Waking Up: how I found unexpected allies in trans women

Can you indulge me in an experiment? Imagine a trans woman. Imagine her face, her clothes, her figure, her hobbies, her flaws and good points, her job, her family situation, her life history. Who do you have in your mind?

Maybe you’re struggling to get a picture. Let me give you a few people I have in mind.

There’s Rebecca. She transitioned 20 years ago. She’s happily married with an adult kid to whom she’s still providing taxi and dinner services and she has a seemingly never-ending rotation of wholesome hobbies. She’s a mother hen who likes taking care of everyone around her, and her sense of humour is so dry it might have been forged in the Sahara.

There’s Evie. She transitioned 15 years ago. She works as a lawyer and lives in a conservative area, and as a consequence, only her very close friends and family know she’s trans. She types like the wind and argues for an estimated 75% of her life and has a distinct Leslie Knope quality.

There’s Celia. She’s sweet and compassionate, and always has time for her friends’ problems and their jokes. She likes coffee and coding and learning new things about philosophy, religion, pop culture and politics. She never wears makeup. She’s one of the best people I know, and I’m pretty sure everyone in her life says the same of her.

There’s Anna. She’s studying medicine and does volunteer work. She is blonde and beautiful, and intimidatingly intelligent. She’s thoughtful and straightforward. She’s an old soul who knows shockingly little about pop culture.

There’s Julia. She loves animals as much as I do (no small feat) and is madly in love with her girlfriend. She has a young daughter and she enjoys the good things in life. She loves travel and good food and she is super fun to be around when she’s drunk.

I’m bringing these women up now because I think if you aren’t well acquainted with many trans people, and you spend a lot of time on Twitter, you might have a different picture in your mind. I think if I say ‘trans woman’ to you, you might be picturing something a little more sensationalised.

Maybe you’re picturing Karen White, or Jessica Yaniv, or the It’s Ma’am lady. Maybe you even think I’m naive for picturing my friends instead of a more sinister image. Having a negative automatic image in our minds for minority groups we don’t know personally is a pretty human inclination, but I hope it goes without saying that it’s an inclination we always need to fight against.

I’m going to be honest straight away. I think “Gender Critical” people* are radicalised and I think there is a lot of danger for many cis people on the periphery to follow them down that rabbit hole. I’m writing this essay in an effort to prevent radicalisation of any feminists looking in on the situation who haven’t made their minds up yet. I’m speaking to people who consider themselves feminists and don’t consider themselves transphobic. I’m speaking to people who don’t spend time accusing trans people of having fetishes, who don’t think selfies with Proud Boys are excusable, and who don’t think soup is worse than Nazis. If that’s you, I hope you read on and consider what I have to say in good faith.

For the remainder of this essay, I’m going to ask you to some questions that I consider both relevant and under-answered by GCs (gender critical people). I’m also going to ask you to keep Rebecca, Evie, Celia, Anna, and Julia in mind.

Let’s start with a doozy. What is a woman? No, I’m kidding, I’m kidding. Please don’t leave! My real first question is why do we need a standard compact definition of woman? What is the benefit to women’s rights to focus on airtight definitions of women? When I was GC, I believed that it was impossible to fight for women’s rights if we didn’t have a solid definition of woman. But why did I think that? Do people who fight for the rights of people of colour demand a definition of what it means to be black? I think we can all see how problematic it would be (and has historically been) to try to define a race. And yet, we cannot doubt that black rights movements have had material success. Does it hurt women or help women to have one simple definition? My definition, in case you’re wondering (and I assume you are), is indeed an adult female human. But definitions of large categories are broad strokes attempts to communicate something that isn’t very succinct. Who counts as female and who doesn’t? Whether your definition is chromosomes or gametes, there is always some woman who was assigned/observed female at birth who gets excluded. Most of us are unambiguously male or female and don’t make any attempts to change this throughout our lives, but that’s not true for everyone, and it’s the outliers that are of interest to us in this discussion.

On a related note, who is trying to erase the word woman and how is this fear compatible with the anger that you (or some trans rights skeptics feel) at the phrase trans women are women? Are trans women trying to erase the word woman or co-opt it? It can’t be both. Some people that I’ve asked this question of have said that by erase, they mean that they feel trans activists are making the term meaningless. But this is simply false. Some trans people believe that men and women are defined by gender identity, some feel that trans women become women and trans men become men after medically transitioning, some would replace medically transitioning with socially transitioning. But I have not encountered anyone who thinks the word woman is meaningless. You might disagree with those definitions, but they have meaning.

As you can see from my previous essay on the subject, I was GC about two years ago. You can read about what led me to become gender critical in that essay, but I would like to go into more detail about why I eventually abandoned the ideology (and yes, I do believe it is an ideology). At the end of 2020, I was on the periphery. I was looking for compromises, for middle ground, for people who were willing to talk and listen. I recognised that trans rights advocates and gender critical people were at a standstill, and that both sides hated each other so much that no human understanding was getting through. I had become tired of the debate and took a step backwards, focussing on other things. When I came back, I was surprised by the single-mindedness of many of my GC mutuals. Some were even vowing to vote for Trump, and sacrifice abortion rights (which I believe are the foundation of the contemporary women’s liberation movement) for a dictionary definition of woman. Some doubt about my own mindset soaked through my thick skull. Was I approaching this issue the way I normally approached issues (or hoped I did)? With equal doses of thought, empathy, and skepticism? I didn’t relate to the other GCs who simply said, “trans women must use the men’s” and left it at that. But I was staunchly in favour of third spaces for trans people, and couldn’t see why the majority of “TRAs” eschewed them. Pure obstinacy on their part, no doubt.

Listening is important. I knew that. I knew I didn’t know everything that people of colour needed. I knew that the daily lives of disabled people were often invisible to others. I knew it was impossible to quantify what I took for granted due to my comfortable middle class upbringing. I would not have tried to tell any of these groups what they needed as though I knew better than them. And then it started to occur to me, I would not dictate needs and solutions to another minority, so why was I doing it to trans people? I wanted trans people to listen to cis women; the least I could do was listen to them. So I asked one (famous/infamous) trans woman, was it really so very important to her to use women’s facilities?

She responded cheerfully and kindly, but absolutely emphatically. Yes. She used them now. Why did people need to single her out? Was her personal history any of their business when she was going to the toilet in the pub or changing at the gym? But, I pursued, why couldn’t she use a third space? The answer to this oft asked question is now obvious to me. Let’s go back to Evie. Her coworkers don’t know she’s trans. She lives in an area where her safety could be at risk if she were outed, and even if she were perfectly physically safe, she would still face discrimination in her conservative environment. So what happens if a passing trans person goes and uses the special trans third space? They get outed. What happens to trans people who get outed? GCs would have you believe it’s all Glamour Woman of the Year awards, but the truth is that most trans people who come out face the possibility of getting kicked out of their homes, their jobs, and their social circles. They are potentially facing violence.

Let’s go back to Rebecca. She has used women’s spaces for 20 years without issues, without anyone thinking it was inappropriate, with her daughter thinking the idea that her mother would not be able to go into the ladies with her was hilarious. What would be the reason to force a change? Why would I advocate for a change to a system that was already operating largely without issues? Was I fiercely advocating for the rights of women and girls to maintain spaces that had never been trans exclusive in their lifetime, or was I attempting to force a change on another group of people that would disadvantage them by opening them up to discrimination, otherise them, and make them feel less welcome in the society they had a right to feel welcome in? And was I doing that at no appreciable benefit to cis women?

There was one thing I knew from fights on Twitter with trans advocates; something I’d long recognised but found difficult to admit. There had been almost no incidents of trans women being violent in women’s spaces. If you are from the UK and reading this, you are probably thinking of the same two names that I’m thinking of right now. Can you do that for cis men? I don’t know the names of every cis male perpetrator in the UK. I don’t even know the names of every man who has committed some kind of sexual violence or harassment against ME. So what was I worried about? A change in the future. An oncoming tide. Trans women weren’t the issue, I argued. It’s men who will take advantage. Note the use of the future tense. If trans women are allowed into women’s spaces, men will take the opportunity to abuse women further. A conditional sentence predicated on the idea that a) trans women are not allowed to use women’s spaces (false) and b) trans women are not already using women’s spaces (false). This hypothetical positioning betrayed my lack of knowledge about the day to day reality of trans lives. Trans women are already using women’s spaces, and there are vanishingly few cases of men taking advantage. Trans people already exist. I had no reason to speak in the future or the hypothetical. I was asking a marginalised group to make a change over a future, potential situation. What was the reason to force a change?

While I was talking to my new infamous interlocutor, something clicked. I wasn’t really bothered by the idea of trans women using the same spaces as me, I was bothered by the idea of telling women, particularly young women, not to trust their instincts when they saw someone they felt uncomfortable around in a changing room. Reflecting on this feeling two years later, I wonder if I was trying to hold on to control that doesn’t actually exist for women. Yes, women and girls should to be able to speak up when they feel threatened. But we rely so much on the idea of instinct as a form of defence, and I think it’s simply a coping mechanism. Instinct is no substitute for a functioning legal system or a culture that values women’s sexual freedom. Our instincts fail us constantly.

Another shift in my thinking came when I started examining the writing of Christa Peterson more closely. On anti-trans twitter, Christa is often portrayed as a biased kool-aid drinker who attacks the sweet wilting flower that is Kathleen Stock out of sheer malevolence. My mind having been cranked a little bit more open, I took a second look. Christa is very well-versed in radical feminist literature, and she’s able to discuss these issues with incisive insight. And yet it’s her most bleedingly obvious statements (that were not obvious to me at all) that affected me. It’s hard to choose which of her comments resonated with me the most, but consider this:

This tweet struck a cacophonous chord, like a lot of things that show up your internal contradictions do. I maintained that I wasn’t transphobic and yet I disagreed with a significant number of aims and rights that the majority trans people asserted they needed. How could I square this? How could I say I wasn’t transphobic if I rejected so much of what trans people were saying? The majority of trans people want to use the spaces designated for their transitioned gender. The majority of trans people want to change the sex marker on their driver’s licenses, passports, and birth certificates for their own privacy and safety. The majority of trans people want access to affirming healthcare, and think that the UK gender clinics and the process of changing your legal sex are cumbersome, outdated and move at the pace of a drunk snail wading through molasses in January.

We could (and I have done so ad nauseam on Twitter) argue over the EA2010 and what it says about trans inclusion until the cows come home, but it doesn’t really matter. Trans people use the spaces they want to use, or they simply self-exclude from using public facilities at all. I knew this because they told me and I knew this because I’d never seen anyone looking like Laith Ashley in the ladies.

I discovered how many trans people avoid using certain public facilities out of fear of getting harassed. I found out that both Julia and Celia, who are ardent feminists and would never do anything to make a cis woman uncomfortable, haven’t been swimming in years because they were too afraid of getting harassed in the changing room. Swimming is such a natural joy; something that we can see from infancy to old age that humans take such pleasure in. It’s heartbreaking to me to think of people feeling that they can’t do it, not because of fear of the activity itself, but because there’s nowhere safe for them to change for 5 minutes before and after.

Some trans people even report that they’ve contracted UTIs or kidney infections from avoiding public bathrooms. Now, surely if there’s any experience cis women can empathise with another human being going through, it’s a urinary tract infection. And if you are okay with that, what are you saying? That you’re okay with another person going through pain and physical danger for no reason? That you’re okay with trans people living a shadow life, unable to fully participate in society, because of something they didn’t ask for? Because that is what we are discussing here. Should trans people be able to spend the day shopping, work outside the home, go swimming, join a yoga class, or go to the pub? Should Rebecca and Julia not be able to have a day out with their daughters without risking abuse or outing? Should Evie be able to go into her office without risking her professional future? Should Celia and I be able to meet for a cup of coffee without calling around to find out which establishments will let her use the right facilities for her?

“They can do those things, they can use the spaces that correspond with their SEX.” They can’t. They can’t for the same reason that you would not go get changed in the men’s changing room. Nobody’s chromosomes or gamete potential are important here. And I think, deep down, you know that. You know what would happen to trans women who tried to change in front of men. Cis women and trans women fear men for the exact same reasons.

While we’re on the subject of what we know, that’s another question I’d like to ask you: what do you know for sure? What facts are not merely argument or speculation?

Here’s what I know for sure:

• Trans women have been using women’s spaces for decades.
• The law solidified trans women’s access to these spaces 13 years ago.
• There are millions of women and girls going to the toilet every day in the UK and we only know of one instance of a trans woman committing rape in public toilets.
• We know of zero cases of trans women committing rape in women’s changing rooms.
• We know of zero cases of trans women committing rape in women’s shelters.
• We know that the staff of women’s shelters want to include trans women in their services.

Anti-trans positions are all based on speculation.

• What IF a man takes advantage of trans inclusion?
• What IF the staff at women’s shelters are lying?
• What IF someone transitions and regrets it?

We don’t make good decisions based on hypotheticals and speculation. Could a man take advantage of trans inclusivity? Yes. But to the best of our knowledge, this happens extremely rarely. Could shelter staff be lying or feeling pressured not to speak their minds? Sure. But we have no evidence of that. Could cis male prisoners be trying to get transferred to the female estate for nefarious reasons? Again, yes, but they aren’t transferred on a whim. They are closely assessed. There are a lot of terrible things that could theoretically but we can’t organise our society around them, while ignoring the terrible things that happen frequently.

Here’s what else I know for sure. Trans people are real people. Their lives are not hypothetical. While we are discussing this topic on Twitter like it’s a theoretical game, they are truly scared for the future of their rights. So far in the UK there has not been significant legislative change, but we’ve seen hundreds of anti-trans laws proposed in the US, from threatening to perform genital testing on young women in high school sports to revoking the medical licenses of doctors who provide affirming care to threatening to take kids away from parents who even socially affirm their child’s gender. These are real children. They are not fodder for us to argue over. How many trans people, adults or children, do you know in person? And what aspects of their well-being are you willing to risk for a theoretical argument?

On the last hypothetical point, I’m going to make the assumption that you want the best for dysphoric children. I hope that you can extend the same courtesy of good faith assumption to me. The best evidence and research we have tells us that if dysphoria persists past the age of 12–14, it is likely permanent, and that transition is the most effective treatment for dysphoria. There is no real dissent on this.

The narrative goes like this. Transition is actually conversion therapy for young lesbians whose parents/communities cannot accept that they are same-sex attracted or gender non-conforming. Children are being force-fed puberty blockers the second they pick up a toy associated with the opposite sex, being ‘mutilated’ by the age of 13 and sent on a lifelong path of medicalisation and sorrow, all because trans people can’t handle gender non-conformity. A constant refrain of Listen to Detransitioners can be heard all across GC Twitter. Okay. So, that’s my next question. Are you really listening to detransitioners? Here are some of the most well-known stories:

Dagny is a female detransitioner who previously lived as a trans man. She suffered dysphoria from the age of 12, was diagnosed at 16, started HRT three months before turning 18, and still has dysphoria after detransitioning (three years ago at the time of recording).

Chiara is the daughter of the founder of 4th wave now, an anti-trans website aimed at preventing young people from transitioning. She expressed an interest in transitioning to her mother at the age of 17, an interest which she seems to attribute to internalised homophobia and sexual abuse at the hands of her father. She doesn’t appear to have undergone medical transition.

Helena was and now is a stereotypically feminine young woman, who developed an eating disorder and seems to link that disorder to her experiences with transitioning. She is straight and did not medically transition until 18.

Sinead Watson is another female detransitioner, and she says she was not pressured into conforming to gender stereotypes by parents. She describes herself as a tomboy and someone who didn’t like stereotypically girly things, and started going by a male name online to avoid harassment. She started medical transition at the age of 24.

Keira Bell is possibly the most well-known detransitioner. She describes herself as a “classic tomboy”, and developed dysphoria during puberty. She was put on puberty blockers at the age of 16, and a year later went on HRT, and underwent a mastectomy at 20. She is attracted to girls, and her life story recounts a general and serious lack of parental support. She suffered from vaginal atrophy, and also began to realise she was very physically different from a cis man. Bell ended up suing the NHS in a well-known case, advocating for a restriction to trans healthcare for under 18s. She won, but the ruling was overturned on appeal. Keira maintains a beard and still uses men’s public facilities.

Ritchie is a male detransitioner, a group which is generally less publicised. He comes from a homophobic family, and knew he was gay as a kid. He transitioned at the age of 25, taking three years to get HRT. He continues to take estrogen.

Jane is a 53 female detransitioner who lived as a trans man for 20 years. Her detransition appears to be what is sometimes referred to as a political detransition, meaning it’s motivated by exposure to gender critical rhetoric, rather than physical discomfort or dysphoria. This is inference from my part, there’s not much about Jane’s story online.

So, the number of these cases that conforms to the GC rhetoric up there is zero. Out of 9 detransitioners we have 2 lesbians, and 1 gay man, we have zero medical transitioning under the age of 16, we have a variety of reasons for transitioning and a variety of reasons for detransitioning. We have a lot of influence from social media leading up to transitioning, but we also have a lot of influence from social media leading up to detransitioning. Helena’s discussion of her eating disorder issues strikes me as quite distinct from Dagny or Kiera’s discussion of their dysphoria. Looking closely at the stories, I notice a pattern of health issues arising (vaginal atrophy gets a frequent mention), I notice a pattern of lack of family support, and I notice a pattern of restrictive family upbringings. What do these patterns suggest to me? Other than the very obvious facts that trans men need better health care and more research into issues unique to them, and that a lot of people who are not suitable parents have children anyway, they don’t suggest much. There aren’t a ton of commonalities. And their stories certainly don’t validate the GC narratives I detailed above.

I also want to draw attention to Ky Schevers’ account of retransitioning and his feelings about his time as a detransitioner. Ky appears in Katie Herzog’s well-known Stranger article about detransitioners as Cass, and she spends a lot of time on his case. A few years after the publication of the article, he retransitioned (something that the majority of detransitioners eventually do) and came out swinging at the GC movement that he believes led to his detransition. Is there room in your view of transition for Ky’s regret?

It’s well-worth reading Ky’s own account of his experiences: but this passage in particular jumps out at me:

“I’ve accepted myself and I’ve found other people who accept me as I am. Why did it take so long to find that? Why did I have to spend six years of my life trying to be something I’m not, suffering needlessly in the process? I do what I can to salvage that time as much as possible because what else can I do? But I see that time as a loss, as time I will not get back. I can accept what happened while also wishing it hadn’t happened. Because I didn’t need to suffer like that.”

I feel this passage not only because Ky’s pain jumps off the page at me and makes itself impossible to ignore, but also because the way Ky speaks about his experience reminds me so much of the way GCs try to speak about young transitioners’ experiences on their behalf. GCs claim that detransitioning will help these “confused” youngsters become more at one with themselves and their womanhood, but we can see from Ky’s writing that the opposite is true, and instead he found that inner alignment when he rejected GC pressure.

Speaking of pressure, I think we probably have common ground in that we both believe no cis lesbian should ever be pressured, directly or indirectly, into having sex with trans women. Of course, our society has a huge problem with sexual coercion. I think we are still far, far from a solid collective understanding of what true sexual consent looks like. In fact, while awareness of marital rape and victim blaming has increased, and we at least pay lip service to the idea of wanting to improve the sexual dynamics in our world, I think nowadays a lot of teenage girls and young women receive more pressure to be sexually liberated and to engage in practices they might not really be interested in. I’ve thankfully aged out of that group, but when I was younger, I had sex I didn’t really want to have and experimented with sexual acts I wasn’t really interested in because I thought that’s what liberated women do. From the sounds of it, I don’t think things have improved much on that front for Gen Z. And really, why should it have? Consent and boundaries are buzzwords in the media, but I see plenty of evidence that even progressive-minded people don’t actually know what they mean. Take what Stonewall’s Nancy Kelley said in the now infamous BBC article about trans women and cis lesbians.

“Nobody should ever be pressured into dating, or pressured into dating people they aren’t attracted to. But if you find that when dating, you are writing off entire groups of people, like people of colour, fat people, disabled people or trans people, then it’s worth considering how societal prejudices may have shaped your attractions.”

I believe everyone reading this will all agree on the truth of the first sentence here. But the second sentence betrays a subtle compliance with the patriarchal forces that aim to make women feel bad about their sexual choices, and aim to change them for the advantage of other people. I very much doubt this is at all conscious on Kelley’s part, and I’m not intending to add on the pile-on of her for these comments, but there is an issue here. If you find yourself writing off the possibility of dating entire groups of people, based on ethnicity, ability, size, whatever the case…FINE. You are not required to include ANYONE in your dating pool. You can break up with someone for any reason. If you are racist, transphobic, ableist, or fatphobic, you should deal with that IN GENERAL, but the goal should never be to make yourself more willing to date someone.

The second issue that I see in Kelley’s quote is a subtle shift away from the topic at hand, because while it’s true that nobody should be pressured into dating anyone, the issue here is specifically lesbians being pressured into sleeping with trans women. Lesbians should not be pressured into sleeping with trans women. Lesbians should be free to date trans women if they want to and to reject them if they want to. I’m not sure of the reason why some people take a step away from explicitly saying that, but it reminds me a little of when politicians are asked if they have an issue with a PARTICULAR group, and they respond that they abhor racism in all it’s forms. That wasn’t quite the question, was it?

But I want to proceed on here to the repeated question of reality. How many lesbians are being explicitly pressured into having sex with trans women? Have you met any? The BBC article that examines the issue finds one instance of a woman pressured into sex with a trans woman, and by pressure I want to be clear that from the details presented in the story, this woman was raped. And if she’s reading this, she has my full belief and my full empathy, and I hope her rapist rots in hell. The story talks about two other women who have received pressured, though they were not assaulted, and I believe them too. If you are reading this and you have been assaulted by a trans woman, or you’ve been pressured by your social circle to sleep with trans women or at least say that you would, I believe you too. And it’s totally fucking unacceptable.

What I also believe is that few trans women have any interest in pressuring cis lesbians (or anyone at all) into having sex with them. The journalist of that article worked for years on it and found ONE case. For someone funded by the world’s premiere news organisation, that seems significant. Few so-called trans activists believe that genital preferences are transphobic. Those sentiments are out there, but they are nowhere near as prevalent as you may believe them to be. I can name a few prominent trans voices who have displayed homophobic, coercive attitudes, but it’s only a few, and I’ve seen plenty of pushback from other trans people when those attitudes are aired. I can name many more who believe lesbians have total right to set their own boundaries. It’s common for GCs to say things like: a) if trans women are so desperate for someone to sleep with them why don’t they sleep with each other? b) They have to pressure people into sleeping with them because no one could find them attractive c) Where have all the lesbians gone?

These statements again display a lack of knowledge about trans lives. a) Trans women do sleep with each other. All the time. I was just talking to two separate couples of trans women who are almost annoyingly adorable (almost :)) in their affection for each other; b) every straight trans woman on Tinder laughed so hard she cried just now; every time I talk to Anna she is sifting through the pile of men hitting on her; c) Erm, lesbians are about. There hasn’t been a decrease in the number of young (cis) women identifying as lesbian, there’s been an increase! I understand the strong desire for lesbian representation, and the anxiety that can occur about the idea of lesbian voices disappearing, but this anxiety is not backed up by the data, at least in terms of a recent decrease.

Are we all ready to feel bad about the world? As I’m writing this, Twitter is reeling from the appearance of literal nazis (not just the social media kind) at Posie Parker’s anti-trans rally in Australia. While the images of actual Nazis are striking, they don’t really come as a surprise to anyone on the pro-trans side. We’ve known for a long time that Parker was sympathetic to the furthest right voices, and suspected she was more deeply connected to white supremacist movements than was generally known. I think Parker is a white supremacist. I make no bones about that. Am I bringing this up because I think the average GC is a nazi? Not at all. But it is an inescapable fact that Nazis and GCs share a political belief regarding trans rights. And I think you should be asking yourself why would the far right be interested in the work of a bunch of radical feminists?

I don’t think I’ll have to work very hard to convince you that whatever so-called values Tucker Carlson, Matt Walsh, Jordan Peterson or ACTUAL NAZIS have do not align with the values of radical feminists. I would suggest that the reason they are interested in the issue are because they see something you don’t. Right-wingers recognise women’s liberation when they see it, because they hate it so much. They have never been on our side. They never will be on our side. They do not respect our right to our own lives, our own bodies, or our own minds, so if they are agreeing with you on an issue of women’s rights, THERE IS A PROBLEM. You might be thinking that you and Tucker don’t see eye to eye on the basics of the issue: he is pro-gender stereotypes and you are against them. But where does this all end up? It pains me to point out the right is very often several steps ahead of us; the devastating destruction of Roe v Wade shows us that. What is in it for them? They get to divide the left, something the gender debate has been extraordinarily effective at. They get to distract feminists from real issues (again Roe v Wade, the cornerstone of American feminist achievement, has fallen). On this very trip, Posie Parker has been spouting anti-abortion sentiment for the minors who need abortion and birth control the most, and since becoming radicalised, she’s claimed that lesbian mothers weren’t really mothers, and that trans men (whom she views as women) should be forcibly sterilised. They get to paint the left as the real agents of hatred, as the real homophobes, as the people really trying to shut down debate. They get to watch as lifelong feminists start criticising women’s appearance and behaviour for not being feminine enough. They get to watch as lifelong feminists start to argue that male violence is not a product of socialisation, of entitlement, of broken legal systems that do not view women’s bodies as their own, but as something inherent to men. Something they can’t help. Something we shouldn’t even try to change. And they get to recruit you. And they are doing that with remarkable success.

Speaking of benefiting from trans issues, where is Marion Millar? More specifically, where is Marion Millar’s crowdfund money? She raised £30,000 for a court case regarding her harassing multiple gay and lesbian people (including a lesbian cop) that was dismissed and she has since disappeared from the face of the earth, under investigation for fraud. She’s not the only one to go missing. Charlie Evans, a detransitioner, made a big splash in the news a few years ago when she announced that she was setting up the Detrans Advocacy Network and that she had received communication from hundreds of other young detranstioners. She had a small crowdfunder to start the website and was earning £200/month from a Patreon before she too disappeared off the face of the earth. In 2018, Jennifer James raised £30,000 to challenge the Labour Party’s decision to allow trans women on all women shortlists. The legal challenge was never brought and she has since…disappeared off the face of the earth. The current list of GCs who have at least started crowdfunders stands at:

Marion Millar

Charlie Evans

Jennifer James

Graham Linehan

Maya Forstater (three times)

Allison Bailey

Harry Miller

Sarah Phillimore

Jo Phoenix

Fair Play For Women (Nicola Williams)

Transgender Trend (Stephanie Davies-Arai)

Ann Sinnott

Louise Moody

Helena Wojtczak

Kath Murray

Lucy Hunter Blackburn

Lisa Mackenzie

Joanna Cherry

James Esses

Katie Alcock

Victoria Edwards

Lisa Keogh

Trina Budge, Susan Smith and Marion Calder (For Women Scotland)

Nina Paley

Julie Bindel

Posie Parker

Raquel Rosario Sánchez

Denise Fahmy

I don’t think I have to over-explain the pattern here. I’m not suggesting some broad conspiracy or financial cabal. But some of them are making money off stoking fear and anger, and they are collecting charitable donations in a time of immense economic anxiety. The cases that do actually make it to court are billed by big name GCs as milestone cases that will change the course of gender discourse. But in reality, they are minor cases with peculiar and narrow points of focus. Should one woman not have her contract renewed for leaving GC literature around the office and speaking disrespectfully of trans people out of the office? Should one woman have been asked to delete two tweets? Does the wording of the guidance for one question of the census that affects fewer people than the margins of error need an entire court case? Does all that sound really significant to you? Because the crowdfunders for those cases alone raised over a million pounds. What else could that money have funded? Instead of minorly helping out the careers of already well-off people, that money could have gone to causes that actively help women and girls in actual need.

The final question I’d like to ask you is what would happen if you stopped caring? If instead of focusing on trans issues, you turned your attention to things like making rape actually illegal instead of just in name only, or making sure abuse victims have a legal system that backs them and a financial and social system that allows them to escape. What if you turned your attention to the continued sexual objectification of young women’s bodies, to the continued pressure on them to starve themselves into ethereality, and to the ways that pressure continues to haunt us throughout the rest of our lives? What if you never thought about trans issues again? What would change? I would suggest that the obsession over trans issues does nothing to lower sexual assault rates, does nothing to make any woman feel safer, does nothing to fight against regressive ideas of gender and in fact does everything to reinforce them. The insistence over using “he” to refer to trans women and “she” to refer to trans men helps zero women in zero situations. The preoccupation with toilets has prevented zero assaults and has instead resulted in cis women being assaulted for not being gender conforming enough. The obsession with defining the term woman has not solidified any support for women’s rights and instead has reinforced the narrative that women exist solely to make more men.

Improving the lives of women and girls around the world is exhausting, overwhelming, never-ending work, and I think many women who focus on trans issues do so because they feel that the mountain of work to be done on actual feminist issues is insurmountable. Perhaps they feel that trans issues are something tangible, something small enough that they can have an effect on. It’s true: trans people are a small and vulnerable enough minority that we have the power to truly damage their rights. So you can try to do that. Or you can leave the conversation and not look back. Or you can try to affect real change for women and girls. It’s up to you.

*a note about language: GC stands for gender critical, which is the self-chosen term for the contemporary anti-trans movement. I prefer to use this term to TERF (trans exclusionary radical feminist), in part because I don’t believe the movement is dominated by feminists or women at all, and in part because the term TERF is at least arguably gendered. I also use cis to refer to men and women who are not trans, and I’d like to invite you to get over it.