Podcast On Trans Issues

“Trans and non-binary activist, counsellor, trainer and writer Sam Hope is a founding member of Nottingham Trans Hub and the author of the book _Person-Centred Counselling for Trans and Gender Diverse People: A Practical Guide_ (2019). We speak to them about the dangers facing the trans community in Europe, and how best to offer meaningful support and solidarity.”

I gave this interview back in August, but it still feels relatively current, referencing GRA reforms, JK Rowling, and the situation for trans people across Europe. It took place prior to the Government’s decision not to reform the Gender Recognition Act in the UK. 

With thanks to Ibtisam Ahmed for giving me the platform to speak up for my community.

Cis allies versus transphobes – when and how to engage

This blog came out of a conversation with an ally about when and how to engage with anti-trans campaigners. Here are my top tips for how cis allies can be helpful in the fight against transphobic hate.

Do not boost the signal

Many transphobes do what they do in order to get attention and social media hits. Every time you hate share a transphobic article, the person who wrote it is winning, no matter how outraged you are. Do not assume that sharing an article and commenting how bad it is does damage to the writer.

If the writer or poster’s goal is simply to get good media coverage, there really is no such thing as bad publicity. Social media algorithms make being outrageous and controversial online lucrative. People piling in on them will only help raise their profile and make them look like a plucky hero to those who share their hateful views.

In addition, arguments gain traction the more they are heard, even if they are being refuted.

Example: the people who still believe climate change isn’t real have almost all heard good evidence that it is, but the controversial climate change sceptic arguments still have traction exactly because they are controversial, and therefore get a lot of attention in the media in the way a well thought out argument just will not. It doesn’t hurt that, like transphobia, the right-wing media likes to signal boost those arguments.

Another example of the success of being controversial is anti-vaxxers, who use an approach called fire-hosing. According to Lucky Tran in the Guardian:

“Firehosing inundates us with so many wild opinions that it becomes exhausting to continually disprove them. In this scenario, reality is reduced to positioning and who can sell their position best.”

Transphobes are particularly good at this tactic, and the allies and trans people quickly become exhausted by the process of continually providing evidence that refutes their claims. Because the media still uncritically shares false information about trans people, the propaganda gains a similar veneer of truth to climate change skepticism. It doesn’t matter that there is a near consensus about the genuineness of trans experiences and the importance of granting them safety and civil rights. It doesn’t matter that there is zero evidence that trans civil rights endanger cis women in any way. It only matters which voices get signal boosted, just as the climate skepticism angle has been signal boosted despite a near consensus from scientists about climate change.

When you share or comment on an anti-trans article, you are unfortunately helping signal boost that article. If you create discussion beneath an article a friend shares on Facebook, you are also signal boosting that article.

Just don’t, okay?

Consider the impact on your trans friends

Transphobes, and that includes self-styled “gender critical” feminists, terrify a lot of us. Many of us have been genuinely traumatised by the hatred and vitriol that these groups target us with. I personally experience PTSD symptoms whenever I witness the hate of gender critical feminists on or offline, due to previous, awful experiences that have accumulated over a couple of decades. When it is vicious and transparently hateful it is bad. When it is polite, clever and manipulative, with undertones of gaslighting and dog whistling, it is far worse.

There is nothing worse than an abuser who is attacking you in plain sight whilst others look on and do not realise you are being attacked. The most toxic are people who share quite “reasonable concerns” that are in fact clever and false arguments that undermine our civil rights and incite others to enact violence and abuse against us. The ones that play for sympathy towards the transphobe and paint the trans person asking for civil rights as an aggressor or worse, a predator. The ones that manage to convince others that they are being victimised even by us pointing out their transphobia.

Abusers are very good at getting people on their side by in turns being charming and playing the victim. They are even better at driving their victims up the wall until they break and lash out.

When our friends treat these individuals as reasonable and engage in debate with them they are offering social inclusion to transphobes in a way that is often unwittingly socially excluding towards us. Here is a space our friend may well be holding or curating, is certainly participating in, where whether or not I should have civil rights is seen as a suitable topic for debate, rather than a given. Things are being said there that may activate my PTSD symptoms, while the cis folk in that space have no concept of the impact of this discourse. If I dare to participate at all, it’s at the risk that I may become upset or rattled, and be told by my supposed ally that I am “not helping my cause” because I haven’t been sufficiently polite to the person who is enacting structural violence on me oh, so subtly but devastatingly.

Because there is a small but vocal left wing and feminist contingent of transphobes, we are much more likely to encounter these people during activism or amongst our friends. When cis allies tag us to draw us into a discussion, or comment on a public post that then appears in our timeline, or share their experiences or an article where we can see it, they contribute to our trauma. They may think that they are demonstrating their allyship, they may think that our input would be useful to counter what has been said, but in reality they may simply be adding to our distress whilst signal boosting hate.

Imposing sanctions

If arguing with transphobes is not helpful, what then can we do to counter hate? Well, one thing we can do is impose sanctions. Hold people to account for their behaviour. There is a reason why hate- mongers insist so often on their “right to free speech” – they want to be able to do what they like without consequences, and use the “free speech” argument to shut down anybody who tries to impose sanctions against them.

That’s because sanctions work.

No platforming, deleting comments from our timeline or groups, telling people we’re not prepared to stay in their presence if they continue with their hate, calling for somebody to be fired, banning them from their social media platform, unfriending them or blocking them for their views, asking people to boycott their event, are all actions that transphobes will complain very loudly about. That’s because they’re effective. Responses need to be proportionate, but often our responses take into account the heat that will fall on us for our actions more than the magnitude of the offence. Transphobes often get away with their behavior because they’re natural bullies and people are afraid to square up to them, remaining bystanders to their bullying behavior.

They will call the consequences of their actions censorship (it isn’t) and shout about an “all powerful trans lobby”, but nevertheless we must persist in making sure that people are materially and socially accountable for their actions. We should not be afraid of harnessing social power or gaining enough power to have an equal place in society. The only goal here is to gain civil rights and to shut down arguments that have been disproven over and over again to those who’ve bothered to do their homework. We have to make hate speech something that has consequences for the person making it rather than the people experiencing it.

When a friend says something transphobic, start by sending them a private message. Ask them if they knew that what they shared or said was transphobic and ask them to take it down. If they come back and disagree that it is transphobic, ask them if they would be willing to take part in an accountability process to explore this. Tell them that it is not for them to decide whether something is transphobic, that it is trans people who get to decide that. Remind them they are unlikely to know as much about trans peoples’ experiences and civil rights as trans people do. Remind them that there is a concerted anti-trans campaign going on at the moment and they might well have fallen victim to this campaign of misinformation, but the facts in favour of trans people’s civil rights are friendly.

If the person refuses to reconsider their actions, consider unfriending them and, if their hatred is entrenched and they are an active campaigner against trans civil rights, consider letting mutual friends know about the situation. When we publicly risk our own standing by siding with the bullied rather than the bully, it can be frightening, but it also signals to our fellow humans, who are, after all, pack animals, that maybe it’s time to stop the bullying.

Sanctions must be proportionate to the crime, but the impact of campaigning against trans rights and legitimacy should not be underestimated. Hate speech is the foundation of escalating violence against marginalised groups and needs a zero tolerance response.

Educate yourself and others, and speak up

Although trans-positive articles will never have the reach of those negative articles that get hate-shared everywhere, you can inform yourself and others by following and sharing the work of knowledgeable trans people on social media – random names off the top of my head include CN Lester, Munroe Bergdorf, Tavis Alabanza, Alok Vaid-Menon, Janet Mock, Laverne Cox, Ben Vincent, Ruth Pearce, Christine Burns, Natacha Kennedy, Kat Gupta, Paris Lees (me!!) . . .

Make sure you know a hell of a lot before wading in on an argument – gender critical feminists are wiley, and can have folks believing up is down. Poor arguments make the situation much, much worse. Maybe 9/10 times I see a cis person arguing with transphobes, they actually don’t know enough not to get badly tripped up.

Here are some stock phrases to help you out rather than getting tangled in an in-depth “debate”

“Trans lives, identities and civil rights should not be up for debate.”

“Trans civil rights hurt no-one, anyone who says differently is peddling misinformation”.

“The pervasive idea that trans women pose a threat to cis women is a fiction that de-centres the very real violence trans women experience.”

“De-legitimising trans experiences and undermining their civil rights is an act of structural violence”.

If you’re a cis man, and you’re arguing with a cis woman about women’s safety and feminism, please also consider that you might not be helping at all just by virtue of being a man. Engaging in an online argument only serves to reinforce the pretense of victimhood of transphobic women who claim that trans rights is some sort of trojan horse for men to impose themselves on women. It’s not, of course, but when it comes to the finer points of feminism and navigating feminists discourse, very few cis men know enough to do this well, and I do not want my trans-positive activism to come with a side-order of accidental misogyny or the optics of a cis dude brow-beating women and telling them what’s good for them. Just as the likes of Graham Lineham haven’t been overly helpful to the gender critical cause when he browbeats trans inclusive feminist women online and tells them how they should do feminism properly.

Better still, share positive, trans inclusive feminist articles (such as the ones I share on my Facebook Page) in spaces where they’ll have impact and simply delete any anti-trans comments. Don’t forget that if you block someone, they can no longer reply to a thread you started in a group, so consider blocking people who make hateful comments if you don’t have admin rights to delete their comments. Respond briefly and firmly, report them to admins, and block them.

Consider having a policy on your own groups and timeline that does not allow speech that opposes marginalised people’s civil rights, and learn why those toxic, pervasive but sometimes innocent-sounding “whatabouts” do just that. Learn about the links between supposedly feminist/leftist transphobes and the far right, and examine the ways in which their arguments overlap.

 

As long as whether or not trans people should have civil rights is still considered a matter for debate in polite, socially aware circles, trans people will continue to suffer and die under the weight of this structural violence. Dehumanising speech is the underpinning mechanism for the rise in hate crime and alarming suicide statistics. It needs to stop.

Creating a lie: How trans women are portrayed as predators

First of all, a quick apology to my readers – I’ve been out of the habit of blogging while working on my upcoming book, Person Centred Counselling for Trans and Gender Diverse People 

But today I was running a trans feminism workshop with a lovely group of Feminists over Fifty and it reminded me I’ve been neglecting this blog, so I think I might write a few quick blogs on trans feminist subjects, because there’s still so much misinformation out there that has a life of its own.

Today’s blog is about claims that keep surfacing online that trans women show “male patterns of violence” and how that trope has managed to be perpetuated without evidence, and has contributed to a hostile climate where reform to the Gender Recognition Act has stalled. I also look at the community in general and what we do or don’t know about trans offenders. Please be warned, there are some very upsetting contents ahead.

Content warning: discussion of violence, including sexual violence, transmisogyny, prisons, criminality, systemic oppression of trans people, marginalised groups in prison statistics

Telling a good story

When creating a lie the first ingredient is some good storytelling. So many TV and film murderers are trans-coded; gender non-conforming or outright trans representations, as in Insidious 2, Pretty Little Liars, Silence of the Lambs or Psycho. The portrayals are so frequent and run from blatant to subtle. Next time you watch a crime show, look out for little clues and hints at a trans narrative for the villain, especially if the crimes are sexual.

This means we are primed to believe that trans women are violent, predatory, often disturbed, and of course perverted, because we are told the story over and over until it becomes a trope we don’t even notice we are absorbing.

The offering up of trans (and queer) characters as villains is of course a deliberate ploy of the patriarchy – it distances perpetrating behaviour from cishet men, enabling the rape and violence culture that allows cishet men to get away with their crimes far too easily.

The idea of the deviant trans woman is also rooted in misogyny, in the idea that women are inferior sexual objects, so someone society sees as a man wanting to be a woman must have warped sexual motives. This has also led to some truly terrible and entirely debunked, inappropriately sexualised theorising about trans women from clinicians and transphobes alike that is much discussed elsewhere. No such equivalent theories exist for trans men, despite the huge similarity of trans men’s and trans women’s experience, because misogyny infects society’s view of trans women in some truly alarming ways.

Lies in the media

Ingredient 2 in creating the lie of “trans woman as perpetrator” is evidenced in the national presses’ ability to throw around a completely fabricated story that Soham murderer Ian Huntley is transgender (he’s not, never was, never said he was).

There have been a lot of these “anonymous source” stories about trans people recently. Often “anonymous source, terrified of powerful trans lobby, tells completely unsubstantiated and alarming tale of a Bad Thing a Trans Person Did”. In the case of Huntley, the anonymous source, a fellow prisoner, simply made up the story Huntley was trans and it was widely reported in the media, and taken up in the Twittersphere, particularly by high-profile writer Graham Lineham.

Because journalists protect their sources, unscrupulous media can use this route to publish pretty much any fiction they please without any accountability. There are no  repercussions for the source or the writer beyond the need to print a small print apology if the truth comes out. Proving something did not happen when it is an anonymous story about an unnamed trans person in an undisclosed location is even harder, and when we complain about such (common) stories being unsubstantiated gossip presented as fact, the complaints are not upheld.

Presumably, there is a financial incentive too to provide a juicy story that captures the “concerned about trans rights” zeitgeist.

It doesn’t really matter that the Huntley story has been retracted, because in 20 years there will still be transphobes repeating the story, some in good faith, some in bad – trust me, urban legends about Terrible Things A Trans Person Did never die, they just get more and more embellished.

There is no evidence, despite what some people might claim, that trans women (or trans men, for that matter) are in any way more dangerous than cis women, but it does not matter – people believe awful stories about trans people because they have been consistently groomed to do so.

Fake statistics

Ingredient 3 in the lie was a scandalously manipulative claim by Fair Play for Women (FPFW), a group campaigning against trans civil rights, that 41% (60 out of  a total of 125) of trans prisoners are sex offenders. The truth, as revealed here is that the figure was derived by entirely spurious means, but yet again it was widely, and uncritically, reported.

If FPFW’s figures were correct, they would signify that there are only 125 trans prisoners in the UK in total. That means that for a total trans population estimated to be between 200,000 – 500,000, trans prisoners would be a surprisingly small group comparative to the general prison population of 179 per 100,000.

Just to clear things up a little, that 60 sex offenders that sounds so alarmingly large as “41%” is 0.01% of the estimated trans population – one in ten thousand.

I would expect the trans prison population to be proportionately higher for complex sociological factors I explore in the next section, just as it is for other oppressed and marginalised groups. And yet if FPFW’s stats are right and that 60 sex offenders figure is indeed out of an 125 total trans prison population then that’s astonishingly low. Of course, if you read the BBC’s fact-check on the figure all becomes clear – most trans prisoners are not recorded and there is a reason why serious offenders are recorded as trans while minor offenders are not.

So FPFW and all the media outlets who shared it effectively lied about the proportion of trans sex offenders, stirring up people’s existing prejudices about trans people.

The truth, that there are 60 sex offenders out of a completely unknown but certainly much higher total is less impactful, though. There are of course sex offenders in every group of humans in existence – there are an estimated 64,000 female sex offenders in the UK according to the Guardian, for instance – that’s one in every 500 women. We do nothing to keep these sex offending women out of toilets and changing rooms.

I guess that if the government are as bad at recording stats for minor LGB offenders we could just as easily (god forbid) produce a similarly manipulative statistic for the proportion of recorded lesbian or gay sex offenders, and start a debate about LGB people being a danger. Which would be horrific.

And this is where the existing lies enable the new lie, and where social marginalisation plays its part too – if someone produced a statistic that 41% of middle class white men in prison were sex offenders, few would believe it and it wouldn’t be in the interests of our increasingly right wing media to share it.

So what would we expect the trans prison population to be?

If it was recorded, which it isn’t, there are many factors that might make trans people more likely to end up in jail. Members of many marginalised groups are over-represented in the prison population, not under-represented. Factors that might influence incarceration rates include high homelessness statistics (25% of trans people have been homeless) low income (60% of trans people earned under £20,000 in this UKgov survey) and high unemployment (35% of trans women and 43% of trans men were out of employment in the last year).

Mental health service users are vastly over-represented in the prison population. If you look at the Trans Mental Health Study 2012, 76% of trans people have taken antidepressants, 31% had accessed a community mental health team. Rates of mental health experienced were: Depression 88%, stress 80%, anxiety 75%. 36% scored as having major depression. We know from a landmark study published in The Lancet among others that poor trans mental health is directly linked to the appalling way society treats trans people.

Then, let’s remember that marginalised people who are the victims of violence are often themselves arrested for that violence.:

“Women marginalized by their identities, such as queers, immigrants, women of color, trans women, or even women who are perceived as loud or aggressive, often do not fit preconceived notions of abuse victims and are thus arrested.” (Source: Jacobin)

The government LGBT survey reported that in the last year 25% of trans people had experienced domestic violence, and the Trans Mental Health Study 2012, showed that, 38% experienced physical intimidation and threats for being trans, 19% had been beaten up for being trans, 14% had been harassed by the police.

The report Out of sight, out of mind? Transgender People’s Experiences of Domestic Abuse reports staggering stats for victimisation of trans people: Abuse from partner or ex – 80%; emotional and transphobic abuse – 73%; Controlling behaviour – 60%; physical abuse – 45%; sexual abuse 47%. In addition, 37% of respondents said that ‘someone had forced, or tried to force them to have sex when they were under the age of 16’ and 46% had experienced some other form of childhood sexual abuse.

This is not the subject at hand, but these statistics bear out the reason trans people desperately need to be included in safe spaces, refuges, services, hostels and other provision for victims.

All of these experiences of being victimised, marginalised and oppressed sadly make any marginalised group also more likely to be enmeshed in the prison system. One thing (white middle class) feminism does very badly is equating criminality or even violence with privilege, and looking for carceral solutions when in fact the causes of criminality and violence are complex. For example, recent reports show a rise in knife crime is associated with austerity

Of course, with minority groups and incarceration levels you also need to factor in the amount people are reported for crimes and the likelihood police will push for prosecution and a jury will convict. Given the extent of  society’s mistrust of trans people evidenced by the films, TV and headlines mentioned above, it’s safe to say that trans people do not experience the teflon-coated protection that the white middle class boys of this world receive when they do perpetrate.

That Swedish Study

Which brings us to ingredient #4 in creating the perfect storm of a lie about trans people. An oft-quoted (never been replicated) Swedish study claims trans women (and also trans men) show “male patterns of violence”. This is used by transphobes to “prove” that trans women have some innate “essence of maleness” that should exclude them from womanhood, whilst also pushing trans men conveniently outside of their circle of protection.

The study’s author came forward and protested transphobes misusing the study, saying:

“we were measuring and comparing the total number of convictions, not conviction type. We were not saying that cisgender males are convicted of crimes associated with marginalization and poverty. We didn’t control for that and we were certainly not saying that we found that trans women were a rape risk. What we were saying was that for the 1973 to 1988 cohort group and the cisgender male group, both experienced similar rates of convictions

. . .  claims about trans criminality, specifically rape likelihood, is misrepresenting the study findings. The study as a whole covers the period between 1973 and 2003. If one divides the cohort into two groups, 1973 to 1988 and 1989 to 2003, one observes that for the latter group (1989–2003), differences in mortality, suicide attempts and crime disappear. This means that for the 1989 to 2003 group, we did not find a male pattern of criminality.” (Source)

Leave aside the utter injustice the author used the term “male pattern of criminality” at all to describe offending numbers of trans women, when she could also have used the term “marginalised pattern of criminality” just as easily.

But, you apparently only need to worry about increased numbers of criminal trans people if you travel back in time to before 1988 anyway. All in all, this is surprising – given low socioeconomic status, repeat victimisation, poor housing, poor mental health and the number of trans people pushed into sex work, I would really expect our community to be more highly represented in the prison population than it apparently is.

The study’s author goes on to say that better treatment of trans people most likely led to the reduction in offending rates. Almost like making constant insinuations that we are dangerous and deviant has a material affect on our wellbeing and place in society.

In conclusion

These toxic lies about trans people, particularly women, leave them often excluded from people’s circle of care, treated as the “outsider” to be scared of instead of the vulnerable people to be scared for. In my work, I see the impact of this injustice every day. Truly vulnerable people constantly being subject to violence and abuse, excluded from services but more than that, excluded from people’s concern.

People don’t seem to realise this community is banging loudly on the door to be let in for a reason – not because we are difficult aggressive sociopaths demanding the unreasonable but because it’s scary and dangerous out here, particularly for trans women, and being included in the human pack and treated like a person in need of care and safety is a fundamental need.

It’s time to stop believing the lies.

How cis lesbians can challenge transphobia after London Pride

Content note: This blog mentions transphobia, violence and sexual violence 

The events at London Pride inflicted huge distress and threat on trans people. Ensuing discussions have not always been useful, but as someone who lived within the lesbian community I understand how embedded misconceptions about trans issues are. I decided to write a longer blog specifically for my cisgender lesbian friends, to help them better challenge in-community transphobia.

“It’s important to keep talking until everyone understands/agrees”

Unfortunately, this is a fundamental misunderstanding of human nature. Most people will go along with the prevailing feeling of the group as a whole. If it feels they can get away with saying something nasty about a minority group they don’t really care about or want to understand, they will take the opportunity to do so. Strong social disapproval of this behaviour works much better than patient listening and arguing.

This is also because expressing controversial views is actually a display of power, as I discuss here.

If the prevailing dialogue is saying “we’ve had this conversation enough, trans women are women and we need to stop debating this”, then that sets a tone for inclusive spaces where trans people feel safe to come in without feeling they need to justify their very existence.

If the prevailing dialogue is “there is still much to talk about on this issue and it’s ok to keep discussing it til everyone agrees”, then we will carry on having this same conversation forever, because transphobes will always exist. If we centre the transphobes, even the unconsciously transphobic ones, and their need to talk, then we will forever be making spaces difficult to access for trans people.

At some point a moment happens where socially something shifts in people’s imagination from “it’s free speech” to “it’s just not an ok thing to say”. Usually, people claim “free speech” only if they have sympathy for the arguments. If you are letting cis people talk at length about the legitimacy of trans people, you are at the very least enabling transphobia, if not somewhat sympathising with it.

“The protest sheds light on the issues”

Does the increased opportunity to say bad things about minority groups “shed light” on issues and resolve them? Just look at the emboldening of the far right across the world and their own insistence on their right to “free speech” for an answer to that question. Prejudice is not something you can debate someone out of – social non-acceptance of prejudice is a far stronger tool than debate. See the paradox of tolerance for more on this.

I was told by a number of people the protest on Saturday created “an opportunity”. But the protest in reality just reinforced trans people’s positions as outsiders.

This has made trans people much more afraid of attending LGB(t) events, particularly Prides. An online video where a Pride in London steward says “We don’t mind you being here, we appreciate it”  (at the 3.50 mark) to the protesters doesn’t help things. Neither does the fact that Police did not act despite it being a public order offence, but did try to stop trans women shouting back at the protesters, who were shouting “dykes not dicks” and “men can’t be lesbians” at the time, whilst distributing leaflets calling trans women rapists.

One person told me I should be glad about the protest and I asked how he would feel if someone distributed hundreds of leaflets accusing him of being a rapist. Unfortunately, accusations stick, and these leaflets and the circulated videos and banner pictures will influence people. If you say hateful things about a minority group, it will socially influence people to think you must have a reason for doing so, and the respect given to the protesters will give their words even more weight.

Contrast the treatment of the privileged figures who led this protest (Julia Long is an established and well heeled white, middle aged, middle class, senior academic), with the treatment of other Pride protesters over the years. This photo, taken at Glasgow Pride last year, shows how young trans protesters are treated:

Listening over and over to transphobes and allowing their discourse to dominate lesbian spaces even though they are arguably a minority, means the community spends more time and empathy on the unfounded fears of transphobes than the very real fears of trans people.

This discourse is directly undermining potential and existing civil rights, as well as putting vulnerable trans women in increased danger. But it also silences younger cis lesbians, who are far more likely to be trans inclusive, and it reinforces power dynamics about who controls lesbian space.

“No one side of this is more oppressed than the other”

Saying this is tantamount to saying trans women are not women. If you think that, you are being transphobic. You might not want to think of yourself that way, but that doesn’t change it.

There is an enormous body of evidence to support the existence of trans people both historical, archeological, psychological and biological. You want your neat sex binary? Tough, it doesn’t exist. You want to believe that birth certificates and pronouns are biological facts that cannot be changed? Well, they aren’t.

Trans women are women. Trans lesbians are lesbians. So when a cis lesbian attacks a trans woman yes she is absolutely acting oppressively, because they are both women and only one of them is trans.

“But I’m being called a transphobe for not wanting to sleep with trans women”

Okay, first of all, your body, your choice. You can sleep with whoever you like!

But here’s the thing, if you would not consider dating a trans woman because you’re a lesbian, then you probably consider her to be outside your dating pool. And that means deep down you probably see her as outside of the category “woman”.

Sorry, but it really is transphobic to exclude trans women from the category “woman”. So, yes, you don’t have to date trans women, but making the statement that you wouldn’t date trans women reinforces the idea that they are not legitimate people for (cis) lesbians to date. All the cis lesbians who are dating trans women would very much disagree with you.

It’s transphobic to say that trans women can’t be lesbians and cannot date lesbians. This doesn’t mean anyone is forcing anyone to sleep with trans women, but it is saying you do not have the right to decide for everyone else what woman means, what lesbian means, or what transphobia is. Excluding trans women and the cis women who date them from the word lesbian or from lesbian spaces is transphobic.

“But lesbians don’t like penis”

Some trans women have a penis. And some lesbians are fine with that. If that’s not you, that’s ok. I lived as a lesbian for many years and I can tell you there are many kinds of lesbian with many different likes and wants. Dictating what all lesbians do and do not like isn’t ok.

Stigmatising anyone for being different is a truly horrible thing to do. There are all sorts of reasons trans women cannot or don’t have surgery. But saying things online like “I would never date a woman with a penis” is really, really hurtful and stigmatising. It doesn’t just hurt trans women, it hurts over-endowed intersex women too.

I couldn’t be around penises intimately for a long time when I was going through abuse recovery. It is totally ok to feel that way and not be stigmatised for that. There will be times when you need to share that information. Online, as a result of a discussion about whether trans lesbians are valid is not one of those times. To use your personal trauma around penises to invalidate trans lesbians is just plain manipulative.

Sleep with whoever you like. Your body, your rules. But just like Grindr statuses saying “no fats no femmes” can perpetuate systemic prejudice against certain bodies and presentations, so can unnecessarily broadcasting your negative feelings about some trans women’s bodies.

“But some trans people do bad things”

There are estimated to be 64,000 female sex offenders in this country. A trans exclusionary radical feminist (Valerie Solanas) shot Andy Warhol, leaving him with a life limiting injury. A cis lesbian nurse (Beverley Allit) was Britain’s most notorious child serial killer. I also know a number of women who have been violently attacked, both sexually and otherwise, by cis lesbians, and who have been left with permanent injuries.

What do these facts have to do with each other? Absolutely nothing.

If I were to raise any of these issues in the context of trying to say there was something inherently problematic about cis women, that would be deeply problematic. If I were to talk about the cis lesbian violence cited above in the context of a conversation that was discussing lesbian exclusion from women’s spaces, or trying to portray them as more violent than other women. that would make me lesbophobic, pure and simple.

It wasn’t so long ago that het women were saying lesbians didn’t experience the same oppressions they did, had male energy, might make advances on them, were more likely to commit crimes, be violent, be sexually aggressive, etc. We didn’t get past that stage by over and over allowing homophobic rhetoric to be tediously discussed, but by shutting it down for the nonsense that it was. Because there isn’t a group of people alive that is devoid of criminal activity, and citing individual crimes in the context of a civil rights discussion is simply oppressive.

It’s transphobic to highlight individual misdemeanours of trans people as some sort of statement about the group. Of course it is. By all means call out problematic behaviour, but never on the basis that somebody is trans. That’s transphobia.

“Trans people are ok, but trans activists are going too far”

Every civil rights movement in history has been painted as evil. This is nothing new. I wince when I hear feminists coming out with the exact same nonsense we hear about feminism – “too aggressive, political correctness gone mad, pendulum swung too far, I’m being oppressed by not being able to say what I want to say.”

At a time when the internet is full of far right sock puppet accounts and 4chan-produced memes trying to stir up fights on the left, I don’t doubt that bad things are said sometimes by some people who are trans or purporting to be, and I don’t doubt that in every civil rights movement there will be the cool heads and the less cool ones.

But nine times out of ten the poor victim of these “terrible trans activists” has actually simply been told that they are transphobic, and doesn’t believe this is the case.

You are not being oppressed by being called transphobic. If you’re told you’re transphobic just say “I didn’t intend to be, but I will reflect on that”. Nothing bad is going to happen to you. You don’t need to defend yourself, and if you do, of course people will keep coming at you, that’s the nature of the internet. But people being called transphobes aren’t an oppressed minority, and aren’t going to have their civil rights taken away. Unless you think being humoured in bigotry is a civil right.

If trans activist is a dirty word I am happy to take my place alongside other dirty words like feminist, because it means we’re changing things and conservatives don’t want us to. We won’t stop until we’re equal.

I am personally non-violent, but the question of whether violence helps gain civil rights, the Stonewall bricks, the Suffragette bombs, will always be a lively one and I do think in any civil rights battle violence is going to happen at some stage, whether justifiable or not, because people don’t like to be oppressed, and oppression is structural violence that in this case materially affects the wellbeing and life expectancy of trans people.

In other words, trans people are dying as a direct result of transphobia. Trans exclusionary feminists, for instance, managed to argue for an exception to the Equality Act that specifically allows trans women to be excluded from the DV and sexual violence services they proportionately need more than cis women. Although most services such as women’s refuges that I train are actually trans including because they understand the need, it deters trans women from approaching services, and this puts them at increased risk.

Often privileged people tell minorities they are “not helping their cause” because it stops the privileged person having to look at their own complicity in oppression. Those who are not actively campaigning for trans civil rights are the ones not helping our cause, don’t blame trans people. We will be safe when people stop being afraid to stand with us or looking for flimsy excuses like one bad apple to distance themselves.

“I support you and want you to have rights, just not the right to be women”

The only civil rights trans people want are to be recognised as who we say we are, and accepted without stigma or prejudice. Saying trans women are men is unacceptable. Saying “why don’t you all just have your own bathrooms and be registered third gender” is SEGREGATION. This is unacceptable.

If you do not accept the enormous body of evidence supporting trans existence, and accept that we are allowed our place in society, you are transphobic. It’s that simple. If you want us to be segregated out of your spaces, you are transphobic. If you want to stop trans women being fully recognised as women, trans men being fully recognised as men, and non-binary people being allowed to choose which side of the current legal gender binary they fit or opting out of the legal binary, you are transphobic.

“I accept trans women are women, but I also believe men are saying they are trans women for dubious reasons”

Let’s be clear that this isn’t really much different from “trans women are men”, it’s just switching over to “some/most trans women are men”. I have heard all sorts of nonsense on this one. Autogynephilia, an entirely debunked theory, is one of the many ways trans women are sexualised and portrayed as deviant men. The word rape and trans women gets used in the same sentence so often that it naturally contributes to the climate where trans women are portrayed over and over as a danger rather than in danger. The alarmingly high incidence of sexual assault of trans women is evidence of the result of this narrative – trans women receive all the objectification of cis women with none of the protection.

Every day, trans women fail the test of being “woman enough” for cis people, and are expected to be held to cis people’s judgement. Are not allowed to decide for themselves who they are. Of course, this happens to all trans people, but for trans women there is the addition of misogyny, where being demeaned, objectified and considered “lesser” by virtue of their femininity is part of their oppression.

Misunderstandings of what the GRA reforms mean add to this panic. I say misunderstandings, I mean lies – in the media, online, everywhere, the anti trans lobby are trying to block these reforms, but they are really going after the Equality Act 2010 protections that we currently have. They want to reverse our civil rights.

It is the Equality Act that allows us to self-identify in everyday life – use toilets, changing rooms and services as we need, without a Gender Recognition Certificate. Trans women and men have actually been self-identifying and living their lives for many years, but the EA gave them some protection and rights in this. Not to wave their willy around in a changing room in front of kids as some transphobes suggest, that’s still indecent exposure and it will continue to be illegal, but to use facilities just like other people. We don’t have to produce a birth certificate at the door, and we have a right not to be harassed.

“But women only spaces are at risk”

Women’s refuges, prisons and other spaces come up a lot. My local Women’s Centre has allowed self-identifying trans women to use it since 1998. Transphobes were so outraged about this, in one incident a transphobic woman spat on one of the cis women who pushed for the change. The change happened, of course, because of cis women deciding they wanted to include trans women. They understood trans women are vulnerable and should not be left outside.

In my extensive experience of women only spaces such as domestic violence services and lesbian or women only events, trans exclusionary types are invariably in the minority. They are often bullies, however, who want to control the spaces.

How many problems have their been with the Women’s Centre’s policy in its 20 years of including self-IDing trans women? Exactly none. Not once has someone represented themself as a trans woman to gain access to the centre.

When I do training at the centre, it turns out the real problem is convincing trans women that they are safe there – it is still very under-used by trans women. This was also my experience working for trans including Women’s Aid organisations – despite 80% of trans people experiencing DV, they don’t feel safe to approach services, and of course this puts them at greater risk.

We didn’t need to fear that a man would slip under the radar and access a refuge, because we did thorough risk assessments before allowing access, just as prisons do. And in both cases, some cis women would be excluded for being too violent or unsafe to include.

If you drill into the “some trans women aren’t real, some are” rhetoric, you find that the proponents of this believe all trans women are men, but will tokenise compliant trans women who are happy to say “we are mentally ill, we are men really, we are only valid if we have surgery, and we don’t need any civil rights”. Studies clearly prove trans people are not mentally ill, but are just part of life’s natural diversity, and that the best way of confirming what somebody’s gender is is simply to ask them.

Why haven’t men taken advantage of the EA to invade women’s spaces like everyone feared? Why haven’t they taken advantage of the Irish legislation that now allows people to legally self-declare their gender? It’s simple. Men don’t need to go through any such nonsense in order to attack women, nor would these legislations in any way help them to do so. Making a statutory declaration, as they have in Ireland and propose to have in England, is a legal commitment, and doing it falsely would be fraud.

“We should have the right to self-organise how we please”

Actually, I agree with this. Transphobes should absolutely be allowed to set up their trans woman-excluding spaces if they want to. But in my experience, that’s not enough for them. Back in the 70s, when these ideas first came up, they dominated women only spaces, but increasingly cis women have fought to include trans women, and little by little “women’s space” has come to be trans inclusive. As this shift has happened, the transphobes have lost control of these spaces and the women within them, and that’s the real issue here.

When they protest younger assigned female people transitioning, it becomes quite clear how proprietorial they are over other people’s bodies and identities. Personal and bodily autonomy go out the window – people must live the way the transphobes dictate. It is all, of course, about power and control, and sowing fear is one of the best ways in which to control other people.

As someone who lived for many years as a lesbian, because it was a socially easier, less stigmatised identity, I abhor the way some lesbians try to police transness out of the community. It will always be there, because gender and sexuality are interlinked, although separate.

Many lesbians experience a spectrum of gender dysphoria issues, and many lesbians surreptitiously have these issues medically treated with hormones or surgery. But coming out as trans into the community is impossible, because a hard line is drawn where none really exists. There are lesbians with no gender issues, there are lesbians with some gender issues, and I know a few lesbians are open to me if not elsewhere that they would come out as trans men if it felt safer to do so.

Who would have thought, gender is on a continuum, just like sexuality.

When my partner came out as trans, I received an email that same day saying “now you are straight, you should remove yourself from this lesbian email group”. When I came out as non-binary, but still lesbian-identified, I received another email: “As a man, it’s disrespectful for you to comment in this group” these people were, of course, known transphobes, but their views were overly tolerated in my old social circles.

I didn’t leave the lesbian community and didn’t want to – it left me. It could not contain the huge diversity of people who resonate at some point with the word “lesbian”. The rules of belonging were too rigid, and too binary.

I realise this may not be true for everyone, but in the spaces I was in there is no way to get away from the fact that the lesbian community was institutionally transphobic and also biphobic.

“We need sex-based, not gender-based protections”

Anyone who knows me, knows I fundamentally disagree that we should legally assign gender at birth. It is bad for women, intersex people, and trans people. It is segregation, it enforces a binary where none exists, and it massively exaggerates the implication of being born with certain organs.

Gay people, black people, disabled people have protection in law from discrimination and can self-organise without legal registration. In fact, we would be horrified if we legally registered people for being gay.

I do not have a problem with legal protection for people based on reproductive capacity. We rightly should protect pregnancy, for instance, as a factor that can lead to discrimination. But this is not a woman’s issue solely, because men and NB people can give birth, and many cis women cannot.

A transphobe once said to me that rape of trans women is not as serious because they cannot get pregnant. Appalling when you realise rape of children or post-menopausal or infertile women is by implication also less serious. Or an infertile rapist is committing a lesser crime. Of course we cannot make such simplistic and nonsensical statements. Rape is traumatic for all those who experience it and all those who experience it, whatever their gender, have experienced someone having power and control over their body, the ultimate oppression.

Pregnancy, abortion, period tax, smear tests, are all important issues, we need to talk about them, but we also need to remember they are issues for some men and NB people, and not issues for some cis women. The myth is trans women are saying we can’t talk about these things, the truth is that assigned female people like me are asking we talk about them more inclusively and with more awareness. And obviously never bring them up deliberately to exclude trans women.

I do not need to be legally registered and socially labelled because of my uterus, but there are rights and medical needs I do have because of my body, or did have when I was younger. I also don’t need a shop assistant to call me by a particular salutation because of my uterus, in fact I am puzzled that any woman is fighting for this bizarre social convention to be preserved.

I do want there to be access to gynaecological healthcare, contraception, abortion, smear tests, pregnancy leave and rights, an end to period tax and ideally have tampons on the NHS. I want childcare to be valued and equalised. None of these are related to having to be legally registered as female or needing to have she/her/ma’am/Ms applied to me.

If I had been born without a functioning uterus but still assigned female, the idea that that would that have made me “less of a woman”, that rape would have been less serious, that I could have been decentred from feminist conversations as childless lesbians once were, is abhorrent to me.

The way Mumsnet users have been radicalised in the anti-trans crusade I can see we are slipping backwards to a time when women are considered walking wombs or baby-makers and very little else. Ironically, they call the cis women opposing this “Handmaids”. It is well known in trans circles that the influence of this radicalisation ultimately comes from the misogynist and evangelical right wing, not from the left but intended to divide it.

“Lesbian, not queer”

None of this is good for a healthy, diverse lesbian community. But older lesbians, if you want to know why more and more younger people are identifying as “queer” it’s to distance themselves from this nonsense, and to embrace a diverse community rather than a rigid one, in which trans people are included not universally shut out.

I personally don’t think we should lose the identity lesbian, but rather embrace the fact that it is ever evolving. At different times in its history it has been more about sexuality, or more about gender. Radical feminist Monique Wittig, for instance, saw all lesbians as “third gender”, but most modern definitions solely cite exclusive attraction to women. But “lesbian” is still a broad church. For some it’s about attraction to “female masculinity”, others to “femmes” and “femininity”. Believe it or not, there are even some self-identified cis lesbians who sleep with gay men, because sexuality is complex and diverse.

Of course, people are complicated and identity is complicated. When I organise, I focus on creating anti-oppressive space rather than space that excludes certain people. I look at what is going to be centred, rather than trying to create a pure monoculture. I organise across difference rather than encouraging people to focus on sameness.

Women centred/ lesbian centred space rather than women only space is one possible future for the increasingly complicated lesbian terrain. I would give anything to organise with and socialise with lesbians again, but things do need to change and I have no desire to set foot in spaces labelled women only, especially if those spaces exclude trans women or include me only by erasing my identity.

“What can we do, though?”

I’d like lesbians reading this to ask themselves some reflective questions. Have you spent more time in your life listening to transphobes that trans people? Have you spent more social time in spaces where trans people wouldn’t feel comfortable than in spaces where transphobes wouldn’t feel comfortable? Have you read/consumed the words of transphobes or “gender critics” more than the words of trans feminists like Julia Serano or CN Lester? Count the even slightly transphobic people in your life. Now count the trans people. How does that tally?

How might these things perpetuate biases you aren’t even aware of?

Now, please go and fill out the GRA consultation affirmatively, and share information about it, such as that from Stonewall and TransActual.

Get behind trans friendly cis lesbians like Ruth Hunt and Grace Petrie and share their words. Follow my Facebook page Trans Inclusive Feminism and subscribe to this blog. Learn ways to stop transphobic discussions running amok in spaces you hold or frequent.

Sometimes that’s about being firm and saying “trans women are women, trans men are men, non-binary people are legitimate, and it’s oppressive to say otherwise”, rather than engaging in long-winded debates you may not be equipped for and that just give awful views even more of a hearing.

Please help trans people get civil rights, and ask your friends to do the same. Without you, we are looking at our rights going into reverse, and trust me, we are the canaries but this alt-right fuelled division will be after you next. All of us need to choose this moment to cease to be silent in the face of any hatred against marginalised people.

Can I be non-binary and transsexual?

I talked in a recent blog post about ditching the term “binary trans person”. I want to talk about another binary in this blog, the TS/TG (transsexual/transgender) binary. This is as a result of an admin of a trans group telling me I shouldn’t comment on a thread because it was for “transsexuals only” and “being TS means you identify with the traditional binary”, that non-binary  people “absolutely cannot be transsexual”.

Obviously, I felt hurt and excluded by these remarks, and wanted to explore them. The subsequent conversation left me feeling unwelcome in the group as a non-binary person, and I left. It’s sad, but there are still many trans spaces that feel unwelcoming to non-binary people.

So here we have yet another binary, but also one created so that non-binary (NB) people can be excluded. We can be trans or transgender, but never transsexual, which smacks of the age-old issue of who gets to be “trans enough” and what it means not to be.

One underlying issue that creates this supposed divide is specific to trans women. A frequent complaint I hear from trans women is about happily-living-as-male crossdressers (CDs) throwing their weight around, as people with a bit of male privilege often do, without understanding the oppression and violence trans women suffer. Because many who might once have been called “crossdressers” have now adopted the term non-binary, this has perhaps created a narrow impression of what non-binary means. Some assume non-binary is synonymous with having less gender dysphoria, desiring less medical intervention, or not needing to socially transition. But none of these things is true.

I will fight forever for a diverse community to be held and protected under one umbrella. But we are not all the same. Non-binary covers a variety of people who don’t fit the prescribed and artificial binary that society currently inflicts on us. It does not mean we don’t transition, or don’t experience gender dysphoria, or have less gender dysphoria, or have less legitimately gendered or sexed bodies after transition.

So can transitioning non-binary people be transsexual? Some folks say that NB people cannot be transsexual because the historically older term was coined at a time when NB was not recognised and we had no civil rights. We are excluded because, well, we always have been.

But what’s the difference between a transitioning trans man or woman and a transitioning NB person? I have what some people call gender dysphoria, both physical and social. I changed my name, live in my identity, underwent medical treatment to change my physical sexual characteristics. Many NB peeps have lower surgery, and I’m not ruling it out. But some insist NB folk can never be transsexual. Our dysphoria is not like trans men or women’s dysphoria. Their gender identity carries some meaning and legitimacy that mine does not. Legally and socially that’s currently true, of course, but it still hurts when the trans community perpetuates this separation, particularly because they are people who have themselves faced a cis society that delegitimises their identities.

But what is dysphoria?

Not everyone likes the term gender dysphoria, because it’s associated with medical diagnosis. The opposite of euphoria, it means the clinically significant distress some trans people feel as a result of being trans. Some argue that in a perfect world, being trans should not cause distress, and a landmark Lancet study agrees that being trans is not, in and of itself, a cause of mental illness, but rather the treatment of trans people in society is.

Looking back at the conversation that sparked this blog, the implication was that having “lower dysphoria”, the desire to change your genitals, is what makes a person TS. But how do we know, when people desire to change their genitals, that it always means the same thing or feels the same way? Or if they don’t, might there also be multiple reasons for this?

Let’s look at how trans guys and AFAB non-binary people feel about their bodies. For a start, dysphoria is not just one thing but many strands of experience. You may feel that having a penis is part of being a man or male, and you will be incomplete/not a man without one. That it is impossible to be a man without a penis. This is an aspect of social dysphoria – a feeling created by the way society sees men and thinks about trans men. If you are surrounded by people who accept trans men fully, whether or not they have a penis, this type of dysphoria is less likely to cause you to need surgery. You may be disabled and fear how you will be treated during personal care, or fear personal care when you are older, if your genitals do not match the way you look. The experience of many trans men with their carers bears this fear out. Again, this would be resolved by feeling confident that carers will always treat you as a man no matter what is in your pants. This, too, is social dysphoria. You may fear being rejected by lovers or partners based on what your genitals look like. Again, that’s social dysphoria, and this may be lessened if you are in validating relationship.

Physical dysphoria is something different. Sometimes likened to “phantom limb syndrome” it’s the feeling that something should be there that isn’t. Or shouldn’t be there but is. This can happen with all kinds of body parts, a wiring glitch where the brain does not accurately map onto the body. So, there are people who, for instance, feel like certain body parts do not belong to them. Brains and bodies are weird and the way people experience their embodiment is diverse. So for instance, there are AFAB peeple who feel agender or woman-identified but have strong physical dysphoria, desiring male-typical anatomy.

For some, physical dysphoria is unendurable and the need for surgery is intense. For others, it can be resolved through the use of prosthetics and surgery is unnecessary. For people like myself who are dissociative or out of touch with their bodies, it may be easy to ignore or we may even be unaware of physical dysphoria, as I describe here.

There is also a third kind of dysphoria some people call internal dysphoria – neither physical nor social, it is about how the person feels inside of themself, outside of a physical or social context. Again, this varies hugely from person to person.

Let’s not forget also that for AFAB trans people reproductive organs are more than just external genitals. Some people, like myself, feel far more physically dysphoric about our internal reproductive systems (owning a womb, having periods, hormone cycles, potential of pregnancy) than we feel about the size of our erections.

Because with or without intervention, AFAB people get erections! We have our very own erectile tissue. And when we take T, it generally grows (a bit, don’t get *too* excited). And for many of us, this growth is sufficient for our needs. Or we might be much more focused on chest reconstruction. Or just hysterectomy. And if we do decide we need more length, or want to stand to pee, there are a range of options from the very simple clitoral release, the more difficult metoidioplasty to the very complex surgery of phalloplasty. And of course, many disabled people and people without access to funded healthcare find lower surgery unavailable to them, however dysphoric they feel.

Am I defined by my gender or my sex?

I’ve written about how gender and sex are far more interconnected entities than we would like to believe. The reason transgender as a term has gained traction over transsexual is, I think, an acknowledgement of how much trans lives are affected by social gender (including birth assignment) rather than simply the shape of our genitals/size of our gametes. It’s the social consequence of our body shapes that affects us more than our bodies themselves. We are trapped in people’s perceptions of our bodies, as the saying goes.

The other reason the term transgender has gained traction is because more trans people now consider their gender to be something pre-existing a desire to transition – transition does not create us, it helps us be more comfortable. So I, for instance, feel I was trans as far back as I can remember – that my experience of gender, and the way I was treated, is not the same as the experiences of women who are my contemporaries. In other words, transition doesn’t make me trans, I just am.

But the term transsexual persists, usually meaning a trans person who alters their sexual characteristics medically. Let’s take it down to brass tacks – sexually, what am I now, with a male hormonal profile and secondary sexual characteristics, but XX chromosomes? If I can’t be described as transsexual, then how can that term carry any meaning at all?

I have so many questions about how this TG/TS distinction could possibly work in practice, and even more about why it is needed. Of course the reality is, it’s just some people preferring one term and some the other, and the terms thoroughly overlap each other.

Divide and conquer?

We know TERFs want the TS/TG distinction because they are trying to convince trans women that a special exception will be made for them if they have had all the available treatment, that they will be allowed civil rights and be partially treated as women as long as they hold the line against the rest of us gaining any rights. A classic divide and conquer tactic which alas seems to work all too well, playing into a widespread fear that non-binary rights are just going too far. But trans women already have civil rights, and these were never TERF’s to bestow. Whether or not they have surgery, they can have their gender recognised. The Equality Act 2010 defines “transsexual” as “proposing to undergo, is undergoing or has undergone a process (or part of a process) for the purpose of reassigning the person’s sex by changing physiological or other attributes of sex.” Transitioning non-binary people are understood to be covered by this wording.

So in law, I am transsexual. In my gender doctor’s notes, I am transsexual. It’s not my favourite word, and I tend to prefer my trans umbrella to be wider rather than narrower, but if TS is to endure as a term, can we at least make it mean something that isn’t NB erasing? Because saying my transition is so fundamentally different from a trans man or woman’s transition that it needs a separate word is unbelievably othering.

What is the underlying fantasy in all this? That there are clear lines dividing transsexual from transgender, non-binary from trans men and women, and that we can pin everyone down clearly, with no bodies straying over the lines? But many “crossdressers” are “true transsexuals” waiting for the right moment to take the plunge. Many NB people have more medical intervention than people who identify as trans men or women.

Ultimately (trust me on this) when you drill down into people’s experiences, the words they claim to describe themselves are often used in unique and idiosyncratic ways, and we are all still floundering around for the right universal language. So there are people who identify as non-binary transsexuals, some others who see the word transsexual as old hat, and some who think it signifies a binary, because it was coined by people who hadn’t imagined anything more than a binary.

Who gets to decide? That’s always an interesting question. Who are the gatekeepers of any community, the holders of the keys, who get to set the terms? Personally, I believe “transsexual” will remain with us as a term. Some people like it, some loathe it, but as long as it’s alive, and used by some people to self-identify, it’s valid, and we shouldn’t be denigrating its use. Is using it a valid way of creating spaces and discussions that explicitly exclude non-binary people? No, that would be really oppressive.

Do non-binary and other trans people need to reflect whether they have relative male privilege, or whether they are comfortable enough in their assigned sex they will never need to socially or medically transition, and so are exempt from particular aspects of trans experience? Sure. I know I’ve had moments of anger when someone happily living and working as a man has taken a place on a podium speaking as a trans woman.

But we need to remember if we were to exclude those with assumed “male privilege” we might also exclude the most vulnerable of trans women and NB people. I know many trans people who are unable to access trans medical treatment because of other, pre-existing physical or mental health conditions. If you’re homeless, access to healthcare, to clothes, to shaving equipment and all the other means to present in your gender may be inaccessible, not to mention how unsafe it can be to present as trans or gender non-conforming while homeless. Other trans people are awaiting the result of asylum applications before embarking on transition because they would not be safe in their country of origin. Some are not safe to transition for economic reasons (they would lose their income, home, or other security), others are waiting for elderly parents to die, for whom they are sole carers, or for children to grow up. Or perhaps they are children themselves, with unsupportive parents. Still others are in abusive family situations where it would not be safe to come out. Some of us had to work through complex mental health issues before coming to terms with our gender.

Non-binary people have the additional hurdles of trying to live within genders not legally or socially recognised, which restricts our choices and means there is no clear transition pathway for us. Many non-binary people have publicly transitioned and are living in their gender as much as they are able yet their identity is perpetually erased and defaulted back to their birth assignment, and this is certainly not a privilege. So “living as” is not the same as “identifies as” is not the same as “perceived to be”.

Not forgetting that NHS waits are 2 years now, and everyone deals with that wait differently.

There is a variety of privilege, and a range of experience within this community. But is there a TS/TG binary? A TS/CD binary? Is there a clear dividing line between non-binary and trans man or woman? The hell there is. Life is just not that simple. We all exist on a continuum. We are who we are, all our self-identities are valid, but gross generalisations need not apply.

Surgical liberation

CN: discusses top surgery and associated body parts in some detail (with post-surgery photo), also trigger warning for references of child sexual abuse, trigger warning for anyone with emetophobia

Today was the big reveal, my post-op appointment 10 days after chest reconstruction surgery with Mr Kneeshaw at Castle Hill Hospital, near Hull. This has been such an emotional ride, and I feel the need to share some of the highs and lows. When I made the choice to have surgery, it felt more like a necessary evil than something I longed for, so I was completely unprepared for the joy I would feel when it finally happened.

I was never one of those people that hated their breasts. I was happy with one aspect of them for many years – being an inconsequential AA cup size meant nobody had ever ogled them, catcalled me because of them or even really noticed them. Then I got fat, and they grew (a little), and for a while I enjoyed the fleeting sensation of being womanly.

I was always at odds with my gender, wanting to be a woman or at least feeling I ought to work at being a woman, and finding it impossible to achieve in a way that felt authentic. This despite enormous effort on my part to feminise my voice, my clothes, my behaviour, my walk. So for a while, having (still fairly inconsequential) boobs felt like an accomplishment, but soon enough, they began to feel like an anachronism, a lie.

But even after starting to take testosterone, it took me a long while to consider having my chest surgically reconstructed. At first, I bound them with commercial chest binders, but these caused me pain, (curse my fibromyalgia), and were difficult for me to get into and out of. I could at this point wax lyrical about how little we talk about the health risks of chest binding. Eventually I passed my binders on (please consider sending your cast-offs to Morf) and I made my own binder, a much looser garment created from an old bra, with a flat panel sewn in at the front in place of the cups.

After the surgery, I had a ritual burning ceremony for this by now exceedingly manky piece of kit. It made me wonder about the (somewhat apocryphal) bra burners of the 1960s, and whether any of them were actually suffering from dysphoria.

Would I have felt more comfortable with my breasts if they had not been constantly associated with social gender labels like “ladies”, “she” and “ma’am”? Would I have felt my gender dysphoria more keenly had I not suffered from such extreme dissociation for much of my life that it’s hard for me to connect to my body at all? It’s impossible to say, because what we go through makes us who we are. But I had a lot to untangle to get here.

How abuse stopped me hearing my dysphoria

I have spent a lot of time lately diligently reflecting on the journey my breasts and I have taken together.

At times, I was grateful to my breasts, because when they grew, the abuse I suffered throughout my childhood stopped. I don’t want to get into the head of my abuser, but he left my two sisters alone, and treated me in many ways like a boy, so I have little sense that the abuse I suffered was specific to my birth anatomy rather than my gender presentation.

It’s hard to mention abuse in conjunction with being trans, but here’s the reality – AFAB or AMAB regardless, around 50% of us are sexually abused as children, a figure that’s much higher than for cis women. A potential reason for this is because as non-conforming children we are less valued, looked after, believed, and socially supported. Easier to isolate and prey upon.

Because of the negative way society thinks about trans people, it’s easy to internalise “did abuse make me trans?” and ignore the reality, that abuse can interfere with the clarity with which we understand our trans selves.

If anything, abuse blocked the intensity of feeling I had towards my body, and pushed me towards thinking of myself as a woman, which was far from a natural inclination. I also thought of myself as a woman because society equates sexual abuse with femaleness and erases the high levels of abuse in minority populations such as trans, queer, racially oppressed and disabled.

When I went through recovery, there were no books for sexual abuse survivors who weren’t women. It was as if being a woman was the only kind of oppression in existence. This forced me to think about my gender in a particular way that was ultimately unhelpful. I was urged to learn to “love my body” by an old-fashioned and puritanical feminist rhetoric that disallowed the possibility of making your body more comfortable to live in. I worked through the abuse, but in the process got tangled into some very simplistic messages about gender, that delayed me fully acknowledging my transness.

I realise now, I freed my body from the abuse I experienced as a child, but handed it over to the control of a particularly toxic kind of feminism (other, wonderful, intersectional feminisms are available). Suddenly my body was owned by, and politicised by, a clumsy kind of second wave feminism. And amidst all the other liberations, surgery has also cut me free of that trap.

Getting my body back

In the last year, as testosterone slowly made me happier with some parts of myself, I allowed myself to connect to my breasts and was shocked to discover the strength of feeling I had about them. I had thought the intense body dysphoria of other trans guys was altogether alien to me. Instead, I discovered it had been carefully and thoroughly suppressed. And as I let go, it was like discovering some hidden programme running in the background that’s hogging all your processing power – dysphoria is a truly disabling mental state, and when you unearth it, the relief and overwhelm is indescribable.

As surgery neared, I began to feel my fear of the anaesthetic’s impact on my fibromyalgia (and thanks to fibro pals especially womandrogyne, I took this warning card with me for the anaesthetist, which seems to have helped a whole lot). But there was another, growing feeling – excitement. Unambiguous, uncomplicated pleasure at the thought that I own my body and can shape it to be more comfortable for me to live in. My guilt, perpetuated by the mini-TERF that lives in my head, began to slip away. Perhaps, after all, a procedure that would allow me to connect to my body more and love and take care of myself and be happy is not so drastic. Not a mutilation, but an alteration, a sending to the menders of something that simply didn’t fit right no matter how hard I wriggled around in it.

The double incision procedure that I had is relatively simple. Two curved incisions, removal of tissue, nipple re-sizing and re-placing. You’re usually left with scars and loss of nipple sensation with this procedure. It’s an overnight stay. Under Dr Kneeshaw, you come home from the hospital with two drains concealed in fabric bags that the hospital lends you. I was given two very flowery bags, and a kind nurse offered to swap them for something more “manly”. Of course, I declined, but with gratitude for her sensitivity. For bigger folks the procedure’s technically trickier, sometimes revisions are needed.

I see a lot of overjoyed faces beaming through anaesthetic haze when my friends go through this. I wasn’t expecting to be one of them. But there I was, post-anaesthetic, lying in bed with a huge grin on my face. Even the projectile vomiting a couple of hours later didn’t completely wipe the smile away.

Pure joy. I thought it was perhaps some drug-induced high, but it hasn’t left me. A weight off my chest, indeed.

Transition hasn’t been easy for me. However much my story overlaps with that of trans men, it doesn’t quite compare and that has left me out on a non-binary limb. I don’t get the same civil rights as my partner. I’ve experienced job discrimination, and astonishingly bad behaviour from some members of the lesbian and gay communities. Testosterone has taken its sweet time to make changes and I’ve felt in limbo. I fell into a pretty bad pit of depression and got well and truly stuck there. And I was afraid that surgery and too much time to myself during recovery would only make things worse.

I simply had not anticipated the possibility of being happy about my new chest. But here it is, in all its rawness, freshly revealed; and it does make me feel incredibly happy – so happy that I’m sharing a picture of a bit of my body, not something I am used to doing.

It is curious the way I can connect to my body now in a way I never could, and this gives me hope for being able to care for myself better in the future, and potentially make health gains because of this. I feel not the slightest regret. Surgery was the necessary price of my wellbeing, and I’m confident that what I give back to the world can be greater now I no longer struggle under the burden of dysphoria.

I am unbelievably grateful to the NHS. It took time for me to realise I could not do without this op, that it was as necessary as any other procedure available in our increasingly beleaguered healthcare system. The nurses and doctors at Castle Hill are amazing. Mr Kneeshaw* is one of the kindest and most down to earth surgeons I’ve ever met; his results are good, and he’s not huffy about doing revisions if needed.

This procedure is life-changing and potentially life-saving, and I am simply overjoyed and full of gratitude.

PS – after the post-op, Robin and I treated ourselves to vegan rocky road brownies from Blondes in Cottingham – life really couldn’t get any better than this!*

*nobody is paying me for these endorsements

Just an ordinary day

A snapshot of one day in the life of a transitioning non-binary person

CN: TERFs, mental health, dysphoria

About me: I am taking masculinising hormones, but am still generally read as female. I identify male-ish, femme-ish, queer, bisexual and (for want of a better word) non-binary (all these words are equivocal). I actually just prefer “transgender person” in some ways rather than trying to define things that are all so loaded with complex and variable social meanings. I use they/their/them, hate she, tolerate (barely) he, cope with Mr and for some unaccountable reason don’t like Mx. Will eventually try to destroy all titles. Or become a Dr. One or the other.

7 am: Facebook status update:

I’ve been on and off ESA this last year, mainly stress related. Going back to work is a big deal, not least because I had some difficult trans-related discrimination to deal with last time I worked (I’m self employed too but that’s unreliable, and the coffers are getting low).

7.25 am: I’m still in bed. I’ve been arguing with TERFs on Twitter over the NSPCC’s aborted “debate”. Since I wrote a take down of one of Sarah Ditum’s articles and it went somewhat viral, she and her friends have been oh so attentive. I ask myself, as always, what good I am doing listening to this poison, what point there is in repeating facts they already know but don’t care about. If this was really about child welfare, they would be jumping up and down on behalf of intersex kids. They’re not. They just want to erode trans civil rights, legitimacy, recognition. They want to end us. It’s oppressive and abusive, and I know it is, and I have trauma reactions still lingering from some of my worst encounters with local TERFs.

The plus side is I discovered a great community via challenging their twisted ideology. Doing my homework built bonds and understanding with this huge, diverse, messy trans community. Yes folks, you heard it here first, TERFs turned me transgender! Or rather, they helped me to admit it and understand it better.

Unfortunately I now have a miniTERF living permanently inside my head. Logically I know it lies and manipulates, but that nasty, perpetual, gaslighting question plays incessantly “how do you really know who you are?”

The feelings I have about gender are political, feminist, radical and yet . . . they are also deeply personal. I have an experience – of soaking up male socialisation instinctively from an early age (the science geek bit of my brain whirrs . . . could gender identity come from the hypothalamus?? Is “gender instinct” a better term than “gender identity”?). I just wanna know why I am the way I am, to prove that I’m not crazy, that this really is a thing.

“You’re making it all up” says miniTERF, echoing the words of abusers everywhere. “You’re just unhinged”. Well who wouldn’t be unhinged with this constant drip of doubt challenging your own lived reality? I just can’t be a woman, it doesn’t work. I tried, god knows I tried. I tried every way to get comfortable in that lie but it kept falling off me like an unstitched suit.

These are the sort of thoughts I generally have before breakfast.

7.30 am: I get up, wash, shave off my still patchy stubble, put on my testosterone gel. Like I do every morning. Put on a somewhat flattening bra because I can no longer wear a binder. Too many health problems. Try to tell myself the contours don’t matter, but they do to me. I didn’t want to want them gone. Didn’t want to (miniTERF alert) “mutilate” my body. But it feels more like incising tumors. I can’t seem to be in my body with those there. I wish I could. Years of therapy, mostly from a radical lesbian feminist, hasn’t fixed me on being a woman. Okay, maybe, beloved as she was (and still is) to me, the radical lesbian feminist therapist didn’t help my trans self-esteem.

I try not to argue with TERFs any more because it nearly destroyed me, brought me close to suicide in the past. Logically I can see how they operate, how they twist everything, how they seem to live in a bubble where pronouns and toilet doors and words and birth certificates are straight from nature and untouched by human hands, while my fundamental and lifelong experience of myself is nothing, is just made up, simply cannot be.

Ugh. I eat breakfast, leave the house tea in hand. I manage to make the train. Donald Trump’s rapey behaviour all over the front page of the Metro. Ugh again.

9.20 am: Need a toilet and can only see Ladies and Gents at the station. Haven’t used the ladies for a few years now. I deal with using the gents, but always feel fear. Nobody gives me trouble. I still get ridiculous anxiety and sometimes it will wreck a trip out. I’ll be avoiding a pub toilet because of drunks, wondering how long I’m going to last, or I’ll realise people have wrongly assumed my gender as female and that using the gents will out me. My anxiety gets the better of me and I’m not much fun to be around.

Seeing a gender neutral toilet or accessible toilet that isn’t locked makes me ridiculously happy when it happens.

9.45 am: Arrive at HR reception with DBS check, the one with my prior name erased like a dirty secret. I shouldn’t have to feel shame because one day I decided to take back the name I chose for myself as a kid, the one nobody would use. Because names are also biological facts, sewn into our skin, apparently.

The receptionist rings the office and I tense, waiting for her to say “this lady has brought her form” or some other gendering words.

It doesn’t happen. She didn’t gender me! This is amazing. How often in our even casual interactions are we not gendered? I start to breathe again. I want to hug her.

10.00 am: Meet my line manager for the third time. He misgenders me “she, sorry, he” and I say as breezily as I can “I prefer they”. I already told him this. It takes a lot of practice and grit to sound easy breezy every one of the thousand times you get misgendered when each time it’s threatening to snap your very last nerve. He tells me it’s going to be hard for him. I get it. “They” is hard for the brain to get used to. I really understand, because I mess up myself with my “they” friends.

Only . . . wouldn’t it be nice if one time a cis person didn’t say “this is hard for me” and instead said “this must be hard for you”.

It sucks. (“You’re not real, you’re not real, transgender doesn’t exist and non-binary doesn’t exist even more!!!” miniTERF shouts gleefully).

12.45 pm: I get my staff pass. I’m waiting for her to go “Oh, there’s been a mistake, this says mister”. Holding my breath again. Don’t smile for the photo, men don’t smile.

She doesn’t correct it! My pass says Mr and nobody blinked!!! Today is a good day.

“Thank you so much.” I say in that lilting, raised, people-pleasing voice it took me years to learn in my efforts to properly pass as a woman. Dysphoria crashes down on me – I know my voice will give me away forever now.

The usual raft of options run through my head. It’s not too late to stop this, I do a pretty good job of passing as a woman, even if it took decades of practice. Surely it would be easier to pretend to be the person everyone wants me to be?

Easier, yes, and yet also impossible. You can’t unlearn the truth about yourself, unawaken. I can’t explain it, but there it is. Even if I don’t know exactly what I am, I can’t be a woman anymore, not even a boyish woman who in no way conforms to what a woman should be. I did that most of my life, and it never resolved that pervasive truth that no matter what I wear or how I act I still was being forced to be socially labelled and segregated according to what’s in my underpants.

I just can’t manage the drip drip drip of words that all mean the same thing; “you have a vagina and socially that means more than anything else! It defines you.”

Fuck you, assigned gender. Just fuck you.

2.30 pm Walking to a meeting across town, I have a difficult phone call about a homeless trans woman I’m (voluntarily) supporting. Everything suddenly feels difficult and busy and overwhelming. I suddenly feel the weight of this entire lost, rejected, hurt community on my shoulders. Why the hell can’t people just listen and help? Just be kind.

I stop to take pictures of a pigeon in the fountain and come back to earth. I don’t remember being this easily overwhelmed, but I guess my bucket is full from that drip drip drip. Minority stress. I lived as a lesbian for years but it wasn’t like this. Trans is worse. Folks treat trans people like shit, treat non-binary people like an insubstantial but very unpleasant fart.

4.30 pm: I’m on the tram and I have no idea where I’m getting off. A nice woman tells me she’ll warn me when my stop is coming up. We share some idle chat and I remember I will miss this, being talked to as if I’m a woman, as if therefore I’m safe to talk to, to make eye contact with. I really don’t want to be a man, I just want people not to gender me at all. I want the impossible, I remind myself.

Everyone will gender you, one way or the other.

6.30 pm: Home. Twitter is on fire. Must stop reading TERF poison.

11.00 pm: Had to deal with a TERF infestation on my Twitter feed. They’re like ants – first one comes, and the next thing you know they’re swarming all over you giving you no time to think. Profiles set up seemingly with the sole purpose of antagonising trans people. Pictures of Buffalo Bill, the serial killing pseudo-trans character from Silence of the Lambs. Self-descriptions that serve no other purpose than to mock or delegitimise trans people. Parody and hate and attack all dressed up as Freeze Peach.

My Achilles heel is I try to treat their manipulative questioning with sincerity, but really all they want from me is that I will be hurt enough by them to snap and say something that will then be used against every one of the millions of trans people on the planet (we are a hive mind, don’t you know). When I start blocking them others go on the attack, how dare I set boundaries and end a conversation they want to have over and over and over?

Maybe about a hundred (it feels like) TERFs now blocked. MiniTERF has fed well, and is pretty powerful and vicious right now.

The theme of tonight’s tweets was “detransition” and the idea that if a handful of us (hundreds amid millions) change direction, then the existence of all of us is a lie.

Here’s the truth. You can’t do anything about being transgender, whatever flavour of trans you are, and there are many. But there are choices – narrow ones, in a world that makes life damn near impossible. There are calculated risks you can take, and by and large they pay off. But not always.

People detransition. I might. I probably won’t, but I might, because the world is not a friendly place to non-binary trans people, and it’s significantly easier socially and professionally to live as a gender non-conforming queer woman. I know from experience.

But whoever I live as I will still be transgender, have always been transgender. And if I regret attempting transition, it will only be like the many other regrets in my life -shags, jobs, relationships that didn’t go as planned. We know statistically the outcomes are good for transitioning, but we can never know if it will work for us until we try it. It’s a leap of faith.

Midnight: Time to sleep. It’s been a long day. TERFy days are always the hardest, they shred your head if you let them. But I was out in the world and only got misgendered once, that’s a win. Generally, the world has been kinder than usual, and I can put the cruelty in its place. Is it worth all this stress and trauma? Still yes.

 

 

Careless talk costs

The hardest thing to do as a therapist is help people learn that although they are not responsible for the horrors that have befallen them, they are ultimately responsible for themselves and their own behaviour. It is particularly hard to help a traumatised, hypervigilent person to see that they have a choice in how they are acting. I know this only too well, having also been on the other side of the therapeutic relationship; I spent a long time in trauma counselling trying to re-learn trusting, relationship-based interactions with people and unlearn fear-focused, control-based patterns of relating.

I’m sure, if I’m honest, that I still have a lot to learn.

The trouble with the internet, is we can self-publish our own words without any kind of moderating process, meaning highly triggered and triggering responses can go out into the ether unchecked. Careless words leave opponents feeling blamed and shamed and unlikely to listen, more likely to spew back yet more triggered and triggering material. Careless words also tap into the trauma and hypervigilance of like-minded people, fueling their sense of entitlement to their own rage, and often sparking the kind of mindless mob that becomes too much of a blunt weapon to make any kind of breakthrough. It ends up not being about who is right or wrong, who is the most oppressed or entitled to their angry feelings; it becomes about people being in too high a state of fear arousal to really listen to anything at all, rendering the entire interaction utterly pointless other than to provide the fuel for further drama.

I tend to think of anger as a good thing to be in touch with, but I also think it is dangerous for any of us to have a sense of entitlement to our anger – anger is just a feeling; it is information, it is not a right. Feeling angry does not legitimise any ensuing behaviour; the strength of our trauma response does not necessarily hold the triggering person responsible for all our feelings. We are responsible for our feelings, and for our triggers. Other people are only responsible for their own behaviour.

I do not go into situations as a blank slate with no previous baggage, my trauma responses are far more deep rooted than anything that is happening in the here and now, so much as I would love to blame TERFs or MRAs for all my bad days (and they would like to blame me for theirs), this would be rather disingenuous. Even without my trauma history, living life as a gender variant child and adult exerts huge psychological pressure in a world that bullies and excludes us. We are social beings, and if we are different, the social structures supporting us are far less reliable, leaving us vulnerable to victimisation, abuse and trauma, and ultimately to poor mental health.

I am not responsible for the way the world treats a queer kid, but I have to be responsible for the person that I am in this world, and that means owning my fear, lack of trust, hypervigilance and fury at any form of oppression, marginalisation or injustice. My well-examined and thought-through anger is a splendid tool in my activism, but only when I am fully self-aware. When I screw my anger up and throw it without any pause or self-reflection, which I do more often than I would like, I add to the burden of aggression, tension, drama and even abuse that exists in this world. I fuel the fear. I know that so much of my activism has gone astray because I just didn’t have a proper hold of myself, and that all those misfires are wasted energy that undermines where I and others are trying to get to.

None of us is completely insignificant, especially those of us with a voice on the internet. Feeling entitled to our rage can be dangerous, and feeling completely powerless even more so, especially if it gives us permission to “let rip” at our opponents, or allies who have got it wrong. Others pile in, and soon we have that old fashioned angry mob with the cyber equivalent of waving pitchforks. Mobs have power, even mobs of relatively powerless individuals. I have seen lesbian mobs, feminist mobs, trans mobs, TERF mobs, and every other kind of mob you can think of. The mob always looks much friendlier when it isn’t after you, but from an outsider perspective all mobs are as ugly as each other.

I am trying to learn to ask questions before I speak out, collectively or unilaterally: When we’re organising for our rights, are we leaving time and space for each of us to reflect on our own behaviour? Do we think about the power we have or the power our actions might manifest? Are we whipping others up with triggering stories that override their ability to reflect? I keep trying to be non-violent in my approach to activism, not just because I’m a dreamy hippy, but because non-violent communication builds bridges and creates change.

Trouble is, when I’m full of fear I knock down as many bridges as I build.