About Katy Jon Went
I am a writer, commentator, educator, keynote and conference speaker, and activist, on social justice, equality, diversity & inclusion (JEDI or DEI), intersectionality, politics & culture, language, literature, theatre & the arts, history & social sciences, religion & philosophy, LGBTIQ+, sex and gender, mental health and wellbeing, human rights, DASV, photography, and many more things besides, ie I’m a multipotentialite who has studied and worked in many fields and sees the bigger picture, I hope, and the intersectionality of ideas and causes.
I very much believe in all the smarts – IQ, EQ, SQ and a dozen more, and believe in life-long learning. I love to teach what I know but more importantly to share how to discover it for yourself. I’m a part of the Pick My Brain team and have a profile there if you are thinking I really want to “pick your brain” about pretty much anything!
I’ve been the subject of BBC, Channel 4 and independent documentaries, regular TV & radio interviews from ITV to GB News, Radio 4 to Bush Radio in Capetown (Africa’s oldest community radio station) and have been on many podcasts to talk about mental health – especially bipolar and anxiety, insomnia, gender, sexuality, conversation and communication, cancel culture v woke wars, and the human mind and capacity for knowledge, understanding and self-growth.
I speak at workplaces, schools, universities, TEDx, numerous panels, and festivals like the Hostry Festival, N&NFest, Women of the World (WOW), WHEN, Act for Change Together, Academy of Ideas BattleFest, Wilderness, and Prides.
I’m the UK Coordinator & Head of Methodology at the Human Library, and part of the global online event delivery team. I head up best practice and develop safe spaces for risk and engagement without offence taking, bringing my DEI training expertise and personal willingness to talk to anyone into the Human Library experience arena. I sit on the Norfolk Equality & Human Rights Council, as well as advising on ITV’s diversity panel and others.
I chair the Respectful Conversation “toxic and taboo topics” panel series at Norwich Arts Centre – where I’m also a board member and diversity sub-committee member.
Also in the arts, I co-organise the plein air art event Paint Out since 2014 – and managing artists is like herding cats!
I previously ran a tech company and used to program but my skills are now more people-based despite an ongoing fascination and usage of gadgets and technology.
I founded GenderAgenda, run support groups, and consult on the Fifty Shades of Gender project. I was a committee member of Norwich Pride and LGBT History Month.
I am passionate about learning, change and humanity’s potential. I am somewhere between a realist and an optimist, whilst I warn about negative outcomes, I like to believe we will avoid them. I love reading about dystopias in order to imagine a better utopia, so long as it is a varied and diverse one, and not a dull uniform one. I was inspired by 60s-70s Sci-Fi to believe in a future where interracial kisses, genderless worlds, and alien bars were the norm. AKA I’m a TV & movie addict from Star Trek to Star Wars, Mandalorian to Marvel & DC nerd. Though why does it always rain and the sun never come out in Gotham?
Many people feel a need to keep their professional and personal, public and private, separate. I’ve decided to throw caution to the wind in the name of transparency and authenticity, and the pointlessness of privacy options when Google can find anything these days except my car keys and glasses. (Edit: with Smart tags it can find them too now!)
As a result, I’m very visible around mental health, gender or sexuality, political views (have voted for 4 different parties!), but more than that I endeavour to listen to varied points of view. I read (dip or devour depending on my schedule) 3-5 newspapers and multiple online media daily, across the political spectrum to ensure I’m not in some kind of echo chamber of only my preferred beliefs. I like to discover people’s whys as well as their whats. I’m as interested in “to what end” and how something is said, as in what is said itself.
My Name, Gender, Pronouns, Identity
I am non-binary transgender (but hold all these labels loosely preferring person or human) with a medical history of atypical physical gender, height and puberty development (due to a hormone deficiency). You may find me on the Internet as my former name Jonathan Went (e.g. articles and papers online from the 1990s), under which I used to write and teach. I prefer simply Katy or Katy Jon when interviewed, but can also be found under bylines as Katy-Jon, Katy Jon Went, KatyJon or just KJ.
As to pronouns, I’m fine with ‘she’, but feel technically more aligned with non-binary ‘they’; I’m not keen on ‘he’, though I tolerate it to avoid explaining myself a dozen times a day, as my indefinable gender does send out mixed messages in our stereotyped binary world. My name, pronouns and gender, are less important to me than being respected as a human being of value, first and foremost, even though the courtesy of respecting self-identification is a part of that. I prefer trans person or transgender without the addition of woman unless offered as an inclusive olive branch od sisterhood among consenting women.
My sexuality continues to evolve but seems to have arrived at asexual with a splash of pansensual and polyflirty. I somewhat tongue-in-cheek say that I have been or am each and every letter of LGBTIQAP.
If you want to know more then read my potted Bio (sounds like something that should go in the greenhouse!).
Also check out my: Talks, Quotes, Writing, Film and Comedy pages, and introductory post on here about trying to bring everything together in one place.
In addition, feel free to follow or send me a friend request on the various social media channels below or book a free call on Pick My Brain to get to know me.
Web Sites & Social Media Profiles
You can also find me at:
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- Art Exhibitions UK – calendar & events site for artist & gallery shows driven by my love of art and need to organise all the PVs I go to, sometimes 2-3 in a night.
- Biblical Hebrew Made Easy (teach yourself an ancient language)
- Blogger – KJ’s Rants & Musings (older blog posts on politics, economics, social commentary)
- BMSoftware (translation, office & graphics software, SEO, SMM, WordPress)
- Facebook – Personal (friend requests welcomed)
- Facebook – Writing & Speaking
- Facebook – UK Art Exhibitions
- Facebook – Biblical Hebrew
- Facebook – BMSoftware
- Facebook – GenderAgenda
- Facebook – Logophilia
- Facebook – Professional Pedants
- Fifty Shades of Gender – project consultant & co-founder
- Food and Wine Reviews – Who doesn’t love to eat and drink, and in our case write about it!
- GenderAgenda – trans, gender, intersex awareness talks & training
- Google+ (soon to be discontinued by Google)
- Human Library – involved as the UK coordinator & current Zoom magician
- Instagram – Food, Cats, Art, and Docs pics mainly!
- Norwich Arts Centre – Board member and chair of A Respectful Conversation series of engagements around difficult topics
- Paint Out – majorly involved since 2014 in this fabulous art & plein air painting project
- Pick My Brain – advising around diversity, culture, and confidence on this start-up platform – you can book me for a talk or chat there.
- Professional Pedants (proofing, editing, correcting, writing)
- Quora (a Q&A site where I tend to answer questions on motivation, mental health & wellbeing)
- Soundcloud – Audio recordings of talks and podcasts
- Storify (fabulous site for collating web & social media trending topics – my first was on neuroscience and gender)
- Tumblr – KatyJon
- Twitter – Personal (instant immediate news & views gratification)
- Twitter – Art Exhibition UK
- Twitter – BMSoftware (tweets on translation, social media, SEO & tech advances like 3D printing)
- Twitter – GenderAgenda (beginning to diversify my personal a/c into a separate gender/trans/intersex/sexuality feed)
- Twitter – GAS Group (Gender & Sexuality studies & discussion)
- Vimeo (where the film “What Katy Did” can be found)
- WordPress – Transgendering (older blog posts on gender/trans/intersex/sexuality)
- YouTube
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Hi,
I’m an Aussie straight bloke (only because it’s important ) and I have just finished watching the red pill panel(s) for like the 2nd time now. I just wanted to say how captivating you are. You are very open, your positions are layed out for all to see, you are very transparent and it is absolutely refreshing to see. You can also see your level of compassion.
Like most straight guys I do struggle with this brave new world of gender identity and I am evolving as I am brave enough to put my opinions forward and reflect with any criticism of my opinions. Sometimes I change my opinions, sometimes I strengthen them.
I am a very caring person and don’t feel hatred towards people unless they earn it personally of course so I tend to feel bad about getting it wrong.
Can you help to straighten this straight guy out?
Here is my current opinion/theory without any historical research-
As humans we needed to catogorise everything and incorporate it into our language so I imagine sex came before gender. Biological males have a penis, biological females have a vagina, and of course nature can sometimes go both ways in minor cases.
And I imagine gender flowed off sex as an expression of identification of sex. Ie: instead of saying ‘you are a human with a penis’ it would be much easier and more civil to say you are male. The pronouns are then used because saying ‘the male did it’ can be improved to ‘he did it’. It just seems that language is evolving as is most things. We now use crazy things like lol, rofl, brb ect ect to make language more efficient, faster ect as the world just moves faster and faster.
Now from here you also have class and titles due to marriage and education which is where you get sir, maam, mr, dr, ms, mrs, miss and for the most part helped to get a quick snapshot of life position. Ie: don’t ask this woman on a date, she just said her name is mrs Jones, pretty sure I don’t want to be involved with a married woman, it might cause issues .
Now coming back to where this relates to trans people. I totally believe that we are all different and that there is a huge scale of character traits and identity. Some men are very masculine and on the other end of the scale there are men who are quite feminine in nature. I accept everyone as they are and quite enjoy diversity however I am continually confused by the want or need of some trans and honestly more regularly from political leftists that want to alter definitions. If I am of course seeing this correctly. I might be wrong (historically) but I imagine at some point the word gender had a definition change.
If a biological male has feminine thoughts, feelings and mental traits and gender originated from sex, why would you want to be referred as ‘she, her’ ect. To me language, culture, social concepts are confusing enough. Wouldn’t it be easier to look down and go ‘yep, there’s a penis, call me he, mr ect’. I might act differently but I’m completely ok with that and so should everyone else. I mean I’m different in that I’m a blokey bloke that goes 4x4ing, camping, shooting. But on the flip side I was in musical theatre, love karaoke and love having guy and ‘girl talks’. Masculine and sensitive. Should I ask for my own pronouns? I don’t think there is a need and are they truly that offensive? I don’t want to upset anyone but I feel that the trans and most of the feminist movement are putting down land mines and we are going to have innocent casualties and probably will backfire also. Ie: how easy it was for Lauren southern to change her gender. Male rapists saying they identify as women to go to women prisons so they can reoffend. Might sound extreme, but it is just that, extreme. How do we police it and how can we understand and apply it without a solid simple framework that everyone can understand.
Once again, just thought you were amazing and truly value your opinion on this as you are quite candid and open and conduct yourself with great integrity.
Thank you
Dear Katy Jon,
I’m getting in touch to see if you would be available and interested in speaking as a witness in the Women’s Equality Party citizen’s assembly on whether we should change any of our policies in light of the debate around the GRA.
Do you have an email address I could send more information to, if you are interested?
Best wishes,
Erin
So sorry, only just seen this – my email is katy@katyjon.com in case you want to follow up in other ways on the ongoing gender/sex protection conflicts
Hi Katy,
I just watched a debate you took part in on GB news with Neil Oliver.
I just wanted to say how beautifully and calmy you spoke.
It’s such a shame that they didn’t put aside more time for this segment and had to cut you short.
I feared where the piece would go on the outset. Much of the Internet seems to either be outright abusive of trans people. Or to claim utter insanity on behalf of trans people.
And so much meaningful debate seems to never happen because people get hung up on using the correct language.
As CIS (though I consider myself human first and foremost), I fear to say things to offend a group of humanity that I admire and respect. Because the language alone can cause such offence. I guess that’s on me to learn more on the topic.
So for me it is encouraging to hear people talk so freely without descending into arguments.
The point you appeared to be making, before being cut short, is that we are speaking about a small subset of a minority population. And that on this basis we should have sufficient resources to manage on a case by case basis. Have I understood this correctly?
If so, I think this is a powerful argument and a great tonic against alarmist headlines.
I’d love to listen to more of your views. So I’m bookmarking your website.
DJ