The assassination of Charlie Kirk, a man who once implied that doctors should electroshock and lobotomise trans women as they did in the 1950s, and used what would be his final breath to fearmonger about “trans shooters” (and Black people) before being shot dead himself, feels like a turning point. Namely, the fallout from it has shown plainly that the trans rights movement in the west, at least the liberal programme of legal reform and cultural representation pursued for the past decade, is as dead as Kirk.
In the days since his killing, the US right wing has fallen over itself to blame trans people or, as Alex Jones put it to his almost 5 million followers, “the tranny death cult”. Similar formulations can be found across social media. Trans people are terrorists, a death cult, like the Taliban, need to be socially ostracised and banned from transitioning. And we all know there is only one type of trans person most of these people are imagining when they call for us to be electroshocked, shunned, and – let’s be real – beaten and killed. And that’s trans women.
It's over. There and here in the UK. Today I doubt I will see another progressive measure (either in legislation or healthcare policy) put in place for trans people in my lifetime. Who knows what may yet be taken away. In the UK, the terf campaign groups make their goals quite clear: they would like transition banned before the age of 25 and for trans women to be compelled to carry male government ID in all contexts. Once the EHRC guidance banning us from all women’s groups and spaces across society is in place, they intend to sue organisations and service providers that don’t exclude us. Right now, I think it’s best to assume all these things are a likely prospect in the next ten years.
In the community itself there’s been a definite shift in the way we speak about the future. The middle-class trans micro-economy that boomed in the 2010s: Pride month corporate sponsorship, jobs at LGBT charities, DEI talks and panels, diversity modelling and ad campaigns, progressive theatre, educational books about being trans etc, which some of us used to make a living, has gone. A friend and I used to riff on the old Susan Stryker joke that as a trans woman you must commodify yourself one way or another: it’s either escorting or the diversity and inclusion panel. The friend (a sex worker) always said she found more dignity (and better money) in the former.
I’ve moved through the personal disappointment about the fact we are no longer fashionable or marketable and come to acceptance about the way in which the trajectory of my more mainstream career will now likely plateau. I am, by any metric, already a successful author, and will continue to write books, but I suspect that in the next decade I will see the cis women and gay men I consider my peers eclipse me in both earnings and opportunity as the profound stigma against trans women means doors close to me. So be it. These are bougie problems to have.
In the brief oasis of the past ten years, I funded my medical transition and created financial security for myself. I have been able to train in a fall-back career in case the writing all gets too much, and I could pay for the training using savings from my book royalties and past speaking engagements (when there was still a market for those). I have secure housing, sobriety, access to therapy. These are the wildest dreams of many transsexuals past and present. I’m scared and very angry but I’m broadly OK.
In the UK, we – transsexuals - are about to become significantly less employable as a class. Especially trans women. The segregation law and reduced access to medical care have rendered us ‘undesirables’ and this will affect how we make money to survive.
The premium on passing is as high as it was in the 1960s (the electroshock conversion therapy era Charlie Kirk wistfully longed for). Passing offers a flimsy form of acceptance based on being presumed to be something other than you are. I see passing dolls bragging about it all the time now – insecurity and fear transmuted into intracommunity meanness. It’s really nothing to feel superior about – it’s merely a different form of inferiority to enjoy safety and dignity in public only because you’re presumed to form part of the oppressor class. A class that, by the way, is contriving to make sure your ability to truly pass is as patchy as possible, by outing you at every official and institutional turn.
I see trans women online blaming the NGOs (like Stonewall) and more discursive trends that tended to frame ‘transness’ as a matter of individual self-expression and cosmopolitan values than a material need (the right to access medical transition and to live and work in safety). I am broadly in agreement with recent observations made by the formidable Jules Gill-Peterson in this respect about the need to restore the centrality of class-based analysis to transsexual politics: transitioning medically makes you significantly poorer and any trans politics should start there.
I do think that, in the UK context, the all-encompassing focus on the Gender Recognition Act reform from 2017 to 2020 was a grave mistake. I worked at Stonewall in those precise years myself – largely because it was one of the few places I felt I could work – and even at the time could sense this liberal priority of legal recognition was only entrenching the authority of the state and of capricious politicians. But my trans colleagues (all in relatively junior roles - trans women never occupied significant influence at Stonewall) also did genuinely good work in NHS stakeholder groups on healthcare access and with schools. It was a job. And as oblivious as the well-meaning cis gays and others who do not medically transition can be, they are not responsible for the insane, well-funded Christian evangelist movement which has decided to make trans people public enemy number one. Let’s remember that.
I don’t have a positive note to end on. “Trans joy” – often demanded at the end of the now deceased diversity panel – is also dead (thank God). I realised in therapy recently that I avoid discussing all this with cis friends and family as their instinct is to try and generate hope or minimise despair, but it typically minimises the gravity of the situation and the depth of my grief and exhaustion and fear - increasing my resentment. I am learning to live alongside a new kind of anger. I don’t want to hear the fucking platitudes or false equivalences. There’s time for hope later. I have survived addiction and sexual violence and men who claimed to like me fetishising me and major surgeries I spent years financing and underwent completely alone. I’ll survive whatever happens. The transsexual life requires a degree of tenacity I think most cis people can’t even conceive of. Trans women are expected to put a brave face on everything! They’re calling for vigilante violence against us on the news. Let me have my fucking grief!
, I was a fool and I was trying to be nice and help others as I always have and still want to but it took me financially devastated and out for the count, I’m 23 months in on GAHT and I literally just turned 65 , my life is an absolute Soup Sandwich now and I have lost my funds for my affirmation procedures to continue and I don’t want to be I have had someone suggest to me that I should have a go fund cause and get the funds for my surgeries, I have never in my life asked for anything but not I’m disabled and on fixed income without a car , I get at on a bike and I’m in a new state and don’t know what to do, so what do you ladies think? I’m not asking for money here I’m just trying to get some options and ideas on what to do These are some scary times were in and of course I’m not a raving beautiful and I’ve had some scary encounters, just saying Thank you in advance for any solid advice
