Member-only story
Angry trans people fight back
Britain. 2023. The Prime Minister stands up at his party’s national conference and declares that it is okay to misgender people. At the same conference members of his party seek to ban trans women from women’s hospital wards and newspapers carry the story that exclusionary feminists have created a list of MPs who support trans rights in order to hound them. Welcome to the land through the looking glass, where trans rights are enshrined in law and caselaw, but the governing party does everything in its power to roll them back. TERF island indeed.
Across Twitter and other social media there has been an outpouring of anger from British trans folk, joining their American trans siblings in a state of perpetual frustration at how quickly their rights are being eroded. For all the talk of gender apartheid, separate but equal, the reality is that all the anti-trans lobby is doing is demolishing what few protections were in place, making already scared trans folk desperate. We are not at the Reichstag fire stage yet, but there is a feeling under the surface that all it will take is one desperate trans person to do something rash or a government to spin a calamity against the trans community and the whole house will come crashing in on us.
Or maybe I am just being melodramatic for effect. In the modern age it does not require a grand display of momentary madness to bring about…
