Footballing legend, Neville Southall, joins Dr Helen and Marianne to talk about equality and why it is so important for those who have a platform to use it for good. Neville talks about the reasons why he regularly hands over his twitter account, with its 170.8k followers to minority groups to help get their message out and why, in order for society to be fair, everyone needs to have a voice.

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Links:
Twitter: @NevilleSouthall
Facebook: Rainbow Toffees
Neville Southall's latest book: Mind Games, the Ups and Downs of Life and Football is available to purchase now.

 
The GenderGP Podcast
A footballing legend's take on Trans Rights - Neville Southall
 
Hello, this is Dr Helen Webberley. Welcome to our GenderGP Podcast, where we will be discussing some of the issues affecting the trans and non-binary community in the world today, together with my co-host Marianne Oakes, a trans woman herself, and our head of therapy.
 

Dr Helen Webberley:

So, Neville Southall, that's out of the way. Excited to have you on. Tell us who you are, what you do and whatever are you doing on the GenderGP podcast?


Neville Southall:

Well, what I was, was a footballer for Everton for a long time, probably 20 odd years. And what I do now, I work in a special school in Ebbw Vale, which is, I know it's not too far from you. And what, why I've come on really is because I don't know nothing really. So I'm on here to learn a bit as well. And I think every time I go on something or I talk to people, then I learn a bit more. And as you know, good me going on Twitter and talking about transgender issues or anything like that. I don't think that's right. I think what you can do is support and help when you can. But the main thing is to get the right people to talk about the right things. So you can educate people because it's like anything else, any minority group needs to be understood, and it needs to have a fair platform to be able to do that. And the way the media sets up well, in most countries, it doesn't give everybody a fair view. So my platform is really to raise awareness of what people do and to give them a chance to actually say what they believe in. And I think everybody should have that chance.


Dr Helen Webberley:

A couple of weeks ago, you very kindly gave Marianne, our head of therapies, sole access to your Twitter account which obviously has massive following for your followers to ask all the questions. So, what's your interest in minority groups? Why have you decided to do this, to help people learn? What's your interest? Why you?


Neville Southall:

Well, mainly because I can. And I thought, as a society, we were brought up to help everybody. So when I first sort of went on Twitter and it was all because a lad was, you know, really homophobic, but he was obviously denying he was gay. So we had long chats and long chats. And eventually I came on Twitter and asked people what I should be saying, because coming from the football world, it was never talked about in nice friendly terms ...