seeing
Joanne Lockwood: queer people, trans people, nonbinary people, bi,
Joanne Lockwood: gay, on television, in the media, working in
Joanne Lockwood: shops, that reinforces the subversive,
Joanne Lockwood: secretive, perversive type stuff we've talked about,
Joanne Lockwood: because people aren't being in the mainstream. So we need to make sure we have
Joanne Lockwood: more mainstream representation of people with a disability, of people of
Joanne Lockwood: colour, et cetera, and queer people to allow people
Joanne Lockwood: to believe that they can succeed in society. Yeah,
Georgie Williams: absolutely. And I think that representation, our
Georgie Williams: idea of representation, I still think, is very two
Georgie Williams: dimensional as well, where it's like, am I seeing
Georgie Williams: a gay couple in a McDonald's advert
Georgie Williams: and that kind of thing, where it's like, okay, great. So do you actually
Georgie Williams: care about these people and the nuances of their identity and their
Georgie Williams: welfare, or do you want to virtue signal using our community?
Georgie Williams: And, yeah, I think good
Georgie Williams: representation involves showing how people don't
Georgie Williams: fit into clear boxes, ever. That your ideas about
Georgie Williams: queer people, trans people need to be
Georgie Williams: loose and open to account for everyone. Because
Georgie Williams: it's not about just creating more bites, like we said earlier. It's about
Georgie Williams: saying, well, the boxes don't actually exist. I
Georgie Williams: remember when I was growing up that whenever I saw
Georgie Williams: people talking about bisexuality, it was about kind of dispelling this
Georgie Williams: notion of, well, bisexual people aren't greedy, they're just capable of attraction
Georgie Williams: to more than one gender. And I remember as a
Georgie Williams: teenager being like, no, I am. I am greedy, but I'm
Georgie Williams: also a human being and I don't need my
Georgie Williams: identity to be sanitised in order for me to be
Georgie Williams: respected. There's many, many. Listen, if you think about
Georgie Williams: cisgender, heterosexual men who can have many relationships all
Georgie Williams: the way throughout their lives, and people go, oh, good for him,
Georgie Williams: right? Anyone else? Especially bisexual people, you have lots of
Georgie Williams: different relationships, especially early on in your life,
Georgie Williams: and it's seen as dysfunctional, it's seen as,
Georgie Williams: once again, perverse and predatory. So, yeah, I think
Georgie Williams: representation is also about saying there's nuance to our
Georgie Williams: identities and this is how we present them. Not morally
Georgie Williams: perfect queer people, not queer people as villains, but a little
Georgie Williams: bit of everything. Yeah. When I
Joanne Lockwood: transitioned seven or eight years ago, hard to define a point
Joanne Lockwood: because it's an evolution rather than a point in time.
Joanne Lockwood: I was married at the time for best part of 30 years,
Joanne Lockwood: 28, 29, 30 years. My wife, in
Joanne Lockwood: order to be able to get her head around it, had to open up her
Joanne Lockwood: own thinking around her own sense of sexuality. And it's
Joanne Lockwood: actually, if you like, enabled her to be open
Joanne Lockwood: about her bisexuality, which allowed her to reconcile with
Joanne Lockwood: me and accept me for who I am without
Joanne Lockwood: rocking her sense of self either. So she's now openly bisexual. It
Joanne Lockwood: doesn't mean to say we're going to go out there and have relationships with anybody
Joanne Lockwood: else. It just means that we're quite comfortable in a
Joanne Lockwood: relationship that isn't traditional, it isn't
Joanne Lockwood: normal, whatever, however you want to describe it. I can be queer, Marie can
Joanne Lockwood: be bi, I can be pansexual. Not that I want to do anything with
Joanne Lockwood: it, but it allows me to have a conversation with
Joanne Lockwood: my wife where we're compatible because we're not creating
Joanne Lockwood: any rule set that says we're incompatible. And allowing
Joanne Lockwood: herself to explore that, created the ability for her to accept
Joanne Lockwood: me in a way that we embrace each other's identities now
Joanne Lockwood: rather than being a barrier between us. And I know many people struggle,
Joanne Lockwood: if you're in a relationship, to be able to take that bisexuality or that
Joanne Lockwood: gay or that lesbian or a trans dynamic
Joanne Lockwood: into your relationship, because it's about you, isn't it? It's
Joanne Lockwood: about your own identity and it impacts them. Yes, totally. Because I
Georgie Williams: think when we have conversations about this, people always consider
Georgie Williams: their own identity. And when we have to ask those questions, sometimes it can make
Georgie Williams: us uncomfortable. And actually, I mean, speaking from a personal perspective
Georgie Williams: as well, my partner has always identified as
Georgie Williams: a cisgender, heterosexual white man. We actually met on
Georgie Williams: the ship that I was travelling on, which was a very queer
Georgie Williams: ship. We had a female majority crew, we had many queer
Georgie Williams: people. I was one of four trans people in the crew.
Georgie Williams: And this was his kind of first experience of being
Georgie Williams: around trans people. And it was
Georgie Williams: never something that shook him up, ever. And I remember when we
Georgie Williams: first kind of started our relationship and I remember saying, well, do you
Georgie Williams: ever question how this makes you feel about yourself?
Georgie Williams: And I remember him being completely honest and being like, well, listen, I
Georgie Williams: don't care enough to ask those kinds of questions about myself. I am happy and
Georgie Williams: I am in a relationship. It doesn't have to shake the
Georgie Williams: foundations of me feeling like me. And I loved that
Georgie Williams: because it wasn't him saying, oh, well, your identity is not
Georgie Williams: relevant to how I feel about myself. But he was more like, I know who
Georgie Williams: I am and I don't need to put labels on that.
Georgie Williams: I can feel like the labels I've grown up with still identify
Georgie Williams: me, but still feel very firmed and assured about my own
Georgie Williams: identity in this relationship and respect and acknowledge yours.
Georgie Williams: And I think sometimes we expect queer
Georgie Williams: relationships to tick certain boxes in order to be
Georgie Williams: respected. I think especially it's something that I see with.
Georgie Williams: I've see it with trans women who previously identified with gay men,
Georgie Williams: whose partners still identify as gay men. And yes, sometimes that
Georgie Williams: doesn't work, sometimes it does. And both of those people can feel comfortable in their
Georgie Williams: identities, but also say, this relationship works for us.
Joanne Lockwood: So you're out with your partner who identifies
Joanne Lockwood: and presume he expresses as a white man or a
Joanne Lockwood: man, a straight man who gets offered the
Joanne Lockwood: menu. When you sit in a restaurant, does he offer the menu and asked to
Joanne Lockwood: place the order, or do you get a look in? I'll be entirely honest, he
Georgie Williams: is a very sweet, softly spoken introvert and
Georgie Williams: I am a human tornado, which means that largely,
Georgie Williams: I take the lead on these things anyways. So I think, yeah,
Georgie Williams: I haven't really paid a huge amount of attention to it, but usually I'm
Georgie Williams: the one that will ask for the bill and things like that. I think usually
Georgie Williams: it comes to me because that's one of the joys of gender, is it doesn't
Georgie Williams: matter what gender you are, if you are loud and annoying, people will
Georgie Williams: defer to you. In a restaurant, when my wife and I, we go
Joanne Lockwood: out, we're in a restaurant, and we know that the waiter is going to come
Joanne Lockwood: over and look at both of us a couple of times and go,
Joanne Lockwood: what do I do? We have a discussion before we go in
Joanne Lockwood: and say, right, your turn to order, and I'll pay, sort
Joanne Lockwood: of thing. So we predefined how we're going to respond
Joanne Lockwood: and interact with the waiter because we know that it often
Joanne Lockwood: causes confusion. I'll reach the
Joanne Lockwood: menu, or we'll say to each other, so what do you think you're having?
Joanne Lockwood: Or what do you think you're having? And we go, okay, you go first. No,
Joanne Lockwood: you go first. All right, I'll go first. So we have that kind of. But
Joanne Lockwood: it's almost like a little game with us because we know the person is
Joanne Lockwood: not sure how to deal with us. Well, I mean, my partner and I kind
Georgie Williams: of play with these things in similar ways as well, because I think he
Georgie Williams: loves the novelty of it, that you get to see people
Georgie Williams: behaving in such unusual ways, because that social script is
Georgie Williams: gone. And one of the things that I remember
Georgie Williams: happening was actually on the ship that we still go and do
Georgie Williams: maintenance on together. So the thing is that he and I refer
Georgie Williams: to each other. He refers to me as his husband. I refer to him as
Georgie Williams: my wife. And it became a joke that was like, oh, actually, we quite like
Georgie Williams: this. And it's quite sweet. And I remember once
Georgie Williams: he was working on the other side of the ship, and the person down on
Georgie Williams: the deck, I was up in the rig was like, oh, do you need anything?
Georgie Williams: And I was like, can you just tell my hot wife that I love him
Georgie Williams: as a joke? And someone misheard that and
Georgie Williams: turned to my partner and went, oh, your hot wife loves you. And
Georgie Williams: I was like, no, you heard that in the way that you wanted
Georgie Williams: to hear it because you looked at me and went, that would be the person
Georgie Williams: who's described as the wife in this relationship. And I thought it was so interesting,
Georgie Williams: that exposure of that kind of, like, unconscious bias.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, it is. And it's fun.
Joanne Lockwood: I often get people now helping me with my bag
Joanne Lockwood: up the stairs or something. If I'm checking to a hotel, someone will rush over
Joanne Lockwood: and go, I saw it, love. I'll take that. And I go, yes.
Joanne Lockwood: Result micro validation. Yeah, I'll take that. Every
Joanne Lockwood: day. And Marie looks at me funny sometimes. He says, aren't you going to
Joanne Lockwood: carry my bag? I said, do I look like a husband?
Joanne Lockwood: But obviously ingest. And we play with it, and it's
Joanne Lockwood: fun to sort of challenge these gendered rules and who does what?
Joanne Lockwood: My wife and I do joint talks. She always says that I don't do
Joanne Lockwood: the dishwasher. And so the dishwasher is, for whatever reason,
Joanne Lockwood: Marie's role. But I always point out that I do do the
Joanne Lockwood: rinse aid and put the salt in because that's not what Marie does. I do
Joanne Lockwood: the mechanical stuff. She does sort of like the
Joanne Lockwood: housewife. Yeah. I think it's no different to
Joanne Lockwood: other queer relationships. Lesbian relationships, gay relationships, bi relationships,
Joanne Lockwood: whatever. You just define your own protocols, don't you?
Georgie Williams: You do. You really do. And it was something that I found very
Georgie Williams: affirming at the start of my relationship with my partner was he said
Georgie Williams: that one of the things he loved about being in his first ever queer
Georgie Williams: relationship is the freedom it gave him, that actually
Georgie Williams: there weren't ways that he felt pressured to perform in order to
Georgie Williams: be the man in the relationship and have his partner be the woman in the
Georgie Williams: relationship that actually, we've kind of thrown that script out the window,
Georgie Williams: and we were figuring out what worked for us. And it feels
Georgie Williams: very emancipating to be able to say, actually,
Georgie Williams: whatever worked before felt restrictive. And we get to
Georgie Williams: decide what this dynamic looks like. And sure, maybe it makes other
Georgie Williams: people uncomfortable, but that's nothing to do with us. It's
Georgie Williams: been. Yeah, so liberating. Thank you. That's amazing.
Joanne Lockwood: And we could carry on all day. I know we could. And we've
Joanne Lockwood: spoke many times before. This is fascinating. And to Georgie, how can people
Joanne Lockwood: get hold of you? I'm sure they'd love to tune into your podcast and find
Joanne Lockwood: out more. So how do people get hold of you? So if you'd like to
Georgie Williams: listen to the podcast, the podcast name is Queer, so that's a forward slash
Georgie Williams: Q-U-E-E-R. If you search queer on
Georgie Williams: Spotify or Apple Podcasts, you'll come across it. It's
Georgie Williams: queer in black text on a white background, so it's relatively easy to
Georgie Williams: find. You can also find it via my social media.
Georgie Williams: So my Instagram handle is queer. That's
Georgie Williams: slash queer. It's the same handle on
Georgie Williams: Twitter, which I barely use now because of Elon Musk. You can also
Georgie Williams: find me on LinkedIn, my name being Georgie Williams.
Georgie Williams: And you can also cheque out more of the project at the Slash queer website,
Georgie Williams: which is slash queer.com slash queer. Thank you,
Joanne Lockwood: Georgie. You've been amazing. Thank you for having me. As we
Joanne Lockwood: bring this conversation to a close, I want to express my
Joanne Lockwood: deepest gratitude to you, our listener, for lending
Joanne Lockwood: your ear and heart to the cause of inclusion.
Joanne Lockwood: Today's discussion struck a chord. Consider subscribing to
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Joanne Lockwood: community, driving real change. Share this journey with
Joanne Lockwood: friends, family and colleagues. Let's amplify the voices
Joanne Lockwood: that matter. Got thoughts, stories or a
Joanne Lockwood: vision to share? I'm all ears. Reach out to
Joanne Lockwood: jo.Lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk
Joanne Lockwood: and let's make your voice heard. Until next time, this
Joanne Lockwood: is Joanne Lockwood signing off with a promise to return
Joanne Lockwood: with more enriching narratives that challenge,
Joanne Lockwood: inspire. And unite us all. Here's to fostering a more
Joanne Lockwood: inclusive world one episode at a time. Catch you on the next
Joanne Lockwood: bite.
Joanne Lockwood: Close.