Content note: discussion of transphobia and trauma.
In my previous post I wrote about pain and love. About how people who have suffered pain often end up inflicting that pain on others. They do not sufficiently explore the nature and origin of their pain, and they do not work to heal it – to create that crucial distance between the source of the pain and their self. I wrote about this because I can relate to being in pain. The queerphobia of my youth and adulthood traumatised me and it wasn’t until my early thirties that I realised the extent of this pain – partly through reading about queer oppression and being able to connect that to my own experience. This knowledge allowed me to slowly create a distance between myself and the experience. I poured love, patience, therapy, friendship and kindness into this gap to help heal the wound. And it has healed.
So when I look to the people at the forefront of the transphobic moral panic I draw from my own experiences to try to relate to them. As a person who’s suffered pain I try to connect with the ways they have suffered pain. Hence the title of that previous post, “Pain & Love”. But in doing this I forget about that other key ingredient of transphobia – hate. That visceral loathing for trans women, that hateful disregard for non-binary people and all the other ways hate manifests in a ‘movement’ that wants to see trans people scared, erased and, for many, dead. These things have nothing to do with pain and everything to do with hate and the activating of that hate to harm other people. Another word for this is violence. Simply put, transphobia is violence.
There’s a phrase that “hurt people hurt people” but, do you know what, I’m a hurt person and I try my damndest to not hurt other people – even the people who hurt me! I try my best not to meet anger with anger, even though a lot of people get angry with me, and feel justified in blasting me with their anger. But that hurts and, surprise surprise, I don’t enjoy hurting people. It’s not fun to shout at others, to wound them, to cause them harm. When it comes to hate “hurt people hurt people” simply won’t do as an explanation (or excuse) for the actions of bigots. “Hateful people hurt people” might work a bit better and while it’s important to understand the origins of that hate, just as it’s important to understand the origins of people’s pain, the first task is to defend those being harmed by that hate. So that’s why I’m writing this post – to remind myself to say no to hate. For so long I was conditioned to excuse and tolerate the behaviour of my abusers, constantly making excuses for them, and empathising with them (while they had zero empathy for me), and that conditioning affected my politics too and how I engaged with oppression. But I’ve changed and this post is a reminder that while healing and rehabilitation are vital destinations on the journey to peace, before either of them, we must first hold haters to account and say no to their hate.
In Helena Bonham Carter’s recent interview she defended the transphobia of J.K. Rowling. She said: “It’s been taken to the extreme, the judgmentalism of people. She’s allowed her opinion, particularly if she’s suffered abuse. Everybody carries their own history of trauma and forms their opinions from that trauma and you have to respect where people come from and their pain. You don’t all have to agree on everything – that would be insane and boring. She’s not meaning it aggressively, she’s just saying something out of her own experience.”
My response is simple. Yes. Rowling is allowed her opinion. But if that opinion is transphobic then folks like me will stand up for our dignity and rights. Yes. I do respect where people come from and their pain. But I do not respect when people take their pain, weaponise it and attack others with it. Later in the interview, when asked about Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint speaking out against Rowling’s transphobia, Bonham Carter said: “Personally I feel they should let her have her opinions, but I think they’re very aware of protecting their own fanbase and their generation.” The phrase for when one generation harms another with its own trauma is intergenerational trauma. I want my legacy to be one of ending the intergenerational trauma which I have been given – and there’s been a lot. I’ve spent years exploring, understanding and doing the best I can to heal my pain. And one of the necessary balms I’ve needed to heal is love – filling myself with love from within. The results have proved transformational!
There is now a greater distance between myself and my pain. My trauma no longer defines me and it doesn’t dictate my behaviour (i.e. usually resulting in defensive or aggressive actions). I am better able to take control of and responsibility for my actions, ensuring I inflict less harm on others. This allows me to contribute more to the sum total of healing. This has yielded so much more happiness for me and a greater energy to do that which I think is important. It has liberated my imagination allowing me to imagine worlds beyond trauma, patriarchy and pain, rather than just imagining yet more ways of traumatising others. Love proves a wonderfully sustaining force and so much more motivating than hate. If hate burns like coal then love is a renewable energy like the flow of the river or the current of the tide.
“Children who need to be taught to respect traditional moral values are being taught that they have an inalienable right to be gay.”
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Conservative Party Conference, 1987
Thatcher’s comments were applauded and the following year Section 28 was imposed, which prohibited the promotion of “homosexuality as a pretended family relationship” by UK local authorities. Officially, this meant state schools and public libraries couldn’t educate on LGBTQ+ lives and rights, nor support LGBTQ+ people. However, its reach stretched beyond the state sector and empowered other institutions, such as my private boarding school, to say nothing. Silence and neglect were my education and whenever I heard the word gay it was a slur. Section 28 was repealed in 2003 just around the time I was discovering an interest in guys.
Today, history is repeating itself as Conservative MPs such as Liz Truss (and most of the Tory PM candidates), journalists such as Janice Turner and famous novelists such as J.K. Rowling wage “culture war” on “Generation Woke”, reducing trans rights to a ‘debate’ and refusing to even acknowledge the existence of non-binary people. To this, I say bullshit. I’m older now and I don’t rely on my parents and teachers as I did as a child and adolescent, I can speak for myself. I will claim my inalienable right to be non-binary.
Trans rights are not a ‘debate’ they are human rights. Being non-binary isn’t about being ‘woke’, it’s about being a human. Fighting for my rights isn’t a ‘culture war’ it’s a fight for my fundamental right to exist. Just because I was born into an oppressively binaried system of gendering doesn’t mean I have to stay in it. For some this might mean expanding what it means to be male and female beyond the violent limitations of patriarchy. For me, it means stepping beyond the binary itself. I’m not strong because I’m male. I’m not kind because I’m in touch with my feminine side. I’m strong and kind because I’m human. I don’t oscillate between two poles of gender, i.e. male and female, I’m just me. And while I was profoundly shaped by my male upbringing it does not define me. It’s a part of me, absolutely, but it’s not all of me, and I’m excited to keep growing with the years.
The tactics of our oppressors are very familiar – bullying, neglect, abuse, ridicule, vilification – I recognise these from the playground. And I’ve survived them. I have every intention to survive them again despite the rising levels of transphobia in this country. I will meet their hate by loving myself and championing myself. I will meet their destruction by building a life for myself in which I am loved and championed for who I am. A world built of hate can only burn but a world built of love is beautiful and, after all, non-binary is beautiful.
It’s taken me longer than I intended to write the Part 2 post to Cancel Culture Ain’t The Problem. Partly because every time I’ve written a response to a current instance of transphobia a new one crops up – Liz Truss, the UK’s equalities minister and foreign secretary, using the Conservative Party’s spring conference to denounce the so-called “ludicrous debates about languages, statues and pronouns” was my initial inspiration but in the meantime we’ve had Ricky Gervais, J.K. Rowling, The Times, the UK Government’s Attorney General…and the list goes on. I was even planning on writing a response to Janice Turner’s deeply transphobic Times article titled “Cult of gender identity is harming children” which she wrote on 21st September 2019, likening gender identities beyond man and woman to Pokemon (i.e. made up). And then I watched the wondrous Jeffrey Marsh’s video on hate and they said four magic words… “hate is largely chaotic”.
That’s when it clicked. I was spending all this time engaging with the work of transphobes be it their articles, tweets, policies, or speeches. I would do my best to articulate a response that explained why their transphobia was bad (and why it was transphobia, full stop, given so many people deny transphobia is transphobia) and to offer a more loving and liberated alternative. I would try to understand them so I could better understand the things they said, wrote and believed. But what they say, write and believe is hate. Transphobia is hate. And these transphobic people have literally zero interest in my blog posts and zero interest in treating trans people such as myself better. Their hate is not thoughtful, well-researched, logical, compassionate and empathetic…it’s just hate. As Jeffrey says, hate is largely chaotic. I was expending so much energy trying to make sense of their chaos. Exposing myself to hate over and over again, trying to turn it into love. And, boy, that is a fool’s errand.
The likes of Liz Truss and Janice Turner will carry on hating me until they don’t (which will probably be never) even while claiming they don’t hate me (if they ever get called out on it, which they probably won’t). They won’t seek to understand me, they’ll just keep hating me. They won’t listen to me from a place of openness and compassion, they’ll hate. They’ll dehumanise me. They’ll ridicule ‘generation woke’, ‘cancel culture’, pronouns, and anything else they want to justify their hate. They’ll use all the familiar moral panic tropes/lies such as ‘threats to children’, ‘paedophilia’ and ‘recruiting young people’. Janice Turner, in her article, even says being non-binary is homophobic. Well, I’m a gay man and a non-binary queer, and I sure for one ain’t homophobic (and nor am I trying to foment hate within the LGBTQ+ community to further my transphobic goals). As Jeffrey says, hate is largely chaotic. Navigating chaos is impossible. Trying to make sense of chaos is impossible. Asking hateful people to listen to me and see me as a human is a job that requires more hours than I’ve got left to live. Hate is a war that has been (chaotically) designed to ensure I cannot win.
I’m done. I care too much about myself to immerse myself in hate. I want to have fun. I don’t want to get triggered every time I try to write a blog post. I don’t want to get caught in hate on the off chance it rubs off on me and I end up hating the haters. I simply don’t have time to hate. And we all know what the opposite of hate is…it’s freedom. A profound personal and collective freedom based on love and unbounded liberation. Of course I’m still going to write sassy blog posts calling out queerphobic tropes in trashy/fun films but I’m no longer going to meet the haters where they’re at. They’re too chaotic to even know where they’re at. They’re too lost in their hate (and on a good day I’d pity them). Having said that, there are still battles I must fight – because our rights and identities are being marginalised and trampled upon. There are material, political and social battles to fight. But I’ll be better resourced to fight them if I do it from a place of such self-love that the hate of others slides off me like water off a duck’s back. At the moment, this ain’t the case, I’m too tired, traumatised and triggered, their hate still hurts. But thanks to Jeffrey I know I can stop trying to make sense of it. “Where does hate come from?” asks Jeffrey and their answer, “Who cares?” I’ll care about myself instead, which feels much more like Queertopia.
*
And talking of utopias…in mine, words aren’t used to hurt and dehumanise. Words aren’t used to worsen people’s suffering and push them closer to death. Words aren’t used to minimise acts of transphobic violence, thereby encouraging them. Nope. In my world, words heal. They give life, offer hope and inspire. They do not cancel, they welcome (while clearly not welcoming prejudice). Words are carefully chosen and freely spoken. Words are acts of love realised through ink on a page, clever technology (which I don’t understand) on a screen, chalk on a wall, and vibrations in air. Quite simply, words are magic.
Big spoilers ahead. Without caveat I loved Heartstopper, the queer teen romance taking Netflix by storm. It centres on gay and out 15-year-old Charlie Spring (played brilliantly by Joe Locke) falling for the could-he-be-gay 16-year-old Nick Nelson (played equally brilliantly by Kit Connor). Turns out Nick’s bi and, eventually, the two finally get their romance. They’ve got epic friends as well and the series offers a true diversity of identities – lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans – and so many races beyond white. There’s also a teacher who wears a Pride Progress badge and offers the sort of sassy support all young queers deserve and there are even some parents who seem pretty okay with having queer kids. The show made me laugh, cry and cheer, I loved it. And while it did make me think of my adolescence and how I would have killed for a series like this, I’m just glad it’s here, now.
Thinking of my youth, when I was a teen I had Big Brother’s Anna Nolan (the gay ex-nun) and Brian Dowling (the gay flight attendant). I loved that show so much, especially as it introduced me to a world of diversity my boarding school lacked. What my boarding school didn’t lack was prejudice, homophobia, toxic masculinity, bi-erasure and bullying. I also didn’t have sympathetic parents or teachers I could turn to for support. I fought those battles alone. I also remember Queer As Folk, which was definitely not the family-friendly sort of show Heartstopper is, and Angels In America, which blew my teenage mind. Gay guys cropped up in Eastenders,Hollyoaks and Dawson’s Creek but something like Heartstopper, which is incredibly PG and lacking in violence and tragedy, just didn’t exist. What’s more, I don’t think a show like HS could have existed in my time. I can just imagine the backlash from the cis & straight majority. A majority hell-bent on educating queerness out of the youth (via Section 28) and stopping us having sex (the age of consent for male homosexuals was equalised with straights in 2000). I shudder at the thought of the hate-filled articles in The Times (just like the transphobic ones being written today) and all the ‘concerned’ parents speaking out on behalf of the ‘safety’ of their children. Furthermore, as a writer I couldn’t even have imagined writing a story like HS back in my teens. Gay-ish characters cropped up in my Soul Calibur and Final Fantasy fan fic but it wouldn’t be until much later that I created my first exclusively queer play, aka The Cluedo Club Killings.
But. Just because Hearstopper exists now and paints a nice (enough) picture of the queer teen experience, it doesn’t mean everything’s ok – far from it. There’s a review by Amanda Whiting in The Independent titled, “Heartstopper’s sunny vision of school queerness is a fantasy – but that’s OK”. Whiting comments on how predominantly great the school is in the show, a place where “a gay highschooler’s romantic experience isn’t significantly more traumatic than the regular highschooler’s romantic experience.” Whiting states that this isn’t realistic as the realities are often far more worse. But I’d argue that the vision of the school in the show is far from sunny – Elle Argent (played by the wondrous Yasmin Finney), a teenage trans woman, had to move to a different school because of transphobic bullying; Charlie is bullied for being gay (even though we only see a bit of this in the show); and the teacher who provides support does so in the privacy of his art classroom and there’s little sense any of the other teachers have anything to say. This isn’t sunny, it’s just less stormy. It’s also worth noting that a few people commented on Whiting’s review saying their experience of school is actually better, which fills my queer heart with joy. This is also why I’m being careful in this post to not generalise my experience of school to other people’s. Meanwhile, people are praising the character of Sarah Nelson, Nick’s Mum, played by the iconic Olivia Colman, for being “the world’s biggest and best ally“, mainly because she isn’t a massive bi-phobe when Nick comes out. But, again, I’ve got notes. For 16 years Sarah has assumed her son is straight until he tells her she’s not. That’s not allyship, that’s bad parenting. He’s the one who has to come out – which is a huge amount of emotional labour to expect of any teen and itself a product of oppression – while she’s done nothing to hack down the closet she and the rest of society built around him. She then makes a quick apology which, as far as I’m concerned, ain’t enough. I know Sarah Nelson is played by Olivia Colman but we can’t forgive her characters everything.
These observations are not criticisms of Hearstopper which I’ve made clear I lurve! They are criticisims of our relentlessly queerphobic society, which has fought against the creation of shows like HS for years (oh, but huge shout out to G.B.F. of 2014). And because queers of all ages have been dying for a show like this (and literally dying at the hands of said queerphobic society) it’s unsurprising we’re over the moon. I know I am. And because queers like me are so used to lowering our expectations and being grateful for whatever minor visibility we get (such as Scar in The Lion King), when we do finally get better representation it can seem like the weather is sunny when it’s actually still overcast. But Heartstopper isn’t trying to present a utopic view of school, instead it celebrates a diversity of queer loves and characters, and it does this perfectly. Five stars from me.
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On the topic of utopias, if we want a truly sunny vision of a school then I want it to be a school without bullying, without enforced toxic masculinity, without transphobia (and with more sports than blooming rugby which I know far too well from all my time at all boys’ school). When we imagine utopias we liberate ourselves and we uncondition our imaginations. We can dream as big as we want to (and then bigger still). And just because we can’t live in our fantasies doesn’t mean they can’t inspire us to make changes, even very small ones, in our own lives. I know, from personal experience, how painful the gap between reality and fantasy can be, especially if you’ve got a strong imagination, but I’m learning that our ideal places such as Queertopia or Heaven or Truham Grammar School for Boys are there to inspire us. These places exist within our hearts and minds, and they exist to liberate them too.
At my local swimming pool there are two changing rooms – male and female. I change in the male changing room. I do this because I am biologically male (not that I’ve ever had a test to confirm I have a Y chromosome) and because for the majority of my life I was identified as male (note, I am differentiating sex and gender). As a kid I was called a boy and from the age of 8 I was sent to all boys’ schools. There I was taught how to be a man, often tough but there was fun to be had as well. I became attached to these identities – boy and man – and it wasn’t until I was 26 that I learnt what the word cisgender meant. Over the years I started to lessen my attachment to the gender identity of male and explored the words trans and non-binary, as well as using they/them pronouns. Now, somewhere into my thirties I identify as all and none of the above. Such a large part of my gender history is male and he remains a huge part of me. He’s the dude that got me here after all, so kudos to him. I am trans because I don’t exclusively identify as the gender I was assigned at birth. I am non-binary because I believe gender is so much more than the binary of male and female. I am also none of these things because I’m just me, Robert. It is this person who takes his clothes off in the changing room and puts their swimming trunks on.
This is my gender journey and it’s unique, as are the experiences of every dude who gets his swimmers on in the changing room. And I want to use this post to make clear that, as far as I’m concerned, all men are welcome in my changing room. And to be even clearer, I’ll use the word mxn with an ‘x’ as I’m not just talking about biologically male people who identify as men. Trans and non-binary men are also welcome. And just because I’m a person with a penis doesn’t mean I expect everyone in the changing room to have a penis. I don’t actually care about their genitalia, I just want them to feel they belong in this changing space. I also don’t find it inherently dehumanising to be referred to as a person with a penis when it’s appropriate, however, this time around, regarding the changing room, having a penis isn’t of interest to me because I know there are men with vaginas and intersex genitalia. All I ask is that people treat each other respectfully.
I also want to be very clear that my changing room isn’t trying to erase men. If there’s someone who was born biologically male and identifies as a guy (like my 18 year-old self did, for example) then he is blooming welcome in the changing room as is a trans dude who has just had top surgery as well as the non-binary guy with breasts and the cis guy with breasts. However, I do recognise that many trans men will have experienced transphobia from cis men, so I’ll try and do my bit as an ally, and ensure the changing room is as safe a place as possible for all the mxn who use it. I’m not sure if any of this can be said of the actual changing room I use given there are no messages or codes of conduct which make clear it’s an inclusive and safer space.
I write this post partly as a response to some of the articles I’ve read by “gender critical” feminists. In one the author wrote that, asides trans women being a threat to women (apparently), she never heard of men having to make space for trans men. I know this isn’t true and here’s my post to prove it. Some GC feminists also deny the existence of gender identity and speak only of biological sex (well, they speak only of male and female biological sex and ignore the others) and in doing so they erase my identity as trans, non-binary and a man. They just want me to be a biological male with a biological penis…and might even want me sent for “conversion therapy” to ensure I man up. Gender critical feminists (aka terfs, aka transphobes) want to exclude me from society whereas all I want to exclude is transphobia (and sexism and racism and inequality etc). I can assure you that even though a lot of cis women are causing me considerable pain I will not weaponise that pain and throw it back at them. Add to that all the pain cis men have caused me whether it was bullying at school, homophobia at university or queerphobia since but, again, I’m not anti-men, I’m anti-abuse. I want a world in which people of all genders and sexes can be safe. All men and mxn, all women and womxn, and all people are welcome in Queertopia.
Just when I was going to write a blog post about Liz Truss, the UK Conservative government’s Minister for Women and Equalities, talking about the “ludicrous debates about pronouns”, Putin went and compared Russia being cancelled to J.K. Rowling being cancelled by “fans of so-called gender freedoms”. I mean, I’m a writer and I can’t write this stuff. Not to mention the other week when I flicked on BBC Politics in the afternoon and a group of middle-aged women were discussing the “crisis of well-being in the UK”, rather than be assured by the conversation I asked myself – how long before something transphobic is said? Answer: less than two minutes as a Baroness soon dismissed people’s “promiscuous” use of mental health when, for example, university students claim to experience PTSD in the wake of so-called transphobia. In these three examples my desire for they/them pronouns has been dismissed as “ludicrous”; my fandom of “so-called gender freedoms” has been dismissed by the man responsible for the invasion of Ukraine; and the pain of the experience of transphobia has been dismissed as “promiscuous”.
Over the past few years Britain has become an increasingly transphobic country. A moral panic is very successfully being stirred which paints trans and non-binary folx as dangerous, demanding, deluded and all manner of dehumanising tropes. We’re the enemy within, apparently, and the comments of the likes of Truss and Rowling simply affirm this. The moral panic is working. It’s divide and conquer – divide cis women and trans people, especially trans women, and set them off against each other. I’ve also seen this at play amongst my friends and acquaintances, but more on that another time. But you know me, I call bullshit. As a they/he, trans, non-binary, and a little bit cis, insofar that I do identify with the boy and man I used to be, I want a world for everyone, one full of gender freedoms and gender abundance. But what’s abundantly clear is how few people care about this world of gender abundance, caught up as they are in the moral panic, instead believing that trans liberation is a threat to cis people. I dream of Queertopia but I’ve got to live on terf island. So, as well as critique the issue (because there is so much to critique and I sure love a sassy blog post) I want to focus on how I’m going to survive and, hopefully, thrive in the face of systemic transphobia.
I’ll start by sharing this – that in all 30+ years of my life I have never been so trans, so non-binary, so queer, and just so much of me. I’m done with not being validated by those around me – I’ll validate myself, thanks. I’m done with being routinely dehumanised by mainstream society – I’ll humanise myself. I’m done with being told (in all manner of words and silences) that I am hated – I’ll love myself. It’s me, myself and I (hence the excuse for posting the below video). Not forgetting all the friends who do validate and love me, and all of those learning how to in the face of norms that have taught them the opposite. Not forgetting my therapist and also the wondrous Jeffrey Marsh, trans super guru! It’s tough living on terf island, really tough, but I’m tough too. And I am growing such a power within that one day the dehumanising and hurtful comments from BBC Politics, Rowling and others won’t have to hurt so much. One day.
Coming up to seven years now since my first post and after everything that’s happened – Brexit, Donald Trump, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, climate change (still), covid-19, George Floyd’s murder, Sarah Everard’s murder, a transphobic moral panic, Putin invading Ukraine – you’d think that some of our critiques would focus on neoliberal capitalism, xenophobia, white supremacy, racism, patriarchy, femicide and transphobia. But no, according to many in the mainstream the problem is actually that thing called ‘cancel culture’. Previously referred to as ‘no-platforming’ and before that ‘political correctness’ (gone mad) as well as ‘rewriting history’, it’s that many-headed monster…yup, people demanding an end to prejudice and hate. Once again, I call bullshit.
No, the problem is not less powerful people speaking out against the violence, physical and/or psychological, of more powerful people. The problem is the more powerful people refusing to relinquish any of their power. Whether it’s white people getting called out for being racist, cis people for being transphobic, men for being sexist, people hate being faced with their prejudice and most of them will deny being prejudiced in the first place. But we already know all this and I, for one, am fed up of those around me (and beyond me) doubling down on their prejudice and ignorance. I’m exhausted from trying to explain gender diversity to my family and justifying why pronouns matter to my cis friends. They throw back the usual – ‘but it’s so important to have an open discussion’, ‘I didn’t mean to hurt you’ and ‘I’m fed up of people I don’t know being angry about this on twitter’ – and I’m left right where I started but a little more hurt.
However, so many of these conversations are predicated on someone else’s assumption that I will stay and listen to what they have to say. I’ve done this a lot – listen. I’ve listened from a place of empathy, compassion and patience. But these past few years have killed that patience and I’m tired of people assuming they can say what they want to me because they feel ‘safe’ to express their prejudice at me. I work so hard to create safer spaces and, boy, it hurts when people use that space to hurt me. It becomes clear that they don’t care for my safety and well-being in the way I care for theirs and they often don’t even care for the validity of my existence as a trans & non-binary person. They cancel my very identity (while claiming cancel culture is the problem). And, surprise, surprise, when I challenge them on this they usually get defensive; either doubling down on their prejudice or denying it in the first place. I’m left where I started but much more hurt. But it’s time for change and 250 posts later there’s no time like the present. To be continued…
It was International Coming Out day on Monday 11th October and it got me reflecting. For so much of my life coming out was something I had to do for the benefit of other people – i.e. straight and cisgender people. When I told my parents I had a boyfriend the response was one of surprise and bewilderment. They didn’t have a clue what to do and so it fell on my teenage shoulders to carry the burden. When I told my parents I use they/them pronouns the response was one of surprise and bewilderment. They didn’t have a clue what to do and so it fell on my thirty-something shoulders to carry the burden. As you can imagine, I really want a massage.
Whenever heterosexual and cisgender people ask me when I came out the question makes me feel uncomfortable because it’s framed as something I had to do. No one ever asks the question – what did your parents do to champion you as a queer child? For me, coming out was predicated on being in. As a teenager I kept my sexuality hidden for years. I was surrounded by homophobia, both loud and quiet, and with each comment and microaggression so the closet was built around me. As a twenty-something I kept my gender hidden for years. I was surrounded by transphobia, both loud and quiet, and with each comment and microaggression, so the closet was built around me. Despite all this I barged my shoulders against the closet doors and forced them open. But rather than being met with love, solidarity and validation, I was met with surprise, neglect and continued microaggressions. I was still loved, though, and well loved, but it wasn’t a love that could adapt and expand to fit and understand queerness. While my first boyfriend came to stay for Christmas, for example, I was policed on who I could tell. This policing of my sexuality and gender was a regular feature of my twenties as I kept getting shoved back into the closet, “Don’t talk about these things in front of the kids”, “Don’t mention these things on your CV”, “Stop shoving it down our throats.” It’s not elephants, it’s closets all the way down.
As you can imagine, I’m tired of coming out. I’m exhausted by it. These closets were not of my making and all they’ve done is make my life harder. It’s not my job to tell straight people I’m gay and queer, it’s their job to stop assuming I’m straight. It’s not my job to tell cis people I’m non-binary, it’s their job to stop assuming I’m cis. I’m done with coming out for the very people who built the closets in the first place and then forgot I even came out! So, rather than come out those closets I’m going to burn them down. But even as I write this I realise there is a bigger closet than the one I was trapped in and that is the closet of cisheteropatriarchy. It’s a closet in which so many heterosexual and cisgender people are trapped in, even though they do not realise it. Instead, they’re left busily doing the thing they know best – building closets. It’s closets all the way down, after all.
To counter this somewhat bleak post I want to note a few times when coming out has been a joy. When I met one of my long-standing friends at uni and we both had got the same badge at Freshers’ week, it read, Homophobia Is Gay. Looking back, it’s a self-defeating badge which says a lot for the state of things back in 2007 but thanks to that badge my friend and I came out to one another. We then went on to become co-LGBT (I’m not sure if we had the Q on back then) reps for our college and, boy, did we have a lot to fight back then. We also threw some great parties. And just the other day I met someone for tea and we both came out as non-binary and it was a joy. Four hours later and it transpired we had a lot to talk about. It’s these experiences of coming out that I live for, when it’s not a struggle to barge open the closet doors but the closet kinda dissolves as we embrace who we are. After all, why build closets when you can build Queertopia?
A moral panic is a “feeling of fear spread among many people that some evil threatens the well-being of society…It is the process of arousing social concern over an issue – usually the work of moral entrepreneurs and the mass media.” (Wikipedia).
A moral panic is a common political tactic used to unite otherwise disparate groups into undermining the equality and rights of a minority and/or oppressed group, such as women, Catholics, gay men, lesbians, socialists, people with HIV/AIDS, Muslims, people of colour, travellers and Jewish people. The groups are targeted by a more powerful group (e.g. men, Protestants, straight people, capitalists, white people), which feels threatened by the prospect of the oppressed group gaining more political power and equality. The oppressors use moral panic to stir up widespread prejudices within a populous to encourage them to act against the oppressed.
In the UK a moral panic is currently being stirred to undermine the rights of trans people. Certain political actors (e.g. politicians, journalists) are capitalising on the large amount of transphobia already present in the country as well as provoking more of it. The key aim of a moral panic is to incite fear, to make the broader population feel threatened by trans people, so they act against them. Many people I know are being caught in this moral panic and being encouraged to act on their transphobia rather than question, explore and change it. Many of these people consider themselves liberal and tolerant but their empathy and compassion is being replaced by prejudice and hostility. The fear mongering and stereotyping is working as trans people are routinely being dehumanised and discriminated against. Here are some ways to discover if you are being caught up in the moral panic.
Threat to the safety of children and women
Are you being encouraged to think of trans people as a threat to children? For example, you might read media that associates trans people with paedophilia or calls them predators, or describes trans people as recruiters, i.e. wanting to recruit young people and force them to transition against their will. This is an old tactic in the book of moral panic and just replace trans people with black people or Jews and you realise how abhorrent it is (if you don’t already).
Are trans people, especially trans women, being presented as a threat to cis women? For example, that they want to enter female spaces so they can assault and rape women.
Are trans identities being ignored and trans women being presented as ‘men in dresses’ to further bolster the idea that they are dangerous and threatening to women?
A threat to feminism and women’s rights
Are women’s rights being presented as incompatible with trans rights, especially the rights of trans women? For example, women’s rights might be presented as a zero sum game, meaning that any effort to support trans women’s rights undermines the rights of cis women – of course, the term ‘cis’ won’t be used (it may well be ridiculed instead) because the proponents of this view don’t believe in trans identities and, therefore, don’t believe in cis identities either.
Are efforts to increase inclusion – e.g. recognising that many non-binary and trans men menstruate – being presented as an effort to undermine women’s rights?
The above is an example of scaremongering. Another one would be presenting dystopic scenarios, for example, that trans people are wilfully ignoring the rights of women and may even want to erase the category of women entirely. Here, hyperbole and escalation are being used to make you afraid of trans people.
Medical transition as mutilation and dangerous
Are you learning of medical transition through examples of medical malpractice, i.e. the times when doctors have harmed patients? If so, it’s likely these instances of medical malpractice are being presented as proof that surgical transition is dangerous and extreme, often described as mutilation rather than surgery. By not focussing on the majority of successful instances of surgical transition, which have transformed people’s lives for the better, you are being encouraged to associate surgery with pain, suffering and even torture, so you are prejudiced against it.
Against this backdrop of medical malpractice and mutilation are you being made to believe that the safety of young people is threatened by surgery and transgender identities? Again, the focus is pulled away from all the trans people who want and need surgery, many of whom are young people.
Are you being made to believe that young people are being forced to medically transition? For example, that counselling and other forms of care and education don’t form part of the process of transition.
Are you being made to believe that being transgender requires medical surgery, when actually it doesn’t?
Are you learning of transgender lives through examples of medical detransition – when someone has stopped or reversed a medical gender transition? Are these examples being used to discredit the broader identity of transgender – thereby dehumanising trans people more generally as well as appropriating that individual’s experience of detransition for transphobic ends?
The ‘trans orthodoxy’
Do you regularly see phrases such as ‘trans orthodoxy’, ‘trans agenda’, ‘trans ideology’ and ‘trans dogma’, as if all transgender people form part of a powerful political unit or group rather than an oppressed minority made up of many, many individual people who lack political power as a collective? How would you feel if you read of the ‘Jewish agenda’ or the ‘black agenda’?
Are trans people being associated with fascism – e.g. called Nazis for ‘demanding’ equality and calling out transphobia; or referred to as part of the Rainbow Reich? Associating trans people with fascism is designed to make them sound extremist and dangerous.
Are examples of harmful behaviour (e.g. someone tweeting a death threat to J. K. Rowling) being used to further essentialise trans people and present them as dangerous? To be clear, I stand against the issuing of death threats but, here, they are being used as a tool in a political effort to undermine trans rights, rather than as a call for more nuanced and empathetic discussions around equality.
Are instances of transphobia being downplayed and rejected as transphobic by cisgender people? A bit like a white person telling a black person they haven’t experienced racism when they just have.
Are instances of a transphobe being called out on their transphobia being represented as an attack on the transphobic person? A bit like a sexist man getting angry he has been called sexist. This is a distracting tactic used to make people ignore the transphobia and focus their ire back on the person being discriminated against.
Stereotyping and dehumanising
Are trans stereotypes being used to further dehumanise trans people?
For example, trans women with features often typically associated with masculinity are often dehumanised and stereotyped. We may be encouraged to laugh at them and think of them as ridiculous, threatening and/or disgusting.
Another form of stereotyping concerns ‘snowflakes’ and ‘generation woke’, i.e. presenting people who want trans liberation as overly-sensitive, unreasonable and/or threatening, in a bid to undermine their demands/requests for trans equality.
Or perhaps efforts to make trans people lives safer and happier are being ridiculed – e.g. mocking people’s pronouns; mocking other forms of gender identity such as genderqueer and non-binary. Or they are being held up as unreasonable and unsafe – e.g. deriding medical practitioner’s efforts to use more inclusive language as bowing down to ‘trans orthodoxy’.
The aim of this stereotyping is to dehumanise trans people – to make them appear less than human – which makes it easier for others to act against them.
Your identity
Is your gender and/or biology being weaponised to make you less sympathetic to trans people? For example, you might be made to imagine your genitals being ‘mutilated’ to make you less supportive of medical surgery.
Or perhaps because you identify with the gender you were assigned at birth, you are encouraged to imagine anything else as invalid.
Or someone being trans is presented as a threat to your own gender. For example, the existence of trans women somehow being a threat to cis women and an effort to undermine the category of womanhood.
Or someone being non-binary is presented as a ‘loss’ to your gender. For example, a non-binary person who was designated female at birth might be presented as a loss to women and somehow responsible for further undermining women’s rights.
This narrative of loss is a pervasive one and often used against people of minority genders (e.g. trans and non-binary). Look out for the phrase “it’s such a shame”, for example, “it’s such a shame that X is non-binary now” – this invalidates their gender and incorrectly assumes that the gender they were assigned at birth is their ‘true’ gender.
I’ve also heard this used in the context of protecting young people. For example, “I’m worried that young women seeing ‘older women’ come out as non-binary will feel that’s their only option.” This both invalidates the non-binary person’s gender and makes it seem that not being cisgender is somehow a bad thing turned to out of desperation and unhappiness.
As the moral panic sets in so transphobic prejudice and hostility increase, as does indifference to the suffering and lived experiences of trans people. You might be experiencing this. For example, do you baulk at the idea of gender inclusive toilets because you think trans women are dangerous men in dresses? Or do you think medical surgery shouldn’t be allowed for transgender people because you think of it as mutilation? Or you think transgender people shouldn’t be allowed to self-identify? Or that trans people receiving counselling and therapy is the equivalent of undergoing conversion therapy (a type of torture that is still legal in the US and UK, as well as many other places)? All of these views undermine trans equality and in having/expressing them you are part of the process of making society more hostile to trans people. You encourage transphobia. This makes it easier for transphobic politicians to enact transphobic changes to the law because there will be more support for them. It also makes it easier for violent transphobes to attack and/or kill transgender people. You might decry violence but societies in which transphobia is more widespread have higher anti-trans crime rates. Meanwhile, widespread indifference and hostility makes it harder for trans people to access the support services they need. This endangers their well-being and mental health and results in higher homelessness and suicide rates. You might not want trans people to be made homeless or to take their own lives but your transphobia contributes to a process that makes these things happen.
There is a causal chain that connects all transphobic beliefs to the violence experienced by trans people, which includes verbal abuse, physical assault, corrective rape, murder, mental health decline, suicide, homelessness, economic instability, unemployment and unhappiness. Prejudice facilitates the suffering of others. Ignorance and indifference exacerbate it.
The antidote to moral panic and its consequences is to inform ourselves, empathise and take political action to enshrine trans rights and equality. Look to trans people and learn about their experiences and stories. Read up on what it means to be transgender (rather than assuming what you read in that one article written by a cis person is true). Acknowledge your prejudices – we all have them and that’s (sadly) just a fact of being alive today; challenge your prejudices by exploring their origins and learning new information; change them by becoming a trans ally rather than a transphobe. A moral panic depends on fear and fear depends on ignorance. The more we learn the less afraid we have to be and the harder it will be to manipulate us. To summarise, transgender people are not the problem, transphobia is the problem. A moral panic cannot take hold in a society free from ignorance and prejudice. We can and must create that society.
humanconditioned 