Speaking Truth to Power

Leo Grant, Class of 2003, has been returning to LEH for more than 10 years to talk to U6 students at a pivotal moment, as they face the pressure of UCAS applications and imminent A levels, to give a talk entitled ‘My Various Failed Careers’.

Their upbeat, reassuring message of ‘you can’t possibly know already what you want to do for your entire career; you don’t need your whole life mapped out right now; and change is always possible,’ is met with audible sighs of relief.

In their time they’ve worked as a barkeeper, waiter, civil servant, university teacher, admin officer, and a maths/chemistry tutor. They are currently doing a PhD in medical education at Winchester University.

“I’ve never really faced adversity – of course it’s all relative – but I think I had a good start by attending one of the best schools in the country in one of its loveliest areas and, as I say to the U6, that has really shaped how I experience the world.

Obviously as a man I am quite an unusual ex-LEH student, and I think people probably expect me to have faced some adversity relating to that but I don’t feel that I have. I don’t find it very interesting to talk about my gender – it’s definitely something which is more interesting to others. I often get asked about it and I think people are hoping to hear a story about me feeling like I was trapped in the wrong body and was miserable and then when I transitioned, I was transformed and became complete, but that’s just not my experience.

However, I do think I’m quite resilient. I just get on with things, I’ve had a lot of different jobs and I claim that shows resilience and I generally have an attitude of not giving up, probably even when I should!

The thing that has massively helped me is a complete failure of imagination. I never think about how things can be different. I obviously do have goals and plans, but in the moment, I’m just there experiencing it. I think it’s a skill I’ve developed through practice. It’s definitely been beneficial in my day-to-day life.

If I find myself in a difficult situation, experiencing negative thoughts or feelings, I pause, say ‘yes’ to myself, and just accept how it is. It makes life so much simpler and, overall, happier. It’s not that I’m trying to avoid negativity, but problems live in the fight of the feeling rather than in the feeling itself.

I was a very pretentious university student, the potential for which definitely started when I was at LEH. I was studying chemistry, but I read a lot about stoic philosophy, and I guess that acceptance of life just stuck.

Gender is very little to do with how you feel about yourself, more about how you relate to the world and how the world relates to you, which is more extraordinary and more boring at the same time.

At school, my gender expression was different and unusual. I was the kid with the weird gender. When you always exist in that way, when you can’t do anything about it, that teaches you something. That something isn’t always positive – probably what I learnt most growing up was that I was incorrect or wrong in some way. Now, I don’t feel that at all.

I was growing up as a queer trans kid under Section 28 – at the time it was illegal in school to discuss being gay. When I talk to pupils now, they tell me about the LGBT Society and that’s incredible – that would have been illegal before 2003.

When I was at school, I think we all knew which of the teachers were gay, but it was a secret, something we shouldn’t talk about. During a PSHE lesson we were informed about the existence of gay people but the way it was framed was very much ‘gay people exist, but don’t worry you will never have to meet them’.

Being at LEH made me feel like I was secret too. That was my reality of going to a girls’ school under Section 28 as a queer person. But I don’t have any negativity towards the school in general; they were just complying with the law at the time. There were some experiences I look back on and think should have been different, but they are the minority.

In fact, because of LEH, I think I have had such an easy time. I’ve been able to advocate for myself and to navigate the bureaucracy not only of being trans but life in general. I feel very confident in expressing myself and arguing for my position. The education at LEH was simply brilliant. I really would have had to try pretty hard to fail. The level of commitment from the staff is off the charts.

Don’t feel bad if you don’t know what you want to do, or you end up trying various things with your life. You are doing your best.

Uncertainty is weird and hard. At school I felt like I had to draw on a small amount of experience to deliver a huge amount of decisions. You have to make decisions based on the best available evidence at the time. It’s OK to change your mind later and make new choices.

The absolute truth is that no-one knows what they are doing. Everyone is making it up and getting by on a day-to-day basis. There are really very few wrong decisions. Everything is recoverable. It doesn’t say anything bad about you if you make a mistake or get it wrong. You don’t have to have a perfect career where everything makes sense. Change is always possible. You’re going to be OK.

In many ways LEH was fantastic and I’m very fond of the school and am pleased to see it thriving.”

WHAT WAS SECTION 28?

Section 28 was a controversial law passed in 1988 by a Conservative government that stopped councils and schools “promoting the teaching of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship.” The Prime Minister at the time, Margaret Thatcher, said: “Children who need to be taught to respect traditional moral values are being taught that they have an inalienable right to be gay. All of those children are being cheated of a sound start in life.”

There were mass demonstrations by LGBT campaigners, including protestors abseiling into the House of Lords and chaining themselves to a desk during a live BBC News bulletin. Thankfully the law finally was repealed in Scotland in 2000 and in the rest of the UK in 2003.