Kierkegaard's Lunch

Back at the beginning of February this year I wrote on this blog that I could foresee Keir Starmer throwing the British trans community under the oncoming bus that was Donald Trump and his deranged transphobic obsessions. I speculated that in the coming months, Trump would prove incredibly difficult to deal with and that Starmer - understanding just how appallingly weak the United Kingdom is now (entirely reliant on the US for its nuclear deterrent, with an armed forces that have dwindled to shockingly small proportions and now cut off from the trading power of the EU that might have some sway with the authoritarian American President) would be forced into a dual strategy of supplication, flattery and concession to keep him onside. I predicted a scenario of Trump being invited for a State visit to the UK, with Starmer keen to offer something to keep the President sweet and to demonstrate his commitment to some of the ghastly culture war punishments that Trump enjoys inflicting on his...

. In Britain, run by a Labour government populated by duplicitous snakes, the mood music may differ, but we're about to be looking at a level of discrimination against trans people that maybe even Trump hasn't managed. So, it's happened. The moment I have written about here and here and in countless other places. The event that I have been trying to tell anyone who would listen - cisgender or trans (though God knows the latter haven't been short of doom laden predictions to tick off one by one like some kind of Advent calendar from Hell). The UK Supreme Court published a ruling yesterday in what should have been an arcane case launched by some trans-hating Scottish activists (For Women Scotland - FWS), who objected to the Scottish government allowing the definition of those classed as women to include trans women when they were inviting applications for the Boards of public bodies, but which turned into a Landmark Legal Moment. A moment in which the Court gave its vie...

Is your UK passport in your lived gender due to expire in the next few years? Is it your only passport? You've seen what is happening in the US. Within the appalling witch-hunt now unfolding, all trans people who are attempting to get or renew a passport in their legal gender are now being refused one - either being given one in their birth assigned sex or (say some reports) sometimes not getting one at all. There is no sign of this happening in the UK - yet - but there are two scenarios in which it could, and if it did, it could happen very fast and with little warning. They are potentially related. 1. Trump's frenzy of hostility towards trans people in the United States and his clear, public aim of completely eliminating us has changed the game for trans people internationally. Authoritarian regimes are already cutting/pasting the language from his anti-trans Executive Orders (i.e. Kenya) whilst in the so-called Western democracies, haters of trans people are taking detailed ...

UPDATE JAN 12, 2025: Five days after I published this blog, my friend Jonathan, about whom I write, suddenly died. He was good man, and a loving and compassionate Dad with a powerful moral sense. My heart goes out to his family. He’ll be much missed.  RIP buddy. You earned it. ****** I  am a trans woman. This means that I have taken a journey in life that’s unlike the one travelled by many. The weight of being expected to carry, share and explain the story of my past in ways that satisfy the curiosity or calm the anxiety of those around me is something of which I am always conscious. But when a good friend developed Alzheimer’s, I unexpectedly felt free of that weight because he could no longer remember the past. It was an extraordinary, strange, gift made all the more so by seeing what he was going through, by sensing what was in store for him and by him being unaware that he was giving it to me.  Alzheimer's Disease has surely got a strong claim to be one of the most he...