feminism

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My speech on the Cass Review and Scotland’s trans healthcare ban (with footnotes!)

This post shares a video and transcript of my speech at the emergency demonstration in George Square, Glasgow, on 18 April 2024, against the decision from NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde to ban endocrine treatments for trans people aged under 18. The speech was unplanned and made without notes, so I have made some small corrections in the transcript, plus minor amendments for clarity. I have also added references for some key points. Thank you to @transprotestglasgow for the video.

Readers seeking more detailed evidence and academic critiques may find my previous blog post helpful: What’s wrong with the Cass Review?

TRANSCRIPT

Hi, I’m Ruth Pearce.

I’m a Lecturer in Community Development at the University of Glasgow, and I’m a researcher on trans healthcare.

And I was a trans child.

I want to talk about that for a moment. Because I came out to myself circa 2001, when I was 15, when not many people did that. And it was hard for us. And there was trans community, and there was information, but it was very difficult because we felt very, very alone. I was mostly only able to connect with other trans people my age through the internet, through blogs, and they were mostly Americans. The Brits were there; a lot of us connected later as we grew older. But we were so isolated.

A really important thing to remember, in a moment like this where we are seeing a return to the kind of medical policies that were in place when I was a kid: there are so many more of us, and we are so much more powerful than we have ever been.1 Never forget that strength we have together.

One of the things Hilary Cass says in her report is that the meaning of the word “trans” has changed since 2020.2 She says, and there is no evidence for this, that “trans” in 2020 meant something quite rigid and specific, and only now in 2024 it’s become an umbrella term for lots of identities. Tell that to me coming out as a trans teenager in 2001!

So here’s the thing. We’ve always been here, and we are more powerful now, but we are seeing this backlash. That’s been a long time coming and transphobia changes its face over time. One of the things I wanted to do to deal with my loneliness and the experiences I had was that I wanted to become an activist. And when I started doing activism, when I got into meetings with people in government, and with the Equality and Human Rights Commission, they said “there’s no evidence” for the discrimination we faced. So I was like, “fine: let’s see what evidence I can find”.

So I did a PhD in trans healthcare.3 And I found what you often find when you do research; you often find things you don’t expect. So I did find some things I expected to find. About waiting lists and how hard they are. About how hard appointments can be when you’re meeting with sexist and transphobic clinicians who are asking you, as a young person, how you masturbate and who you’re attracted to. But what I didn’t expect was the sheer level of pain from the waiting. And I talk about that in my work. And the anticipation, where we are anticipating all the time. When is it going to happen? When are we going to get to live our lives? And that happens on every level of our lives.

I was also shocked by the level, and detail, and complexity of the ignorance of healthcare practitioners. It ranges: it’s not just that they all hate us, right? It’s that some people are trying to control us, some people want to help but don’t understand how, and some people don’t want to know. There’s different kinds of ignorance.4

So I published my work, and other people have followed. Other people were there before me of course, because “trans” was not new, and trans research wasn’t new either. There is now a lot of published research on what it is like to go through a gender clinic, and what it is like for a young person to go through a gender clinic. There’s people like Cal Horton5 and Natacha Kennedy6 who are writing on this, and Harvey Humphrey7 who works here in Glasgow. There’s a lot of people doing work on this.

We are saying, time and time again, “we need services that meet our needs”. For some people, that is access to puberty blockers, and that is access to hormones. For other people, that is access to counselling, and therapy, and community support. What we call “trans-affirmative” or “gender-affirmative” care is flexibility, meeting a person where they are at, and based on what they want to do with their lives.8 You don’t have to change your body – but you can.

It’s our body, it’s our right: we can do what we want with our own bodies.

This is what is disgusting about the decision by NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde. They have not addressed the years and years of mistreatment and abuse in their child and adolescent clinic at Sandyford. It is not a great place that we are trying to save. It is a clinic that has repeatedly refused to treat young people, and made people hold on for care. It has helped a handful of people. Dozens of people – only dozens – have accessed treatment in the last few years.9 Now they are proposing to stop doing the very little they are doing to support young trans people.

People who get a referral to a child and adolescent gender clinic are not necessarily seeking access to counselling and therapy, because you can get that elsewhere.10 They are not seeking access to community, because you will find no community at Sandyford. They are most likely seeking access to endocrine treatments: puberty blockers and hormone therapy. And that’s what they are going to stop doing.

Sandyford say they are still accepting new referrals. But what is the point of a gender clinic that does not offer people medical treatment?

NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde have based their decision on the final report of the Cass Review. Let’s talk a bit about the Cass Review.

I’m an academic researcher. If the Cass Review was submitted by an undergraduate student, the first thing I would say is: “That’s nearly 400 pages long! No-one’s going to have time to mark that”.11 And you’ll notice that all the people in the media, all the Labour politicians, all the Tory politicians, all the people saying we should immediately implement the findings of the report: none of them read nearly 400 pages in one day. Neither did the journalists at the BBC, the Telegraph, the Times, the Daily Mail, the Observer, the Independent. We expect better! And now the Scottish media: it’s all over the Scotsman, the National, the Herald. None of them have bothered to read the report, or think about it critically.

So here’s a bit of information about the Cass Review. The Cass Review was undertaken by a group of people who, from the very start, excluded trans people from oversight of the project. That was in their terms of reference.12 They didn’t want people who had experienced services having a formal part in the report. They excluded healthcare experts. If you were someone who had worked in a gender clinic you were excluded from being part of that.13 You know, I have lots of disagreements with many people who work in gender clinics, but you would have thought they might get a say.

You can see that ignorance, that intentional ignorance, playing out in the final report of the Cass Review. You can see, if you read the Cass report, that they looked at over 100 studies, most of which show that puberty blockers and hormone therapy can help young trans people. And they just ignored them.14 Intentionally. They say that the majority were not “high quality evidence”.15

What else is not high-quality evidence in healthcare? Paracetamol for back pain.16 There is no high quality evidence for that, in the terms of the Cass Review. Anti-psychotics.17 ADHD medication.18 All these medications that are in regular use. You know what else? Puberty blockers for young people with precocious puberty – if they’re cis.19 That is direct discrimination. 20

The thing is, that’s the Cass Review being serious. Let’s think about when it gets weird.

There’s a graph in there, where they show referrals to a gender clinic (the Gender Identity and Development Service in England) rising year on year, with “an exponential rise in 2014”. But they cut the graph off at 2017. But if you look at 2017-2020 the referral rate flattens off. It’s deliberate removal of evidence.21

We know why this is happening. Experts – medical experts, and experts by experience have been cut out of the Cass Review process. If you are trans, that’s you. You are an expert by experience. You know what it’s like. We have been cut out the process!

And the NHS have done that here in Scotland. There was no consultation on the ban that’s come in.

Who did they consult? We know there are people who are proponents of conversion therapy who were on the Cass Review team.22 That is what they are proposing.

They are proposing conversion therapy. Not just for trans kids, because they want to deal with all gender-questioning and non-conforming kids. This is going to be conversion therapy for queer kids. Little boys who want to wear a dress, they might not be trans, but they deserve to have the space to explore. That is not going to be what happens in clinics where people are referred which are being informed by conversion therapists.23

So consequently you have other weird stuff in the Cass Review. They’re dismissing all the evidence about why puberty blockers and hormones can benefit people within particular contexts, but they’re relying on other evidence for their recommendations. Let me give you one citation. “Thoughts on Things and Stuff, 2023”. That is a citation from the Cass Review: Thoughts on Things and Stuff.24

What is “Thoughts on Things and Stuff”? It’s a right-wing Youtube channel run by anti-trans bigots,25 featuring contributors such as “Gays Against Groomers”.26 This is the level of evidence that is informing NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde.

And I’ll tell you what else is in the Cass report. They say that little girls are likely biologically inclined to play with dolls. It’s right in there, in the Cass report.27 And little boys are probably biologically inclined to play with trucks. Why is this? It’s not just an anti-trans agenda. It’s an anti-feminist agenda. Its an anti-woman agenda.

Why is this happening? It’s happening because trans people are an easy target.

If you want to stop young people accessing contraception as teenagers, you remove trans people’s right to consent to care as young people. If you want to prevent young people – teenage girls – from having abortions, and you’re failing time and time again in the courts, you instead target puberty blockers, because that way you can set a precedent for preventing people from being able to make decisions as young people. You are undermining the idea that young people might have the capacity to consent to care and make an informed decision about their own bodies.28

So I will end on this. I’m a woman, I’m a trans person, and I think it’s really important we think about allies. I had the parent of a trans child contact me and say, “thank you for being an ally”. I want to think her for being an ally. The thing about allies is, we talk a lot about an “ally” being someone who supports somebody else. But no: allies are people who stand by each other and work together.

That’s why we need a trans feminist movement. A trans feminist movements gives people autonomy over their own bodies, space to make their own decisions, and enables people to stand together when we are all at risk.

So I’ll leave you with a chant I want to hear more of at protests:

“Trans rights, women’s rights: one struggle, one fight”.

FOOTNOTES

  1. My statement here is intended to highlight that more people are out as trans than ever before. Contrary to narratives of “social contagion”, there have always been people with gender diverse or sex nonconforming experiences. What has changed is that there is greater access to information and community, which makes it easier for people to come out. ↩︎
  2. “During the lifetime of the Review, the term trans has moved from being a quite narrow definition to being applied as an umbrella term to a broader spectrum of gender diversity. This clearly has implications for conceptualisations of detransition” (Cass et al., 2024, p.187). This claim is demonstrably false, as “trans” (and before that, “transgender”) has been used as an umbrella term for decades. This is shown in my own previous work as well as writing dating back to at least the 1980s by individuals such as Leslie Feinberg. ↩︎
  3. https://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/88285/ ↩︎
  4. For an excellent, more recent and more detailed analysis on this topic in the context of trans youth healthcare, see Magdalena Mikulak’s (2021) article “For whom is ignorance bliss? Ignorance, its functions and transformative potential in trans health“. ↩︎
  5. https://growinguptransgender.com/evidence/ ↩︎
  6. https://www.gold.ac.uk/educational-studies/staff/kennedy-natasha/ ↩︎
  7. https://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/socialpolitical/staff/harveyhumphrey/ ↩︎
  8. “Our stance, as gender-affirming practitioners, is that children should be helped to live as they are most comfortable. For a gender-nonconforming child, determining what is most comfortable is often a fluid process, and can modify over time. Therefore, in a gender affirmative model, gender identity and expression are enabled to unfold over time, as a child matures, acknowledging and allowing for fluidity and change” (Hidalgo et al., 2013). ↩︎
  9. “Since 2018, around 1.77% of young people who are referred to the gender care services at Sandyford have gone on to be prescribed puberty blockers”: https://www.thenational.scot/news/24262271.many-young-people-scotland-given-puberty-blockers/. ↩︎
  10. Although in practice, trans people are often also turned away from mental health services due to “trans broken arm syndrome“. ↩︎
  11. In my original speech, I inaccurately stated that the report was “500 pages long”. However, my point about requiring time to carefully consider its contents remains. ↩︎
  12. “The original published Terms of Reference (ToR) for the Cass Review’s assurance group explicitly excluded trans expertise, stating that it “deliberately does not contain subject matter experts or people with lived experience of gender services” [Report 1, version 1]. The current (updated) assurance group ToR is worded less clearly, yet still conveys exclusion of those with expertise or lived experience, as such individuals would naturally be expected to have an interest in the outcome of the review” (Horton, 2024: p.7) ↩︎
  13. One former gender clinician was involved in the research process: Tilly Langton, formely of England’s Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS). Langton’s recent activities include promoting conversion therapy materials in training for NHS psychiatrists and lobbying Kemi Badenoch about the UK government’s conversion therapy ban, alongside proponents of conversion practices. ↩︎
  14. Hilary Cass has contested this claim in reporting for the BBC. Her argument is that of the 103 studies analysed for the review, 60% were included in the synthesis of evidence. However, my argument here is specifically that the findings of these papers were broadly ignored in the writing of the report’s recommendations, while less robust material was instead prioritised. As Simon Whitten argues, “The majority of moderate certainty studies were included in the results section but then arbitrarily ignored in the conclusion entirely”. ↩︎
  15. I have removed a statement I made about randomised control trials from the transcript here as my point was unclear and therefore potentially misleading (as can happen when you do an unplanned speech on a complex topic!) Unlike the Cass Review team, I am keen to correct my errors. See the links in the above footnotes above for more detailed information on inclusion/exclusion criteria for the Cass Review. ↩︎
  16. See e.g. https://www.nps.org.au/news/is-paracetamol-effective-for-low-back-pain. ↩︎
  17. The landscape of evidence anti-psychotics is a complex one. There is “high-quality” evidence that anti-psychotic drugs work better than placebos in addressing various conditions, but the evidence for use of multiple drugs, reducing or increasing doses at particular junctures in treatment, or taking one drug rather than another in treating specific conditions is often of a similar (or lower) quality than the evidence for benefits of endocrine interventions assessed by the Cass Review (see e.g. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0890856716319992). ↩︎
  18. Specifically in the long-term, see e.g.: https://www.nationalelfservice.net/mental-health/adhd/adhd-medications-effective-safe/. ↩︎
  19. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cen.14410 ↩︎
  20. At this point, somebody stuck their hand up in the audience. I responded: “Someone stuck their hand up and might give me a footnote on that! I totally approve of that. I might invite you up later because I like evidence and I’m obsessed with it. [person indicates they were just waving to their friend, crowd laughs] Oh that’s grand! There we go, we haven’t even had a footnote.” Well, here is the footnote. ↩︎
  21. p.24 of the Cass Review final report. The rationale for this within the report is that the figure is adapted from a 2018 paper published in Archives of Sexual Behaviour. However, as Trans Actual observe: “The number of referrals to GIDS is known until 2020/21 […] the last 3 years for which data is available, shows that the number of referrals has recently plateaued. Such data is inconvenient for a narrative that relies on an inexplicable explosion in need[.]” ↩︎
  22. https://transsafety.network/posts/gender-exploratory-nhs-training/ ↩︎
  23. A historical example of treatment that “tries to make the child comfortable with the sex he or she was born with” within a gender clinic context can be found here: https://www.npr.org/2008/05/07/90247842/two-families-grapple-with-sons-gender-preferences. ↩︎
  24. p.70, used to evidence the activities of GIDS’ research team at a WPATH conference. They could have instead cited the conference website. ↩︎
  25. A good summary of the channel can be found in this piece by What The Trans: “When citing a recording from the WPATH 2016 conference, Cass uses a YouTube channel called Thoughts on Things and Stuff. This appears to be the associated channel of a now-defunct blog largely focussed on criticising the Mormon Church. Why this was relevant to Cass is unclear, although titles of recent uploads at the time of the WPATH video include “Dr. Stephen Levine: 13 Untruths Behind Gender Affirmative Therapies for Kids” (Levine is an advisor to Genspect) and “Gays Against Groomers: stop the indoctrination and medicalization of children. 2023 Florida testimony.”, which perhaps provides a clue to how Hilary Cass ended up citing a channel with only 22.4K subscribers. It thus seems that, in addition to being advised by and networked with a variety of prominent anti-trans figures and organisations, Hilary Cass appears to be getting her professional news from homophobic and transphobic YouTube channels.”  ↩︎
  26. Anti-gay campaigners have long attempted to position LGBTIQ+ people as a danger to children. In recent years this tactic has seen a resurgence, through positioning trans and queer campaigners as “groomers”. GLAAD have described Gays Against Groomers as a group who intentionally use “ambiguous messaging about characterizing LGBTQ+ people as pedophiles falsely and maliciously with the absolutely clear intent of driving fear.” ↩︎
  27. pp.100-101 ↩︎
  28. https://transsafety.network/posts/bell-v-tavistock/ ↩︎
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DJ set list: Killer Queen @ Grrrls Night Out, Coventry, 08/03/24

Photograph of a home-made DJ booth designed to look like an ancient Celtic chariot, with the name Boudica embossed on the front.

Back in the day, I had another blog where I posted all my DJ set lists. That blog no longer exists outside of the Wayback Machine because it was hosted by the University of Warwick and universities hate to host websites for too long, it seems (see also: Leeds and Sheffield taking down the trans pregnancy project websites once that sweet, sweet UKRI money stopped coming in).

However, I still like archiving things, so for the sake of posterity, here is my headline set from last night’s amazing party for International Women’s Day at the Tin in Coventry, hosted by the awesome women at Boudica Festival.

Blondie – Atomic
The Selecter – Missing Words
Azealia Banks – 212
underscores feat. gabby start – Locals (Girls Like Us)
100 gecs – mememe
Hole – Celebrity Skin
The Cardigans – My Favourite Game
Indigo Girls – Closer To Fine
Dolly Parton – 9 to 5
Beyoncé – Texas Hold ‘Em
Le Tigre – TKO
The Ting Tings – That’s Not My Name
Miss Eaves – Thunder Thighs
St Vincent – Digital Witness
SOPHIE – Immaterial
Annie Lennox – Walking on Broken Glass
Wet Leg – Wet Dream
Mitski – Washing Machine Heart
Gloria Jones – Tainted Love
Bananarama – Venus
Belinda Carlisle – Heaven Is A Place On Earth
Courtney Barnett – Pedestrian At Best
Black Dresses – In My Mouth (request)
Wargasm – Do It So Good
Nova Twins – Antagonist
Janelle Monae – Make Me Feel
Billie Eilish – bad guy
Aretha Franklin – Think
Skunk Anansie – Weak
Kate Bush – Running Up That Hill
Evanescence – Bring Me To Life
Nightwish – Over The Hills and Far Away

I believe this was my first DJ set in almost nine years and I will admit I was pretty nervous! Even worse, most of my old equipment is buried in a box somewhere due to multiple moves over the last few years, so I really had to wing it. At the same time, I used to play a lot back in the day. Between that, a usb stick stuffed with days’ worth of music, and some hard work in preparation, it all felt very natural once I was on stage in Boudica’s amazing home-made Iceni chariot booth. I really enjoy figuring out what an audience wants to hear and then taking them on a ridiculous journey with that, and once the adrenaline kicks in it’s one hell of a trip.

I’m hugely grateful to Boudica for inviting me back to Coventry and providing such a supportive environment. It was exciting to dance to brilliant sets from new DJs before stepping up myself, reflecting Boudica’s commitment to supporting women and non-binary people in picking up new instruments and skills. Most of all, I’m thankful to everyone who turned up to party.

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Free essays! Queer punk, trans-inclusive midwifery, and trans health law

In recent years I have co-authored numerous peer-reviewed essays for edited collections. I have just made three of these freely available, from books originally published in 2020 and 2021.

Why is this happening now? Well, it’s basically due to moves toward so-called “open access” within the bizarro world of academic publishing. I try and publish my work in places that will also let me share my work for free. For book chapters, publishers usually impose an embargo period of 2-3 years, after which authors are allowed to share the post-peer-review version on our own website. The essays I have recently uploaded have all had their embargo end, so I’m excited to now share them more widely.

You can download the essays by clicking on the links below.

Queering Community Development in DIY punk spaces
Also published in the book: Arts, Culture and Community Development (Policy Press)
Written with my long-running collaborator Kirsty Lohman, this essay looks at grassroots community organising within queer, feminist, and anti-racist punk spaces. We argue that this organising is often prefigurative: that is, it actively models and enacts the changes that punks want to see in the world. Looking at events such as First Timers and Decolonise Fest, plus bands such as Big Joanie, we explore what happens when marginalised people create their own cultural spaces, and seek to facilitate access to these spaces for others who are often denied artistic and political expression.

Men transmasculine and non-binary people and midwifery care
Also published in the book: Midwifery Essentials (Elsevier)
I contributed to this essay as part of the Trans Pregnancy research project team. Our project spoke with over 50 men, transmasculine, and non-binary people who experienced pregnancy and childbirth in Australia, Bulgaria, Canada, Germany, the UK, and the USA, plus a handful of midwives who have supported people from this group. In this short essay, we briefly outline the positive and negative experiences that trans birth parents reported having with midwives, plus challenges reported by midwives themselves. On this basis we make 8 recommendations for developing best practice with trans people in midwifery services.

Depathologising Gender: Vulnerability in Trans Health Law
Also published in the book: A Jurisprudence of the Body (Palgrave Macmillan)
I co-wrote this essay with Chris Dietz, a scholar of Law at the University of Leeds. Drawing on feminist and trans critiques of human rights models, plus an analysis of gender recognition laws in countries including Argentina, Denmark, and the UK, we argue for a new approach to understanding the fight for depathologisation in law and medicine.

These three essays are just some of the many peer-reviewed academic publications I make freely accessible on this website. For more work on a range of topics relating to trans studies, feminism, and/or community development, see my publications page.

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Talk at the University of Strathclyde: Wed 17 Jan

I will be speaking about my research at an event hosted by the Strathclyde University Feminist Research Network at 3pm on Wednesday.

The talk is titled “Reproductive Justice for Trans People”. It will focus on findings from the Trans Pregnancy and Improving Trans Experiences of Maternity Services projects, but will also touch on wider questions of social reproduction for trans people of all ages and genders.

The event is free to attend, and you can register to attend here.


There are also a lot of other great talks on feminist topics hosted by the Feminist Research Network as part of their seminar series, so definitely check them out!

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“Transnormativity in the Psy Disciplines” reprinted in feminist reader



I’m really happy to announce that an article I co-authored, “Transnormativity in the Psy Disciplines: Constructing Pathology in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual and Standards of Care”, has been reprinted in the Palgrave Handbook of Power, Gender, and Psychology.

Originally published in American Psychologist in 2019, this was among the first of many articles written collaboratively with my colleagues in the Trans Pregnancy Project team: Damien W Riggs, Carla Pfeffer, Sally Hines, Francis Ray White, and Elisabetta Ruspini. I hope that through its inclusion in this new handbook on theories of gender and power in feminist psychology, this slightly updated essay will reach new readers and provide helpful context on the construction of sex/gender norms through classification and diagnosis.

As I explained on its original publication, in this piece “we examine how the interests of cisgender clinicians and trans patients have variously been opposed and entwined, and contextualise this in relation to wider structures of racism, sexism, colonialism, and binary thinking around sex and gender. We focus especially on how guidance for diagnosing trans people and managing trans healthcare has been contested across various versions of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (the DSM) and the International Harry Benjamin Gender Dysphoria Association (HBIGDA, later WPATH) Standards of Care.”

A free open access version of the original article remains available here: [Transnormativity in the Psy Disciplines: Constructing Pathology in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual and Standards of Care].

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Trans liberation at Greenbelt Festival

I’m delighted (and slightly baffled) to announce I will be speaking at Greenbelt Festival at the end of August. I’ll be talking trans liberation and feminist futures, thinking through how solidarity and collaboration can help us build a better future for all.

You can get your tickets here.

If you’ve ever wanted to see me on the same lineup as Ezra Furman, Laura Mvula, Grace Petrie, Sorority Grrrls, Brian Eno, and *checks notes* Tim Farron, this is likely your one (1) chance.

Poster for Greenbelt Festival, which takes place 24-27 August in Kettering, UK
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Trans joy in hateful times

“We’re living in the future!”

I bounced up to an old friend to share this important insight. All around, queer bodies danced and swayed to furiously enthusiastic music. We have always sought refuge in one another, in our in our art, in utopic dancefloors and community care. But something felt different.

The collective energy of the crowd was wild, strong, cohesive. The entire room was dancing – and among us, so so many out, happy trans women and transfeminine people. On stage, a non-binary person sang explicitly about their experiences of gender to an assertive ska beat. It was a joyful moment – but the true wonder of it for me was that it was far from unique.

This was the last in a string of winter tour dates for my band wormboys, at the brilliant Queer As Punk event in Edinburgh. But I’d experienced similar in Dundee, in Glasgow, in Newcastle, in Hull, in Leeds. At every gig, trans women and non-binary people were scattered throughout the audience; at most, there were also several of us on stage through the night. It’s a world of difference from when I encountered just the occasional trans man playing gigs in the mid-2010s; let alone from when wrote a blog post titled Trans/queer rock music back in 2010, in which I desperately sought validation in questionable gender-bending tunes written by (largely) cis musicians.

While trans women (and trans people more broadly) have always been involved in DIY music, there’s a clear change taking place. We have taken our inheritance and run with it. There are more of us making our own art, telling our own stories, and celebrating one another more than ever before. We are more visible, we are more assertive, we are more respected within our scenes, and – collectively – we are having more fun.

Photo of three people from a band, rocking out in front of an audience in a darkened room
wormboys play Queer As Punk. Photo by Blanka Bandi.

—

The very night we enacted a better future on that dancefloor in Edinburgh, 16 year-old trans girl Brianna Ghey was stabbed to death in Warrington. Two other teenagers, a girl and a boy, have been charged with her murder.

For trans people across the UK – especially trans women and girls – this lethal attack was not unexpected. It feels like the culmination of a vicious hate campaign that permeates our media and politics. It’s also the tip of a vast iceberg of intentional violence and untimely death.

Suicide is endemic among trans youth driven to despair by the socially-sanctioned antagonism directed at them every hour of every day. I am tired of citing statistics. I have lost so many of my friends and peers. Words and numbers are insufficient for the raw anguish of my grief.

This is only compounded by the failures of bystanders who refuse to intervene, schools and employers who try to make us disappear, a National Health Service that inflicts harm upon us. England’s only child and adolescent gender clinic is due to close in a matter of weeks, with nothing ready to replace it. In an extraordinary open letter, the majority of clinical, research, and administrative staff at the clinic note an “increase in deaths related to the service” since the suspension of endocrine treatments in 2020.

Many of my friends have been threated or assaulted in broad daylight. One, for instance, had rocks thrown at her. Another was assaulted in front of the school gates. Another was raped by boys in the school playground. I frequently struggle with feelings of survivor’s guilt, having merely been publicly assaulted, stalked, harassed, and subject to threats of legal action and murder. Relatively minor matters, in the scheme of things.

Photograph of a large crowd in a narrow street in London, with occasional placards and a trans flag.
Vigil for Brianna Ghey outside the Department of Education, London. Photo by David Griffiths.

—

How to understand joy in the face of so much hate and despair?

This is a question I struggled with throughout our tour. The night before Brianna’s murder, 400 people rioted in Knowsley outside a hotel that houses asylum seekers, spurred on by the fascist group Patriotic Alternative. This horrific event, too, did not occur in a vacuum. Racist and anti-migrant sentiment has similarly been stirred up by cynical politicians and journalists, as asylum seekers, economic migrants, British Black and Asian people, Gypsies and Travellers are repeatedly failed or directly targeted by our authorities and institutions. Patriotic Alternative have also repeatedly targeted LGBTIQ+ communities, through their campaign against Drag Queen Story Hour.

The Sunday prior, a large rally was held in Glasgow by anti-trans group “Let Women Speak”, who have a long history of collaboration with white supremacists and antisemites. This event, supposedly organised in support of “women’s rights”, featured numerous flags in the suffragette colours of green, white, and purple, alongside massive black banners emblazoned with the slogan: “Woman (noun): Adult Human Female”. It was attended by Holocaust deniers, anti-migrant, and anti-abortion campaigners, and was described by supporters as an “undisputed Aryan victory”.

I could say so much more: about assaults on disabled people’s rights and livelihoods, about the demonisation of the poor, about attacks on pay, pensions, and the unions that attempt to defend them (I am writing this post while on strike). About how fascist violence is excused by sexist men in the name of “defending women and girls”. About how oppressed groups are played off against one another, while the effects of all this hateful discourse and action are felt most keenly at the intersection of multiple forms of persecution, such as by migrant trans women of colour.

Ultimately though, my point is this: what we are seeing is both a consequence of historic prejudices in our society, and of rising fascism.

Minority groups, women, migrants, and working class people in the UK have always faced a shared struggle against systemic discrimination and violence. Following a period of mild reform in the 1990s and 2000s, we are now experiencing a significant upswing in bold, blatant hate speech and violence,  effectively condoned by every major political party and the majority of mainstream media publications.

This is the context of trans joy in the 2020s – and the reason why that joy is so necessary and vital.

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Our tour reminded me that art is resistance, and resistance is collective. In recent days I have felt myself marinading in my own fear, a recipe for passive inaction. If we cannot experience joy, we cannot dream; if we cannot dream, we cannot hope; if we cannot hope, we cannot fight back. In the face of a world that wants so many of us dead, it is vital that we create reasons to live, and to thrive.

In Leeds, wormboys played to a rammed room in Wharf Chambers, a triumphant hometown crowd. We invited the brilliant Punjabi-Celtic-indie fusion trio Kinaara and gorgeous queer folk duo Serin to support us, building new friendships and cementing old ones. In Hull we debuted at the New Adelphi, where now-legendary acts such as Lizzo, Manic Street Preachers, Pulp, Skunk Anansie, and PJ Harvey played before they were famous. We shared the stage with Sandbox Mode – a solo hip-hop artist making deeply honest and funny songs about mundanity and despair – and Baby Flowers, an exciting young grunge group playing their second ever gig. This was the least well-attended, most male-dominated, and least obviously queer gig on our tour. And yet: the mood was vibrant, I noted at least one other trans woman in the audience, and Baby Flowers’ bassist was showing off a well-placed trans rights sticker.

In Newcastle, we found ourselves in the Little Buildings, a venue which has miraculously survived Covid-19 despite being founded just the pandemic began. The event was hosted by new dance party Queer Love. We played alongside the incredible hardcore group Disciplinary with their two bass guitars, and also the feminist dance-punk phenomenon of Fashion Tips. The whole night was amazing, but Fashion Tips were particularly exciting for me. Frontwoman (and Queer Love organiser) Esmé Louise Newman has a long history of involvement in groundbreaking queer feminist punk, metal and no-wave groups, including Penance Stare and Etai Keshiki. The new band were just as brilliant, with aggressive guitars and vocals underpinned by a powerful rhythm section, heralding a new era of revolutionary dancefloor divination.

Next to Glasgow, where I organised a well-attended gig at The 13th Note in less than a week, after our original promoter pulled out at the last minute. We booked the astoundingly powerful riot grrrl group Brat Coven to play with us, along with HAVR, purveyors of gorgeous post-punk soundscapes. The latter band are fronted by Carrie Marshall, author of Carrie Kills A Man, who noted to cheers that she was a different gender the last time she played the venue. This was an event with plenty of trans women present, beaten only by brilliant gig in the same venue the very next night, which I went to see my soulful dyke folk pal Pictureskew play inbetween our own shows. That event might well be the first of its kind I’ve been to where there were at least as many trans women in attendance as anyone else. It was beautiful.

Then to Dundee, where Rad Apples and Make That A Take put anarchist theory into practice by actively working to provide a safer punk venue and events for women, queer people, and migrants, through simultaneously building a welcoming space and promoting a zero-tolerance attitude towards discrimination and abuse. There I had two totally new life experiences. First, I witnessed somebody crowdsurfing in a shopping trolley during a storming set from banjo punks Alldeepends. Then, we were subject to the well-organised chaos of the “crowd surfing machine” by jubilant anarcho-folk headliners Boom Boom Racoon (a variant on the sat-on-the-floor rowing boat dance associated with songs such as “Oops Upside Your Head” and “Rock The Boat”, but with audience members encouraged to take turns in crowdsurfing along the boat).

Through the tour, I’d been carrying a trans flag to drape over my bass amp, and have often said something about trans liberation from stage inbetween songs. wormboys are a political band, but not in the same way as more in-your-face punk groups I’ve previously fronted. I’ve reveled in the ability to just be a musician and make that – rather than my status as a trans woman – the focal point of my involvement, leaving most of the talking to dual vocalists duo Sop and Harry. In the current political environment, that has increasingly felt untenable. It seems important to speak out, make myself visible, be obviously a trans woman making music.

But at Rad Apples I didn’t need to. There was already a trans flag up. There were plenty of other trans people there. There were placards in the bar opposing Section 35. I could just be.

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And so to Edinburgh, where I found myself living in the future during a joyous set from opening act Bufandas. A future in which we experience the true paradox of trans visibility, in that we are both uniquely vulnerable, and uniquely strong. No longer hiding in the shadows, we are easier targets for those who hate us, but also have so much more potential to build power together.

Brianna Ghey’s killers may be convicted and jailed, but that will do nothing to stop the violence we face across these islands, and across the wider world. We have learned that we cannot trust the police to save us, or the courts, or politicians, or journalists, or managers, or human resources departments. But we don’t need any of these people or organisations. We owe it to Brianna to continue the grassroots work she did to improve other people’s lives, because another world is possible.

The headliners at Queer as Punk in Edinburgh were the fiercely feminist disco punk group The Red Stains. Their set included several explicit statements of support for trans people and especially trans women and girls, reflecting the attitude of most women active within actual feminist movements. This was an important reminder that anti-trans movements do not speak for all women, and never will.

My experience of sharing a stage with so many amazing musicians, from so many backgrounds, featured many such reminders. I was reminded of the sheer depth and range of human creativity. I was reminded of how much we can be inspired by our differences as well as shared experience. I was reminded of how far we have come, as well as how far we have to go. 

There are so many of us. Today, we mourn. Tomorrow, we fight. Soon, we will win.

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Video: Reproductive Justice for Trans People

Earlier this year I did a talk for the University of Cambridge Reproductive Justice Research Network alongside my excellent colleague Francis Ray White.

We talked about research findings from the Trans Pregnancy and Improving Trans Experiences of Maternity Services projects, plus reflected on the wider context of reproductive justice for trans people, including media coverage, medical racism, abortion rights, and attacks on young trans people’s bodily autonomy.

You can watch a video of the talk here:

(as a quick aside, I’d like to thank my good friend Harry Tunnicliffe for last use minute of his office so I could do this talk while away from home!)

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Upcoming talks: April-May 2022

I am speaking at a series of exciting events over the next few weeks! All are free to attend, you will just need to register in advance if you’d like to come.

Tuesday 26th April – Manchester
Trans Healthcare: Past, Present and What Might Have Been

In-person roundtable discussion, with Ellis J Johnson, Stephen Whittle, Krishna Istha, and Laura Salisbury.

6pm-8pm BST, International Anthony Burgess Foundation
3 Cambridge Street, Manchester, M1 5BY

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Wednesday 27th April – Online
Queer and Trans Mobilisations – Possibilities and Challenges

I am incredibly honoured to be giving a keynote talk for this two-day event hosted by the Department of Sociology, University of Hyderabad, and the Centre for Writing and Pedagogy, Krea University. I will be speaking about “Building Queer and Trans Communities in the UK” towards the end of the first day, and am enormously excited to be learning from colleagues in India during the event.

10am-6pm IST, 27-28 April
Register online to attend

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Thursday 5 May – Online
UK Workshop in Trans Philosophy

I will be delivering a keynote on the first day of this groundbreaking event hosted by the University of Glasgow. My talk is provisionally titled “Let’s (not!) fight a TERF war: Trans feminism in a time of moral panic”.

9:30am-4:30pm BST, 5-6 May
Register online to attend

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Wednesday 11 May – Online
Reproductive Justice Research Network seminar (link to come)

I will be joining colleagues from the Trans Pregnancy project to discuss findings from our international study of trans and non-binary people’s experience of conception, pregnancy, and childbirth. Our talk is provisionally titled “Reproductive Justice for Trans People”.

Full details TBA – watch this space!

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Womxn in Music: Friday 5 March

Promotional image for the Womxn in Music event hosted by the Boileroom. It features Lesley-Anne O'Brian playing guitar, Ruth Pearce singing and pointing, and Nuha Ruby Ra looking moody and intense.

I am speaking on a panel on Womxn in Music this coming Friday! The event is being streamed by Guildford venue The Boileroom as part of a super cool series in the runup to International Women’s Day. I expect to be speaking a bit about DIY culture, my research on queer and trans politics within punk scenes, and experiences of playing in bands and running events.

I’ll be in conversation with Nuha Ruby Ra, who will also be performing a live set, plus Lesley-Anne O’Brien of Lockjaw Records and Midwich Cuckoos.

You can book tickets for free here (or for a donation to the venue – which definitely helps in Covid times!)