As Channel 4’s joyful study proves, there’s no better way to get to grips with the trans and non-binary experience than meeting those living it

“To those people who say we don’t exist, I’m right fucking here,” says Saffron, a non-binary 22-year-old and force of nature whose defiance masks a world of pain. In Genderquake (Monday, 9pm), Channel 4’s non-binary answer to Big Brother, 11 people of assorted sexuality and gender identity are parachuted into the Sussex countryside to live together for a week. In between barbecues, hot tub sessions and alarmed encounters with cows, life stories are swapped, differences thrashed out and tears – theirs and ours – shed.

What looks on paper to be an exercise in the worst form of televised manipulation turns out to be a candid, eye-opening and frequently joyful study of lives across the gender spectrum. Among the housemates is Brooke, 24, who has Klinefelter syndrome, which means she has an extra X chromosome. Despite having been born a boy, she began growing breasts and developing female characteristics when she was 13, which went down like a cup of cold sick at her boys’ school.

There is Cambell, a 22-year-old trans woman who has undergone hormone treatment since she was 16 and has recently completed gender reassignment surgery. There’s also Marcus, a gay man in Cruella de Vil makeup; Phoenix, a “freaky alien child” who identifies as 70% female; and 21-year-old Tom, a straight man from Barnsley who declares: “You’ve got a penis, or you’ve got a vagina. There’s no in-between, is there?” Reality TV convention dictates that, when strangers are thrust together, there should be a villain in their midst. At first, that role seems to be fulfilled by Tom who, despite having never encountered transgenderism, has clear views on the subject. In the event – spoiler alert – it takes less than a day for him to have his mind blown, to renounce his penis-or-vagina stance and assume the role of house agony uncle. “I’ve learned more in the last six or seven hours than I’ve learned in my whole life. It’s fucking crazy,” he sniffs.

Less so the pale, stale males and overnight gender experts in the local pub whose eyebrows shoot into orbit as the visitors troop in for a pint. “It’s all become quite fashionable, it’s nothing more than that,” says one man to Saffron, who has just patiently explained her experience of gender dysphoria.

There are those who will argue there are more serious ways to investigate transgenderism in the 21st century, possibly involving academics, medical experts and social commentators. But there can be no better way to get to grips with the trans and non-binary experience than meeting those living it. Here, there are open-hearted discussions about hormone treatments, surgery, sex, beauty regimes and what makes a woman. Bullying, bigotry and the fear of ending up alone are also recurring themes.

In its ruminations on identity and selfhood, Genderquake is honest and open, and lays waste to notions of transgenderism as an extreme form of attention-seeking. “It’s never been more confusing to be young, free and single,” says the opening voiceover. But these fearless young people know exactly what and who they are. The confusion lies with the rest of us.