Trans and non-binary individuals often feel excluded from single sex spaces (Picture: Getty)
At just 21, Hannah Temple* found herself at the doors of Loving Me, the UK’s only trans and non-binary domestic and sexual violence shelter.
‘I arrived following a sequence of domestic abuse from a partner I was with at the time. It was really difficult because I didn’t really have anywhere else to go. My family disowned me a few years ago for being transgender,’ Hannah tells Metro.co.uk.
‘My partner was the sole person for me in terms of what I was provided with in the world. It felt like I was alone with this one person controlling everything and it destroyed me emotionally.’
The shelter was founded by 49-year-old Amanda Elwen in 2023, who is non-binary and has worked in the domestic abuse sector for 25 years. They noticed a lack of support and safe spaces for those who weren’t cis women.
But it was a phone call Amanda received from a worker at a women’s refuge in Blackpool which cemented the need for the small seven-bedroom Loving Me centre, which had opened that very day.
A trans woman was in need of refuge but the shelter wouldn’t take her because of their ‘single sex policy’. She’d experienced significant domestic abuse at just 23 years old.
Amanda Elwen runs Loving Me and is hoping to protect the LGBTQIA community (Picture: Amanda Elwen)
As a result, she’d been passed over to a male homeless hostel with ex-offenders and drug users. Within the first three days of her stay there she had been sexually assaulted by six men. Loving Me was quick to open its doors to her.
‘It was at that point for me that I saw how step public services that are meant to protect people were actually placing people at more risk. No victim deserves to be put in a place where there are at higher risk,’ Amanda tells Metro.
Having come out as transgender just before the pandemic, Hannah used the time during lockdown to start hormone therapy, but in the process she lost the support of her family.
Once she had socially transitioned, the hospitality worker also had issues with being accepted in single sex spaces, particularly in her home city of Leicester.
‘Single sex spaces are always very difficult to interact with, for me personally, because there’s always that fear that something’s going to happen or something will be said,’ Hannah explains.
‘It’s happened a few times, but I will still keep trying and still keep engaging in single sex spaces because that’s my right. It’s just always disheartening when you have bad experiences.
‘It was never really an easy road until I ended up at Loving Me and I got a chance to stop and take a breath, which I hadn’t done for years at that point.’
Before reaching the shelter Hannah had been in a temporary housing arrangement with a care provider, until her support worker informed her that Loving Me was able to provide her with accommodation, where she stayed for five …read more
Source:: Metro
