Tara's Thoughts

I’m not sure if England still wants me. I feel at home when I'm riding my bike through rolling hills, when I'm wandering on the beach at low tide with my shoes off, when I'm walking in the woods with the doggies, when I'm heading down a busy street and hearing 5 different languages.   I feel at home when I’m with my partner, when we’ve sat together and enjoyed a delicious meal one of us has cooked.   In the time we’ve lived together, we’ve enjoyed a steady arms race of cooking, as we have each developed our own niche recipes.   I have effectively appropriated a broad Italian inspired repertoire, whereas she remains devoted to Mexican-oriented dishes.   Her vegetarian bean and Quorn tacos are to die for. Just recently, I was on a usual Sunday ride through the New Forest—a cyclist’s playground, and a place that has become an integrated part of my own perception of my home.   Southampton is a city where I never intended to find myself living, when I, as a 21-...

  Trans Joy is a Privilege, and More People Need to Acknowledge That There’s a phrase that does the rounds in queer spaces — especially among trans people — and that’s “trans joy.” You see it in photos taken just after surgery, in posts celebrating HRT milestones, in little exchanges of “your name really suits you” and “I love how you’ve grown into yourself.” And it makes sense.   For a community that’s spent so long being defined by trauma, shame, and sheer survival, the idea of joy feels almost revolutionary.   It’s resistance.   It’s hope.   It’s a reason to keep going. But here’s the truth I’ve had to sit with: trans joy is a privilege.   And we don’t talk about that nearly enough. First of all, lets actually define what I mean.   “Trans Joy” — often referred to as gender euphoria—is the profound, affirming sense of happiness, peace, or rightness that many trans people experience when their gender identity is acknowledged, respected, or refl...

This book was totally different from what I expected, just going off the blurb. I went in fully anticipating a road-trip novel: Act One setting up Maria, Act Two kicking off the trip and introducing James, and Act Three giving us the emotional payoff — James figuring their shit out and Maria finding some closure. That… is very much not what happens. Part One being as long as it is felt wildly unnecessary at first. To be honest, I actually put the book down for a bit before I came back to it to finally finish it, yesterday. But once I got into Part Two, I realised just how much all that setup and all those establishing shots in Part One mattered. Interestingly, I found myself relating way more to the people around Maria than to Maria herself — mostly to Piranha, actually.   She’s the stalwart, friendly face of the NYC trans community. Kind of where I sit in Southampton — the one who seems to have their shit together, who everyone comes to for help… while secretly very much ...

The childhood I experienced was one where I was taught to love my country.  I was a member of the Scout Association for nearly all of my childhood and teen years, only leaving the youth section of the organisation when I was 16 in order to pursue a Naval career.  When I got to University, I was an assistant leader for a local Scout Section for about 18 months during my undergraduate years, and I look back on that with a lot of fondness.  Combine the drummed-in words of “Do my duty to God and the Queen” of the last line of the Scouting Promise with my military background, and you have someone who could well have found themselves on the fast-track to the Conservative Party.  My upbringing was of a system that had experienced consistent investment through the Blair-Brown Labour years, and I had never seriously wanted for anything growing up.  I never experienced hardship that less fortunate individuals would have. In 2022, when I came out as a trans woman having ...

  Hi, welcome to another one of my essay-ramblings about my life, reflecting on bits and bobs.   What I want to talk about today is two concepts that I have felt a lot, and when I’ve mentioned it to friends, they’ve expressed great solidarity with my words. As a trans person, there are moments that leave me at a loss for words. Moments so specific and so visceral they deserve to be named.   However, the vocabulary we use is quite difficult to change.   Sure, we’ve had recent additions to the common lexicon – brainrot, transmisogyny, and compersion are the examples that spring to mind, but for the most part it takes a while for these to filter through. Lacking a proper name for a lot of these feelings, I’ve decided that where a word doesn’t exist, you can just invent them – a kind of linguistic liberalism. --- Comphoria The first of these concepts is a kind of joy I’ve felt many times: when I witness someone, especially another trans person, finally start to be...

There is a fundamental problem with the way we approach sport in this Country.   As I write this, it’s August 2024.   It’s the off-season for a variety of sports.   Football, Rugby, Cyclocross - sports that are important to me.   Some I have participated in and some I wish I could participate in.   We have also just had the Olympics.   I have written before about how these Olympics have not gripped me anywhere near as much as other games have, as well as how vitriolic so much of the media coverage has been, particularly surrounding a certain Algerian gold-medallist boxer.   These feelings have not subsided, and the simmering feeling of disillusionment with Sport that I had prior to these games has only festered further.   This is something I have discussed with my partner a great deal.   She is formerly a professional criterium cyclist, and for over a decade of her life cycling, in many disciplines, has dominated her free time.   She...