We are young trans people occupying Wes Streeting’s office

Right now it’s midnight and I’m writing this from the pavement in front of Wes Streeting’s constituency offices. Wes is the Member of Parliament for Ilford North in east London and the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care and today announced an indefinite ban on puberty blockers on the basis that “they’re dangerous”.

I’m surrounded by Trans people, young and old setting up an occupation. Some people are huddling under sleeping bags and Dr Who blankets, trying to sleep. Others are making a giant cardboard coffin, similar to smaller ones we’ve been making for months. Another group of our growing numbers are trying to inflate what looks like an enormous hammock. We’re surrounded by snacks that have been sent to us from supporters and we’re all here together because we didn’t want to be alone in our despair this evening.

Often in the trans community we talk about hormone blockers as if they’re the be all and end all of what it means to be a trans kid. We’re no more or less trans if we have them, and in a very real sense we haven't had access to blockers long before today. Gender clinics haven’t been fully able to prescribe medication since 2019, and so whilst today isn’t a big change - it is a sign that the denial of our healthcare is now institutionalised.

What is so confusing about this decision - one which was not even called for in the Cass Review of gender identity services for children and young people in England - is the idea that these are dangerous drugs? The ban on blockers is only for trans minors and they’re still readily and easily available for cis minors and adults. So clearly the blockers are only dangerous for the people that he decides. This extension of the ban wasn’t unexpected, but we all held some hope that someone in his office would come to their senses and realise that denying trans kids healthcare that is “normal” and readily available for other people was an unjust and a stupid idea.

What this ban has done is show that the denial of our welfare isn’t a side effect of the NHS struggling. It’s a deliberate political choice. It’s not even something Labour can pretend is a hangover from the Conservatives. Labour have chosen to enact this policy and it’s scary that it’s one of the first things Wes Streeting has chosen to do with his power.

We know that there’s no truth that this decision was made on the basis of our safety. If he was concerned about our safety, or actually took the time to listen to us, he would be making decisions that would allow us to move through the world in the ways we want to be seen and as we are.

Wes has promised “clinical trials” on the effects of hormone blockers. But we already know what happens when we get them. We get to live happier healthier lives because our bodies won’t be permanently altered in ways we don’t want. The real trial or experiment he has now created is to keep us from our healthcare and see what happens when an entire generation of trans people grow up knowing the trauma they’ve gone through was avoidable. I’ve not consented to be part of that experiment - I just wanted healthcare.

I want to ask whether it’s right that a politician should have control over the hormones that go into my body? Is it right that I should be forced to have my body do things that I don’t want it to? Because really it’s not taking the puberty blocker that is an act of change, it delays the choice, it gives us time. Forcing us to go through a puberty we don’t want is permanent. The purpose of a hormone blocker is to give us time to think. We cannot think usefully about who we are or what we want when all we feel is a sense of impending doom for what is coming and knowing that someone else has decided that for you.

This isn’t the first time we’ve been here outside this office. It’s day 93 or 94. We’ve been here every day since he first renewed the ban on puberty blockers in July. We’ve done two other occupations of NHS offices and the department of education, we’ve done phone blockades and emailed him constantly. And we were eventually invited to meet with him by his team. We knew that meeting would mostly be performative, but we thought we might at least try to get something out of it. Despite sending constant emails to follow up his invitation, the meeting never happened.

Every time we’ve visited we’ve dropped off handmade paper coffins - representing the lives of trans people already lost and the lives that still could be . The inspiration for the coffins was the Act Up 1992 ashes action, where the families and friends of people who had died of AIDS took the real ashes to the White House and threw them onto the lawn. The cause of their death was government inaction - it’s why so many people, and especially gay men died unnecessarily. Wes Streeting is a gay man and probably thinks that his place in government is a win for representation - but we think that makes the decisions he is making about our healthcare even crueler. In the same way government inaction on AIDS cost lives, he could cost us ours.

Most trans kids will survive. But many of us will have to survive knowing that there are no institutions in Britain that will protect us. Not the courts. Not the media. Not the department for education. And most clearly it’s not going to be the NHS. We will have to find more ways to protect ourselves and each other. I really strongly believe that the majority of the people in this country want us to live and lead happy and healthy lives but we are being slowly denied that happiness by systems of the state.

Lots of people have already died waiting for healthcare and they never had to. More people will die. For some people - the feeling of impending doom and that every possible avenue that they thought they had to their healthcare is gradually getting removed will be too much to deal with. And that’s why for us tonight is mostly about being together - rather than alone despairing our own futures.

Trans Kids Deserve Better is a UK action network by trans+ youth, for trans+ youth.

Enjoyed this article? Follow Huck on Instagram.

Support stories like this by becoming a member of Club Huck.