In mid-April I will be travelling to Sweden to speak at the University of Gothenburg. I will provide a keynote address at a symposium titled Academic Freedom and Collegial Solidarity in Times of Pressure, hosted by the academic journal lambda nordica. I am really looking forward to again meeting Swedish colleagues, and learning with them, after an extremely productive visit to Karlstad, Uppsala, and Linköping last year.
My talk, “From Birth Parents to Backlash”, takes the Trans Pregnancy Project as a starting point for thinking through how and why academics are facing specific types of social and political backlash, what this looks like in practice, and what we can do about this.
It will build on material I have previously delivered at events such as the BSA Medsoc annual conference, and last year’s Standards of Evidenceworkshop at the University of Lausanne. I will be linking long-term trends to more recent events, thinking through how recent attacks on academic freedom build on phenomena such as the international trans panic and debates over the teaching of critical race and gender theory within universities.
The public portion of the event will take place on Thursday 16 April, and details can be found here.
In January, I received an unexpected message. And at first, I thought I was being scammed.
Actually, I received several unexpected messages, over a couple of weeks. These comprised direct messages to my social media accounts, a comment on this blog, and – eventually – an email to my work account.
The purported person urgently trying to contact me was Mieke Verloo, Professor of Comparative Politics and Inequality Issues at Radboud University in the Netherlands, and Permanent Fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, Austria. I was familiar with her extensive feminist scholarship, especially her work on gender equality policies and anti-gender movements. Given the overlap in our interests, I wasn’t surprised she reached out. I speak with a lot of other researchers and activists on a pretty much daily basis. What was surprising was how keen and persistent she was to speak with me.
As a social researcher, my work is all about people – and our interactions with policy, institutions, and community organisations. To do my job well, I need to speak with people, all the time. Outside of teaching, this can consist of formally conducting a research interview, sharing advice or information, or just having a chat to maintain a relationship. I’m grateful that my research been highly read and impactful: that has happened because I have worked closely with others the whole time, to inform, design, undertake, and share my studies.
The problem is that academic employment does not leave much time and space for this people work. I do it on top of my teaching and administration load, plus reading, planning, writing, and so on. So I squeeze it in: a meeting here, a blether there. It’s increasingly difficult. I have a growing list of people who want to speak with me about their project idea, the latest insider scoop on NHS policy, next steps for their organisation, or their proposed PhD or postdoc. It takes me increasingly long to reply to emails, and I’m booking meetings months in advance. I am, to put it bluntly, overwhelmed.
So that’s a normal academic problem. It’s even worse for those of us working in fields such as gender studies at a time of far-right backlash. I have started to develop a trauma response to opening my emails. I am always anticipating the next terrible news, the next round of harassment, the next legal threat from a “gender critical” scholar who has decided I am a problem. There is, sadly, a reason why my work email can no longer be found on my university profile. Like many minoritised scholars, I have removed it, making it harder for hostile individuals to contact me.
This is a systemic issue, not just a “me” issue. Universities like to say that they value community engagement and impact. But we are never really provided time for it in our workload, especially if we are part of a targeted minority group. I feel like a one-woman gender clinic, gradually amassing my own ridiculous waiting list.
Professor Verloo did not want to wait. Her numerous messages indicated that what she wanted was clearly very important. I wondered, is this actually the real Mieke Verloo? Is this part of some elaborate harassment campaign? Am I being catfished?
Eventually, I set aside a bit of time, and asked Mieke to prove her identity – which, very kindly, she did. As a leading feminist academic who has studied anti-gender movements, she got it.
I had a flexible hour the next day, so I set up a Zoom meeting, to see what I could help her with.
On receiving awards
I don’t do the work I do to win prizes. I am not saying this to be humble – I am saying this because it true, and realistic.
While some of my work is highly-read, I think the most impactful things I’m involved in tend to be invisible. And that’s okay. I organise with others, and share ideas and information with various people and groups, without any of this ever being visible to the wider world (let alone seeing academic publication). This is the work of social movements, and untold millions of us do it.
Meanwhile, on the occasions when I have sought academic awards, it has been very difficult. I’ve really struggled to land research funding, in spite of my profile, in spite of cis mentors pulling baffled faces and saying things like “I have never seen a proposal this strong fail in the first round”, over and over again. Again, this is a systemic issue. I’ve seen enough trans studies scholars go through the same to know that we are being quietly discriminated against. The same is true of other marginalised groups, such as academics who are Black and people of colour.
I have also, very occasionally, won something that feels entirely hollow. A few years ago I received an “LGBT+ Advisor Award” from NHS England. This was announced in a ceremony I wasn’t invited to, and was not publicised outside of a tweet from someone who was there. I received a small badge in the post, which is now displayed on my office pinboard, a focal point for conflicted emotion. For several years, I put enormous amounts of time and energy into working for a more trans-friendly NHS. Now, many of the very NHS commissioners and policymakers I used to meet with are mainstreaming pseudoscienceand conversion practices. It hurts.
So when I asked what I could help Mieke Verloo with, and she said, “we would like to give you a prize”, I went into shock.
Recognition and recovery
I think I have become too acculturated to the idea that there is no external recognition for trans liberation work. This is an important reminder that people outside of trans communities care about us, and care about our role in wider struggles for social justice.
I have been a part of a feminist movements my entire adult life. For many years I have campaigned for and within women’s services and women’s political spaces, and fought back against systemic sexism and misogyny. Nevertheless, as the anti-trans movement has grown more powerful, I have felt the walls closing in. Powerful forces are trying to separate women like me from our sisters in struggle.
In a world of divide-and-rule, it matters that we extend recognition to one another, in whatever ways we can. Often, this means just telling someone that they are seen, and that their work matters. It means so much when I hear this, and I try to make a practice of doing the same for others.
But Mieke Verloo is part of the FLAX Foundation, a Dutch organisation with some funding for Europe-wide feminist research awards. It seems that FLAX seeks to extend recognition in ways that are as useful as possible for prize recipients.
The recognition alone is the most powerful and beautiful thing about the Emma Goldman. I think it will provide me with greater strength going forward, a sense of togetherness with other feminist activist-researchers across Europe.
However, the award also comes with funding. So I will also be considering how best to use this to support my work going forward. My hope is to focus on finding more time and space for restoration and slowing down, for existing collaborations and research dissemination rather than starting something new. I hope to focus on writing up findings from work undertaken with colleagues in the Trans Learning Partnership, and finish my next book. I will also look into paying for services that might help me better manage my experiences of overwhelm, ideally in a way that puts money back into queer and trans communities. It is rare indeed to obtain funding for this purpose.
The Emma Goldman Award
Every year, between five and ten people receive an Emma Goldman Award. Several more can win a different prize given by the FLAX Foundation, the Snowball Award. Two weeks ago, we gathered in Vienna for an awards ceremony, and for a budgeting workshop to support the best use of the funding we have received.
It was quite overwhelming to be in a room with a group of such highly accomplished women. We came from a great range of backgrounds, in terms of nationality, heritage, culture, discipline, field, and medium. It was amazing to hear about the work everyone was doing: as academics, as journalists, as filmmakers, as comic artists – and, inevitability, as collaborators and organisers. Every one of us was involved in community-building in one way or another. And everyone seemed pretty shocked to be receiving an award, because each one of us feels the pain of oppression, and none of us do what we do to win prizes.
The award ceremony was filmed, and I’ve put a link to the youtube video at the bottom of this post. It’s worth a watch simply to hear about the exciting things every single award winner is up to. It expanded my sense of possibility, of what is happening in the world and can happen in the world, and who I might work with or be inspired by going forward.
It meant a great deal just to spend time with each other outside of the formal sessions, speaking and listening and learning together, building new friendships. This is something I have taken away from my time in Vienna, something I will sit with for a long time. I believe this is another intention of the Emma Goldman and Snowball Awards: to go beyond themselves, to support networks of research and activism, to enable new connections and collaborations across borders. In this sense, the prize couldn’t be better named.
The thing that struck me most after the award ceremony – and I mean this in a really good way – is that it made our collective achievements feel unexceptional. I don’t say that to talk down myself, or any other winner. Quite the opposite: I feel that recognising this kind of work collectively reminded me that none of us are alone, that we are part of a movement.
It is enough for any of us to simply do the work – of fighting for a better world.
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?
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.
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.
“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.
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I have a new article out, co-authored with Dr Cal Horton. It’s about the incorporation of UN convention rights into Scottish law, and what this should (in theory) mean for trans children in Scotland and beyond. The article is totally open access so anyone can read, download, and share it anywhere. You can peruse a copy right here:
In recent years I’ve felt increasingly critical of human rights as an artificial framework for behaviour, which is frequently ignored or manipulated by those in power. As Nat Raha and Mijke van der Drift put it, these are “human rights for human resources”. Nevertheless, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) is now part of Scottish law, and Scottish children and policymakers alike are being informed that this conveys certain expectations for how young people are to be treated.
Cal and I believe it is important to reflect on what this all means for people seeking to work in a humane way with trans children, in Scotland and beyond. In particular, we emphasise the importance of directly involving young people in conversations and decision-making about their own lives. We draw on the demands of young people themselves in doing so, including groups such as Trans Kids Deserve Better Scotland, who note that policymakers have actively ignored young trans people by “by shutting trans bodies and voices out of every room that matters [and] pretending we don’t exist.”
This weekend also sees the publication of an interview I did for the Herald about the UNCRC article. In this, I discuss the findings of my research with Cal. I also reflect more generally on the situation faced by trans studies researchers, in which it is increasingly hard to conduct trans-positive research even as the UK government and funding bodies throw millionsofpounds at anti-trans researchers.
We end the interview with key three takeaways regarding what can be done to protect the rights of trans children, in Scotland and beyond:
“Number one would be to genuinely consult with young trans people and ask what they want and need. They deserve real and meaningful consultation.
“Number two is that there is a huge amount of knowledge that already exists, both on young trans people’s experiences and on how to consult with young people. Draw on the knowledge that already exists.
“And number three is to acknowledge that there is a trans-eliminationist movement. Acknowledge that there is an active attempt to stop anyone from doing the first two things.
“There’s an active attempt to stop any anyone taking seriously what young trans people have to say about their own lives, and an active attempt to stop any accessing of existing knowledge, and that comes from a place of prejudice.
“One of your starting points has to be acknowledging that that exists.”
In summer 2026 the World Community Development Conferencewill be coming to Scotland! I am part of a group of lecturers from the Community Development programmes at the University of Glasgow who are helping to organise this event.
Running from 29 June to 2 July 2026, the conference will be a space for connection, critical reflection, creative exchange, and global solidarity. It will be rooted in the values of justice, participation, community empowerment and human rights and underpinned by Community Development’s emphasis on collective initiatives for collective outcomes.
Conference Themes and Guiding Questions
We invite submissions aligned with one or more of the following core themes. To support your thinking, we offer the following open questions:
1. Challenge
This theme centres on critiquing and confronting systems of injustice and advocating for policy and funding to support rights-based Community Development.
What are the most urgent challenges facing communities and how is Community Development responding?
How are issues of power, inequality, technology, marginalisation or oppression being confronted and addressed?
2. Change
This theme is about co-creating new approaches through collaboration and future-focused dialogue, while strengthening the resilience of practitioners and communities in complex environments.
What new ideas, or practices are driving meaningful change in your work?
How is resilience being built in communities facing political oppression, social or economic inequality, or the ill effects of climate change?
How are human rights and Community Development being used as tools for accountability?
3. Collective Action
This theme explores community organising through inclusive, participatory, and justice-driven practices and connecting across borders to build solidarity.
How are people coming together to organise, mobilise, and demand justice?
What examples of effective collective action can you share, and what impact is it having?
How can we ensure that Community Development is oriented towards collective justice rather than exclusion?
Presentation Formats
We welcome a wide range of formats, including:
Conference Paper: Research or practice-based presentations (20 minutes)
Facilitated or creative workshop: Participatory, performative or creative workshops by individuals or groups (1 hour)
Lightning talk: A concise presentation highlighting a key issue or insight (5 minutes)
Poster presentation: Digital or multimedia posters showcasing projects or research
Creative and participatory formats: Including book launches, exhibitions, and cultural events
Submission Requirements
Please submit a 300-word abstract or a 3-minute video of your proposed contribution, including:
The topic and framing of your contribution
The format of your presentation
The relevance to one or more of the conference themes
Author/s name(s), organisation/institution, contact information (e.g. email address, mobile/telephone number).
For this piece of writing, we were particularly interested in how embodiment is gendered and vice-versa. In the article, we draw on interviews with trans men and non-binary people to explore the lived, bodily complexities of trans pregnancy. We consider the strategies trans men and non-binary people engage in to manage their gender presentation during pregnancy, and the degree to which pregnancy might disrupt their ability to control the presentation of gender.
The published article is currently behind a paywall, but you can download a free version here from the University of Glasgow’s Enlighten repository, or from the publications page of this website.
This is likely to be the last published article from the Trans Pregnancy Project, an international study which ran 2017-2021. Together we have written around 15(!) other articles and book chapters, and edited a special issue of the International Journal of Transgender Health. You can learn more on the Trans Pregnancy Project website.
On the evening of Tuesday 15th April 2025, I was widely perceived to be a British lesbian, both legally and socially. By 11am the following day, that was no longer the case, following a ruling by the UK’s Supreme Court.
I was not actually in the UK for this momentous occasion. I was instead in the Swiss city of Lausanne, for a workshop on standards of evidence in sex and gender policy. I was there to consider the very questions the UK’s highest court, in their supreme ignorance, had effectively dismissed. Their ruling determined that the term “sex” in the Equality Act referred to “biological sex”, which in turn should be understood as “the sex of a person at birth”. But what do we actually need to know about when we make policy around sex and gender, and what is the role of evidence in this?
The Tuesday evening found me hanging out in a second-rate Thai restaurant with Professor Sarah Lamble, an esteemed criminologist and fellow dyke. Lamble and I spent some time talking about how conspiracy theories around “disappearing lesbians” highlighted the strange ironies inherent in British anti-trans discourse. The anti-trans movement has been extremely successful in raising “reasonable concerns” around supposed problems that are completely ungrounded in reality, to the point where that reality itself begins to warp.
Mainstream political discourse in the UK increasingly reflects anti-trans claims that lesbians are somehow threatened by trans people, or are even being transed en-masse in gender clinics and youth groups. The true biological attraction between two adult human females is disrupted. Young people are tempted away from lesbianism with promises of luxurious facial hair and male privilege; meanwhile, horrifically manly and/or confusingly attractive trans dykes are introduced to the dating pool.
If these claims were true, we might expect to see some kind of reduction in the number of homosexual females. Instead, the evidence we have indicates quite the opposite. Surveys such as the Annual Population Study show a rising number of lesbians over recent years, part of a wider increase of 1.2 million in the recorded lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) population of the UK. This is driven especially by young people coming out, with over 10% of people aged 16-24 identifying as LGB as of 2023.
But what about the lived reality of queer womanhood? Well, there’s great news here too: we are living in a truly historic time for sapphic culture in the UK. Proudly out lesbian and bisexual women can be found across the pop charts, on TV, and across social media. Queer bookshops are on the rise. Pop-up butch bars and new queer cafes can be found in major cities and small towns. And, excitingly, even the much-maligned lesbian bar is making a comeback, with three permanent venues and numerous occasional nights now running in London alone. It’s all got so out of hand that in 2024 the Queer Brewing company sold a juicy pale ale named Dyke Renaissance, which conveniently listed an educational series of cultural milestones on the can.
If trans people are trying to disappear lesbians, we’re doing a really bad job of it.
Meanwhile, queer cis women tend to be pretty supportive of trans people. In fact they’re one of the single most supportive demographics in the UK – which is presumably why the Equality and Human Rights Commission is, right now, attempting to ban trans dykes such as myself from associating with any more than 25 biological lesbians at any one time.
On evidence
As lesbian conspiracy theories show, the very concept of evidence has had a bit of a hard time over the past decade.
In the UK, this was perhaps best encapsulated in 2016 by the Conservative politician Michael Gove. While campaigning for Brexit, he declared that the British people “have had enough of experts”. Gove’s claim is echoed in a growing anti-intellectualism across the globe. From the mass purge of universities in Türkiye, to the post-truth bizarro world of Donald Trump, to Israel’s scholasticide in Gaza, this trend manifests in blunt and brutal ways. Anti-expert authoritarianism doesn’t care about your facts or your feelings.
However, attacks on evidence can also be more subtle. Gove’s comments are widely quoted, but it’s less well-known that he singled out a particular kind of expert for criticism: “people from organisations with acronyms saying that they know what is best and getting it consistently wrong”. While this was gloriously vague in a way that allowed the listener to project all kinds of things onto Gove’s words, in context it was nevertheless evocative of the kind of group that tends to advocate for social justice. LGBTQQIAAP groups, perhaps.
From academic thinktanks, to charities, to campaigning organisations, the implicit problem was any kind of challenge to conservative common sense. The UK’s political mainstream has since doubled-down on this approach. In the run up to the 2024 general election, Tory home secretary Suella Braverman criticised “experts and elites”, while the secretary of state for science, innovation and technology, Michelle Donelan, promised to “kick woke ideology out of science”.
One of Donelan’s targets was the “denial of biology” in research by feminists, social scientists… and biologists. The problem here is that supposedly common sense notions of sex and gender, which assume clean and tidy biological divisions between male and female, collide violently with the beautiful messy reality of the material world. At this point in history, it is well-established that sexual diversity exists throughout nature, that men are not biologically superior to women, that social advantage is not conferred or denied by chromosomes, and that queer, trans, and intersex people exist in the world. The evidence for this is gloriously multifaceted. We find it in laboratories, in systematic reviews, in surveys and questionnaires, in the way that men shout abuse at us in the streets, in how our sexed bodies shift and change under hormonal influence, in the way we feel when we finally have a language that describes our experiences.
Michelle Donelan decided to tackle the thorny problems of feminist science, intersex bodies, and trans existence by commissioning a research project by Alice Sullivan, a supposed sociologist who doesn’t care one jot for any of the evidence outlined above. Published in March 2025, the Sullivan Review insisted that data collection relating to sex and gender should rely on a very narrow definition of biological sex: one that ignores trans and intersex women’s real lives, bodies, and experiences of misogyny, while promoting a sexist model of essentialised womanhood. Her findings were echoed in those of the Supreme Court judges a month later, whose pronouncements on biological sex were made without any reference to relevant social, scientific, or philosophical research on how this might actually be understood or defined in practice.
To position this as a wholly new trend would, of course, would be inaccurate. Western jurisdictions have long used and abused pseudoscience to oppress minoritised groups, especially in colonial contexts. This can be seen for example in the British state’s shameful embrace of “race science” and eugenics in the 19th and 20th centuries. What we are now witnessing is an example of the imperial boomerang, in which the logics of colonialism are turned inwards, resulting in increasingly fascist domestic politics.
But did you have a nice time in Switzerland, Ruth?
On that fateful week in April, I joined a group of feminist, trans, and lesbian researchers and activists for the workshop at the University of Lausanne. In the face of increasingly ill-informed policymaking across multiple contexts, it provided us a space to think together about the lessons we might learn collectively from our very different work on healthcare, sports, and prisons.
One overarching theme was the importance of evidence in understanding human experience, in terms of rigorous data collection, careful analysis – and accounting for the lived reality of actual people’s actual lives. A powerful account of the latter point was provided by Dinah Bons, a veteran campaigner for HIV prevention. She pointed out that if a sex worker repeatedly attends a community clinic for her STI tests, this provides evidence that the clinic feels safe enough for her to return regularly, which is far from a given. Such matters are often highly evident to service users and providers on the ground, without any need for a survey or interview.
Another key theme at the workshop was the extent to which various principles of evidence are increasingly abused by politicians, journalists, and institutions.
The concept of evidence has not been rejected wholescale by sexist, transphobic, and lesbophobic policymakers. Rather, “evidence” is increasingly a buzzword to justify particular approaches or points of view, rather than something grounded in a commitment to scholarly standards or an acknowledgement of lived experience. At the workshop, we explored how flawed notions of evidence have been used to support misleading statements or outright lies about human bodies or human experiences. We heard about the use and abuse of evidence in justifying invasive sex-testing for woman athletes, misrepresenting research on young people’s ability to engage in informed decision-making, and defending conversion practices. Notably, while most of these abuses arose from a specifically transphobic politics, they have far wider consequences: especially for women, intersex, and queer people, but also for scientific processes, community consultations, and informed advocacy more broadly.
You can see an example of this in the Cass Review. Through successfully performing the aesthetics of acceptable expertise and science to the satisfaction of the British public, the Review has become what one workshop participant described as a black box. By this they meant that it has become an abstracted justification for policy and practice, handily replacing any ongoing discussion of evidence regarding young trans people’s health and wellbeing. You don’t need to know what the Cass Review actually says or how rigorous it actually is, only that it exists. Well-documented criticisms of the review from healthcare practitioners, academic experts, trans community groups, and (most importantly) young trans people themselves are been rendered irrelevant. The Cass Review is the evidence, and no other systematic review, original research, or personal testimony can henceforth count against it. Not, at least, until 2031 at the earliest: the official end-date of a single £10 million study, based on the Cass recommendations and featuring precisely zero trans researchers.
The British establishment is now attempting to repeat this trick with the Sullivan Review – never mind that projects such as MESSAGE have conducted more extensive and nuanced work on the same topic with a far wider group of experts – and, of course, with the Supreme Court judgement.
Beyond doom
As with Cass, as with Sullivan, it is difficult to capture the sheer enormity of harm caused by the Supreme Court’s pronouncement on biological sex. The consequences are still playing out, and will no doubt continue to do so for many awful months and years.
At the time of writing, the Equality and Human Rights Commission have proposed a programme of mass segregation, designed to discriminate against trans people in the workplace, in public services, and in social groups. The guidance they have written is just that: guidance, not law. Nevertheless, major organisations such as the Football Association, the British Transport Police, and Barclays Bank, all of whom shamelessly paraded rainbows through their social media profiles last Pride season, are falling over themselves to comply. We are witnessing the attempted complete exclusion of trans people from public life, in the latest culmination of a transparent attempt to eliminate us altogether.
In such moments, it can be easy to despair. This is in part because it is easy to forget the strength, resources, power held within trans communities and by our allies. That includes the knowledge and evidence we have access to.
Don’t get me wrong. The people who want to eliminate us are better-funded, better-connected, and now have the Labour government on-side as well as the UK’s traditional right-wing parties. We are not going to win trans liberation overnight.
But then, again, we never were.
Everything I said about lesbian culture earlier is true of trans people too. 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.
Trans women and non-binary people are a part of the dyke renaissance. We are at the butch bars, and bemoaning the top shortage. We are dancing to Le Tigre and to Chappelle Roan. We are reading Gideon the Ninth and watching We Are Lady Parts and having all the feelings. My partner of the last decade was probably the most surprised of all to learn from the Supreme Court that I am not, in fact, a lesbian, as every bit of evidence from our shared personal lives points to quite the contrary.
I will concede that some trans people are not in fact lesbians, or even queer. Nevertheless, there are somany other places to find us in community with others. Trans people are in trade unions. Trans people are in workplaces. Trans people are in schools and colleges and universities. Trans people are in the streets. Trans people are on the bus. Trans people are in families. Trans people are making families. Trans people are playing football (suck it, Football Association). Trans people are eating pizza. Trans people are restoring the countryside. Trans people are hanging out beside Lake Geneva in the glorious sunshine, enjoying a much-needed break.
There are more of us than ever, and it is too damn late to put us back in a box.
Resistance is fertile
I was honoured to present the keynote presentation at the Swiss workshop. I spoke about the findings of the Trans Pregnancy Project, a study that produced enormous amounts of evidence on the experiences, needs, and perspectives of men and non-binary people who conceive, carry, and give birth.
No matter how much our findings are slammed by the media and billionaire children’s authors and washed-up comedy writers, our peer-reviewed work has demonstrated the lived reality of male and non-binary pregnancy over and over again. Most importantly, it has helped people. We are part of a far wider movement of parent groups, midwives, and researchers who are collectively building knowledge. I am constantly hearing from people who describe how much this knowledge has resulted in better care for them and their child. This kind of story drives everything I do.
Towards the end of my talk, I discussed the anti-trans moral panic, and the Supreme Court judgement. I then showed the below table of findings from the National Maternity Survey. This annual survey involves those who have recently given birth every year in many (but not all!) English hospitals, over the course of a few weeks. Since 2021, they have started asking whether the person giving birth has a different gender to the sex they were assigned at birth – i.e. are they trans?
Two things leap out from this table for me. Firstly, the 2021 data shows a very similar proportion of people indicating they are trans when compared to the 2021 censuses in Scotland, England, and Wales. This suggests that, contrary to assumptions around trans infertility or undesirability, trans men and non-binary people may well be just as likely to give birth as cis women are to become birth mothers.
Secondly, the number of trans people giving birth has risen dramatically over four years. Even as the anti-trans moral panic has deepened. Even as attacks on even recognising the existence of trans people in perinatal services have increased. As Del La Grace Volcano once it put it: “resistance is fertile!”
In the face of growing oppression, trans people are simply refusing to disappear. In fact, we are doing the opposite.
This, then, is the power that the anti-trans movement, the Labour party, and the Supreme Court cannot possibly take away from us. The more trans people are out and visible to one another, the more trans people come out and become visible to one another. Sure, we will unfortunately need to think more carefully about where and when we are out, and where and when we are visible, if this is something we even have any power over in our specific lives. I am sure that more trans people will be going stealth in future years, if they can. But regardless – there are more of us in community, more of us organising protests, and more of us than ever in the lives of our friends, families, colleagues, and allies, showing that it possible to have a good life while being trans.
In this context, it is important to know that people from many parts of the world gathered in Lausanne this April to pool our knowledge and skills and experiences. It is important to know that we have each returned to our home countries to share what we gained. It is important for people to know that similar meetings are happening across the world, in community centres and on university campuses, in board rooms and in bedrooms, involving trans people, and feminists, and yes, lesbians. We are constantly building a movement for positive change, and you do not have to be an academic or veteran activist to be a part of it. Trans power is for everyone.
There is much to say what needs doing in the current moment. We need allies to continue fighting alongside trans people for our collective liberation. We need to be demonstrating in the streets, funding mutual aid and legal action, actively resisting complicity in Labour’s eliminationist agenda, and encouraging every public body under the sun to do the same.
Evidence will be helpful for this. Evidence from academic research, sure, but also – as Dinah Bons pointed out – testimony from the everyday reality of trans people’s lives. And oh boy, do we have that evidence.
More of us than ever are producing evidence of trans existence, and trans persistence.
I am honoured to be speaking at the University of Lausanne next week, at an event hosted by the Center for Gender Studies. If you happen to be reading this in Switzerland, it would be lovely to see you there!
I’ll be providing a broad overview of findings from across the Trans Pregnancy Project. My aim is to analyse the moral panic over trans inclusion in perinatal care in the context of the vast amount of evidence in favour of gender-affirming approaches. This is also part of a series of talks I am doing this year reflecting back on the project more broadly as we publish the last of our findings.
On 8 February 2021, Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust published a series of groundbreaking resources on perinatal care for trans people, written by their Gender Inclusion Midwife team. As of March 2025, the Trust no longer exists, the midwives in question work elsewhere, and the resources page was sadly taken down – a sadly all-too common experience with NHS guidance for working with marginalised peoples.
Given the importance of these materials, for which I was part of a large team of expert reviewers, I am reproducing them on my website today for Trans Day of Visibility 2025, alongside some related resources.
I hope these will be of interest and use to anyone interested in improving perinatal care for trans people, including midwives, nurses, doctors, policymakers, commissioners, advocacy groups, and of course also families and prospective parents.
Professional guidance and protocolsby the Gender Inclusion Midwives
It’s been a long four years since the Gender Inclusion Midwives resources were published. Here, therefore, are a few additional materials that may be of help to people working in this area.
National Maternity Survey data on trans birth parents Since 2021 the Care Quality Commission has collected data on gender modality as part of its annual National Maternity Survey. The most recent findings indicate a significant rise in the number of men and non-binary people giving birth since 2021, with 1.58% of 2024 respondents indicating a gender that differs from the sex they were assigned at birth. This shows that hundreds of trans people are giving birth in England every year. See: Open data > 2024 Maternity survey National tables > page g9.
Improving Trans and Non-Binary Experiences of Maternity Services (ITEMS) 2022 report published by the LGBT Foundation, looking at the findings of an English study on the experiences of 121 trans people who conceived and gave birth. It found that many trans birth parents do not feel safe sharing their identity in perinatal services, with a large proportion not feeling comfortable to access any support at all from an NHS or private midwife.
Trans Pregnancy Project website I reviewed the Gender Inclusion Midwives resources as part of my work on the Trans Pregnancy Project, which was an international study of trans people’s experiences of pregnancy and childbirth. This year we launched a new website. This includes links to all our peer-reviewed publications, on topics including conception, pregnancy loss, midwifery, gender and embodiment, domestic violence, racialisation, and media representation.
Caring for Everyone: Effective and Inclusive Communication in Perinatal Care One of the key recommendations of the Gender Inclusion Midwives’ guidance on Gender Inclusive Language in Perinatal Service is the adoption of “additive” language. This approach acknowledges male and non-binary birth parents alongside mothers, rather than simply replacing woman-centred language with a gender-neutral approach. This 2025 academic article by Matthew Cull, Jules Holroyd, and Fiona Woollard provides advice on a “pluralist” approach to language, which builds upon the additive model by offering a more contextual approach. It includes clear examples of what best practice can look like.
Application deadline: Friday 17 January 2025, 24.00 UTC/GMT
We are currently recruiting to the editorial board of the Community Development Journal (CDJ), for which I’m currently one of the co-editors. This is a normal enough practice for many publications, but a bit of a historic moment for CDJ, which has historically relied on recommendations from an existing board member over the past 59 years(!) of the journal’s existence.
The current CDJ editorial board takes a very constructive and democratic approach to decision-making, so I’m really excited for the potential to reach beyond our existing networks to expand our diversity of knowledge and skills. Moreover, as Kirsty Lohman and I note in our editorial for issue 60.1, this will be (as far as we are aware) the first time we have ever recruited beyond the UK and Ireland – something that I feel is long overdue.
The full call can be found below, cross-posted from the CDJ Pluswebsite. If you are at all interested, please do apply! Importantly, we are seeking to recruit practitioners as well as researchers, so you do not need to hold any kind of academic post in order to apply.
The Community Development Journal is seeking to appoint up to five new Editorial Board members to join us from March 2025. We welcome applications from academics and practitioners globally, particularly encouraging those from under- represented groups.
About the Community Development Journal (CDJ) Established in 1966, the CDJ is the leading international journal in its field, covering a wide range of topics, reviewing significant developments and providing a forum for cutting-edge debates about theory and practice. It adopts a broad definition of community development to include policy, planning and action as they impact on the life of communities. We particularly seek to publish critically-focused articles that challenge received wisdom, report and discuss innovative practices, and relate issues of community development to questions of social justice, diversity and ecological sustainability.
The journal is published in partnership with Oxford University Press on a profit-share basis. The income received from the journal is managed by a charitable trust linked to the journal, of which editorial board members are also trustees. The trust can fund initiatives such as conferences, seminars and other activities that support its mission. The strategic objectives of CDJ are currently:
To produce the leading international journal in the field;
To develop critical reflection and theoretical learning on community development;
To promote international learning and exchange;
To promote informed critical debate on community development theory and practice;
To develop and support appropriate relationships, partnerships and networks to further these objectives;
To ensure that CDJ is well governed and financially viable to achieve the above objectives.
With several long-standing board members retiring, we are looking to refresh the membership with active and engaged people committed to promoting community development scholarship.
About the role Board member responsibilities include:
Attending board meetings (virtually or in person) as required. There are currently two full-day board meetings per year, including one residential.
Contributing as a peer reviewer to the journal at the request of the journal editors. This may include reviewing up to four articles per year.
Supporting and participating in our events and initiatives.
Promoting the Community Development Journal and encouraging submissions.
We ask that Editorial Board members commit to minimum of three years.
Who are we looking for? The Community Development Journal is committed to equality, diversity, and inclusion. We actively seek to create an Editorial Board that reflects the diversity of the communities we serve and study.
Skills and experiences we would particularly welcome include some of the following:
Good links to practitioner networks;
Experience as a community development practitioner/academic;
Financial management;
Familiarity with UK charity governance;
Interest in editorial roles;
Supporting people to build capacity for writing;
Organisation of community development focused events;
Knowledge and/or experience of democratic publishing models.
How to apply Please submit your application including:
A brief statement outlining the knowledge, skills and experience you would bring and explaining why you are interested in becoming a member of the CDJ Editorial Board
A two-page CV
Send your application to secretarycdj@gmail.com with the subject line “Editorial Board Application.”
Application deadline: Friday 17 January 2025, 24.00 UTC/GMT For any queries, please contact secretarycdj@gmail.com
Dr Ruth Pearce 