This week, I’m joined by Katy Lees (they/them), a queer writer and psychotherapist from the North East of England. They can be found writing therapy tips, poetry, anti-oppression rants, short stories, and more. They are currently writing a good mental health guide for trans and non-binary people, to be published soon by Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

Join us as we talk about the oppression different sized fat folx experience, trans and non-binary mental health and self-care, Katy’s experience navigating and recovering from burnout, stepping away from the constant pressure to ‘level up’ in life, the challenges of dressing as a fat, trans, non-binary person and lots more.

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

Find out more about Katy’s work on their website.

Support Katy’s work on their Patreon

Follow Katy on Instagram

Full Transcription

Gem: Welcome to Queers & Co., the podcast on self-empowerment, body liberation and activism for queer folx and allies. I'm your host, Gem Kennedy. My pronouns are they/them and I'm a transformational practitioner and coach living in the UK.

Gem:  Hey folx! Welcome to Episode 4. I hope you were able to get some relaxing time during integration week. I know that it was really helpful for me to practice some of what I talk to my clients about around working sustainably and actually give myself some space to not be furiously editing and producing all the time. So with that in mind, I'm very excited and energised to be back for Episode 4. And this one is a short and sweet episode. They're an incredible guest and they also happen to be an incredible client of mine. And I'm just really happy that they agreed to record an episode with me. We had quite a few technical difficulties unfortunately during the recording, which meant that we tried two different platforms and then by the time we'd had that all sorted, then time was up. So we have just over half an hour together. And I hope that you'll find it as interesting as I did. And just to introduce my guest... They are a queer writer and psychotherapist from the northeast of England. They can be found writing therapy tips, poetry, anti-oppression rants, short stories, and more on their website iamkatylees.com, and that will be in the show notes. They're currently writing a good mental health guide for trans and non-binary people, which is going to be published hopefully this year (I'm keeping my fingers crossed) by Jessica Kingsley publishers, and I'll share all of the relevant links so you can go and follow their work after the episode today. I've already asked them about recording another episode together so look out for that, hopefully around the same time as the book launches. And so without further ado, allow me to introduce my wonderful guest, Katy Lees.

Gem: Hi Katy! Thanks so much for joining me.

Katy: Hi Gem. It's really nice to be here. Thank you for inviting me.

Gem: I'm so excitred. No worries. So I always start often start with asking people just to introduce themselves and their various intersections. Would you be happy to do that?

Katy: Absolutely, I would. So my name is Katy Lees. I use they/them pronouns. I am a white mid-fat, trans and non-binary queer person from the northeast of England. And I am a writer and a psychotherapist.

Gem: Great, thank you. So there's lots to unpack there. And I think the first thing that comes to mind is that you used mid-fat, which for some people listening if they're not kind of familiar with the terms of how people identify, I guess, yeah, if they're not used to how people identify within fatness, how would you describe the different levels?

Katy: Sure. Um, so generally speaking, at least in the circles of fat activism, that I tend to roll in there tends to be the idea that different levels, I guess, different types of fatness are subject to different kinds of oppression and different kinds of pressure from society. So generally speaking, there's the idea that there are small-fat people who might find trouble finding clothes, and probably have a difficult time getting medical care, but can otherwise expect to be able to do up their seat belt in a car, be able to fit into chairs when they go out into the world. And then kind of going up from there, you've got mid-fat people like me, who experience more difficulty finding clothes, fitting into the world, maybe more difficulty accessing appropriate medical care, and then you've got large-fat people. And then you've got the death fatties, who are generally people who are considered (huge air quotes here) "morbidly obese". And then up from there, you've got infinifat people who face the most oppression from society.

Gem: Yeah, thank you so much for sharing that. And as I said it, I realised levels sounds really problematic. But yeah, I wonder... I should think about a better word to use for that.

Katy: I understood what you meant. It's quite fun to think myself like that I've levelled up to a mid-fat.

Gem: Like a computer game.

Katy: Yeah!

Gem: Okay, so other parts of your identity that you mentioned are around being trans and non-binary and you're doing some really interesting work around trans and non-binary mental health. I wondered if you could just tell us a bit more about that.

Katy: Sure. So in my psychotherapy work, I mostly work with trans and non-binary people, and also other people in the LGBTQ+ community. And as a writer, I'm currently writing a book for Jessica Kingsley publishers, which is a trans and non-binary guide to good mental health. So as a trans therapist who I mean, I've worked in mental health for basically my whole adult life and also, I've had wonky mental health we'll say for longer than that. Yeah, it felt really important to be doing that kind of work for my community.

Gem: Yeah. And also, I think it's important to mention that you're in the process of writing the book.

Katy: Yeah. I mean, it's been a really interesting experience. Yeah, I feel like, I mean, writing a book is pretty difficult with my therapy practice being pretty full, it's been difficult to find the time, but also I've really loved writing it. I've really loved, I don't know, making, making that kind of space and I guess making something that I don't think exists much, or at all in the world right now. Just kind of making making space where I don't know, that's about mental health from trans people, for trans people and catered to them. Because I think a lot of mental health books that I've found, tend to be about trans and non-binary people for the assumed cisgender people who work with them, often written by cis people. And yeah, it feels like really good, important work, to be hopefully giving trans people good care that helps them to feel better and that is relatively accessible. Yeah, feels good. Also feels kind of terrifying, but it feels good. I think that's just my anxiety speaking.

Gem: Yeah, I like this idea of being terricited. I don't know if you've heard of it before, but like feeling terrified, but excited at the same time.

Katy: That's the that's the one. I feel terricited.

Gem: So thinking about writing a book, what would you say, what has the process been like for you? Have you learnt more things about your own sort of self-care and mental health as a trans or non-binary person?

Katy: Hmm, yeah, I mean, I definitely have going through the process, because I've had to... as I've been doing some things that are so difficult, I've had to be looking after myself, which I haven't historically always been very good at. So it's been a good way to find different ways to care for myself, to explore different meanings of self-care, which I'm already pretty keen on anyway. I think that the idea of self-care has become very commodified and kind of twisted around by capitalism. So I'm already pretty keen on exploring different avenues of self-care that aren't spending money on a bubble bath. But yeah, I think that writing this book has really made me focus on lots of different ways to look after myself, sometimes including having a bubble bath. Yeah, and looking at how much of that I can offer to other people as well. It's been good to revisit ideas that I find very easy to apply to other people as well and maybe less easy to apply to myself. Something about the act of writing something down and sending it into the world as a global truth means that I definitely have to accept that it's gonna be okay, if I'm telling everybody else that it's