Transforming LIVES

In 2020, Dani St James founded Not A Phase, a charity that wants to make a difference for trans and gender-diverse adults. Here, she tells us more

- Jack Pengelly

When Not A Phase, a charity to change W the lives of trans and gender-diverse adults for the better, was founded in 2020, it was a time of immense upheaval and pressure for the queer community. According to a report by Galop, four out of five trans respondents said that they had been the victim of a transphobic hate crime. And a quarter of those said that the attack had been violent in nature.

"The irony is," says Not A Phase founder Dani St James, "that back then we believed that the issues that we were talking about seemed like the peak of anti-trans sentiment in the media and by the people that were working to oppress us, when in reality, here we are three years later and I still don't believe that we have reached that peak."

The depressing reality is that since 2020, anti-trans sentiment in this country has continued to grow like a cancer - even infiltrating the wider queer sphere with the formation of hate groups like LGB Alliance, whose mission is to disassociate the LGB initialism from trans people altogether. As Dani points out, trans people make up less than 0.5 per cent of this country's population, so why have issues like trans kids, trans athletes and single-sex spaces become such a dominant staple of politics and the media?