Some of us are barely holding on

It's relentless. If I sound like a broken record, sorry not sorry as they say. This is my life. And the life of many friends of mine. And, as another weekend rolls around, that means more public attacks on the transgender community. Fresh from the success of preventing the reform of The Gender Recognition Act, turning a public consultation into a fiasco at the end of which trans people were pathetically grateful that their rights hadn't actually been pushed back, the Usual Suspects are moving on. The next target, we suspect, is the repeal of The Gender Recognition Act. 

Some of us thought the bigger public health disaster for a century combined with a piece of voluntary economic self-harm unparalleled in modern history might give them something else to think about. 

They didn't miss a beat. 

At the weekend: a grotesque piece in The Mail on Sunday claiming teachers were now to be stopped from 'transing' children (something no teacher has EVER done) and a letter in the paper of record for hatred of trans people, The Sunday Times, in support of JK Rowling. Another letter, another rallying around the world's richest novelist. Various celebs lining up to sign with the Usual Suspects, including Griff Rhys Jones, Tom Stoppard, Ian McEwan, Alexander Armstrong and Ben Miller (the Ben Miller whose blindness to the abuse and ridicule of trans people in which he was participating, in a sitcom in 2009, galvanised the emergence of the first real fight to get the British media to stop monstering us).

I need to be clear - misogynistic attacks on JK Rowling, or any other woman, online, or anywhere else, are completely unacceptable. When this whole latest nightmare kicked off, many voices from the trans community were appalled by The Sun's vicious attempt to join the party and said so.  I haven't met a single trans person who in any way condones the abuse of a woman online.

But what is very striking is how the well-defended, well platformed, hugely resourced Rowling constantly attracts sympathy from certain quarters - for her views, for her right to say them and to cause profound hurt on a scale she is likely fully aware of, while others are just left to twist in the wind.

What is also striking is how easily 'names' from the world of culture, familiar to us all, are co-opted into this performance, exploited, perhaps without the slimmest understanding of what they are really doing. The letter in question, whilst on the face of it condemning the online abuse of Rowling (again - I fully agree with that stance) contains an implication a mile wide. That is that it is trans women - like me -  who are doing it. And that trans women are inherently, unavoidably like this - bitter, male, misogynists caught up in some kind of twisted gender parody.

You see, we know who and what you mean when you write these letters.  We know the point of them, why you send them to certain newspapers and why those newspapers publish them. We know what they are for.

There again, perhaps the signatories do all know this? Perhaps they aren't just useful idiots?  Maybe they have distrusted, even hated us too for years? Perhaps all that time I spent watching them on tv, admiring their work, the bitter joke was on me? Stoppard is perhaps the cruellest of all to see lining up with these bad-faith actors in this latest seemingly-innocuous stunt. Stoppard with his family history - this man, whose searing, shocking play about prejudice towards a whole group of people, about how they thought they had gained acceptance but never could, Leopoldstadt, I enjoyed so much in the last days before the world shut down earlier this year.

There are some hashtags and comments out there about JK Rowling that are really sickening. Of course, she has a right to be defended from this hate and from threats online.

But so do we.

Today, another letter, from 60 lawyers, on some 'free speech' website, populated, you guessed it, by some pretty repellant writers with plenty of form hating trans people. This one going on about the sanctity of 'biological sex'. The usual names are there of course. The ones who have willfully bent their interpretation of the law over the years to an agenda.

And as for 'biological sex'...here we go again. Forgive me, here we fucking go again. What is it now? Chromosomes? Wombs? Vaginas? Hormones? Ovaries? Neurology? Something else? Hand size? Which one, or which combination, is THE definition that says I am not a woman, never have been, never will be? Which is the one that in the next paragraph - written or unwritten, but always present in the minds of these people, says that I am a man, and thus dangerous, a likely rapist or suffering from a serious delusion?

Which is the one that says my entire life has been a lie? Which is the one that negates the last twelve years of my lived experience, after I went through hell, lost almost everything, to be me and to live that way? Which is the one that asserts that I am actually a rapist or a paedophile, when in those twelve years, indeed in all the years before it, I never raped anyone nor ever remotely wanted to (though I have been scared of being raped or attacked often and carry a panic alarm in my handbag) and my relationship with children was characterised only by loving and wanting to care for my own? Gender policing is real, but like all real oppression, those with power conceal the laws by which it operates. If you think you know the rules, they will have changed.

Biological sex eh? Much beloved of the Trump administration I should add, which is rolling it out as much as possible to erase trans people wherever it can. Its definition is what a nurse or midwife writes on a form within the first 2 minutes of your life after looking briefly between your legs. That's it. And elsewhere, Trump-supporting Republicans are wheeling out JK Rowling's statements in defence of all this and more widely to shut down LGBTQ+ rights in general. 

But back to the endless letters. Where is our letter from those with power, or influence, or cultural capital? Where is our letter to The Times supporting us when we are endlessly attacked, told we are deviant, told we should be driven from society or denied human rights?

Where is our letter supporting our right to just be, to not live our lives in fear in the transphobic sewer that is England now?

Where is our letter supporting us when we get insulted, stared at, laughed at, attacked, killed? Judith Butler has just asked the same question (her reward was to be vilified online, obviously). 

Where is the

Fox and Owl - a taste of what they deal with

letter from tv personalities and writers and comedians when Fox Fisher and Ugla (Owl) Jónsdóttir have to deal with this? 

There is no letter because we have no power, no societal  status.

There is no letter because we don’t have anything we can give these people who (often deliberately) know nothing of us whatsoever, despite attempts to reach out to them, as  Mermaids has, as Paris Lees has, as others have on many occasions.

We have no book out, no film about to go into production, no shared agents, no editors or publishers or drinks receptions in common. No money.

I despise JK Rowling's views, but she has a total, unimpeachable right to not live in fear because she holds them. Somehow, taking a wild guess, I think that despite everything, she'll be ok. Perhaps her net worth of $1 billion will help. Perhaps her ready access to platforms, and the access to platforms of those who 'stand alongside' her and also hate trans people will help? There they can write about being cancelled to millions of readers, or discuss their latest letter. At the end of the day, I think that they, and she, will be fine

Myself, and those like me, unprotected, with barely any voice at all and few resources, I am not so sure about.

*************

Top Image: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSh84JZZ0V0