The ones who want trans folks out of the public sphere will now feel emboldened to challenge us, to abuse us, to misgender us
~ Kell w Farshéa ~
It’s the sheer sadism of it—the corks popping outside the Supreme Court as a group of women and a couple of men cheer at excluding one of the smallest minorities in the country out of meetings, community centres, and events. They are proud of themselves. They are cheering. They see this as a great victory. They do not look across the ocean to see where this kind of politics ends up. Instead, they see themselves as white knights on chargers righting wrongs for women. And all the while Andrew Tate and misogynists like him spread hatred and bigotry across the internet, whispering into the ears of adolescent boys and grown men that their rights to sex and relationships and fatherhood are being stolen. The Supreme Court ruling will do nothing to challenge that—in fact it is part of the problem.
This should be a warning for everyone. The British State through its highest courts, in collusion with the media and the government and the official opposition, has erased a group of people. We are now not women, we are men who identify as women. We can be barred from any kind of event or meeting or place if the host or organiser or institution declares this to be a women only space by intent. And everywhere we go—every toilet, changing room– becomes a greater nightmare. The ones who want us out of the public sphere will feel emboldened to challenge us, to abuse us, to misgender us. And trans brothers and nonbinary siblings too. Because the supreme court ruling may have been targetting trans femmes, but the net will go far and all of our community will suffer.
As a working class nonbinary trans woman with disabilities I’ve been in the firing line a lot recently, both by the Starmer government and by the actions of the Trump government. Just like Israel is treating Palestinian children’s lives as of lower value than other children, so in the UK are trans children’s lives and outcomes seen as of lesser value than cis children in their classrooms and sports clubs. And it’s the same everywher else: the enslaved children digging out lithium with their bare hands in the mines of Congo, the teenage girls forced to carry pregnancies to term in the co-called USA, the young women working in sweatshop factories, all the non-union bodies deprived of time and food and drink at amazon fulfilment centres across the world.
Yet here we are. A group of feminists and billionaire joyriders like Trump and J. K. Rowldemort, ganging up on girls. And not just girls. On cis women boxers. On black distance runners. On women prisoners. On army conscripts. On trans boys and nonbinary kids too.
And now they’ve come for adults, as we knew that they always would. When it was no longer about saving some kids from ‘invasive treatments’ or “medical diagnoses”. When it was no longer about Keir Starmer refusing to call his child a cat. When it was no longer about saving children from themselves but about sadistically going for the femmes.
The less well we pass, the more we are a target. And it’s coming for older sections of the community too. Yes. this isn’t just misogyny and transphobia—it’s also about ageism. The trans folk who got their gender recognition certificate years ago. Who have been living out there, in society, getting on with their lives. And now it turns out that even if the state has legally recognised you for who you are. Even if your ID matches your genitals and your hormones. Even then the state can erase you.
Compared to the USA, what is happening here is all the worse for being led by the centrist liberal/left party. It is a Labour health minister who has banned trans and nonbinary healthcare for under 18s. And, as we saw after the publication the Cass Review, we can’t even trust our own community leaders to say or do the right thing. As if writing appeasement articles in the transphobic Guardian or begging letters to this government are going to win us back equality. Our leadership is hamstrung by way too many charities, walking a narrow line between providing support and not being too political. Our frontline is over dominated by naive liberal constitutionalists, who believe that justice and equality can be won by signing internet petitions and having a quiet word in the ear of a sympathetic MP.
As anarchists we learn first thing: the State cannot be trusted. Ever. The equality the state gives us is always conditional. Just ask Shamima Begum. Our right to remain, to be free, to demonstrate, to be called by the name we choose, to not be misgendered at work or at school, to be walk the street safely, to use a toilet without harassment, to receive proper medical treatments within 18 weeks—none of that is solely in the gift of any government or any state. We bring us our own justice, we ourselves bring us equality—through our alliances with others, our solidarity, our shared compassion, our understanding that we live in cisheteropatriarchal colonialist ableist capitalist states, that we are anarchists and our anarchy is by definition intersectional . Our belief is not just in a better world to come but a better world now.
We will not wait for history to catch up with some promise of a future – we will take our world now, together, hand in hand. In this moment, in this room, on this island, on this planet… And let us speak out loud and clear to all the TERFs, the gender criticals, the trans excluders, the fence sitting liberals, socialist apologists and faux friends: We exist. And our existence, resistance and persistence spans millennia. And we will outlive you!
