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How transphobia hurts

Trans people still face so many challenges — the last place we should expect hostility and prejudice from is the left, writes AVERY

WHEN my friends saw the Stella cartoon that you published on Tuesday, they were angry, and asked me if I, too, was angry. I surprised them by telling them that I felt nothing in particular.

I’ve become numb to the sort of sentiment that the cartoon you published conveys. It’s simply a part of my life: trans people are frequently portrayed as predatory and invasive, and that’s just something I have to live with. There’s not very much I can actually do about it.

I am 32 years old and I came out as transgender last July, after years of struggling with myself and an adulthood spent dealing with depression and reactionary ideology.

Long before I came out or even accepted to myself that I was trans, I was well aware of the immense difficulties faced by trans people, from the lack of adequate medical care to the pervasive and often violent bigotry, even from left-wing groups that should logically be standing in solidarity with us.

I was fully aware of just how difficult my life would be if I tried to transition. I was willing to accept the possibility that friends would abandon me, that strangers would begin looking at me as a threat, that I might experience strife with my loved ones.

I was remarkably lucky, in that I have been able to start my transition in relative comfort, with the support of friends and family. Most of my friends did not have this luxury. The vast majority of trans people I know are working class and struggling to make ends meet.

The NHS’s inefficient and highly prejudiced trans healthcare system has left many on years-long waiting lists to even see a specialist, let alone obtain medication — this is why so many had to turn to the grey market to obtain transition healthcare.

Many have to crowdfund basic procedures like hair removal — as a matter of fact, some of my friends bought an electrolysis kit and learnt to use it simply so that other trans people nearby could have access to the process affordably. Trans people suffer immense employment discrimination.

Throughout all of this we are subject to a brutally hostile media environment which paints us as fakers, perverts and predators, interpreting everything we do in the worst possible light and confronting us with an endless carousel of baseless accusations.

As socialists yourselves, that — if nothing else — should be a deeply relatable experience.

I knew all of this before I transitioned. I knew it would happen. I knew there’d be tremendous hardship. I did it anyway, because for me it was never a choice. I didn’t have an alternative, because the misery of pretending to be someone I wasn’t is not something I was willing or able to go back to.

I was absolutely willing to subject myself to all of these hardships even when I wasn’t sure transition would actually work for me, and given how well it has worked for me, I’d do it all again in a second.

These are the lives trans people live. We’re human beings.

I know that media organisations often have to put out apologies as a matter of practice, but I want the Morning Star to really understand what it’s doing when it encourages this sort of portrayal.

I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt in that you simply didn’t understand how much harm you’re doing to us when you perpetuate these ideas, but nobody goes through the hardship of transition and the difficulty of living as a trans person to prey on other people.

When you spread that idea you make life harder and more dangerous for all of us.

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