Episode 8 - Marc Thompson with Iesha Palmer

Black and Gay, Back in the Day

Season 1 Episode 8 - “Marc Thompson with Iesha Palmer”

Date: 22.11.22

Season: 1

Episode: 8

Presenters: Marc Thompson

Contributors: Iesha Palmer

Producers: Shivaji Dave, Tash Walker

Assistant Producer: Abi McIntosh

Music: Kemi Oyolede

Artwork: Amaroun

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MT: ‘Welcome to Black and Gay, Back in the Day’. We’re bringing to life the archive of images of Black, LGBTQ+ life in Britain from the 1970s to the early ‘00s. I’m Marc Thompson, I’m an activist and health promotion specialist, and I’ve built this archive with the journalist and writer Jason Okundaye.

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MT: In this episode, we are looking at a photograph that was at the heart of a public health campaign for HIV awareness in the early 2000s. 

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MT: A colour photo shows two Black men in a tight embrace, looking into each other's eyes. Their noses are touching as though they are about to kiss. The man on the left is slightly taller than the man on the right. He is wearing a white shirt with an England football crest on the right sleeve. His arms wrapped around the second man, who is looking up at him and smiling, also wearing a white t-shirt. Underneath the image reads the caption: ‘We're so much closer now. Condoms are changing.’ For the last three decades I have been advocating for healthcare equity, particularly for HIV prevention for men who have sex with men and others who are at risk of exposure to the virus. But health care for our whole community is vast and often life-saving. I wanted to hear from someone who has experience in another area of the healthcare space, trans-activist and lover of all things queer and erotic, Iesha Palmer, who has been navigating the space for their own gender affirming care for years.

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IP: I have just been sent this picture by Marc and it's two Black men embracing each other. It makes me feel really warm. All I can think about is intimacy and the beauty of it, and this photo is part of condomsarechanging.com, so a campaign around HIV. I have to put my hands up and say I don't know much more than what many people have seen on television and film, which isn't always a true representation of the experience. And it makes me think about trans healthcare and just trans people in general. I feel as though people are so caught up with what they see on TV, which isn't the true story. And it's distracting from the real issues that we should be tackling similar to the HIV epidemic and the lack of resources, the lack of response due to what was being seen on TV. Thankfully, due to medical progression and advancement, and just amazing people on the front lines, we're not where we used to be but I know we're definitely not where we want to be. In struggles like this not everyone who planted the seed got to water it or see it harvest. But thankfully, we're able to speak to someone who's not only planted and watered, but is getting to see the harvest and he's the host of this podcast, Marc Thompson. He's been doing this for decades. I'm really excited to speak to Marc. I've seen so much of his work and he's been in so many podcasts and articles where his passion and drive really comes across so strong for what he’s fighting for and encourages us to join that fight. Because there's so many parallels between trans rights that we're fighting for today and the fight for gay rights so long ago and still happening as we speak. And I think in order to achieve that future of equity and liberation that we all talk about, everyone has to be on board. You have to build the bridges between generations and what better person to do it with someone who has been such a trailblazer as Marc Thompson and someone who's aspiring to continue that fight as myself. And a conversation like this; a rich conversation like this can’t happen over Zoom. So I need to just book my ticket and hop down to London to get to meet him in person.

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IP: Hi Marc!

MT: Hi Iesha, How’re you doing?

IP:  I'm doing good. How are you? 

MT: Yeah, I’m nice.

IP: Do you usually switch. How does this fit?

MT: You know what, it's really weird because I'm usually doing a lot of the interviewing so I don't know where you're gonna go with me today. 

IP: You’ve gotta trust!

MT: I’m back, I’m relaxed and ready for you to take me there. 

IP: We're looking at an image, an intimate image. What was your initial reaction? What is the first word that comes to you when you look at this picture? 

MT: Intimacy and some very, very good memories. Very good memories. This is a safe for sex campaign, from probably the early to mid 90s, produced by the Lesbian and Gay Foundation. The fact that it’s got two Black men, two dark skinned Black men, embracing in an intimate, loving way is really special and was really quite unique and stood out at the time.

IP: It's groundbreaking. I think. When I looked at the image the first thing that came to my mind was tongues untied. And I feel like I can count on three fingers the amount of time I've seen such a beautiful raw representation of Black gay men. And that image is one of them. And if we look down there's this text.

MC: Yeah, so the text reads, ‘We were so much closer now. Condoms are changing.com’. Is it ‘.com?’ My eyesight is going!

IP: You can borrow my glasses. 

MC: Middle-aged man, not to self: wear glasses when reading Instagram. But yeah, it really is not just about talking about safer sex. It's not explicit, it is talking about becoming closer, being intimate, being special. And I think you've got to put it in the context of the time that this was produced, midway through the HIV epidemic. We're trying to put out lots of information, lots of resources that speak to our community, which was predominantly speaking to sis,gay men at the time around introducing and adapting safer sex practices into their lives. I think what's really important as well as the image is the messaging around condoms, right? They're trying to normalise condom use in relationships because they were unusual and I think that people look back and think ‘oh, well you just use condoms because it was a smart thing to do’. You’re introducing something quite alien into lovemaking which isn't there in normal circumstances. So this campaign and lots of other campaigns and messages, had to sex them up. There was a great phrase that we used at the time but ‘safer sex is hot sex.’ I giggle when I hear that.

IP: It's very true. And I think when I saw that text, I was like, I'm not quite sure. Like, let me dig more into that. And, you know, in London, I think there was a prevention campaign, and there were some taglines like ‘it was in the heat of the moment’ or ‘it was just a one off.’ And what was really great about these campaigns, unlike the beginning of the HIV epidemic, was it was proactive. It was turning awareness into action. This is what you can do as an individual versus in the beginning, I felt like there was just so much there's so much panic, what did that feel like?

MT: Well, you know, I think when the epidemic hit in 82/83, and then we started to get the first campaigns in 1987, the ‘don’t die of ignorance' campaign. Gay communities have already started to do something about taking control and that information wasn't as panicked and wasn't as scary. So if you look at the old campaigns, for example, the Terrence Higgins Trust did, they’re kind of sex positive, and I think that what this image and some of the later work does, is to take a much more sex positive line, accepting that HIV is here, it’s not going away. We can't continue to scare people, because it doesn't work. Scare tactics and fear do not work in campaigns or advertising, right. So we move to a period where we're being much more inclusive, much more diverse. If you look at any of the old Health Education Authority campaigns that came out around that time, particularly those targeting gay men, they moved away from the fear. And you see images of men holding hands and men in bed together, pictures of condoms, and it becomes a much nicer journey. But, and there’s always a but with these things. You start to get a bit of pushback against that from some of the gay community at the time because it becomes quite vanilla. And so these aren't sexy campaigns. In some ways, they're quite sexless. You know, and I remember there's one campaign I remember really vividly where it's just a pair of hands with condoms on them. I mean, ok, what am I going to do with that? And what we started to do in our activist community was to start to reclaim some of that work and some of the work that gay men fighting aids did and I subsequently did a Big Up which was to be much more hard-hitting, it was to be much sexier. To be a little bit more explicit. We didn't want to take away from intimacy but we knew that the men that we were working with weren't necessarily engaging in loving long term, ‘Let's cook breakfast on Sunday morning’, they were going out on Saturday night, they were shagging and they weren't seeing that person the following day. So how do you promote safer sex to those people?

IP: And that is a really good question. How was that possible? I think given the time where, you know, the party scene, that was the life, it is still life for myself. I don't want to speak about you, but going out, that's where we find our community, that where we find, for so many of us, our chosen family. We find them within those four walls, sweaty strangers, telling your life story to someone in the bathroom or falling in love on the dance floor. When is the point that you introduced that talk about safe sex? Is it before the case, is that after the case, is it when you're dancing on the dance floor? Like how is that being introduced? How has that been introduced?

MT: Well what we did as campaigners and activists and people who are affected by HIV at the time was, we were from the community. So the community started to drive the conversation. The community started to decide actually, I go to the clubs, I go to the saunas, I go out outdoors to Hampstead Heath and I meet people, this is how you should talk to me. So it wasn't from on high that was coming down and creating the work. It was a bottom up approach. So when I got involved in the work, I was working with other Black men, my age, we weren't academics, we weren't doctors, nurses, we just like ‘something needs to be done.’ So one of the first things that you would do is to make sure the work you're delivering is culturally appropriate. Okay, so it speaks in a language and uses imagery that relates to the people that you're trying to reach. That's number one. Number two, if you're thinking about the dance floor and the clubs then you go into those spaces, right. So what I would do is I would organise teams of volunteers, young Black gay men, who would pack condom packs, and they would take them to parties; to clubs. Sometimes you get a really bad reaction from people, but overall, people were really welcoming because they knew, right, I've hooked up, somebody just handed me a condom pack, I can go home and I can use this and I will probably prevent myself getting HIV. But what we also did was to work with club promoters, with DJs, with people that were running the parties, running the bars, to say you are part of the community; you have a responsibility and people jumped in on that. And it was really important.

IP: HIV is no longer a death sentence. We've seen a move from panic to prevention, care and treatment options. And this has no doubt been down to community action, which has led to results. That's individuals, that's grassroots mobilisation, for demanding better services, demanding services - period - because there were no services at one point, you know, for medication and education. I wanted to know on a personal level, how did you get involved?

MT: Well, I got involved kind of by accident, you know, I was diagnosed myself for a really young age, of 17. I had no intention of becoming an activist or doing any of this work. And I kind of fell into it because I was invited to by other Black gay men. You know, I was first of all asked to give a talk to a group of volunteers at a service centre I went to. I really enjoyed doing that because it was an audience. And then I was asked to come and give safe sex talks to Black gay men. So I do these little workshops and it would literally be 12 men in a community centre, and I’d have a pack of condoms, bananas to put the condoms on and games where you would measure your risk of a certain act and put yourself in the line to see where you are in the risk continuum and all of these things I would really enjoy doing. And on one level, it was really personal, because I was positive and I'd experience HIV stigma directly. I didn't want other men like me, or me, to continue facing that. So I thought, if I can teach somebody that'll make life a lot easier for me and make life easy for everybody else. And my career just snowballed. And I slowly just got invited to do more things. I set up an organisation with a group of guys called Big Up and it just went and went from there. What I really enjoyed was, in spite of the fact that it was a really dark time outside in space, it was joyous. I mean, the fact that we would get together 20/30 men for a workshop and yes, they'd be talking about HIV, AIDS and how to prevent it, but we were building community; there was a lot of love. These were people who were connecting in the daytime. And I think we have to remember, all of our connections were in clubs. We were now moving to a space where we were volunteering, we were marching, we were staffing helplines, we were running groups, all of these things came out of that pandemic. And I think it's really important that we remember that so many things that we enjoy today came as a result of that time.

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IP: I don't even have words to really process all of what you just said, except that you are just a wealth of knowledge. And it  shows the power of lived experience. And as you were speaking, I was thinking, what we go through doesn't have to be just for us. We can then ask, I mean, you’re still going through, but take that experience that you had and things that you've learned and share that with other people. And I think it's quite difficult. It must have been quite difficult for someone having that experience, someone on the outside to come in and say ‘that’s what you need to do’ and having no connection to community, you have no idea what it's actually like, but when someone who is having the same experience as you. Ssharing, being vulnerable, being open, and helping and sharing that knowledge, you’re so much more receptive to that. can only imagine the power that you found in that it, must have been very difficult and, at times still difficult. But you’re tapping into your personal experience and finding the purpose within all that chaos, all that misinformation and the lies that might have been shared outside, and tapping into that purpose within yourself and sharing that. I think it's just so wonderful. 

Coming from a very religious family, I was born in 1994. I consider myself a bit older now. I mean, people are like ‘I was born in 2002’ and I’m like ‘What?’ I was raised a bit in Florida, but a majority of my young adult life was in the Caribbean. My only knowledge of HIV or AIDS was an abomination. That's what you get for being gay. That was the only knowledge that I had. And I saw firsthand how it wasn’t necessarily, yes, HIV, the pandemic killed, but I think it was the stigma. I believe that it was stigma that created these barriers and reinforced the barriers for people to have even access, to have a conversation, to even access health care. And I wanted to ask, to stick on that point, just for a little bit, What advice would you give to a young Black male who was just who's just got his results? What advice would you give to him? Because I can imagine, I think of the five stages of grief, right? Denial, you know, and then there's anger. To get to that, how do you, in that very moment, how do you see the acceptance of the end? How do you see that light in the tunnel?

MT: You're not gonna see it for a while for some people, right? And I think that one of the pieces of advice I'd say to anybody is, you will see that light eventually.  It's gonna come. And I've worked with lots of newly diagnosed people in my career. And what I've often said to them, is, you go through life, all of us do, you're going down the road, and we always get speed bumps. HIV is a speed bump in the middle of the road. Now, if you're driving your car, you have two choices when you go over a speed bump. You can speed over it, and you'll mess up the under the exhaust and the underneath your car and all the rest of it. If you take your time and you approach it slowly, and you look around and you measure, you’ll go over it and you will come over the other side. And HIV is just one speed bump in your road of life. So it's what you do when you get to that speed bump.

Now, my direct answer to your question, if I had a young Black woman sit in front of me today my first bit of advice is, you're not alone. It’s so important to know that you are now part of a massive community, there are 100,000 of us in this country alone, so you're not on your own and many people feel really isolated. You're not going to die. That's the other important thing to understand. And you will be loved. All the medical stuff you can control, you can manage that, but that psychological stuff, you will be loved, you’ll live and you're not on your own.

IP: Take that to heart. 

MT: That's for everybody.

IP: We've seen incredible medical advances in our treatment of HIV since the 1980s. You're wearing a wonderful shirt here and the text says ‘celebrating women who pushed for PrEP in the UK.’ Can you tell us, I'll be honest, put my hands up, I don't know any of the names on the t-shirt. Can you please just talk about it?

MP: There’s a lot to unpick. So, let’s talk about the t-shirt first. So the t-shirt was made by my company PrEPster, we run to educate and agitate for PrEP access in the UK. And this t-shirt specifically was produced for International Women's Day and it has on it: ‘Gold & Ross & Sseruma & Strachan.’ These are four women who were instrumental in the fight for PrEP access in the UK. And those are Debbie Gold, Michelle Ross, Winnie Sseruma and Sophie Strachan. And the reason we did that, we celebrated 12 women in total; clinicians, researchers and activists, because the narrative has very often been that it’s white gay men or gay men who are fighting for PrEP. And there were so many women that have been proactive in the entire fight for HIV rights and access and prevention since the start of the epidemic, there has been an equal number of women as there have been men. And I think it's really important to celebrate that.

 PrEP is a drug that can prevent HIV, it's available on the NHS, it works, and more people should know about it. And when I consider how far we have come, when I was diagnosed, there was no treatment at all. Then we get something called AZT in the 1980s. Then in the late 90s, we had combination therapy, which is when you take a number of HIV drugs combined, and it reduces the virus in your body. And now we've got to a point where we know, because lots of studies and lots of work have been done with positive people, that  if you're HIV positive and you take your treatment as prescribed, you get to an undetectable viral load, which means you can't pass the virus on. Now I never imagined that, and that is huge! One, it is huge for the world, because we're not passing HIV on and we can end the epidemic, but for me as a positive person, it's life changing for us as people who live with HIV because it stops us internalising that we are infectious; we are vectors and carriers of disease, which is the most internalised stigmatising thing that we carry with us.

IP: Yeah, I believe ‘UequalsU’. It's a really important strategy because, like you said, it minimise stigma, but also it was the first time that people had realised it was possible to develop, ‘normal sexual relations’ with others. Because in the beginning that wasn't even that wasn't even a thought it was, when you got your result, it was like, 'I'm going to die’, essentially. There was no thought about intimacy and the power of being in a relationship, it was so far fetched. And here we are today, where people can have those normal sexual relations with others. And just how important is that? How important is it to know that in life, you still can have life! lThere's a possibility for a full, healthy, loving, happy, happy life.

MT: Remember, I said that there are many people that I've worked with who say to me, once they get a diagnosis, I'm not going to be loved. It’s an immediate thing. ‘Nobody's ever gonna love me again’. And with this piece of science, with this indisputable fact that people can't pass HIV on, it opens the doors to be loved; it opens doors for intimacy, in ways that people would probably put to bed and forget about; didn't think were possible in their lifetimes. But there is always a caveat with this. HIV is a global pandemic. It's not just based in the UK. And it's great that if you're diagnosed here you can go to a clinic and you can get treatments tomorrow morning, boom, nice and easy. But we know that globally, that's not the same, over 50% of people in the world who are infected with HIV are women and girls. Access to treatment globally is not equitable. So I can sit here and go, ‘it’s amazing’, but I know that somewhere somebody is not able to access HIV treatment as easily as I am. And the only way we end this pandemic is to have a global response. So we need to ensure that healthcare is equitable for everybody. Even in the UK, we still know stories of Black women in particular, going into clinics not being offered HIV tests, or not adhering to treatment or being lost to follow up. And this isn't because these Black women aren’t doing the right thing, it is because the system isn't in the right position to meet their needs.

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IP: So I know there’s a lot of acronyms and words you might understand, can you just summarise all of that wonderful knowledge you’ve just said to someone who may have no clue what that means?

MT: Ok, let’s start with PrEP. PrEP means pre-exposure prophylaxis, so it means it's a drug that you take before. That's the ‘pre’ and what it is, it's HIV medication, so it's HIV drugs that are HIV positive, but negative people take them before and after sex to prevent them from getting HIV. That's PrEP. Then you have PEP, which is P.E.P, which is post-exposure prophylaxis, which means it's a drug you take after sex. Now you can take PEP and you can get it from most accident emergency clinics by just going in if you feel you've been exposed to HIV, and you take the drug within 72 hours of that exposure, and you take it for up to four weeks afterwards. And it can stop you acquiring HIV so it’s HIV medication, like PrEP but taken after, and it’s one pill. And then we have UequalsU, which is undetectable equals untransmittable. And what that means is, when a person who is diagnosed with HIV takes their HIV medication as prescribed, which is every day. They then get an undetectable viral load, which means doctors, healthcare professionals cannot measure the amount of virus in your blood, which therefore means you can't pass HIV on and there have been loads of studies done; lots of positive people having lots and lots and lots of sex, and there have been no transmissions around the world and that is great news

IP: The power of medicine. 

MT: Ta-da!

IP: I don't think any of that would have been possible had the stigma and misinformation continue to be prevalent. And again, that's down to workers, individuals, to women, to mass mobilisation, to grassroot movements, demanding we have a fighting chance. 

MT: Absolutely. 

IP: So we know, Marc, that this largely impacted marginalised communities such as Black and brown, queer, poor and all of the above. I do think HIV is a lens through which you can see all the ways in which this intersects. How do you get other people to see that?

MT: That's a really great question. You know, I think, how do we get people to see it? I think what can reflect back, what I started to do was when I first realised and saw the data, particularly in the United States, that Black gay men were twice as likely to get HIV as white gay men. And when I started to understand the epidemiology and research behind it, and I understood well, actually, it's not anything we're doing. Black gay men are not having more sex. They're probably having less sexual partners. They're doing less drugs. And there was this magic bullet that just went into my head, that this is about certain sexual and social networks. This is about the fact that men don't feel they can access clinical services. They weren't accessing HIV testing, they were coming to treatment really late. And all of these things and I knew  and I looked around the Black men I knew I was like, ‘they’re not idiots!’ They’re not unskilled. Why are they not getting the same things that my white friends are?

And I started to look at the social and structural barriers that were impacting those men. So then that gave me leverage when I had a seat at the table with politicians, with funders, to start actually going, ‘This isn't what we're doing. This is what you're not doing.’ And that was a spin on his head. And now I can look and I can see those people in those positions of power, and I have to say this, particularly in the sexual health field, not the wider government, now looking at the needs and the lives of Black queer men are going ‘right it's not just because we need they need to do X, we need to do better.’ It's not about these people being hard to reach. We're just not looking in the right places for them. Right. So I think that's important. And as we've gone on, we're able to add things like systemic and institutionalised racism, which impact how homophobia impacts Black queer communities and brown queer communities in different ways to white communities. So all of these factors, we have the evidence, which we already knew, but we have evidence to show to people. And I think finally what COVID did in the past couple of years, because that lens was broadened out and we saw Black and brown communities hugely affected by COVID and the health inequalities, and light was shown very brightly, were able to come back and go this isn't just about COVID this is everywhere across health. 

IP: And something came to my mind while you were speaking, about the weathering effect, right. So we know that just dealing with everyday impacts of oppression such as racism, such as homophobia, transphobia, sexism, working class, it has a physiological toll. You speak of research, and it's proven that it ends up manifesting itself where it places people at an increased risk. When you're dealing with racism, you're dealing with all these oppressions. You don't have the time or the mental capacity to even think about going to access, having a conversation. Who do I need to speak to ? That time isn't afforded to you. Because all your time is caught up in fighting systemic racism. It's exhausting. And frankly, we are tired, everyone is tired. So I want to know where can Black queer people access this information and services?

MT: Unfortunately, I wish I could read off a list of places for you to go to, for us to go to but there are. And I don’t want to leave people out but I think off the top of my head there are places like Blackbeat Health or Rainbow Noir up in Manchester, you have House of Rainbow, run by Reverend Jide Macaulay. These are some of the places; the Nas Project in London that works in South Asian communities and Latino communities. And some of our smaller organisations which are a bit more generic like the Positive East in London or the Metro Centre, they do great work with marginalised communities, but in terms of naming places, there are very few and far between. And I think that's because we've had austerity in the past 10/12 years, so lots of services have been cut. We haven't been as good as recreating some of those spaces, but I think the place where most people would go right now is online, is to go to your local insta! Your local insta! [laughs] Old person! It’s to go to Instagram, to go to Twitter and to find people who are influencers. People that are making a difference, people that are promoting good, healthy messaging and to make those connections. I'm a great believer in us getting out and recreating communities and building up some of those services that we so sorely lack and that are sorely missing from our communities. 

IP: And speaking of social media, that's something that wasn't around then but it is now and we see how it's been a vital tool. During monkeypox, the virus outbreak that's happening right now. We can see people sharing stories of them in suffering, sharing stories and pictures and videos. And we have people like Dr. Colton Thomas, who's a queer educator on social media. And again, compared to back then to now, here are people in the field who are counteracting misinformation by giving correct information and lived experience. That voice; power of messaging is no longer just from the government. It's with the people here on the frontline with the lived experience.

MT: It’s been democratised, right, which is fantastic! I think monkeypox right now is a great example of communities and individuals in the community taking charge of a narrative, putting out their own stories, challenging misinformation, challenging stigma, challenging stuff within their friendships, social groups, like sexual networks, which is really important. 

Again, I always caveat these things. There’s usually a ‘but’ with me. But we have to ensure the government does have a responsibility to its citizens, to the nation. Queer people, we have a right to good health care and good information, now whilst I'm really happy that a young queer man might put out a great piece of information, as you said about weathering, that's taken away from him taking care of himself. How has he been supported? So if he’s in isolation, who's paying for that isolation time when he's there? If he goes to a clinic and he's met with some stigma, there was some homophobia there because he's had lots of sexual partners and he's got monkeypox, who's supporting him there? So yes, it's great that the individual does that. But we also need to have a big system approach to this. We cannot just solely rely on a group of us getting up and going, ‘this is what's happening. We deserve better.’ Because everybody's in it. We will pay our taxes. We all are citizens in this country. We all play an active role. So we should be getting something back from the government, from the powers that be, from sexual health services. And that is something that hasn't changed since the beginning of the AIDS epidemic.

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IP: That rings so loudly like yes, we deserve better! But now we need to shift the pressure on, so you need to do better and it needs to happen now.

MT: Yeah. What I find interesting when I'm observing the stuff around monkeypox and how it relates back to the HIV epidemic, is I see it mirroring around trans and non-binary health as well, the same struggles, the same lack of response from government or pushback from government and those that sit around it. And I'm inspired by young trans, non-binary activists who are taking control of that narrative and demanding that you work in that field, what has it been like? What are you seeing? 

IP: Well, like you said, the similarities are just so there. It’s so in your face. Anyone who says they can't see it, it's like they choose not to. Transgender people suffer significant health disparities. And some may require medical intervention as part of their care. That's not everyone's experience, but that is something that is some people's experience, and the biggest barrier to healthcare, again, similar to what we spoke about before, is the lack of access due to lack of providers who have any knowledge on the topic. 

And they, quite frankly, from my personal experience, they don't feel as though they should have knowledge about the topic. I remember when I first accessed the NHS, I'm going to have top surgery in a couple of weeks, woo-hoo! But it's been extremely exhausting and long and hard. And there have been so many points, where I was just like, is this all a waiting game? Is this what my life is meant to be? Just waiting for a letter, waiting for a phone call, waiting for a response, waiting for someone to hear my needs, not desires but what my needs are. I realise it's not even a question about us having a voice. It's a question about are they listening? Do they care enough to listen? And what we've seen when it comes to trans health care, it doesn't seem like those in positions of power care enough to listen, and that's something that's mirrored from the 80s it's the same. My mum always said, ‘same message, different choir.’ 

MT: You see, the question that I’ve got on the back of  that, because we’ve both spoken a lot about outside forces, the government, and you just said something that I just picked up on something which you said that ‘it’s not a want, it’s a need.’ When we reflect back on the HIV epidemic, I felt the community came together. Men, women, everybody, just got in it because we were facing death. Do you find that you have a community to come and support and to demand and fight for trans and non-binary health care in the same way that the wider community [did]? Is it just trans and non-binary people fighting for this? Do you need the sis community to be on board? Because sometimes I'm seeing that pushback from our sis siblings.

IP: We need allies. Allies, not just as a term to put into your Instagram bio, but it's an action right? The reason we need that, it's just the same reason that the 80s needed it. We need that collective response. It cannot just be on those being affected by the thing to be fighting for the thing, because it's so hard; it's so hard to juggle. I think about my day to day, when you're a part of the solution; a part of that fight, but you're experiencing that, it takes extreme a very heavy toll. It's like, what am I choosing today? I'm gonna have to compartmentalise. I compartmentalise my experience and focus on the work that needs to be done. Yes, we need allies, sis people step up to the plate and just stepping away from labels, human to human, right. Human to human. Do you want to be the recipient of a system that has relied on the oppression of other people? I don't. Within the community, no one goes harder, right. We go hard for our own. We protect our own, we stand up for our own. 

Thinking of my choosing to go down the private route for my top surgery. After two years of waiting, I was like, ‘Okay, I can't wait’. I waited. I think I've waited long enough. I think I've given enough time to this. And I do think GoFundMe was a shift. So GoFundMe started in 2010, but I think  it was 2019 when I started seeing those hashtags of people creating GoFundMe for their surgeries. And the response was amazing! People gave!

People were willing to give. People were like, okay, even if it's a pound; a penny, I'm gonna mix up the currency now. Sometimes it's not even the question of, do people want to? I feel like people struggle. They don't know how to feel. They're like, ‘can I give to a cause that I don’t understand?’

And what GoFundMe did is, you can be anonymous and just give pounds, no one needs to know what you've done. The right hand doesn't need to know what the left hand did, and that created a safety net for people and they felt like okay, ‘I can do this.’ I started my GoFundMe during the pandemic, which was really, really frightening. I created a draft about a year before and it took me an entire year to press ‘post.’ With the financial crisis, everyone has an issue, everyone has a problem, all these other things I had to think about and, you know, thinking for the people, and I had to come to a point where, hold on a second, I cannot continue to forfeit. What is my right? And I think it has to come down to knowing as a trans person, as a non-binary person, it is your right to healthcare. Every other person's needs are met. I don't understand why  it gets more complicated and the waters get murky. No, you need somethin, you should be provided with that service. We all have a part to play in the liberation, the true liberation of trans, non-binary queer people.

MT: Wow. That was a lot and I couldn't agree with you more. Absolutely. But you asked me earlier, what advice would I give to a young Black queer man who might be diagnosed positive today? So what advice would you give to a young trans or non-binary person who is today realising, ‘I’m not cis, I want more’?

IP: Well, you can have more! One! Two, it took such a long time for me to come to terms with my truth and choose to live that. You don't choose to be trans, you don't choose to be non-binary, you don't choose to be gay, you don’t choose to be bi. You don’t choose those things but what you do choose is to live in that truth.

MT: And that I completely agree with.

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MT: I've been your host, Marc Thompson. The reporter in this episode was Iesha Palmer. You can find the picture we've discussed in today's episode and all the images talked about throughout this podcast on Instagram, @BlackAndGayBackInTheDay. And drop us a message if you have something you want to submit to the archive, a link will be available in the show notes. 

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