Charlie Craggs brings urgently needed compassion to what trans teens actually go through

BBC’s Transitioning Teens isn’t just a documentary. It’s personal.

In the 43-minute programme, author and presenter Charlie Craggs speaks to trans teenagers struggling to access gender-affirming treatment through the UK’s National Health Service. The current waiting time for a first appointment at a gender identity clinic varies between one and five years. Waiting times for an initial appointment range from 41 to 62 months, according to Stonewall, based on the websites of the seven adult gender identity clinics in England. In Scotland, according to National Services Scotland, patients being seen for their first appointment between April and June 2021 had waited up to 38 months since referral.

With all this in mind, the documentary digs deep into topics that are frequently misrepresented in the media, including puberty blockers, the process of attempting to gain access to life-saving healthcare, as well as the weaponisation of ‘detransitioners’ — a term that refers to people who have transitioned who then choose to reverse that transition.

Take Jess, who’s 19 and has been waiting 24 months for a first appointment, and decided to start buying unregulated hormones on the black market. “When I first was referred it was one year, now it’s gone up to a three-year waiting list,” she tells Craggs in the documentary. “You can’t put your life on hold for three years — if I can’t transition, I’d rather just disappear off the Earth.”

For Craggs, hearing the stories of young trans people who feel abandoned by the healthcare system and left to fend for themselves was deeply upsetting. “I cried often after meeting these people, I’d have to go outside and have a cry because I wouldn’t want to cry in front of them and make them feel bad about their lives but it’s so heartbreaking,” she tells me.

“I’ve been there, I’ve done that, I remember how hard it was.”

“I think it’s especially heartbreaking as a trans person like me doing it because this is my story. I’ve been there, I’ve done that, I remember how hard it was,” she continues. “I didn’t want to be here. I didn’t attempt suicide but I was definitely suicidal at the start of my transition because of the daunting years and years and years-long waiting list.”

Craggs, who’s the author of the book To My Trans Sisters, waited two and a half years for her first appointment. Asked how she feels about seeing young trans people essentially fending for themselves out of sheer desperation, Craggs tells me that the word “concern doesn’t even cover it.”

Making the documentary, Craggs wanted to shine a light on the reality of the situation for trans teens — a reality that’s far from the transphobic media coverage that dominates many media outlets in the UK, pushing misleading and fear-mongering narratives about trans people. “A lot of the mainstream media make out that these young people go to the GP on the Monday after having a thought: ‘Hmm I might be trans, I’m gonna try this out for a while,’ and then by the Friday they’ve had surgery and are on hormones,” says Craggs.

As a young trans person, she tells me her goal was to shine a light on what it’s actually like for trans teens, how their lived experiences differ from media reporting on the topic, and the distress these teenagers feel. “They’re buying hormones online, black market hormones, because that else are they expected to do? Sit on their bum and wait for five years?”

Craggs says there’s a real sense of urgency with young trans people in the UK because if they’re able to access the healthcare they need, they’ll be able to stop the irreversible physical changes that puberty brings about. “I went to my GP when I was 20, but these people [in the documentary] aren’t even 20 yet, so they are still in their later stage of puberty, they’re right at the end of it, but they can still stop changes that if they don’t stop them now, they will be fixing them for the rest of their life,” she explains.

In the documentary, you see Craggs having a hair transplant. It’s not her first procedure — she’s had two hairline lowerings. She’s spent tens of thousands of pounds on her hair alone, changing the effects of going through puberty before transitioning. “Because I went through puberty and my voice dropped, it doesn’t matter how much surgery I get, I’m always going to get clocked when I go outside for my voice,” she says. Craggs explains that every single day, she goes out and people stare at her, people laugh and make comments, and that far worse things have also happened to her. “But if you’re able to get on hormones in the late teens or preferably in the mid teens, you’re able to stop that happening in trans women and that will just change the entire course of their life,” she says. Craggs has trans friends who are the same age as her, who started hormone treatment at a younger age and who are now not visibly transgender. Whether or not a trans person is perceived as trans by other (usually cis) people comes with its own problems, and can feed into the transphobic idea that trans people are “deceptive” or “misleading”, when in fact, they are simply living as their authentic selves.

“So I think that’s where the desperation comes from when we’re talking about teenagers, it’s because it’s like a ticking time bomb really,” says Craggs.

Because the documentary is broadcast by the BBC, Craggs was required to remain impartial during the filming. This meant including topics and cases that Craggs didn’t particularly want to talk about. It should be noted the the BBC has recently been criticised for its level of impartiality in this topic.

“I met a detransitioner, who have always been used as a stick to beat trans people,” says Craggs. Detransitioning is rare, but it’s often an issue that’s used as a reason not to support young people in their transition — it’s essentially the argument that a trans person might ‘change their mind’. This is an argument, Craggs tells me, that’s rooted in queerphobia. Meeting this young girl who transitioned and then changed her mind was the biggest thing Craggs took away from the documentary. “Because I’ve never met a detransitioner before, I was literally shaking on the way to meet them because I was so scared of what they were going to say,” she says. Craggs would worried that she would have a fight on her hands during the conversation and that she’d be put in a position of having to defend her community. But, to her surprise, they both came to the same conclusion: that transphobia itself is a significant reason many people detransition.

Watching this documentary as a trans ally is a heartrending experience which underscores the need for radically better healthcare for trans people in the UK. While watching, I felt that the people who’d benefit the most from viewing this programme are those who might have been misled by inflammatory press coverage of trans people. Craggs agrees that the documentary could be a lesson in compassion for people who don’t know about the reality of life for young trans people.

“Even if you take emotion and compassion out of it, you’ll just watch it and think ‘do you know what, this is wrong,'” says Craggs. “Even if you’re neutral on the issue, or don’t even care, or don’t even know a trans person, you can watch this and see what this is wrong, this is not right, this should not be happening in 2021 in the UK.”

Transitioning Teens is streaming on BBC iPlayer.

If you want to talk to someone or are experiencing suicidal thoughts, text Shout at 85258 or call 999 for emergency help in the UK. You can also contact the Samaritans on 116 123 or Childline on 0800 1111.

If you’re in the U.S., text the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 or call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255. Alternatively, a further list of international resources is available here.