Londoner left 'dumbstruck' after seeing actor David Tennant wear their pro-trans shirt
Former Doctor Who actor has been a vocal supporter of the 2SLGBTQ+ community
If you want to hurt the transgender community, you'll have to go through David Tennant first.
So reads the T-shirt that the Scottish actor, best known for his role as the tenth doctor in the long-running sci-fi show Doctor Who, wore to a recent Pride Month event at his children's school.
A photo of Tennant wearing the shirt, taken and posted online by his wife, Georgia, caught the attention of Stevie Brocksom, an 2SLGBTQ+ activist and parent from London, Ont.
It was their T-shirt.
"[It's] absolutely wild. I woke up to my inbox being super full, and people tagging me all over the internet and different social media platforms," said Brocksom, who uses they/them pronouns.
"I'm just... I'm still, like, dumbstruck. It's crazy."
Brocksom began making the pro-trans apparel just over a year ago, selling them through an online store, with $5 from each order put toward two $1,000 scholarships for trans students in Ontario.
They shipped Tennant the shirt, along with several other designs, some stickers and some letters, to a U.K. fan mail address, but hadn't expected anything to come out of it.
"I've seen him on the red carpet wearing a 'protect trans kids' shirt. I thought maybe he might wear these to one of his kids's appointments, or something like that," they said.
"I didn't expect him to wear it to his kids' school Pride, though, and post on social media."
The shirt fits in with other items that Tennant has worn to show support for the 2SLGBTQ+ community. For Pride last year, he was seen wearing a rainbow and trans-flag-coloured pin with the words "you are safe with me."
He also donned a T-shirt reading "Leave trans kids alone, you absolute freaks" at a press event for his Amazon Prime show Good Omens, along with a rainbow pin in the colours of the non-binary flag.
And during a BBC interview on Nov. 20, 2021, the Transgender Day of Remembrance, Tennant sported a pin of a trans-flag-coloured Tardis, the time-travelling police box from Doctor Who.
"Someone who is as visible as David Tennant, standing in the face of hate, standing in the way, 'then you will have to go through me,' that is life changing for so many trans people," Brocksom said.
About 600 pieces of the "You will have to go through me" design had been sold before the photo of Tennant was posted, a number that has since ballooned.
"I have not been able to go through all of them yet," Brocksom said of the influx of new orders.
"We've overfunded our scholarship already, and I don't feel like the orders are slowing down at all."
A meeting of the board for Fairy Godparents of London, the non-profit they co-founded, will be held Sunday to determine what to do with the extra proceeds, including giving away more scholarships.
Brocksom hasn't heard from Tennant or anyone connected to him, but acknowledges it would be "super cool."
"I'm not hanging my hat on it or anything" they said.
"It's just really cool that someone with a platform that he has is using it to stand in the face of hate."