They provoke a constitutional crisis to try to stop us identifying as who we are. They close down the children’s and youth hospital that supported our children rather than allow them to grow up happy and free. They kill us in parks and the police wont even call it a hate crime. They smash the windows of our community spaces and the shops that display our flags in solidarity. They call our elders groomers, rapists and paedophiles. They torment our youth by calling them confused, easily influenced or immature. They threaten to deny the legal rights of our international siblings who might come here with gender recognition certificates issued in more tolerant states. They deny us the chance to take part in or compete in sports. From Prime Minister to Leader of the Opposition, front bench to front bench, newspaper to news website they misgender us, deadname us, and transphobically abuse us both in life and even after we have died. Their attack dogs – whether from organised fascism or the shadow minister for women and equalities – denigrate our existence or picket our events or call our very existence ‘a debate’. They demonise our lives and scoff at our deaths. They refuse us healthcare, hormones, puberty blockers, HRT, medicines, surgeries, and the possibilities of transitioning for spurious heterosexist reasons. Or simply because they can. They gate-keep their incredible power to change and transform our existence. They leave us on waiting lists for decades. Our elders spend a lifetime being denied and are then forced to spend their last precious years re-closetting themselves in care homes and home care services.

And They distract us with Rowldemort, billionaire bigot who relishes the pain she causes.

They make up science – pretending that sexual dimorphism is simple and clear whether in skeletons, genetics, puberty, fertility, brain shape or behavioural traits. They record us as who They say we are, masking the many suicides of our trans sisters and dragging them up, even in death, as men. They claim to tell all the stories of the LGBT community but then ruthlessly deny our truths, our forebears, our ancestors. They project their white imperialist sciences and binaries onto the world’s cultures and communities whether indigenous or trafficked there by colonialism or enslavement. They froth at the mouth as we try to make their violent languages speak in ways that express our truths. They gloss over or erase the neglect, the homelessness, the addiction, the mental health crises, the suicides, the loneliness, the depressions, the self harm, the eating disorders and DIY disasters.

And if we research alternate options, asylum in other countries, we find that these terrible transphobic islands are still considered a safe third party country for LGBT citizens by the EU and North America, Australia, New Zealand and Japan

And I say:
Brianna
Brianna
Brianna

For far too long we have been divided by age, by communities, by technologies, by race, by dis/abilities, by gender identity, by class, by immigration status, by access to social media. For too long we have focussed on a group of poisonous journalists, twitterati gender fascists and a billionaire author.

But remember that in every single one of those health authorities that have gender clinics have head offices. Political decisions are made in their board rooms not on Rowldemort’s twitter feed. They make decisions not to employ more nurses or doctors or surgeons; decisions not to implement widespread shared care; decisions not to allocate more resources to trans kids, trans youth, trans elders and nonbinary people of any age. And those decisions wreck our communities and lives. Those news papers and media organisations have head offices too. The agent who represents Rowldemort takes their cut – I bet they have a head office. The publishers, police departments, education authorities, government quangos, academic research centres, CAMHs – they all have pavements outside their offices and head offices.. Transphobia does not exist in the clouds, it has addresses. Not the individuals who revel in the attention but are actually flaccid egos with no real power except columns in The Spectator or tweets on the broken social media site. No, I mean the institutions and agencies that control, and often destroy, our lives.

But We live in all corners of these islands. And we have camera-phones and banners and placards and social media accounts. We are people who will speak our truth to power, in public, on the streets, in cities and towns and villages. And we have nothing to lose.

Brianna Brianna Brianna

Protect Trans Kids – Defend Trans Elders
We are who we say we are and we are valid
We will NEVER be Silent Again

Kell w Farshéa

Kell w Farshéa (they) is a nonbinary intersex trans woman. They have been an anarchist for 43 years. From Orgreave to Section 28, a union rep to the Camberwell Squatted Centre, the Poll Tax to Trans Liberation – they have been involved in many anarchist and anti-authoritarian activisms for over four decades.

They were press officer for ACT UP London (89-92), co-founded the UK Sister of Perpetual Indulgence, founded the Spanner campaign (1992-1997) & SMPride Marches (1992-2003) and were co founder of Institute of SM Studies in 2019.

They live in London with a companion animal.

Image: Guy Smallman