Nottingham Pride with the Princes Trust and Boots
Hey everyone!
I wanted to share a blog about lessons that I’ve learnt travelling, as I couldn’t find any of this information online. Until we have some restructuring within the factions involved with travel, we’ve got to adapt because those sunsets and beautiful destinations are more important for me to get to, than to have a pleasant experience travelling. I hate working out, I still do that, so I can manoeuvre through these annoying situations when I’m travelling too.
I distinctly remember an incident when I was heading to LA and I was at Heathrow airport, a British woman looked at my passport, looked at me, looked at my passport and read it, then said I have to go in a specialist room where an older man with a grin on his face started to complete a very violating search on my body. I felt gross, completely singled out, and couldn’t understand the necessity for it considering my sex marker was still M. I travelled, finished my work and returned to the UK, and at border control I was told to ‘seek assistance’ by the machines and had to sit there with an elderly man, again a grin on his face, staring at my passport photo and me, and refusing to let me enter the UK. He asked me to prove that I was Joseph Harwood, and I joked that they could look at my wikipedia page. He then stopped and called four other men around to discuss my transformations and I was left there in limbo, with a humungous crowd behind me staring at me like I had done something wrong.
This type of nonsense has happened to me in the UK and thankfully not in a country where they speak another language. I could figure out how to navigate this, but it was really debilitating for me. I spoke to elders in the community and they told me about how these people saw it as a novelty or an entertaining challenge, and just wanted to put you on the spot to find out more about you. That’s the kinda thing that makes me have an anxiety attack, so I had to come up with a strategy to stop this happening. I couldn’t bare the experience continuing so I decided I had to change my passport photo to a visual where I looked neither male nor female, with slight facial hair because I would rather have a document that allowed me to safely travel than to represent me in my normal guise. There’s nothing in place to protect trans people and we’ve got to find ways at the moment to work with this, for our own sanity and safety.
As frustrating as this is, these are my flags to consider:
Prepare for invasive searches. Mentally. I’ve been through violations and I hate it, but I brace myself for it each time.
Use a passport photo that resembles you after a long-haul flight instead of your normal expression.
Have emergency contacts in your destination and at home to speak to either side of the experience.
Have easy access to work statements and public bios, download them to your phone or have a letter from your host.
Research the experience of other people travelling to that destination.
Talk to other LGBT people from those destinations about cultural misunderstandings.
Temper your reactions to what would normally be an unacceptable response.
Equip yourselves with anxiety tools, podcasts that direct your attention to the narrative being shared in your headphones, use breathing techniques like box breathing or 4 count breaths through the nose, 8+ count breaths through the mouth. Feel the floor and the space between the bottom of your foot and your shoes. Focus on the feeling of warmth when you touch your arm. Keep calm. Bring something to comfort you, beaded bracelets that clink or a comforter.
Don’t let ignorance defeat your ambitions.
Invest in a gadget like a Tile, which keeps your items tracked on your phone. Sometimes because I’m hyper aware of all of the above, I panic about my luggage going missing or people not treating my things with respect. I photograph things, use the app that tells me where the tracker is and it balances my mind a little bit more.
Use things like rescue remedy to combat anxiety, I also like CBD.
Should we be doing these things? No. And that’s why I offer ERG and DEI training within the various industries I work in. But many times I have been booked for work by people who do not know about these things, an example was being booked in Germany for Glow Con. They did not take into consideration the flight times, what it’s like to be in a trans body that grows facial hair that causes dysphoria, and the safety concerns entering countries who are intolerant of you. I never got to attend my appearance because there was a lack of awareness of all these various factors from a UK management company, so it can happen from all directions.
Prepare things in advance, don’t let these challenges overcome you and set an intention of what you are going to achieve through travelling. It will all come together and collaborative experiences will create change.