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Standing up for trans rights
There comes a moment when you look at the news and realise that it is you and your community in the cross hairs. Fredrick Bonhoffer has this in 1939, Martin Luther King shortly after he hit puberty, I could go on. When your personal rights are under attack it is easy to call for protection of them, to organise, to march. When it is other people, aliens to your in group if you will, it is harder to empathise and make noise about. Historically there have always been lone voices calling for justice, decrying the moral depravity of governments, though for every Sophie and Hans Scholl there have been people just getting on with their lives unwilling to stand shoulder to shoulder with them. They are forgotten, the Scholls are not. For every white rose there are a hundred unblossomed flowers on the stem. We are at this point with trans rights, in desperate need of more Scholls.
This is not hyperbole. Iraq just criminalised trans identities, daily American states attempt to pass new laws rolling back protections for the trans community, and in the UK trans people are once more being labelled predators in waiting by the State simply for waiting compassionate affirmed healthcare. The tension between trans rights and the braying cries on the other side is ratchetted up by those seeking power, and there is absolutely blood on their hands. For every trans person murdered simply for existing as their…
