As part of our series for Pride month, Emrys Moore, a trainee solicitor at RPC due to qualify in September 2020, speaks about his experiences as a non-binary, transgender man working in the legal profession. He is Stonewall Charity's Role Model of the Year for the South West region.

I first came out as bisexual when I was 22 and as transgender at 25. My gender identity has meant I face personal and professional barriers daily.

The legal profession has a reputation for being fairly traditional, inflexible and resistant to change. While progress is being made, acceptance of transgender people is lagging behind. I hope by sharing stories like mine that I can help this catch up.

Growing up, I was quite the tomboy and in hindsight it was fairly obvious that I was a trans man. However, I had no frame of reference for this until recently, so I just assumed everyone felt like that to some extent. My only reference for someone female bodied who presented masculine was a butch lesbian, but I'm bisexual so that wasn't right.

For a long time, I did not know that transgender people existed, beyond the offensive caricature of trans women as a "man in a dress" I had seen on television.

This all changed when I spoke to trans people, via LGBT+ social groups in Bristol. They spoke of that disjointed wrongness and called it gender dysphoria. For me, dysphoria feels like radio static made up of many thoughts, overlapping to the point that they all drown each other out.

Without any framework for understanding it, all I could make out was that overall feeling that something didn't quite fit and it was distressing. Learning about gender dysphoria and euphoria gave me a direction to explore, places to start to try and turn down the static rather than just ignoring it.

This wasn't an overnight process, but a series of smaller realisations. I read, listened to and spoke about transgender people's experiences of transitioning, the terms they used to describe their gender and how they realised they were transgender. With supportive friends, I tried on masculine clothes, pronouns and names until I found what fit best.

Transition is costly, emotionally and financially, so I hoped each step in the right direction would be the last one I needed to take. Despite supportive friends, family and colleagues and the funds to access medical transition privately to avoid the years long wait for NHS treatment, I was still terrified.

Transitioning has improved my life immeasurably. Before I came out, I had very little energy and was extremely anxious as I feared "giving myself away". I hardly recognise today that person as me, as I am now open and vocal about being transgender and queer.

Visibility is important, as I did not think as a queer transgender person that I could be a successful lawyer, because I did not see it. Paying forward the work done to educate me, by educating others and using my relative privilege to make things better for others, drives me.

The consultation for potential changes to the Gender Recognition Act has significantly raised the profile of anti-transgender views. This has led to an increase in harassment of people who are perceived to be transgender, whether they are or not.

"LGBT+ voices should be centred in discussions of the issues which affect them directly"

Sadly, some of the people who vocally and visibly hold hostile views are among us in the legal industry. This has impacted the way I live my public life. I am extremely wary of using bathrooms or going to events where I don't know the venue, or disclosing I am transgender in some circumstances.

It is a lack of understanding of the negative treatment we face that is one of the main barriers in further progressing LGBT+ inclusion in the legal profession. The other, is that it often falls to LGBT+ people to ask for that change.

LGBT+ voices should be centred in discussions of the issues which affect them directly. However, this also gets extended to LGBT+ people having to make or demand the space for those issues to be discussed in the first place. This can entrench an adversarial, rather than collaborative approach and adds barriers to those who already face more.

It is therefore important that diverse voices are encouraged to speak up and that explicit space is made for them to be heard. Against a background of negative treatment, it is not enough to be neutral. For their own safety, people will be careful and assume that people are not supportive unless they show that they are.

No single person is representative of the group they belong to, whether it is the wider LGBT+ community or a one letter from the acronym. While barriers do overlap, progress for the most privileged in the group can mask a lack of progress for those who face more barriers. Intersectionality is vital and part of this is recognising the gaps in our own knowledge.

I am immensely grateful that many people at all levels of seniority are becoming more aware of the gaps in their own knowledge and more pro-active in keeping an open mind, being willing to listen, learn and challenge their unconscious biases. In my view, that's how we make progress — by all of us being open to listening and learning.

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