Kierkegaard's Lunch

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...

"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...