Welcome to Project PHOENIX

Welcome to the inaugural post of Project PHOENIX

First lets get to know the founder. Me, Roman Anderton.

I am in my mid 20s, I am autistic, and I identify as a transgender male. I am asexual and I use the pronouns He/Him.

I have always been from this area, I was raised in Newmarket, I’ve moved about a fair bit, but have always stayed in Cambridgeshire and West Suffolk.

I have a university degree in Politics – which I find incredibly ironic given my status as a transman! I was diagnosed as autistic in 2020 while in my second year of uni. After leaving uni I have had a variety of jobs, I’ve done bar work, helping in a pharmacy, in a warehouse, and teaching assistant. Employment has been one of the harder aspects of my life so far because of difficulties with being autistic, and the number of hours affecting my housing benefit and rent. I am now a disability confident advisor.

When I got diagnosed, I set up a blog called The Elements of Autism, because I feel so passionate about educating others and sharing my story. In 2023, this resulted in an article being published about my autism in the BBC, helped by a neurodivergent journalist and camera man of the documentary ‘Inside Our Autistic Mind’. This article was seen by over 200,000 people in the first 24 hours. I eventually ended up closing down the blog because I didn’t spend the time I wanted to on it and eventually the cost of the website became too great for me to carry it on.

My LGBTQ journey is a little different, I had always been a fairly androgynous child growing up, rejected skirts and dresses, pink, dolls and barbies. Instead much preferring to dress for comfort, so I live in joggers, hoodies, low maintenance hair styles! (I had a buzzcut during the covid years) It was always for comfort rather than wanting to present a certain way. Although I was the only AFAB person wearing a suit to my Year 11 prom! My housemates at uni were all LGBTQ so it became a daily conversation, so of course it did make me think about it for myself, and I knew at that time that I was asexual, that’s always been an easy thing to figure out. But then at uni, I started identifying as non-binary, it wasn’t a surprise and more explained my dress sense, or lack of! But sometimes I would have this notion that something wasn’t quite right, this feeling would slowly dissipate and would only pop up once every few months.

Once I graduated uni, with fabulous rainbow hair, I then moved to supported accommodation for autistic people. A couple of months into being here, I had this feeling again, but it was way more intense and it happened after a haircut and I felt really disconnected to my own reflection. And it wasn’t going away like it usually did. 2 weeks had passed and I still had this feeling, that being non-binary wasn’t right anymore, but I didn’t know why. I had made some friends in my building who were trans, so I told them and they gave me a lot of support with it, like helping me to work out what this feeling was. Now I knew I was transgender, but no one else did, except these two friends. They carried on in this way, helping me with pronouns, giving me binders, just letting me drive the conversation and not putting any pressure on me at all, and I really respected that. February 2023 was when I officially came out to the big wide world, I legally changed my name in May, and that completed my social transition. Medical transition, as many trans people would know, is hard. Especially here in the UK. I have been on the NHS waiting list since May 2023, and all I can do is wait until the stars align and I either win the lottery to afford to go private, or wait until its my turn for the GIC.

Why I set up Project PHOENIX.

2025 has been difficult for me in terms of employment, I left a job, got a 2 month temp contract job, been unemployed, and had a job offer withdrawn and then finally got a job.

I am not a systems person, by that I mean that I am a square peg trying to fit into a round hole. My autism makes this difficult, as does my overall personality. I’ve always thought that being self employed would solve a lot of my problems, I would be running it according to my own rules, I’d be outside of these systems and could manage it with my own energy levels and personal life. Also, I think I am meant to help others, I am so incredibly passionate to help others in a similar position to me, and to help those not go through the same things I did growing up.

Project PHOENIX will do just that.

I am a member of a lot of support services around Cambridge, so I have done my research into where there are these gaps. And created a business plan to fill these gaps. A lot of services have an upper age limit of 25, some don’t have a physical building, and there’s zero support for transmen. – these are just a few important ones which helped bring PHOENIX to life. Project PHOENIX is there to help the neurodivergent community, the LGBTQ+ community, allys and anyone who is in a supportive role to someone from these communities. I envision Project PHOENIX to offer social groups and meet ups to suit a range of interests, art classes and workshops, a space for activism and writing articles and educating people about issues that face these groups, particularly fighting alongside the trans community. And it will have a physical building for drop ins, coffee mornings, and an independent shop selling local artworks and books.

But I can’t do this without your help. Please spread the word about this new venture and encourage people to fill in the consultation survey to gain interest.

I also have an idea to give a voice to others from the community, so I am also open to blog posts about peoples journeys, stories, anything. So everyone gets a voice. If this is something you’d like to be a part of then get in touch via email or social media.

So, welcome to Project PHOENIX, the journey begins here.

-R