Gender crits in the UK think they are winning. Certainly, they have had a few little local victories. But across the world, the picture is very different. Trans rights are coming. Those so loud, so desperate to erase us from existence are losing.

Shitty Britain

Let’s not mince words. It is a shit time to be trans and living in the UK. On the one hand, we are blessed with a supine press and media that imagines it is supporting trans people by running a new story about the “first” trans man to give birth every six months or so, or the…

Debate is one thing. But when discussion of trans healthcare is regularly sidetracked by out and out falsehoods and misinformation, there can be no meaningful exchange of views. Here I tackle a couple of the worst examples that keep coming back, despite having zero basis in fact.

The abominable vagina!

Did you know that the trans vagina — or, as the medics like to call it, the “neo-vagina” — is in fact an open wound? A bloody unnatural abomination that can only be sustained by daily dilation? No. Me, neither. …

To the prosecco feminists of the UK media, transgender is the real threat

Through work with Trans Media Watch, i am all too aware that the UK press is obsessed with trans people. A mix of insomnia and curiosity led me to do some very basic research and the results are shocking.

Now read on.

Media obsession

It has long been a given that the obsession shown by the mainstream media with anything trans-related is unbalanced. Out of all proportion to either the numbers involved or the actual impact on society at large, i noted sourly a year or so back, as the Times monstered yet another trans campaigner. Their crime? …

Central to the recent Tavistock ruling over the use of puberty blockers for trans kids was a panel of cis folks pontificating on the potential impact, further down the transition road, of their impact on fertility and “sexual function”.

Bad enough that these remarks demonstrate a degree of absolute ignorance about trans sexuality: the equivalent of blowing smoke out of their perfectly manicured legal bottoms. The fact, though, that they could hold such a discussion without inviting a single trans person to comment is beyond shameful.

Now read on.

Legal duplicity

Over the last week I have mostly left the recent Tavistock…

Do i smell transphobia? Or did someone just pass wind?

Earlier this week, many in the trans community were dismayed by news that alternative cosmetics retailer, Lush, had been smearing large quantities of money over some already plump and deeply transphobic bodies. Donations to Women’s Place UK (WPUK) were cited as evidence of badness, and the LGBTQ rumour mill ran rife.

How true is this? And what does it say about Lush’s commitments to the trans community? Now read on.

It all began with the publication of accounts by Women’s Place UK. These revealed, to the consternation of many, that they had received some pretty large handouts from Lush UK…

When defending itself in public, the BBC makes much of its claim to be “balanced”. The problem is: not only is the concept of “balance” dodgy in the extreme — a tool for inserting whatever tinfoil conspiracy theory takes the fancy of editors — but the BBC does not apply its own rules even-handedly. A lack of balance when it comes to balance, so to speak.

Now read on…

In the pink corner, today, we have jane, who will be arguing that the BBC is biased in its coverage of minority issues and bordering on not fit for purpose. And…

A Baker’s Dozen of tropes, techniques and total tripe that the UK media reach for when trash-talking trans people

Over the last three years, the UK press and broadcast media have unleashed an unprecedented wave of hate against trans people. To the enormous chagrin of our media barons, it is not (yet) permitted to publish articles composed entirely of the phrase “trans people suck”. So they have to find other ways to have a go. Here, at the start of Trans Awareness Week, is a handy guide to some of the ways in which they do so.

And a Bingo card.

It begins with the lie direct: the statement, as fact, that a thing that is definitely untrue is…

The last three years have seen an unprecedented level of vicious, sensationalist, misleading and outright untrue stories in the press and broadcast media painting trans people as abnormal and a threat. Little wonder that we are now seeing that work its way through into actual physical attacks on trans people going about their lawful business in public.

TW/CW: Extreme violence against trans people. Transmisogyny.

This is not going to be an easy piece to write. Not easy to read either and, seriously, if you are of a sensitive disposition, or just reeling from the hostility of the anti-trans campaigns over the last few years, just don’t!

The…