Grace Petrie’s stand up comedy show about butch identity and transphobia, Butch Ado About Nothing, has just become available to stream on Next Up Comedy.

I wrote these reflections after going to see the show in September 2023. The theatre in Salford was packed with a sell-out crowd and at the end every single person was on their feet: one of those magic live experiences you won’t forget.

I never shared this at the time, because it felt unfinished. But it’s starting to dawn on me that I have a chronic illness, and almost nothing I write is ever going to feel finished to the excessively perfectionist standards of my pre-illness self – so I’m sharing it anyway. I’ve left it exactly as I wrote it eighteen months ago, even though the reference to BSAS is a bit out of date, because I don’t have the spoons to update it right now.

I hope it inspires you to watch the show, which is not only beautiful and important, but also laugh-out-loud funny.

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I recently came across a quote from the composer Rachmaninov: “I never try to write music that’s particularly Russian or anything else. I simply try to express in a straightforward way what’s in my heart.” I loved this. It spoke to me both of something about my own approach to writing, and of why I love Rachmaninov’s music so much.

I don’t think Grace Petrie has turned her hand to stand-up just because she fancied having a go at writing jokes. She is simply trying to express in a straightforward way what’s in her heart. Certainly, she has put her heart on the table with this show, and I think it deserves a response in kind.

“Brave” is an overused word. People often tell me I’m being “brave” when I share my truth, when in reality I’m just doing what comes naturally to me: keeping my truth bottled up is much, much harder. But I think this show is unquestionably brave. In one of its most poignant moments, Grace tells us that when she first decided to share this story, she knew that she needed to do it without music – because this story is about who she is, and she’s been hiding that person behind a guitar her whole life.

Bravery is about going to the places that scare us. Writing publicly about my burnout was something I needed to do, but it was not something I found particularly scary. With this show, Grace is clearly going to the places that scare her. Perhaps she has some old ghosts to exorcise.

At one point, wondering aloud about her own reasons for writing the show, she says that part of it was just the desire to “carve my name into a tree: Grace Petrie was here”. I deeply understand this impulse. I think it’s part of the reason I also feel moved to write about my most challenging experiences.

It’s what I was doing when I wrote on this blog, six months into my son’s life, about “finding my way back to myself“. At the time, I thought I had lost myself because of the turmoil of becoming a mum. I didn’t know it was also because I was traumatised by my birth experience. But with hindsight, this was my first attempt to use writing as a form of trauma therapy.

I wrote about how, on a trip to Ynys Môn a few months earlier, I’d carved the words “I EXIST” in huge letters with my foot on the beach. I wrote that piece for myself more than anyone else. I think it came from a need to etch “I EXIST” in something more permanent than sand.

It’s easy to forget, given the reactionary views and culture-wars crap that so often dominate the news cycle, that the proponents of these views have become so loud and obnoxious precisely because they are so afraid that society is leaving them behind. As the latest British Social Attitudes Survey confirms, Britain is in reality a much more liberal country than it was a few decades ago – not a more reactionary one.

At the same time, we can’t be complacent about the impact this relentless barrage of bigotry is having on public opinion. The survey finds a depressingly sharp decline in support for transgender rights over the past year alone. And those who insist their stance on things like gender-neutral toilets is not transphobic might pause to note the 18-point rise in people who will happily admit to being “prejudiced” against trans people.

And this is why Grace Petrie’s show is so important – not just for what it has to say but for how and why it says it. Because this is the fundamental truth at the show’s heart: stories are powerful.

Grace is only too painfully aware that the stories we are told, day in and day out, by the media and the dominant culture have the power to shape our reality – even if their basic premises are at odds with reality. She knows that she has a different story to tell, and that she needs to tell it. She seems less certain about who exactly needs to hear it, but I think I can help clear that one up for her: we all do.