In this episode of Queers & Co., I’m joined by Hannah Rose, a non-binary trans woman of colour and London-based activist and event organiser.

We chat about activism, marrying three men and a dog, the lack of trans POC representation, procrastinating as a form of self-care, how to create safe and supportive community events, how to be a better ally to trans folks and some of the hottest events on the London queer scene.

If you haven't already, be sure to join our Facebook community to connect with other like-minded queer folks and allies.

Find out more about Gem Kennedy and Queers & Co.

Podcast Artwork by Gemma D’Souza

Resources

Hannah Rose’s Instagram

Book recommendation: Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard, Rick Riordan

London Bi Panda’s Three men and a dog wedding action

LGSM - Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants

London Bi Pandas website

London Bi Pandas Instagram and recent campaign, 50 Ways to Leave your TERFer

The Outside Project

Aisha Mirza’s Instagram

Mental health collective and sober club night, Misery

Queer Masala food popups

Healthy Filth plant-based catering

YouTube channel, Trans 101

Travis Alabanza’s article, “Why does every achievement have to be a ‘first’ to matter?”

Other nights in London: Them Fatale, Inferno, Crossbreed, Pxssy Palace, Bar Wotever

Full Transcription

Gem: Hi Hannah. How are you?

Hannah: Good, thank you.

Gem: Thanks so much for taking part. So if anyone who hasn't come across your work before, it'd be really great if you could introduce yourself and a bit about what you do.

Hannah: Yeah, sure. So I'm Hannah Rose, I'm German-born, London-based, Iraqi, trans non-binary, woman of colour, neurodivergent. I think that's all the intersectionalities so it's a long list and it's quite a struggle. I do a lot of work in organising activism and queer spaces here in London, and in some other places like occasionally Berlin and yeah, my goal in London right now is just to help the queer community as much as possible and bring as much positive political change about as I can.

Gem: Yeah. And how did you get into and be involved in activism?

Hannah: So, it all started with Bi Pandas actually. Bi Pandas is this London based group. They started off last year. They were at pride when Monroe, who's quite a prominent drag performer and use to be a DJ. I was like, Hey, there's no proper bisexual representation, actual queer, bisexual representation at pride. Let's change that. And them and their partner Max, they did so, so, so much work. And spent so much money on getting a float for Pride. And it was just amazing. It was the most queer thing. The pictures from there are so amazing. We're going to do the same thing this year. So you'll see us around pride. And, Monroe was looking on the Bi Pandas page, they were running a visual for queer and specifically bisexual refugees, and I am a queer refugee, and I'm a child of two refugees, and they were looking for speakers and I didn't do too much public speaking before that, I use to do theatre so I use to talking to big crowds but I never did much political speaking. But I was like, yeah, sure, I'd like to do that. And I wrote something up and I don't know why, but I think I just had like, I don't want to play myself up too much, but I think I just had a natural talent for writing speeches because it was honestly a very, very moving speech because obviously it's issues very much related to me, made multiple people cry, which I think is a good guideline on how good the speech was, how many people did you make cry? And people loved it. [inaudible] especially as I said, that speech was amazing. Phew. LGSM (Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants) were like "Oh you should speak more" And it’s kind of just escalated from there. Just trying and more groups. Got more opportunities to speak. People started actually knowing me and inviting me to things to speak there, like here. And I just love it. Like I just left preparing it. I just love putting all my heart and soul into speaking these words. Convincing people and making people emotional.

Gem: So, it's really not long at all. Like it's not even a year since you've been doing that? I didn't realise.

Hannah: I moved to London four months ago.

Gem: Oh really? I thought you'd been in London for much longer than that? Okay. Wow. So this is all really recent then?

Hannah: Yeah, I'm very quick and everything.

Gem: Yeah. Very efficient. Clearly. So what's that been like for you? Such a kind of rapid change and increase in doing all this political work?

Hannah: So back in Germany. I did help out. I used to live in West Germany. In a town called Essen, it's near Dusseldorf. It was like 500,000 people town, so not too big. And I did work with the local, LGBT groups there. We did a little thing for our pride parade, a little tiny float with a speaker. So, I wasn't completely new to it exactly, but my life did change a lot in like the last year. My political opinions, I don't want to say use I had bad political opinions, but I did.

Gem: I think we all did at one point until we realised otherwise, right?

Hannah: So, that's changed a lot and I've always advocated a lot online. On social media and chat groups, about my political stances. And this was just kind of bringing it on paper and then bringing it, using my voice. And obviously the theatre actually helped quite a lot because speeches have a lot of similarities to acting.

Gem: Yeah, absolutely. And I don't want to spoil for anyone what might be in your speech if they go and watch you. But I wonder if you could share maybe like the main themes that you talk about when you give speeches.

Hannah: The last one I did it made the news quite a bit. It was 'the three men and a dog wedding' by lesbians and gays support the migrants. So there was this Boris Johnson quote , about yeah, gist of it was, Boris Johnson said that if we start letting same sex couples get married, we might as well let three men and a dog get married. So that's exactly what we did. So we got a whole band to play wedding songs. We got a dog and three guys, one wearing a Boris Johnson mask. We got a pagan Satanist priest to commemorate the entire wedding and we wed those three men and a dog and then we walked down Downing street and we stand at the Tory HQ and then marched down Downing street, block the streets off there and then did speeches there. So, I did a speech there for LGSM and a bunch of other people from Bi Pandas who did speeches there. And that was basically about being trans in this country and how it affects me. How the whole Brexit thing is affecting me. Just talking about how hard it is to get hormones here. How the UK ignores my German trans diagnosis. How I might get kicked out of the country or not get hormones anymore after Brexit. Because there aren't a lot of trans women around in activism, sadly, a few prominent ones are, obviously a lot of people have heard about Lucia Blake, Emily Cricket, two of them, they did trans pride, they do quite a lot of stuff. But you don't see a lot of activists. You don't see a lot of trans women around in a lot of cycles, sadly. So I always try and put that at the centre front, the trans experience, and to talk about and to educate people about it. I think that's the most important thing right now