I’ve tried to avoid going to this topic in Ben-Them, as I’d rather accentuate the positive, but the UK’s transphobia is more than it was before. Not the hate crimes, though they are scaling with it, and fuelled by it, but TERFs, that is, people who proactively distrust, dislike, lobby against and condemn trans people in general, and in many cases seek an end to transition, an end to the acceptance of trans people, and ensure that the public perceive trans people as deceivers, deranged predators, or deluded perverts, a threat, a carbuncle and a thing to be harassed, contradicted and misgendered at any opportunity.

In an echo of section 28, there are some who would like the government to criminalise any acknowledgement by teachers that transgender people exist. A veil of secrecy, which unfortunately means many trans eggs - folk who haven’t yet clicked that they’re trans - just find themselves lost and alone, thinking there is something wrong with their inner being, rather than seeing that there are others like themselves, and options other than feeling alone. A familiar sitch. Perhaps you think this doesn’t matter, and that being trans is just an ideology, just as being gay was once treated as an ideology or social contagion, something which could or should be repressed.

I may be using excessively emotive language. I hold back from ever talking about TERFery, because it riles me up, and because I worry people can easily go through whatever I say and point out its hyperbole and slippery-slopiness. But I feel my only options are ‘downplay the threat to trans lives’ in a time when anti-trans rhetoric in politics and in the papers are on the rise, or to speak up a little. As much as I enjoyed debating at school, it’s horrible in real life, and I very often imagine being putinto arguments with someone who wants me and my ilk gone from the world - or more gently, just wants us to declare that we’re deceitful, and to keep off the streets. It took me so long to come through depression, self-doubt and fear that I was a wretched creature — I’m pretty sure I’m more self-defeating than most people, and I worry that there are people who would like to put me back in my snail shell, back to when I kept all my emotions as small as I could.

Back to TERFs, or Trans exclusive radical feminists - though some declare that they are not feminists. Taking things down to essentials, what do TERFs believe and why? I don’t really want to miscategorise this, but as I understand it, they tend to be people who believe trans women are men and dangerous and trans men are women. They will say so often, and with conviction. I think many hold a more intense and insulting view, that trans women are men who lie, and that trans men are women who have been lied to — and that the cruel and predatory would go trans - not an enviable life to do on a whim - to get access to more victims. If those are their general beliefs, there are significant problems here.

A lot of TERFs speak or lobby extremely strongly on trans people, especially on trans stereotypes. I’ve seen many examples of ties between ‘gender-critical’ rhetoric and the tactics of other far-right movements based on race, sexuality or what have you. A lot of trans people hold that TERFery is today’s acceptable face of fascism. I can see that, but I don’t think it’s a general rule. I don’t think that everyone who’s gunning for trans rights is consciously trying to oppress a minority. Far from it. I have sympathy, to some extent. As I understand it, a lot of TERFs are people who have, in the past, been victims of assault by men, and that is truly terrible, and that has left them, understandably very defensive, and fearful of the same thing happening to somebody else - as it does nightly, somewhere.

I think they’re coming from a position of wanting to save people - or that’s the idea, but they’re also very much coming from a position of disgust and distrust, which are the same seeds from which other forms of discrimination grow. Homophobia, racism and other dislike for the unlike grow from disgust and distrust. Anxieties based on race, sexuality, islamophobia and miscegenation and antisemitism so forth tend to begin rooted in disgust and distrust, and repeated stories of pied pipers luring children. Situations like the bathroom ban we hear about in America seem to start from the view that growing paranoia: arguing that, because some members of a group could exploit their rights in cruel ways, all members of the group *should* lose those rights. I never actually hear about trans people committing crimes through their bathroom access - for all I know it could be a purely hypothetical ‘what if’ — but on the basis of a thing that can be imagined, and can thus be campaigned on, everyone in the group must go without. If you want to go to the toilet, do it in your car, madam.

I think what I’ve written today is muddled and incoherent in some days. I feel tense and trepidatious criticising TERFs - or ‘gc’, ‘gender critical’ people as they prefer to be known. Because I think their anger against trans people comes from points which seem to them purely logical and beneficial, so for me to speak up for trans people will seem to them like I’m speaking up for any other bogeyman, bogeywoman or bogeyperson. But transgender healthcare is suffering at the moment. Trans acceptance in public life, being able to walk down a street or go to work un-harassed is somehow getting worse than it was before the culture war, when the papers started to take a keen interest. Maybe post-Brexit, the manager class tired of anti-immigrant talk and had to look somewhere else to fill the headlines and grab paranoid votes. In a recent Stonewall survey in the UK, 41% of Trans men and trans women reponded said they had experienced a hate crime or incident because of their gender identity in the last 12 months.

Trans children, and trans adults, people wanting to live normal boring trans lives and people living wonderful, vibrant trans lives. You will hear plenty about us and against us in the run-up to the next election. Laws may be promised to our detriment. In some American states, gender transition-related medical care has been legislated against, and laws are being drawn up even against drag performances! For the past few years, in Russia it’s been illegal for trans people to drive. Things I hope could never happen here probably could happen here. Transphobia is one of my least favourite things to so much as think about and I wish I could ignore it and wait for it to disappear on its own. (I don't think it will). I would like to not have written an instalment of Ben-Them about it, but in the 2020s, it would be censorious to leave it out. I would like a future where being trans is not just permissible but joyful. I would like a future where people like me don’t need to hide and feel ashamed of being trans slash non-binary. I’m one of the least affected by all of this, because I can pass for a man and have been to afraid to rock the boat by changing my name, my pronouns or anything that might get me noticed. I am affected by transphobia less than almost any trans people I know, but I will be honest, it has not been a boon to my mental health, and I imagine others are in a very similar state