Kierkegaard's Lunch

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 ...

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...

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...

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...

World swimming body Fina has just overturned its previous guidelines and effectively banned all trans women from elite swimming. Each time a new piece of anti-trans discrimination arrives, its authors try to justify it as specific to just one context. But, behind them, the people pressing for each of these actions are celebrating as they build their bigger jigsaw of hate. They have a much larger goal in mind... So here we go again. After drawing breath from being told I am a potential rapist and ought to be banned from all women's toilets or changing rooms and after sitting through noxious comments from government ministers about how I can't be let into a women's ward if I go to hospital, my dreams of an Olympic Gold are now in tatters.  That moment when I cheat my way into the women's kierin final through my concealed yet secretly superior strength and power on my racing bike down the back straight to take the title is to be denied me. No matter, perhaps I can line up...