Text: Oli Spleen. Photo: Oli with long-time friend and trans activist Fox Fisher. By Proud Parkers Photography.
When Hastings Independent Press first launched over eleven years ago, its founding mission was to offer a unique community-led alternative to the mainstream fearmongering, scapegoating and divisive rhetoric that is the fodder of the daily tabloids. For many years it held true to this intent and I was proud to have published various articles covering everything from marriage equality, the Orlando Pulse massacre and my covid lockdown experiences as well as various poems.
The other week I was disappointed to discover an anonymous article titled All About Eve. This piece was seemingly created to feed directly into the scaremongering, transphobic narrative that has already resulted in women being attacked for just wanting to use the public toilets here and in America. Much like the recent Supreme Court ruling that the article cites – which did not ask for the testimony of any transgender or gender non-conforming people – this was a one-sided opinion piece written with no real consideration of those who this harmful legislation affects.
I come from a family of gender non-conforming women, my grandmother would tell us how she raised eyebrows in her Cornish village in the twenties as “the first woman in town to wear slacks” and my mother has always preferred short hair and trousers over long hair and a dress. When I was at school I was bullied for my own androgyny and inability to be boisterous, as well as my mother’s perceived masculine nature. She is now in a civil partnership with a woman. Some ten years ago my niece also came out as lesbian and she often gets mistaken for a boy.
Sadly what this current hysteria around trans women is doing is enabling attacks on many gender non-conforming women. My niece has already been harassed for using the women’s toilets and the keyboardist in my current band, a six-foot-three cisgendered woman (who is clearly very feminine presenting in her dress and mannerisms), has lately been misgendered as a result of this toxic rhetoric, solely due to her height.
These are by no means the only cases of women being misgendered and even attacked for simply wanting to use the toilet. Here and in America attacks on predominantly lesbian women trying to access the restrooms have increased alongside this rising transphobic rhetoric. Tiffany Liles-Taylor from Leicestershire, a cancer survivor who underwent chemotherapy and a double mastectomy, said that she is scared of using public toilets after being repeatedly mistaken for a man.
I have spent most of the last twenty five years in Brighton where I was embraced and welcomed by the transgender community there. Through my transgender friends I began to consider myself non-binary and my band Pink Narcissus was even given the privilege of performing at Trans Pride in 2017 (I have regrettably never had the opportunity to play any of the regular Pride events). I know as many transgender men (assigned female at birth) as I do trans women. These trans men have every apparent characteristic of a man, but by the Supreme Court ruling’s definition should be forced to use women’s spaces – solely because they were assigned female at birth.
Pink Narcissus playing Brighton’s Trans Pride in 2017 by Agata Urbaniak and Emma Bailey.
I have also met several people who are intersex, as in biologically born between genders. These people make up around 1.7% of the population. However the biological lie of binary sex that the Supreme Court would have us believe, denies the very existence of these people. Many intersex children are forced into unnecessary surgeries in childhood and have a binary gender imposed on them by their guardians, simply because we do not have a culture that accepts the reality of gender as a spectrum.
The HIP article suggested that it is the gender affirming care for children that is harmful, citing surgeries and breast binding as common practices for minors, and this is simply not true. The only common practice is that puberty blockers are offered to prevent a transgender child from being subjected to the body horror of experiencing the “wrong” puberty. This is an experience that close friends of mine have testified was traumatising for them. They say it could be lifesaving for others to not be subjected to it.
When I was ten years old, the Conservatives under Margaret Thatcher implemented the Local Government Act, and within it a passage of law that would become infamous: Section 28. This prohibited local authorities from “promoting homosexuality” or teaching about it in a positive light, effectively denying children the awareness of the existence of people such as myself, in the hope that as a result homosexuality would simply go away. What it did instead was enable homophobia to go unchecked in the schoolyard, driving children such as myself to the brink of suicide.
Now the UK government, under its Labour leadership, has just updated its Relationships and Sex Education guidance for schools in England. From September 2026, schools will be prohibited from teaching that all people have a gender identity, and teachers will be denied the ability to suggest that social transition can help children in distress. This legislation seeks to erase the existence of transgender people and will undoubtedly do great harm to the most vulnerable in our society.
Ultimately all this rhetoric around transgender women is distracting from the very real fact that it is cisgendered men – not transgender women – who inflict the most violence against women. Transgender women, who are statistically far more likely to be the victims of violence and hate crimes, are now being unfairly scapegoated to distract from the very real violence that is perpetrated by cisgendered men.
If we are to learn anything from history it’s that at times of political upheaval, when right-wing forces are on the rise, it is always those who are the most marginalised and vulnerable who are targeted first. My transgender friends simply want to live and exist as themselves. If we don’t speak up to protect their rights now, who will be there to defend ours when the time comes?
a powerful and helpful piece, thank you very much. Andrew@HRRA.
Great article. Well done to the Hastings Examiner for running it. In these divisive and hate filled times, the balance this provides to last week’s HIP article is very welcome.