I’ve been struggling to write a post this week. Not for any momentous reason, but the usual suspects of tiredness and a somewhat busier than usual few days at work. But, perhaps, the truth of it is some posts are hard to write.


Bill Hicks

Perhaps I’m taking the late Mr Hicks’s words sightly out of context, but maybe he’ll overlook it this one time 😉

The fear of gay people over won’t someone think of the children?! lead us to the nonsense Section 28 in the 80s. Decades later, almost the same playbook of fear is being rolled out to attack trans people… or perhaps more accurately, trans kids.

It’s not like the transgender community has a massive voice. Certainly not in the ears of those who set policy and amend laws to ensure equality. Yes, trans folk are online: some of us are out, some of us partially out, and a lot more too scared to even touch the handle of the closet door. At this point, a human with an ounce of decency might pause to think how might that feel to not be yourself, to live in fear.

Yet we have…. I’m taking a deep breath here, so I don’t use a very rude word… Yet we have a minority of people actively creating laws to ban American teens from sports, from getting the health care they need, and our own government does not seem bothered to adhere to the promise to update the Gender Recognition Act nor ban the vileness of Conversion Therapy.

Fear is being used to say the Trans people are converting your kids. No we are not. We don’t need to recruit, transgender people arrive in the world by birth. We are born this way and we have to live with what it means. For some, that means help, maybe medical, maybe psychological, or maybe just social. Acceptance by family and friends.

So next time someone rolls out won’t someone think of the children, ask yourself how might it feel to have organisations who, at best, takes a complete disregarded for you, and at worse, actively legislates against your existence. Throw into that mix newspapers that only publish the views of haters and never give you a voice.

I believe it was a former journalist and member of the Scottish Parliament, John Nicolson, who asked the BBC Director General, Tim Davie, if Davie would allow racists and sexists on panels about Black Lives Matter or women’s equality.

I want to believe the rest of Bill’s story that “it’s just a ride”, but I can smell smoke. I can smell it in the news. Wisps of it pass in conversation. Nothing good comes from hate. It burns those who get in the way and it only consumes, never creates. It doesn’t stop either. It doesn’t consume selectively, but moves on to other targets, destroying.

Is that the world we want? A world in which a child born who doesn’t quite fit the narrow binary of gender, must now be told they are wrong, defective, and should be treated as less than the normal kids? F*** that noise. I choose love.

As seen in Belfast a few years back


  1. Its a very sad fact that some news organs are only interested in stories that sell their newspapers instead of the actually news.

    So if writing crap about Trans people sells their wretched organ expect all the lurid details no matter how innocent the reporting being reported about actually it.

    1. I’d like to think that I get that all newspapers have a market they aim for and that comes with a political bias too. However, I feel there’s a difference between bias, fabricating stories, and outright bullying of certain targets. The latter being individuals – Meghan Markle, Lucy Meadows, etc – and groups (immigrants, asylum seekers, refugees, LGBTQ+).

      When we have both a culture and a system that allows individuals and companies to promote discrimination, we feed the fire. The fire runs through our world. The impact of this hatred is the abuse people off colour, women, and trans folk experience.

      1. You put me in an interesting position, while I am happy to accept the findings of Michael Singleton about the poisonous nature of the Daily Wail in the tragic case of Lucy Meadows, I feel somewhat different about the Markle case. Markle has been found out to be somewhat economical with the truth.

        1. The truth is quite a complex situation and I feel that there are times when competing experiences can be true at the same time. Regardless of Megan’s views and comments, in think looking at the situation as an outsider, I feel quite strongly in the view the paper set out to tell a very different story to that compared to other royals and celebs.

          While not exactly the same, you can see similar examples in pairs that report on young black men as thugs, but troubled and complex young men who are white.

          The Lucy Meadows case was simply awful and I think we need to learn a few valuable lessons on the power since of us have and to use that with kindness.

  2. It’s a motly collection of groups that have issues with LGBT matters – religious, feminist, macho, child protective… These groups normally don’t see eye to eye. But one thing unites pushy people and that’s sight a demographic that appears weaker and can be bullied for all sorts of spurious, trumped up reasons, often contradictory and created just for one campaign. Having failed to keep gay life criminalised, having failed to prevent gay marriage, having failed to prevent gay adoption, they now turn to an easier target, the disparate and less organised trans community. Maybe crushing them will work instead, they think, providing a little victory over someone. Given that the vast majority of trans people are in the closet, too scared to come out as it is, and trans people are fewer than gay people, this campaign might just work, and provide smug triumph for some very nasty people. It strikes me that the problem in the UK now is the brazen corruption and kleptocracy at the top that is determined to create an all-powerful elite at the expense of all below. That goes for certain US states and certain other countries. We have to sort that before there’ll be any return to safer days for trans people in some countries. Sue x

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