Activism

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What we have won

It was the largest trans protest in British history.

We travelled from across the country to central London. We were joined by allies, especially cis gay, lesbian, bisexual, and queer people who recognised the importance of solidarity, of standing together in this moment. Wielding bright flags and banners, we gathered in unprecedented numbers. We to were here to raise our voices against the institutionalisation of transphobic hate and abuse, to oppose calls for exclusionary policies and trans healthcare bans.

I couldn’t possibly miss this, so travelled down on the train from Leamington Spa with my home-made placard. Looking around after I arrived on that cold winter night, I marvelled at the sight. There were so many of us. Maybe as many as 150, or even 200! And my friend Jo even brought a home-made trans flag with them, which was an amazing thing to see outside of the internet.

Photo by Guido. I’m in this – can you spot me?

The year was 2008, and we assembled outside the Victoria and Albert Museum to protest the annual Stonewall Awards. The UK’s largest LGB charity had nominated the Guardian journalist Julie Bindel for an award, despite – or perhaps even because of – her notorious transphobia. The protest was called by the London Transfeminist Group, and supported by a range of other organisations, including Queer Youth Network, Trans Youth Network, and the National Union of Students (NUS) LGBT Campaign.

Afterwards, we gathered at a local pub and talked excitedly. The protest was a massive embarrassment to Stonewall, and through grassroots organising we had shown we could bring trans people and allies together on a scale that never before felt possible.

How could we build on this power, and what might the future bring?

***

It was the largest trans protest in British history.

Trans people travelled from across the country to central London. They were joined by allies, especially cis gay, lesbian, bisexual and queer people, plus parents and family members, trade unionists, and celebrities who recognised the importance of solidarity, of standing together in this moment. Wielding bright flags and banners, they gathered in unprecedented numbers. They were there to raise their voices against the institutionalisation of transphobic hate and abuse, and to oppose exclusionary policies and trans healthcare bans.

Photo by Aaron Chown/PA. Compare and contrast…

I wasn’t in London for Trans Pride 2026. I’m involved in plenty of protests and community events in Glasgow these days, from last year’s noise demonstrations outside the EHRC headquarters, to the incredible Solidarity Pride Hub, which filled the Pyramid at Anderston with amazing talks, workshops, and stalls led by trans and queer organisations. Nevertheless, watching online as the images came in was pretty incredible. A reported 150,000 people took to the streets, just one week after thousands more gathered for Trans Pride Brighton.

How can we build on this power – and what might the future bring?

***

For decades, the trans liberation movement has fought to change the world. We found new ways of being, and created language, art, and culture to name and explore these possibilities. We won new civil rights. We achieved incremental improvements in the provision of healthcare and education. We have made it a fair bit easier for many people to exist in the workplace, and to survive on benefits. We have built community: feeding each other, housing each other, and providing advocacy for each other, and partying together.

As the UK enters a new era of state-mandated segregation, I find myself asking: was it all worth it?

***

For all the achievements of the trans liberation movement, many of us have continued to struggle enormously in the face of interpersonal and institutional violence. This is especially the case for those more likely to be left behind by liberal trans activism, including disabled trans people, trans migrants, trans people of colour, and trans sex workers. Trans communities have also handily replicated the structural misogyny of the wider world. As a result, paid roles in advocacy, charity work, and the arts remain dominated by trans men and transmasculine people.

Meanwhile, through becoming more visible, we have become more vulnerable. Through being acknowledged within institutional frameworks, we have become more identifiable. Through asking for respect, we have become a problem. Through entering political conversations, we have become scapegoats.

Cis “centists” are often swift to blame trans people for our own problems. If we’d just been more polite, more accommodating, and less demanding.

Trans people also frequently assess our movement’s activist strategies. Sometimes this will be helpful. For example, there are lots of productive discussions happening right now about the respective merits of lobbying people in power vs building power in our communities from the ground up. Other times, certain trans people will say we have gone too far, demanded too much. If only we’d been more respectable. If only we’d laid off the pronouns. If only we could agree on a nice, clear definition of “trans”. If only we gave up on those confusing non-binary identities. If only we’d let children be children.

***

I came out to myself and my friends while in school, transitioning as a teenager in the early 2000s. I cannot emphasise enough how unusual this was – and consequently, how lonely and isolating my experiences were. We had so little information. Most out trans people at this time were middle-aged or older, and I didn’t have any opportunity to meet them. Being a trans teenager felt like a complete impossibility.

My transition had three key enablers. The first was my own sheer bloody-mindedness. The second was the support I did find and receive from others. And finally, I benefited from an enormous dose of luck.

After years of fruitless online searches for anything that would explain my feelings and my needs, I found a US web forum run by and for young trans people, providing invaluable advice and a sounding board. I wasn’t sure at the time whether I was a real transsexual, or just one of them fake cross-dressers. The broad, fluid language of transgender identity and experience meant that this artificial distinction didn’t actually matter. The important thing was solidarity: gender diverse people standing together in the name of our shared interests. This enabled me to explore what I might need and desire in an open-ended way with other people my own age, without feeling that I had to transition in any specific way or on any particular timescale.

In the offline world, none of my teen friends understood what I was going through. But they supported me unconditionally. My early romantic partners also had my back. One took me shopping, and helped me figure out my style. Another gave me my name.

I first went to see a doctor for help with medical transition aged 15, but I failed to receive a gender clinic appointment until I was an adult. This didn’t feel lucky at the time, but looking back, it was an enormous stroke of fortune. Through spending years on waiting lists, I avoided the conversion therapists who then – as again now – dominated child and adolescent services.

During these teen years, a schoolteacher – unable to provide me direct advice herself due to Section 28 – referred me to a free counselling service provided by a local charity. I remember my counsellor asking me, “do you think you are part of oppressed minority?” I wasn’t quite sure. Maybe? Probably?

Given the luck I had experienced, I did not understand how much I had already been let down. I did not fully comprehend the sheer void of information on trans existence. I did not realise that my self-hatred and self-denial was the fault of damaging social norms and expectations, rather than something broken in me. Nor did I understand how massively vulnerable I was as a result. The support of my peers meant that unlike many other young trans people, I was not subject to sexual predation: a topic later explored in my research, plus stories such as Paris Lees’ autobiographical book and TV series What It Feels Like For A Girl. I did not see how much my own internalised sexism had already warped my sense of what might be possible for me, leading me to take on a passive role in friendships with male friends who I watched play music and video games. And while I had already been beaten up or groped multiple times in the playground and the street, I was yet to experience much of the targeted transmisogyny that would accompany me into adulthood: the continued sexual assaults, the verbal abuse, the harassment, the stalking.

I didn’t know it at the time, but what I needed was trans community, and feminism.  

***

I became an activist in the mid-2000s, during my early 20s. Again, a few chance events spurred me along. But I also benefited from the care and energy of others who wished to change the world.

One of the first trans people I knowingly met in person was the professional speaker and advocate Rikki Arundel. A young gay man had booked them to speak for a student event at the University of Warwick, where I was studying for my undergraduate degree. Rikki took me to a café immediately after the talk. “So”, they asked, “you want to be a trans activist?” I hadn’t asked.

Rikki nevertheless spent some time outlining advice. Get to know people in your area: community members, local politicians, policymakers. Go to meetings and become known. Build a reputation as a helpful and reliable point of contact. At every possible opportunity, leverage this to demand change, positioning it as a sensible, reasonable course of action.

Rikki’s advice was invaluable for working within liberal systems. These days, I am wary of trans liberal approaches, as these can be individualising, and lead to concessions that leave many behind. But you do not need to believe in or support a system of power to work within and against it.

Around this time I also went to my first NUS conferences. Through the NUS LGBT Campaign and later also the NUS Women’s Campaign, I shared knowledge and skills with other young people, and went to my first protests. Through these campaigns I met other young, openly trans people in person for the first time, including Mallory Moore. I learned great deal from organisers such as Mallory. They appeared to have very different beliefs to Rikki, but were, in fundamental ways, doing very similar work. Get to know people. Build connections. Identify points of common interest. Figure out where and how to apply pressure to achieve change. Where Rikki spoke to the local council, Mallory worked with local feminist groups. I found myself doing both.

***

The isolation of my teen years continued into my early adulthood. Encounters with people like Rikki and Mallory were fleeting, one-off events. I would then go entire months without knowingly meeting another trans person.

To break this isolation, I began to travel. I took a day trip to Birmingham to hang out with a slightly older trans youth activist from Queer Youth Network, an internet community I’d recently joined. I travelled to Bradford and Manchester to speak at student union meetings, arguing for the introduction of all-gender toilets. I travelled down to London to attend an event hosted by a new organisation called Gendered Intelligence, and marvelled at being in a room with over a dozen other young trans people. This event wasn’t actually very good: it only happened because it had been funded by cis academics who wanted to do some boring research. But I left to sit in the corridor and chat with other trans girls, who would become lifelong friends.

There were so few of us out because there was still so little information available, and so little in the way of community support for those who did try to come out or transition. Most trans people were spending years, decades, lifetimes stuck in the closet. But this was beginning to change.

Trans communities in the UK were benefiting from a virtuous cycle of coming out. The internet helped a great deal with this, as new resources and information spread online. But the real change came with trans people simply being a visible part of public life. Transphobes like to call this “social contagion”. I prefer Laverne Cox’s term, “possibility model”. You see a trans person getting on with their life, and realise that sex change is possible for you, too.

In so many spaces, I was patient zero for the viral spread of trans possibility. I cracked eggs everywhere I went. Every time I spoke at an event, or attended a conference, or hung out with other queers at the pub, I showed that another world was possible. Young trans people came out all around me, and in turn they became visible to others.

But coming out is just the first step. For trans lives to be liveable, we need support from other people. We need to share resources and information. We need community.

***

I remember speaking in the late 2000s or early 2010s with an older trans woman at an event in Wolverhampton. Following the repeal of Section 28 some years before, she was keen to work with schools to ensure that young trans people were never as isolated and confused as I once was. “We need education at an early age”, she said.

We did this. It was not the action of any one person or group at any moment in time, but the action of a movement across many years. Organisations like Schools OUT produced material and information for schools. Groups like Gendered Intelligence helped support the development of a knowledge base to evidence change. Individuals like myself spoke with our local councils about how they could change their policies. Thousands of teachers across the country quietly changed their curricula, introduced new approaches, and created clubs for trans and queer kids.

Meanwhile, others created blogs, youtube videos, social media posts that circumvented schools entirely, speaking directly to young people. Importantly, much of this material sought to break away from the old binaries that used to divide trans communities: male-to-female vs female-to-male, transsexual vs transvestite. With “trans” we were imagining solidarities across difference, a context in which those who did not seek medical transition sought commonality with those who did, and vice-versa. We were collectively imagining a world in which sex norms and gender stereotypes no longer governed our lives, and in which we might work together to achieve our varying desires and needs.  

It is interesting to think about this former progress at a time when the UK government has produced incredibly transphobic new legal guidance for English schools, and when NHS England is actively pushing conversion practices. Trans kids now face an incredibly hostile policy environment: one that refuses to even name their existence even as it demands that they be segregated and abused.  

Yet, young trans people continue to come out, to seek support and support one another, in numbers that would have been inconceivable to the protesters gathered in London on that cold night in November 2008.

***

The strange irony of trans life in the 2020s is that there are still more of us than ever. Even as external conditions become more and more hostile, the virtuous cycle continues.

Some of this is about possibility models. You can see this in Trans Pride London 2026. We are talking 150,000 possibility models on the streets in central London in one day alone. Every single one of these people sends a message to those thinking about coming out. That message says: you are valued, you are loved, and support is available. You are not alone.

Some of this is about trans-led support. While the NHS, crisis services, shelters, housing services (etc etc) have variously got better and worse over the years, they have always let many of us down. In light of this, trans people have built mutual aid networks to get vulnerable people out of dangerous accommodation, house those in need, produce and share medication, and disseminate harm reduction resources. In this context, trans diversity is vital: we need strong communities that are more interested in how we might bring our myriad of skills and experiences to bear in caring for one another, rather than obsessing over how our language and identities might differ.

Some of this is about trans art and culture. You can turn on the TV and see trans actors, comedians, politicians, and experts, on shows written or produced by other trans people. You can turn on the radio and hear trans people playing music or speaking about their experiences. In some towns and cities, you can even can go to your local gallery and see work by trans artists, visit your local pub or club or DIY venue and see trans performers, and they might even give out handy little flyers telling you where you can get your hands on HRT.

Some of this is about solidarity work from cis people. All that endless work of education over the past decades has not been in vain, however much the politicians and hateful people of this world would like it to be. Through incessantly speaking out and demanding change, and in joining with others to support their struggles, trans people have made allies everywhere. Teachers and lecturers, doctors and nurses, administrators, hospitality workers, lawyers, and many more are more likely to have access to information through their family or friends or trade unions, which help them in turn to support trans people in a hundred thousand little ways every day.

***

In 2008 we found hope in the possibility of community connection, solidarity, collaboration, and friendship. In 2026, we see what was successfully built from that hope and that possibility.

Over the last two decades and beyond, we have won trans community and connectivity on a scale that was once unthinkable. We have made allies across every part of public life. We have helped hundreds of thousands people to improve their lives. This is a historic achievement.

Today, the trans liberation movement faces off against vicious foes and their allies in the Labour government, who would see us eliminated altogether. Trans people of all ages and backgrounds are forced to navigate laws and policies designed to make our lives more difficult and more dangerous.

It is all too easy to think that the trans activism of the past has failed, that every gain has been reversed in an orgy of hate and bigotry. Yet this is simply not true.

The achievements of the past have helped prepare us collectively for the demands of this moment. There are more of us than ever, and we have successes as well as failures to learn from.

Let’s see what we can do with that.

Some relevant resources:

Trans Actual: Know Your Rights

Trans Actual: Segregation in Practice Report

Trans Learning Partnership: Stronger Voices: Trans Housing, Community, & Livelihood

Good Law Project: We’re supporting a legal challenge against the code of practice

Good Wee Place: EHRC Sex Segregation. Staying safe and responding well. (guidance for venues and individuals)

Gendered Intelligence: EHRC Code of Practice Guidance (guides for Young People, and for Adults)

Good Night Out Campaign: Pee In Peace

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Public speaking workshop at Glasgow Solidarity Pride

I’m very excited to be delivering a workshop on public speaking at the Glasgow Solidarity Pride Hub in the Pyramid at Anderston, this coming Saturday!

My workshop will take place during the afternoon for about an hour (timings TBC). I’ll be focusing specifically on techniques for addressing a demonstration or public meeting. It’ll be very interactive, and I’ll be encouraging participants to discuss ideas, and practice techniques together for breathing, projecting, and annunciating (without losing your own accent or style).

The wider event is going to be super cool, with loads of amazing workshops, stalls, and food produced by local queer organisations.

Poster for Glasgow Solidarity Pride, featuring a photo of the Pyramid at Anderston, and an olive leaf pattern symbolic of solidarity with Palestine. Text reads as follows. This Saturday! Solidarity Pride Hub. Glasgow 2026, 18th of July. 11am to 5pm, masked until 1pm. Independent and corporate free. Attendance free. Come for a real community event, with free workshops by local queers, food from 1pm, free or pay what you want. Not sponsored by genocidal corporations! Over 40 local organisations, including Trans Kids Deserve Better, Scottish Trans, Scotland for Decrim, Southside Anti Raids, Sunflowers, Gender Goals, and many more queer sports teams, grassroots organisations, and artists. Find us here: the Pyramid at Anderston, 759 Argyle Street, Glasgow, G3 8DS.
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Supreme Court auto-reply: 2026 anti-segregation edition

What if every person who emailed you faced the reality of the UK’s segregation regime?

Last year I created an internal auto-reply for my work email, in the wake of the 2025 Supreme Court judgement which redefined sex for the purpose of the Equality Act and undermined the civil rights of trans people in Britain. I explained the logic for this in a blog post about it:

“It is impossible for me to forget what is happening to trans people and especially trans people in the UK, so I will ensure it is impossible for my colleagues to forget this also. Equally, my intention is to transform bad feelings into understanding, and practical action.”

One year on, and the auto-reply is still there. It’s come and gone a bit, been amended and updated, and now goes to every single person who emails me, internally and externally, be they a colleague, a student, a community collaborator, a journalist, or anyone else who might be in contact. It has been impossible for me to experience any kind of normality at work during this time, so I do not believe that anyone contacting me should expect me to act as if nothing significant is happening. Most recently, I updated the auto-reply to respond to the EHRC’s new Code of Practice for Services, Public Functions and Associations, which provides a formal framework for the segregation of trans people in most areas of public life.

I know the auto-reply has been actively useful. I have received messages from people thanking me for it, and from those who have adopted it for their own purposes. The most surprising response was a hand-written letter sent by air mail from a scholar based at George Washington University in Washington DC, who had originally been in contact about peer review for a journal I edit. She very kindly thanked me for “providing background, advice regarding how to respond proactively, information regarding further reading as well as resources for those who need support“.

I was deeply moved that she took the time and care to contact me in this way. This reminded me how when we share ideas and information, it can reach and help people in unexpected ways, often without us ever knowing about it.

With this in mind, I am sharing the full text of my current auto-reply. In addition to drawing on the resources I have shared, please do feel free to copy, use, and amend the material for your own purposes if relevant.

Thank you for your email. While I have your attention, I wish to highlight the UK government’s plan to introduce a new segregation regime by 30 June 2026. This will likely have severe implications for the wellbeing of women and trans people, and will impact my ability to work safely at the University of Glasgow. 

As an expert in trans studies, I outline further information and potential actions below, as well as spaces you might seek support.

–

Background

In June 2025, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) consulted on proposed guidance for the mandatory segregration of trans people from single-sex spaces in all areas of public life. The EHRC recieved 50,000 responses to their consultation. These were not read by human beings, but instead analysed by AI, enabling them to ignore calls for a different approach.

The consultation took place against a wider background of rising hatred and intolerance towards all minoritised groups in the UK. Two of my friends died due to transphobia and transmisogyny in September 2025 alone.

In May 2026, a new draft Statutory Code of Practice Services, public functions and associations was put to Parliament, drafted by the EHRC. This provides explicit provisions for the exclusion of trans people from public life, through means that are also likely to disportionately impact women and disabled people. Simultaneously, the UK government has introduced new guidance insisting that institutions collect and report data on every person’s sex assigned at birth, which has significant privacy implications for intersex and trans people.

You can read more about these changes, including their causes and wider implications, here:

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Act now

Any one of these actions could be helpful:

  • If you live in the UK, write to your MP, asking them to reject the EHRC code of practice and support Early Day Motion 240: https://equalrecognition.eaction.org.uk/rejectthecode.
  • Write to senior management in your workplace, asking what they will do to support women and trans staff and/or service users, including through actively lobbying the UK and/or national governments, and ensuring continued access to women’s and men’s facilities as relevant.
  • Write to your line manager and ask what action they will be taking to protect women and trans staff, and what pressure they will be putting on senior management to do the same.
  • Write to your political representatives (e.g. MPs, MSPs) more generally. Explain exactly why you are concerned, and demand action to protect trans people’s civil rights. For example, you could ask for new primary legislation to protect trans people, ask why the UK is no longer complying with the European Convention on Human Rights, or demand the dismissal of openly transphobic commissioners from the EHRC. You do not have to write a perfect letter and it is okay to be emotional and express sorrow or anger, so long as you are not aggressive or mean. If you live in the UK, you can find contact details for your representatives here: https://www.theyworkforyou.com/.
  • Support trans people materially, through providing time, resources, and/or money to community initiatives. Examples include: Glasgow Trans Collective (fundraising for emergency support to people facing an immediate danger of threat to life, https://www.gofundme.com/f/glasgow-trans-collective-emergency-fund); Trans Harm Reduction (supporting safer practices for people self-medicating in the absence of NHS treatment, https://transharmreduction.org); and Five for Five  (donating money every month to a range of trans women’s causes, https://www.fiveforfive.co.uk).
  • Check in on your trans friends and colleagues. Make sure they are okay, and do what you can to be there for them. But do your own research on what you can do to help: don’t put this burden on us. Some good places for information include the websites and social media channels for TransActual, What The Trans, QueerAF, Trans Safety Network, Scene Mag, and Trans Writes.

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Further reading

You can read more about the EHRC proposals and recent Supreme Court judgement that inspired them here:

Women and trans people across the country, including my own friends, have reported increased abuse and street harassment, as the ruling is seen to position trans women as legitimate targets for misogyny and violence. Trans people of all genders are already even more likely to experience public harassment, sexual assault and rape than cis women (see e.g. https://bulletin.appliedtransstudies.org/article/3/1-2/3/). If the EHRC’s proposals are implemented, this will likely get worse.

Realistically, the EHRC segregation regime probably will be implemented in the immediate term. The UK government has demonstrated a clear commitment to hate and authoritarianism, and Labour MPs have little appetite for rebellion. It is important that we – you – do not lose hope as a consequence. I hope this moment helps you to focus on the struggles that lie ahead, and the collective strength we hold in the face of those struggles. With this in mind, I also recommend Josie Giles’ funeral prayer for EDI:

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Mental health support

If you found the contents of this email distressing, I urge you to look after yourself first and foremost. Resources for this can be found below.

Additionally, I find hope and power in community organising. You can read about that in a 2025 blog post I wrote following the death of two of my friends, and a recent article by Juliet Jacques.

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Education as the practice of freedom

This auto-response is inspired by bell hooks’ comments in her book Teaching to Transgress:

“When education is the practice of freedom, students are not the only ones who are asked to share, to confess […] empowerment cannot happen if we refuse to be vulnerable while encouraging students to take risks. [Lecturers] who expect students to share confessional narratives but are themselves unwilling to share are exercising power in a way that could be coercive. In my classrooms, I do not expect students to take any risks I would not take, to share in any way that I would not share. […] It is often productive if [lecturers] take the first risk, linking confessional narratives to academic discussions so as to show how experience can illuminate and enhance our understanding[.]”

I will not necessarily respond to any replies you send to this automated message, as I am trying to stay focused on teaching, admin, and research while the world burns down around me. But regardless, thank you. 

Photo of British landscape with rolling green hills and distant mountains, with sheep in the fields and clouds overhead. Faint reflections can be seen, indicating the photo was taken from inside a vehicle.

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Going to California (with an aching in my heart)

When I received an invitation to speak about my research at the University of California in Davis, my initial, instinctive response was “heck no”.

It was December 2025, and the United States was looking an increasingly dangerous place to be both trans, and to be a critical scholar. The last year has seen anti-trans legislation introduced at every level across the country, while the influential Oversight Project at the Heritage Foundation and some in the FBI sought to brand trans activism as “violent extremism“. Meanwhile, attacks on academic freedom have resulted in massive funding cuts, the mass censorship of race and gender studies, and the kidnapping and detainment of students who protest the genocide in Gaza. One scholar seeking to flee the country with his family following death threats arrived at the airport gate to find their flights had been mysteriously cancelled.

Then there’s the international situation. Back in December, the US administration was beginning to escalate its rhetoric around Greenland. By January, I was genuinely concerned that a visit to California might coincide with a previously inconceivable outbreak of war between the US and its former European allies. It seemed that no possibility was off the table.

Don’t get me wrong, for all that Brits like to dump on Trump, I fear the UK is rapidly heading in a similar direction. While the dangers posted by the US administration are more blatant, thanks to its volatile and emotional rhetoric, the UK’s Labour government is pursuing a similarly authoritarian agenda. We can see this for example in deeply racist policies on migration and asylum, a crackdown on protest groups, attacks on equality and diversity policies, and the embrace of disinformation and pseudoscience in pursuit of an anti-trans agenda. And of course, our country too is entirely complicit in various conflicts and forms of state violence, including the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

Nevertheless, I have the considerable privilege of being a white UK citizen. I own a passport that enables me to freely leave and enter the country. I do not fear being detained on the UK border. I live in a diverse community where I feel safe and held by my neighbours. I am still – for now – able to maintain a university profile that openly states my commitment to feminism and equality work. And while I am increasingly afraid of facing violence at work, at least there aren’t many guns in this country.

So while I felt morally torn about potentially travelling to the USA, I was also aware that my home country is not exactly a great place. Thinking through the idea of complicity, Mijke van der Drift and Nat Raha encourage us to find “the right relation to what your position is in the world”. This “entails attending to where one is, and what one can do from that place”.

The question, then, was one of getting to California safely, and then ensuring that the trip would be worth it. What could my in-person presence offer that was not possible in my writing, or over the internet? What could I offer, and what would be worth the risk?

Photo of a flyer. Text reads as follows. Trans Freedom School. Vital relations: rethinking trans health and medicine. This two panel symposium brings together scholars, clinicians, and activists to examine how trans health has been shaped and contested through medicine, ethics, and political struggle. This symposium situates the contemporary moment's heightened scrutiny, backlash, and regulatory intervention within broader histories of trans medicine - from early gatekeeping and experimental care to community-led health activism to the current reconfiguration of "evidence," risk, and responsibility. What counts as care? Who gets to define it? How is medical authority produced and challenged?



The Trans Freedom School

It turned out that my colleagues at UC Davis really knew what they were doing. The event I spoke at, Vital Relations, was part of the Trans Freedom School. This is a series led by Ava Kim and Christoph Hanssmann, which brings together scholars to share knowledge and ideas on a range of extremely pressing topics.

Our event specifically addressed the past, present, and future of trans health and medicine. This included how trans healthcare might be defined, whose interests have shaped the development of the field, how to address threats to trans people’s health and wellbeing, and how all of this connects to wider struggles around the pursuit of truth and defense of free inquiry. The event format was a facilitated conversation, meaning that the speakers were in conversation with one another as well as the audience. This felt extremely generative given the range of knowledge and experience in the room.

I sat on a panel with Tankut Atuk, who is doing amazing work on pathogenicity: specifically, the social contexts and power relations which make minoritised people more vulnerable to illness and disease. Understanding these things can help us learn not only how and why people are disadvantaged, but also how we can organise against such disadvantage. We explored examples from Tankut’s research with trans sex workers in Turkey, my work on trans people’s experiences of perinatal care, and Glasgow’s strong community networks. A second panel saw Kadji Amin and Jacob Moses explore histories of trans healthcare, plus debates around identity and regret.

Importantly, these conversations are not limited to academic events. The panel discussions are bring professionally filmed, as are separate studio conversations with the speakers. The idea is to produce information and teaching resources for the long term. Other events associated with the Trans Freedom School take a wider look at current debates around gender and race, at a time when discussion on these topics is increasingly censored within media and scholarship, in the US and beyond.

In short, this was indeed vital.

Continuing to foster international dialogue and the free exchange of ideas is incredibly important, especially when these things are under threat. Teaching materials that challenge norms while tackling disinformation are desperately needed. I am grateful and honoured that I was invited to be part of this work.

I will of course be sharing materials produced by the Trans Freedom School when these are ready to go online. In the meantime, I was left with a great deal to think about, which will no doubt shape my own ideas and work going forward.

Tankut and Ruth in conversation
Tankut and Ruth in conversation



The right relation

As it turned out, the US did not invade Greenland while I was in California. Instead, as I flew home, the US and Israel launched a series of airstrikes on Iran. They killed the Supreme Leader Ali Hosseini Khamenei, along with members of his family, plus hundreds of civilians. This including over 170 people at a girls’ primary school, most of whom were children. This was an immediate reminder of how the world’s greatest superpower is also a rogue state, prepared to inflict death and suffering for seemingly little reason other than flattering the macho egos of its unchecked leadership.

Seeing sickening scenes of violence unfold across the Middle East in the following days made me feel extremely powerless. It is hard to know what to do, how to respond, in the face of such evil. I’ve had enough Iranian friends that I have no sympathy with the awful regime there. But the Iranian people will not be freed from tyranny by a racist foreign power murdering schoolgirls. I remember the slow, pointless horrors of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, with hundreds of thousands of people killed across the long years. I remember joining a million people on the streets of London to oppose this violence in 2003, only to be entirely ignored by the Labour government of the day.

In countries such as the UK and the US, what we do with our complicity in state violence depends on what tools we have, and options are in front of us. Here in Glasgow I will be supporting protests against war and arms dealers. I will be sharing information with my friends and neighbours. I will be teaching about power and its abuses in my day job. I will be voting to keep Labour as well as Reform out of Scotland in the forthcoming Holyrood election. It probably won’t feel like enough, but it does matter to do what we can.

The same goes for confronting other forms of state and corporate violence. I focus much of my research, activism, and writing on addressing discrimination and violence against trans people, because this happens to be where I have developed my skills and knowledge. The Trans Freedom School reminded me that the benefits of such skills and knowledge can cross entire oceans. It mattered for people in California to learn not only about my research, but also about the work of UK and Irish groups I spoke about, such as Trans Kids Deserve Better and Trans Harm Reduction. These groups are not working in universities or speaking to government. They are meeting with others in their community and building connections and resources, step by step, conversation by conversation.

Here in the UK, anti-trans policies are killing children. As with the West’s imperial wars, it is easy to feel powerless. But as I argued last year in my essay about the UK’s anti-trans Supreme Court judgement and the Lesbian Renaissance, there is so much we have achieved – and can achieve – through activism, community work, and mutual aid:

“There are more of us publicly creating art and culture, more of us creating events and running nightclubs and playing in bands and writing essays (hi). There are more community groups providing mutual aid and support when charities and state bodies fail us. And, importantly, we are not alone.”

There are always things we can do. It is simply a matter of attending to where we are, and doing what we can from that place.

Photo of graffiti against a colourful background. It reads as follows. Develop enough courage so you can stand up for urself and then stand up for somebody else.



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DJ setlist and review: There Will Be Blood! @ Stereo, Glasgow

I’m currently in the middle of a busy fortnight for work-related travel (more on that soon!) But last night, I managed to make the most of a brief return to Glasgow.

The occasion was There Will Be Blood! a fundraiser at Stereo for the brilliant group Trans Healthcare Access Glasgow. They are helping to provide free laboratory testing for bloods. This is really important for trans people on HRT who are increasingly denied monitoring by GPs. If you couldn’t make it but would still like to donate, you can do so here.

The organisers put together a fantastic lineup and there was a great turnout – especially for a Monday night. It was exciting to see so much talent from within our community, and loads of people come out to support both the cause and a pretty eclectic collection of artists. And exciting for me to be a part of it, performing a DJ set as ROGD.

In which I am going for it. Photo by Onni Gust.


The night kicked off with a luscious set from singer-songwriter and drag artist Sersi. He’s probably the first person I’ve ever seen sport a Britney mic at a DIY gig, which was very cool but sadly couldn’t quite capture the sheer dynamic range of his vocals on the night. At the same time, it enabled him to completely own the stage for a series of ballads that were by turns beautiful and strange. Sersi was ably supported by a pal with a laptop, and Johanna Kirkpatrick (of trad folk bands Chanterelle and Madderam) looking dead dykey on acoustic guitar.

Next to take the stage were Deep Filff. I hadn’t had a chance to look them up before the gig so had zero idea what to expect, although they did arrive with an absolutely enormous inflatable swan. Deep Filff turned out to be a two piece, with Nadia Fiffsky playing bass and belting out epic sun-baked vocals, while Jenny Tingle methodically destroyed the drumkit. As purveyors of some of the dirtiest psychedelic grunge-punk riffs I think I’ve ever heard, they were extremely well-named. It was engrossing, hypnotic stuff. Eventually the swan came out and bounced around the audience, most likely representing a serious hazard to some of the important-looking wires and glitterball hanging from the ceiling.

Local heroes comfort never fail to disappoint, and this evening they truly tore up the stage as the final live act of the evening. The sibling duo have a truly unique sound, with Natalie’s staccato vocals punctuating a skitterish soundscape of totally artificial electronic sounds, underpinned by Sean’s assertive drumming. It was impossible not to dance. My favourite moments came whenever the band’s weird, abrasive noise would suddenly gave way to a transcendentally beautiful synth melody for a minute or two, before we all dived collectively back into the tumult.

Finally, following a quick raffle, I was up! The gig was due to end at a remarkably civilised 10pm, so I had a tight half hour DJ set.

I’ve thought a lot since returning to DJing that the landscape of queer and feminist music and activism has completely changed. Back in the day, I used to do quite a few “Women’s Voices” DJ sets, especially for feminist events such as Reclaim The Night afterparties, and the woman-only Women’s Aid and NUS Women’s Conference discos. The idea was that every song played (sometimes for sets of up to four or five hours) had a woman on lead vocals, and ideally women also playing instruments. Finn Mackay always used to refer to me as “feministDJRuthPearce” (all in one breath!) which was never failed to be delightful.

Unfortunately, many of the people who were only too happy to join the dancefloor for those events are now either actively backing trans-exclusionary politics and the grossest forms of transmisogyny, or otherwise failing to speak out again them. (Junior equalities minister Liv Bailey, I’m looking at you – remember when you hoped I’d DJ your wedding one day?!) It’s odd to reflect on just how normal it was for trans women to be involved in woman-only politics spaces in the UK, given the extremity of the post-2017 moral panic.

Anyway, I digress.

Another thing that has happened over the last decade is the enormous influx of excellent trans artists to both underground and mainstream music scenes. We live in an age where I listened to jasmine.4.t for the first time because my mum told me she’d done a good interview with Craig Charles on BBC 6 Music(!) So, while I’d like to do more Women’s Voices DJ sets in the future, for the first time it felt realistic to put together a Trans Voices set, with a mixture of tunes fronted by trans women and men, and/or non-binary, genderqueer, or genderfluid people, that I could reasonably expect a large number of people in the audience to be familiar with.

So, here’s what I played:

Shopping – The Hype
My Chemical Romance – Teenagers
100 gecs – mememe
SOPHIE – Immaterial
underscores – Locals (Girls Like Us) [with gabby start]
Kae Tempest – Move
Ada Rook – BURY YOURSELF
Janelle Monáe – Make Me Feel
jasmine.4.t – Guy Fawkes Tesco Dissociation
G.L.O.S.S. – Outlaw Stomp
Against Me! – True Trans Soul Rebel

Obviously I could have kept going a lot longer, but I’ve got to say, it was one heck of a half hour. I have such enormous love for everyone who joined me to dance their arse off on a Monday night. And if you’d like me to DJ your event – I’m officially back behind the decks, so do get in touch!

Back home – sweaty and happy!

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Gig: There Will Be Blood! Glasgow fundraiser

I’m super hyped to announce I will be doing a DJ set at Stereo on 2nd March 2026 – performing for the first time as ROGD.

This will be at a gig for Trans Healthcare Access Glasgow. They are raising money to provide free blood tests for trans people who have otherwise been denied healthcare by the NHS.

You can buy your tickets here.

Poster for the There Will Be Blood gig by Trans Healthcare Access Glasgow. The text of the poster reads as follows. Raising funds for trans blood tests. At: Stereo! Monday 2nd March 2026. Door 7pm. Artists: Sersi, Deep Filff, Comfort, Ruth on the Goddamn Decks. Tickets: £10, £12, or £15. The poster features cut and paste imagery relating to medical care and a deck of cards, with the King and Queen of Hearts.


Much like the Glasgow Electrolysis Project (who are now running a successful clinic in the city) the very existence of Trans Healthcare Access Glasgow is both an indictment of the NHS and a credit to our community organisers. It’s depressing that the UK’s state healthcare system has so profoundly failed trans people that many GPs are now refusing to even monitor the safety and efficacy of NHS-prescribed medication. But it is also truly excellent that we are building our own new networks of medical support, which offer an alternative to the cis-led medical systems that have abused and exploited us for decades. Through the work of harm reduction groups such as Trans Healthcare Access Glasgow, we are collectively less reliant on these systems than we have ever been.

Meanwhile, I have a long history as a rock DJ but don’t get behind the decks too often these days. While I’m hoping to perform a bit more often again going forward, there’s no guarantee – so snap up those tickets while you can!

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Activist pasts and imagined futures

Back in October I caught the train down to Coventry to visit my old stomping grounds at the University of Warwick. The occasion was the 20th Anniversary of Warwick Anti-Sexism Society (WASS), a student campaigning group at the university. Technically WASS was 21 this year, but whoever let technicalities get in the way of a good celebration?

Co-hosted by the Centre for the Study of Women and Gender, the event brought current WASS members, including WASS president Izie Lopez-Scott and Students’ Union sabbatical officer Ananya Sreekumar, together with former students and feminist academics, including founders Sam Lyle and Cath Lambert, and early member Maria do Mar Pereira.

As I arrived on campus, it occurred to me that I must have been one of longest-running members of WASS. In contrast to the likes of Sam and Cath, I never played an organising role, instead on volunteering my time with Warwick Pride (the LGBTUA+ society), Rocksoc (for the metalheads), and later also Bandsoc (for whom I still occasionally judge the university’s annual Warwick Battle of the Bands). Nevertheless, after originally joining WASS way back in the academic year of 2005-2006, I maintained an on-and-off membership through my undergraduate, masters, and PhD degrees, finally leaving in 2016. During that time I attended numerous talks, workshops, protests, and occupations as a member of WASS, and joined fellow members as a delegate to Women’s Conferences hosted by the National Union of Students.

I wasn’t quite sure how it would feel to participate in the anniversary event. I anticipated it would be somewhat nostalgic.

Certainly the event served me nostalgia in spades. A WASS exhibition featured numerous t-shirts, hoodies, zines, posters, and pamphlets produced by the society from 2004 to the present day. I brought along a couple of zines from the 2010s – Sam brought along a huge amount of old material, much of which dated back to my undergraduate days. In a panel discussion, we reflected together on the context in which WASS was formed, why it felt so difficult and important to name yourself as a feminist in the early 2000s, and how the society’s early campaigns reflected the priorities and debates of the day (lads’ mags! feminism for men! Page 3!)

Photo of WASS exhibition, with t-shirts, zines, and newspaper clippings.
Photo of WASS exhibition, with zines, flyers, t-shirts, a hoodie, a tote bag, and a progress Pride flag.
Photo of a t-shirt bearing the slogan FHM: Feminism Helps Men.


But my main takeaway was the way in which our actions can echo through time, informing and influencing others in ways we might never be aware of.

When Sam and Cath founded WASS, they were focused on the present. They didn’t think much about how it might provide a way into activism and feminist thought for hundreds of people over two decades. Looking at the exhibition, speaking in a session about what had changed and what happened, it felt clear to me that we are living in a world shaped hugely be the world of 00s feminism, even amidst an enormous misogynist backlash.

There is something here about the complexity of wins, and the importance of work over time. It is not simply the case that the world gets better or worse. At the event, we discussed the growing cultural impact of violent misogynists from the manosphere. Sam highlighted how rates of femicide remain extremely high, half a century after the second-wave feminist movement kicked into gear. Equally, we reflected on how there is far more mainstream acknowledgement, understanding, and support for survivors domestic violence than there used to be even 20 years ago. This matters: it provides more people with a way out, a route into rebuilding their lives with the support of their families and communities.

Similarly, even as racist rhetoric dominates mainstream political discourse, feminist movements have increasingly learned from the difficult discussions around intersectionality that have taken place across years, decades. Meanwhile, other social movements have got better at acknowledging sexism, and embracing feminist ideals. WASS was originally an all-white, all-cis, non-disabled collective, which struggled to build alliances with other student liberation groups. This has not been the case for years. Key issues for student feminists at Warwick in 2025 include the genocide in Gaza, and fighting back against the university’s attempts to implement anti-trans policies. Warwick’s liberation movements frequently collaborate and cross-advertise events, and current students described how activists were often involved simultaneously in anti-sexist, anti-racist, and pro-queer groups.

A young man at the event asked me how campaigners stay motivated when there is so much rollback. I said I was inspired by the fact that we can still help people, that we can still create ideas and resources that it turns out are useful to others years, decades later. This was illustrated perfectly by the most unexpected story I heard that day, from an early career academic who thanked me for my old writing on TeachHigher.

A decade ago, TeachHigher was the University of Warwick’s attempt to advance insecure employment on campus, and undermine trade unionism. Branded as “a more consistent approach to the employment of hourly paid staff who work in different departments”, TeachHigher would provide a framework specifically for casual teaching contracts, offering an alternative to full-time, salaried lectureships. As a “wholly-owned subsidiary” of Warwick, it would technically be a separate company, while still funneling profits directly back into the university. This meant workers contracted through TeachHigher would be unable to benefit from collective bargaining with the University and College Union (UCU). The intention was to expand the model already used by Unitemps, another Warwick-owned subsidiary which “offers flexible staffing solutions” (often zero-hour contracts) across the higher education sector.

An enormous struggle over TeachHigher happened in 2015. The scheme was pushed aggressively by management, and opposed vociferously by hourly-paid teaching staff: the very people TeachHigher intended to contract. In subsequent years, I spoke and wrote about how this model for internal outsourcing was defeated through collective action on the part of students and staff. Workers such as myself carefully scrutinised the university’s proposals, identified pressure points within our own departments, found allies amongst more securely employed faculty, and organised accordingly. We effectively took over our local UCU branch, while also planning outside of its structures. Loopholes in existing casualised contracts enabled us to circumvent the UK’s anti-union laws, through moves such as departmental teaching boycotts. Multiple departments declared that they would refuse to participate in the TeachHigher pilot. The final straw came when UCU announced a national demonstration on a University of Warwick open day, which would have been an enormous embarrassment to the institution.

The successful campaign against TeachHigher brought student groups such as WASS and Warwick Anti-Racism Society together with staff bodies such as UCU. Due to the unequal impacts of casualisation, we recognised – as my late, great colleague Christian Smith put it – that “TeachHigher is sexist, and TeachHigher is racist”. We built on tactics developed in previous years. For example, the idea of protesting on an open day was developed by the 2013 Protect the Public University campaign, which grew out of the 2011 Occupy Warwick encampment. WASS members, naturally, were involved in both.

The defeat of TeachHigher was an enormous win for campaigners. Not only was the scheme withdrawn: we also negotiated pay rises, better terms and conditions for all casualised staff, and pathways towards more secure contracts for some.

Photograph of trees with yellowed leaves lining a road on an autumnal day

Yet by 2025, there was very little institutional memory of TeachHigher. For all that we won, many teaching staff remained on casualised contracts, and Unitemps continued to prosper. Meanwhile, the vast majority of those involved in the struggle have moved on, to live and work elsewhere. The university was largely under new management, and there had been an enormous turnover within human resources as well as student bodies. For those who even know the dispute happened, it can be hard to find concrete information. News platforms delete old stories, and enshittification makes it harder to use search engines to find those that remain.

At the WASS Anniversary, I learned that a key source of information on TeachHigher today can be found in my past blog posts.

Old wins echo down the years. Temporary gains are gains nonetheless. I would guess that every one of us who benefited from the TeachHigher defeat is better off now as a result. Personally, I found myself in a better place financially to finish my PhD and continue an academic career. I also learned an enormous amount about the practicalities of collective organising. I know I have draw on those gains repeatedly over the last decade to continue supporting others in turn.

Even if pay rises for casualised staff were eroded over time, the fact that we fought and that we won can continue to inspire workers facing similar struggles. Just as TeachHigher was inspired by Protect the Public University, which was inspired by Occupy Warwick, which was inspired by the Red Warwick occupations of the 1970s as well as the US-led Occupy Movement, the Spanish Indignados Movement, and the Arab Spring. These long influences don’t just happen: they rely on people writing things down, saving artifacts, and remembering together.

The funny thing is, I had no idea anyone might find my old blog posts on TeachHigher useful after so many years. I was one small part of a far larger movement, and have been involved in so many other campaigns since. Nevertheless, through chronicling events it turns out that I created a resource that remains useful to this day.

At the WASS Anniversary, I was reminded how important it is to commemorate our local histories of activism, and to share what we have learned along the way. Social progress is neither linear, nor guaranteed. But if we imagine there might be a better future around the corner, and act accordingly, then we might change the world in ways we cannot possibly anticipate.

Photo of a poster with bold text and a small picture of a sapling plant. Text reads as follows "By choosing a feminist politics, you are making a commitment to a world that has not yet been built" - Lola Olufemi. Warwick Anti Sexism Society. Campaigning for gender liberation. @warwickantisexismsociety


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Reject Trans Doom-Posting

This week I took the long train down to the south of England for my friend Robyn’s funeral. She died very suddenly three weeks ago, aged just 32.

Robyn gave so much love to the world, and was so loved in turn. Around a hundred and fifty people crammed into a small building for the service. There weren’t enough seats for everyone, so many stood at the back and sides of the room. I sat on the floor. More attended online.

We shared stories from Robyn’s life, learned from each other, cried together. Like many funerals, especially for young trans people, it was absolutely gutwrenching. It also helped move us towards closure. It was good to be in community together, to think and speak not just of Robyn’s past, but of our collective futures. Robyn lived life to the absolute maximum. Surely we could take inspiration from her example.

Photo of a punk crowd having a good time. In the centre of the image, a white butch woman exclaims and points with delight.
Robyn at Manchester Punk Festival 2024. Photo by Chris Bethell for The Guardian(!)


After the funeral, I stayed the night with queer friends in rural Surrey. We went for a curry, toasted Robyn, caught up about our lives. We talked about work and about books and about art and about holidays we wanted to take. That evening I felt tentatively more at peace with the world.

And then I looked at my phone. And I learned that another young friend, Jessica, had also just died.

***

It’s a shit time to be trans. Many people are saying this.

But then again, when has it not been a shit time?

Eight years of moral panic have taken an enormous toll. In the UK, as in many other countries, our civil rights and our access to public services, public spaces, and public life are all being rapidly rolled back. Politicians and influencers fall over themselves to promote anti-trans violence and praise one another’s incendiary takes. We are less safe at work, at home, in hospitals, in schools, and in the streets.

Trans people often die young, including too many of my friends. Sometimes (all too often) we die by suicide, driven to despair in a world full of hate and malice. Sometimes (mercifully less often in the UK) we are murdered, usually in incredibly violent ways. Other times, it’s more complicated. I think of Denise, who died a sudden death from melanoma. I think about Elli, who died of Covid-19. And now I also think about Robyn and Jessica, who each died suddenly of apparently natural or accidental causes.

These days, the high rate of untimely trans death can feel like a consequence of the trans panic. Certainly I believe it’s making things worse. However, this phenomenon pre-dates the current political situation. Trans people disproportionately died young in the 2010s, at the time of the so-called “tipping point“. Trans people disproportionately died young before this too. Sociological theory can tell us why.

A decade or so ago, I worked for a couple of years in Warwick Medical School. I was there to teach medical students about social determinants of health. The basic concept is that our general health is affected enormously by the context in which we live. This includes factors such as the resources and services we do and do not have access to, and barriers we might face in attempting to access healthcare services or otherwise look after ourselves

So, it’s not a coincidence that – for example – life expectancies are shorter in poorer neighbourhoods, or that Black women are more likely to die in childbirth. There is nothing inevitable or biological about any of this, something intrinsically different about poor people or Black people. The issue is that entire groups of people are more likely to experience particular kinds of illness, and more likely to die of things others might survive. This is because of the social disadvantages they face, and because of the discrimination they experience at the hands of bigoted doctors and nurses.

There is a massive scientific literature on social determinants of health. I’ve contributed to it myself, co-authoring a recent study showing an association between transphobic microaggressions and poor mental health among trans people. For this reason, I know it’s no coincidence that so many of my trans friends have died untimely deaths. Trans people are more likely to have worse health because of transphobia. They are less likely to receive timely and effective treatment because of transphobia. This means when trans people are seriously ill, we are on average less likely to survive. I see this when I look at the academic literature, and I see this every day in the lives trans people I know.

I see the impact of transphobia when I look at Robyn’s life and death. Her health deteriorated significantly in her final years. She was afraid to seek help from doctors though: and for good reason, given the discrimination she and many of her friends experienced in NHS services. I wrote my entire goddamn PhD thesis on this problem.

Things were even worse for Jessica. I witnessed so many organisations and institutions in her home city of Coventry failing her time and time again. I could fill whole books with accounts of the violence done against her. She was failed by her school, her church, a political party she gave so much energy to, the council, the local hospital, the psychiatric ward, the housing association. Just last year I sat helplessly on the other end of the phone while she attempted suicide, doing the best I could in this moment to ensure that she was not alone.

The institutional failings experienced by Robyn and Jessica and so many others are the result not just of ignorance, but of actively malicious transphobia and transmisogyny. I believe these factors contributed significantly to their untimely deaths.

How can any of us expect to find hope and purpose in the face of such violence?

***

In recent months I have noticed an uptick in trans doom-posting. By this I mean trans social media posts, blog posts, and videos which dwell entirely on negative feelings and convey a sense of hopelessness.

A prominent example is Shon Faye’s recent essay, well, it’s over, which she describes as “a brief eulogy for the ‘trans rights’ movement”. Shon observes that powerful transphobic movements in the USA and UK are succeeding in many of their aims. They have spread fear and disinformation far and wide, made allies of mainstream politicians and media platforms, and enacted bans on trans healthcare. Now they are attempting to criminalise our very existence, as part of a campaign to eliminate us altogether.

Shon’s conclusion appears to be: well, that’s it. We’re all fucked.

“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.”

I very much empathise with her account of trying to talk about this in any way with cis friends and family:

“their instinct is to try and generate hope or minimise despair [which] typically minimises the gravity of the situation and the depth of my grief and exhaustion and fear – increasing my resentment.”

Shon concludes that she doesn’t want to hear “fucking platitudes” – “there’s time for hope later”. For now, she wants time to grieve. I’ve seen similar sentiments shared by other authors on various social media platforms, including posts from extremely popular trans meme accounts.

I understand intimately where all of this is coming from. Just look at everything I said earlier about social determinants of health. I recognise the violence we are subject to, and its costs. This post too is written from a place of deep grief.

But there is also the question of where and how we grieve. We do need space to vent and to despair. But we also need space to process, and figure out what happens next. Ideally, we need places and times we can do this collectively, rather than just being isolated as individuals. Robyn’s funeral offered this.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t talk about what is happening to us. What I am concerned about is the individualising effect of public platforms, and the parasocial relations we hold with high-profile accounts. We tend to consume doom-posting on our own, on a phone. We often have no-one to process it with, and little context beyond the content in front of us. In this way, doom-posting offers only a partial account of reality, and no way out from despair.

And there is a way out. We find it in community.

***

Look, I have a great deal of respect for Shon Faye. I have a hard enough time navigating the consequences of my own very minor microcelebrity. Shon has to tackle a great deal more attention: from trans people looking for someone to idolise and/or tear down, from cis readers who project heroic expectations onto her, and from haters who see her as the antichrist or something. She’s great on camera, and a brilliant writer. I would recommend her book The Transgender Issue to literally any cis reader. I also recognise that her blog post comes from a place of incredible pain.

At the same time, I am concerned that many trans people and allies are putting way too much energy into engaging mainstream institutions and liberal systems on their own, individualistic terms, rather than looking to the alternative power and support we can build in our communities. Notably, a lot of Shon’s post talks about civil society, legislation, lobbying, and the role of organisations such as Stonewall. This is definitely a realm in which “trans rights” face a seemingly terminal decline. But it is also not the first place I would look for real, grounded hope.

You can find a similar energy in Jules Gill-Peterson’s dire essay Reject Trans Liberalism, which is referenced by Shon. Jules’ piece simultaneously criticises the trans liberation movement for being about more than transition, while also insisting that preparing ideologically sound documents for the US supreme court is a radical act. It posits a false and ahistorical dichotomy between transsexuals (good, pure, radical) and transgenders (bad, elitist, liberal). The essay does not consider how gender diverse people might work together or support one another across our differences. This contrasts with existing critiques of trans liberalism already advanced by activist-scholars such as Nat Raha and Mijke van der Drift. Again, don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge fan of Jules’ previous work. But as trans people, and especially as trans women, we owe each other so much more than this.

Now, I’m hardly without fault. This very blog is replete with examples of myself and others putting untold hours into lobbying politicians, participating in public consultations, advising the National Health Service and so on and so forth. In her post Stepping Over The Line, Josie Giles, who once again I admire greatly (look, I just fucking love trans women) argues that:

“Theoretically, an army of well-resourced energetic activists could simultaneously engage in state-centred advocacy and also do grassroots politics. In practice, it doesn’t happen. In practice, state-centred pseudo-organising dominates the social media feeds and the limited energy reserves of an already depleted community, and absorbs what little money is available to pay for the salaried self-licking ice-cream cone of the lobbying profession.”

Sick burn!

Meme depicting two femme white women. One is labelled "trans NGOs", and is holding the other woman firmly by her hair. The second woman is labelled "broke trannies facing a highly funded segregation movement". The first woman is force-feeding the second woman a bottle of milk, labelled "email your MP".
Meme acquired via one of them social media platforms we’ve all heard so much about.


I do disagree with Josie a little. Unlike Shon and Jules and also Josie, I transitioned in the early 2000s. This was well before the tipping point, and before most trans civil rights even existed in law. I remember how we fought successfully for changes that genuinely improved many people’s lives. I feel it will always be worthwhile to use what levers we can to minimise the harm caused by those who have power over us. Lobbying is the most accessible form of activism for some people. I still have an auto-reply on which encourages every damn cis person who emails me at work to contact their MP.

But Josie is completely right that many if not most trans people can and should be putting a lot more of our energy into grassroots politics. This must necessarily involve re-imagining what our worlds could look like, using what we already have as a basis from which to build. I know from lived experience that we can not only survive in the absence of certain civil rights and recognition, but also see material improvements in our lives when we come together. I met Jessica because we built trans-led community services in Coventry from the ground up.

Similar points are made by Roz Kaveney, who first came out over 50 years ago. In her criminally underrated 2022 poetry collection, The Great Good Time, Roz does reflect on the violence faced by young trans women in her youth. However, she also details the vibrant lives they lived together, the joys they experienced, how they shared housing and clothes and had each others’ backs. In a short forward to the book, she notes:

“I observed a lot of bleakness creeping into trans social media and thought it my job as a community elder to remind young people that things have been, if not worse, then at least as bad in different ways”.

As Josie states in Stepping Over The Line, white, middle-class trans people in particular need to understand in this current moment that we are as disposable to the ruling classes as any other minoritised individual. Our strength lies in practical solidarity with others subject to the violence of corporations, fascist movements, and the state. To once again reiterate the point, we need to be in community with one another.

Both Robyn and Jessica’s lives offered perfect models for this.

***

Every single speaker at Robyn’s funeral talked about how much time and energy she put into punk and folk music, building and fixing things, and caring for others. She was a loud, proud butch who was incredibly committed to sustaining community wherever she went. When she saw a need, she sought to meet it. Many of us only wished that she was better at asking for or accepting help herself.

If a trans person needed somewhere to stay, Robyn would put them up. If a trans person needed to move house, or was being evicted or was fleeing a violent relationship, Robyn would turn up with a van. If a trans person was having trouble at work, Robyn would show up online or in person with sensible advice. This attitude inspired Robyn to volunteer with groups such as Reading Red Kitchen, a grassroots project which provides a social foodbank and free community meals for asylum seekers experiencing food poverty. For Robyn, radical politics could never simply be about slogans and demonstrations: it was about cooking, connecting with others, and washing the dishes.

None of this is to say that Robyn was never found at a protest: quite the opposite. When I lived in the south we co-founded Trans Liberation Surrey, a collective which worked to oppose transphobia in a county hardly known for its activist movements. My most treasured memory of Robyn is from this time, when we attended a small anti-fascist demonstration in Wokingham. A coalition of neo-nazis, anti-vaxxers, and climate conspiracists descended on the town to protest a drag queen storytime event for young children. Robyn and I joined other locals outside the library to wave rainbow flags and play upbeat music, enabling families to attend the event without disruption.

Photo of people with placards around a banner labelled Trans Lib Surrey.
Trans Liberation Surrey, at Surrey Pride 2021.


Jessica was also extremely motivated to help others, in spite of her own difficult circumstances. Like Robyn, she was a committed trade unionist. For many years she was also involved in a small political party, before eventually being ejected for challenging the leadership. Her motivation for this was a genuine belief in the possibility of positive political change, and in the potential for people to come together and make that change happen. Later in life she would rediscover her Christian faith as alternative vehicle for community action.  

After hearing of Jessica’s death, our mutual friend Charlotte reached out, and we asked one another how we knew her. It turned out Charlotte had also been a member of that political party, and reconnected with Jessica several years later as they both sought new ways to make a difference in the world. In turn, I explained how Jessica and I met while lived in Coventry, and was myself involved in organising trans community social events, meals, and punk nights. Charlotte and I also both knew Robyn. “Christ Ruth,” said Charlotte, “trans lives are so entangled and we often don’t even realise”.

So it is. Right now, Jessica’s Facebook wall is replete with people thanking her for being there as a friend, for providing them with advice, for helping them come out.

In a hostile world, we are everything to one another. In the face of the most horrific hate, our love is so powerful. Such love survives death.

Selfie photo taken by a white woman with shoulder-length brown hair. She is wearing colourful clothes and a cross around her neck, and smiling at the camera.
Selfie taken by Jessica.

***

This is where I find hope. At protests and demonstrations, sure, but more importantly in the contexts where we give each other’s lives meaning.

I find hope in community meals, mutual aid, queer bars and queer bookshops and queer gigs. I find hope in small parties, in big Pride events, in quiet meetings at work, in food pantries. I find hope in housing projects and healthcare projects, and in the Glasgow Electrolysis Project, which has created actual jobs for trans women and a vital new service for hundreds of us across the city. We know we are failed constantly by mainstream institutions: rather than seek incremental change, is it not time to re-imagine the clinic, re-think the workplace? Our problems will not be solved by refusing to engage with existing services, nor by creating trans charities that replicate existing hierarchies. We need to find ways to build something new entirely.

I find hope in the fact there are more of us out than ever, more connected than ever. These collective endeavors are all so much more important than anything I personally might write, any research I might do, and certainly any “progressive” policy I might influence.

Doom-posting and finger-pointing cannot deliver any of these things. We need to take the time to connect with one another, especially outside the internet. Yes we need to grieve, but we need so much more than this. We need to actively look after one another, and provide space for rest and recuperation. We need to have each others’ backs. We need to connect across difference, and not (re)create hierarchies of oppression or need.

These are no fucking platitudes. This is my life. This is the lifeblood of our shared communities. This is how we create better social determinants for our goddamn health.

Long may we live together.  

Photo of a butch white woman playing a banjo next to a Scottish loch.
Robyn in the Highlands. Photo by Elaine O’Neill.

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Interview with Xtra: lesbians resisting transphobia

Even if the worst-case scenario occurs and the interim guidance becomes law, Pearce emphasizes that laws “only make sense if people uphold them.” People and organizations must be willing to fight for trans rights, and make the laws essentially impossible to enforce. 

As Pearce puts it, “We need intentional, aggressive, extremely homosexual non-compliance.”


Earlier this month I spoke with journalist Emma Bainbridge about lesbian community responses to the UK’s transphobic Supreme Court judgement. That piece is out now in the Canadian magazine Xtra. You can read it here:

U.K. lesbians are resisting state-mandated transphobia

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Respond to the EHRC consultation together! (10 June)

The Equality and Human Rights Commission’s segregation consultation is a horrible document to look at. But if you’re planning to fill it in, you needn’t do so alone.

Tomorrow evening (Tuesday 10th June) I’ll be joining Katy Montgomerie on her livestream from 8pm to talk about and work through the EHRC consultation. We’ll hopefully make the process that bit less grim together, and also highlight other important and perhaps even joyous things that are going on.

If you can’t make it, Katy will also hopefully be able to put a recording of the stream up on her channel at a later point.