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Trans stuff
May. 1st, 2025 12:08 pmI have been having a whole bunch of feels about the Supreme Court "biological sex" judgement and subsequent ghastliness from the EHRC and UK Government. I am aware that I'm in a much safer position than many trans people - I'm male, I easily pass as cis unless I choose to out myself or someone recognises the scar on my forearm as leading to phalloplasty, and I'm currently living in a civilised country with only occasional visits to the UK. But as well as being furious on behalf of those who are less safe than me, and in principal at the whole absurdity of it all, there is also genuine anxiety about how it will affect my life when I move back to London. Will I be left with a choice between outing myself and breaking the law whenever I want to use a public toilet or changing room? Will I have to wait longer for healthcare if I need hospital treatment, because they won't put me on either a male or female ward, and there are limited single-user rooms?
I find myself vacillating between wanting to be more visibly out as trans, both to increase the sense of "here is a person who is on your side" for other trans people, and to highlight the absurdity of the "woman means biological woman, like this person with a massive beard and a hairy belly and a penis and a low voice and no breasts or womb or ovaries*", and at the same time wondering whether it wouldn't be wiser to go back to being relatively stealth, so that if things continue to get worse by the time I come back I can fly under the radar if need be. At the moment I'm leaning towards greater visibility, but uncomfortably aware that that might change, and that maybe I shouldn't make myself so visible that I can't hide it in the future.
I'm also feeling a combination of impotence and something akin to survivor's guilt, as it feels like even though I've got a bunch of privilege that I ought to be able to weaponise somehow, and I'm somewhere safer in which to do so, there's not a great deal that I can do from over here, especially as I have very limited spare time and spoons around my studies, and I think that jeopardising them for the sake of activism probably wouldn't be the right choice. It took me until today to manage to write to my MP, but at least that's something.
( Letter behind the cut )
On the more frivolous side, I have new beard beads, which I'm quite pleased with.
*FTAOD, I absolutely think you can be a woman with all of those things, and with no intention to change any of them, but I find the inconsistency between the "sex is just common sense and defined by primary and secondary sexual characteristics. How absurd these people are who suggest that a woman can have a penis" and "oh, but sex is immutable and changing all of these characteristics doesn't actually change your sex" ridiculous and enraging.
I find myself vacillating between wanting to be more visibly out as trans, both to increase the sense of "here is a person who is on your side" for other trans people, and to highlight the absurdity of the "woman means biological woman, like this person with a massive beard and a hairy belly and a penis and a low voice and no breasts or womb or ovaries*", and at the same time wondering whether it wouldn't be wiser to go back to being relatively stealth, so that if things continue to get worse by the time I come back I can fly under the radar if need be. At the moment I'm leaning towards greater visibility, but uncomfortably aware that that might change, and that maybe I shouldn't make myself so visible that I can't hide it in the future.
I'm also feeling a combination of impotence and something akin to survivor's guilt, as it feels like even though I've got a bunch of privilege that I ought to be able to weaponise somehow, and I'm somewhere safer in which to do so, there's not a great deal that I can do from over here, especially as I have very limited spare time and spoons around my studies, and I think that jeopardising them for the sake of activism probably wouldn't be the right choice. It took me until today to manage to write to my MP, but at least that's something.
( Letter behind the cut )
On the more frivolous side, I have new beard beads, which I'm quite pleased with.
*FTAOD, I absolutely think you can be a woman with all of those things, and with no intention to change any of them, but I find the inconsistency between the "sex is just common sense and defined by primary and secondary sexual characteristics. How absurd these people are who suggest that a woman can have a penis" and "oh, but sex is immutable and changing all of these characteristics doesn't actually change your sex" ridiculous and enraging.
