Trans-rights clothing site’s sales rocket after David ‘King of Allies’ Tennant wears charity design
Stevie Brocksom (R) says he’s working as hard as he can to fulfil orders for the “You Will Have To Go Through Me” t-shirt recently worn by David Tennant (Instagram)
The owner of a trans-rights clothing site has said they are “so damn grateful” after Doctor Who star David Tennant was seen wearing one of their t-shirts, which raises money for an LGBTQ+ college scholarship.
David Tennant, known as a passionate and committed ally of the transgender community, wore a trans-rights t-shirt to one of his children’s school Pride celebration earlier this month.
The shirt, which featured the colours of the trans flag, bore the phrase “you will have to go through me”.
Stevie Brocksom, who runs the website and clothing store, Stevie’s Safe Spaces, has now revealed that sales of the t-shirt, which help fund a scholarship for trans students in Ontario, Canada, have now rocketed.
Speaking to Yahoo Canada, Brocksom – who uses they/he pronouns – said they had started sending t-shirts to creators with large followings, to get more exposure. A friend encouraged him to include Good Omens star Tennant.
“I didn’t think it would go anywhere,” Brocksom said. “I thought he’d wear one to a doctor’s appointment with his kids or something.”
But, after Tennant’s wife Georgia posted an Instagram photo of the actor wearing the t-shirt, Brocksom has been inundated with “hundreds” of new orders.
He is now working hard to fulfil the orders, which have flooded in from all over the world since David Tennant wore the design, and has had to “turn off sticker orders on the website” to catch up.
“Thank you so much to Georgia Tennant for everything this has afforded me and my little genderqueer family,” they wrote on Instagram.
“I have been sharing the wealth and using this privilege to lift others up with me. I am so proud that you chose to wear my shirt to your kiddo’s school Pride and I hope we get to see you in some of the other styles I sent you as well.
“The orders haven’t slowed down at all and I am so damn grateful.”
Brocksom said that $5 Canadian (approximately £3/$4) from each $35 (£20/$26) t-shirt goes to the Greyson Jones Memorial Scholarship, which helps trans, non-binary and gender-non-conforming students. The first recipient got theirs last September.
The scholarship was started to honour Greyson Jones, a transgender man who advocated for trans rights and mental-health care. According to the charity website, his death “was a direct result of a homophobic doctor’s violence against him during a medical procedure”.
Brocksom said the extra sales “funded an entire scholarship in one day… we might be able to fund two”.
The news comes in the wake of high profile attacks that have been aimed at Tennant this week.
The row started after Tennant took aim at equalities minister Kemi Badenoch. Speaking at the British LGBT Awards on Friday (21 June), where he received a celebrity ally award, Tennant said: “I don’t wish ill of her, I just wish her to shut up.
Badenoch, who is well-known for her anti-LGBTQ+ views – she reportedly delayed laws to end conversion therapy, and backed a ban on gender-neutral toilets – hit back, calling the Good Omens star a “rich, lefty, white male celebrity”.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak later waded into the row, saying freedom of speech is the “most powerful feature of our democracy”. Writing on X, the PM, who, if the polls are right, has less than a week until he is evicted from Downing Street, added: “If you’re calling for women to shut up and wishing they didn’t exist, you are the problem.”
However, Tennant appeared very unbothered by the row when he took his family to the Mean Girls The Musical premiere on Wednesday (26 June).
He showed up to the premiere alongside his wife, mother-in-law and daughter wearing pink nail varnish and a non-binary pin. He also jokingly referred to one of the movie’s best-loved lines, saying “I aspire to be fetch.”
