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Are we the only sane ones left?

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Watching trans actress Nava Mau play trans woman Teri in Netflix’s Baby Reindeer was, for me, the most grounding and affirming aspect of a powerful, though almost unbearably gruelling, drama. In a series drenched in the themes of shame and mental illness in which the main, cisgender, characters constantly make the worst decisions possible, Teri shows self-respect and courage. And in a country so gripped now in a spasm of political and media hatred of trans people, it made me wonder, are we actually the only sane ones left? It's currently at No 1 on the Netflix charts. Comedian Richard Gadd ’s semi-autobiographical story of being aggressively stalked, over several years, by a woman who one day walks into the pub where he is working, has received critical and viewer acclaim and is currently scoring highly on IMDb . Gadd based the story, broadly, on his own experiences - heavily disguised he adds, to protect the identities of those involved, especially that of his (actual) stalker wh
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The Brianna Ghey murder: Sentencing and the media circus.

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With the trial now over and the killers sentenced, the media festival of sham-concern-for-money will soon move on. But, if you are cisgender, please don't bother to even express your sympathy unless you are prepared to speak and act against the torrent of hate descending on Britain's trans community. Because your sympathy means nothing.   The Brianna Ghey murder trial today came to an end, with the sentencing of the two young people who brutally murdered her in a North of England park last year. Brianna Ghey was - for anyone outside the UK or who has been living in a dumpster for the last 12 months - a trans girl. And with this final chapter, the Money-Making Media Circus rolls on to its deeply monestisable, final chapter with the 'tv specials' and the ‘inside stories’ and the interviews and all the other things that have been embargoed till today. The killers' pictures are out there too, plus their names. It's an editor’s wet dream. After today, of course, read
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I’m trans. British politicians, journalists and sports regulators say I don’t exist. But my 81 year old Mum disagreed.

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I transitioned - that's the process of finally starting to live in public in the gender I knew myself to be - 15 years ago. If you are cisgender - that is when the gender you were assigned at birth fits you just fine and you've never questioned it inside - you're possibly going to be struggling right there. Certainly, if you live in Britain or in many parts of the Mid-Western or Southern US you're going to find plenty of people around you (perhaps you are one yourself?) who'd respond to what I have just written by saying 'Wait, that's just rubbish. That notion of being a gender inside that isn't what got written on your birth certificate  isn't even a thing is it! ?'  Perhaps they - or you - think it's some sort of ideology - a web of lunatic theory that some pseudo-academic came up with about 20 years ago - into which I have plunged? An 'ism' of some kind? I could point out that the experience I went through has been experienced in
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UK Athletics has now banned trans women from all women's competition. It's the absolute definition of prejudice and their hate won't win.

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UK Athletics has banned all transgender women who have "been through male puberty" from competing in women's athletics in Britain with immediate effect. Voices are now being raised to have trans women banned from recreational athletics too. Trans women who have already entered events under old guidelines will be permitted to compete but will have their times and placing erased and will not be eligible to receive a medal. "Consideration" is being given to allowing trans women to join a renamed male category.  Meanwhile, the British government and voices of hate within Britain are working hard to ensure that no trans girl can avoid going through male puberty, by shutting down healthcare for them.  The announcement came on Trans Day of Visibility. Of course it did. The annual day in which the trans community around the world stands up - those of us who can, in the shrinking number of countries where to do so doesn't mean you'll be arrested, beaten up or k
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Dear British Journalist

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If you don’t work in the British media, and you’ve been puzzled by how it’s been treating the tiny UK trans community, here’s an open letter to help with that. I may have got some stuff in it right or I may not. Who cares? I'm on a deadline here. I can’t actually be bothered to check with anyone working in the industry, to be honest, and frankly, it might mess things up for me if I did.  But that’ll all be fine, you’ll see… Dear Journalist, First, let me imagine you. Belsize Park or Crouch End? Hampton or Dulwich Village maybe? Wherever, I see you settled somewhere in leafy London. A comfortable urban spot - an Edwardian terrace, or perhaps a corner semi. Knocked through perhaps? Kids in their teens, and maybe even at university now. Two? Perhaps some from the first marriage as well. The eldest is a bit of a shit, but then you were away so much. It’s ok, because it's all civilised with the ex now. You even went to that talk on body politics at The Barbican together. A dog, that
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I am myself. I am a woman. I am enough.

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"Jo" she said, "Can I ask you something personal? Of course, you can tell me fuck off."  I always judge these requests in the moment. There's no foolproof way of handling them. As a trans woman, I am used to having to do the heavy lifting to help those around me try and come to terms with who I am and with my experience, and it can be tiring. But this was a new colleague, and I hope, friend, who had been very welcoming in my new role working alongside her. We had already bonded a fair bit and she radiated lots of supportive energy. So I said. "Sure". "When you started I was really happy that we had another woman in our group. And that's what I see you as, a woman, absolutely and completely", she said. She then reflected on my use of 'trans' and what, she wondered, it meant for me. This, she added, was particularly in the context of another friend of hers who (my guess) identified as non-binary and presented in a more gender non-c
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The public show trial of trans people in the UK.

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Edit: February 22nd, 2023.  I wrote this in January. A couple of weeks later, a 16-year-old trans girl, Brianna Ghey, was knifed to death in a public park in the north of England. Two days ago, India Willoughby, who is trans and recently appeared on the BBC's Question Time programme to a volley of panelist and audience abuse that left her shaken, received a written death threat from British neo-Nazi group 'National Action'.  In the face of a rapidly deteriorating situation in the UK, created and exploited by the British government and the British media, my hope is that readers can pay particular attention to the final paragraph of this piece and then follow some of the links.   *************** In the fifteen years since I transitioned, I have felt many things. Initially, the expansive, sudden joy of finally being able to present myself to the world as me. In the metaphor first used by psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott, my ‘false self’ – the mask I had put on to stay safe and t
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