Vigils and safety

 I'd like to thank the many people who have been attending vigils for murdered trans teen Brianna Ghey. Solidarity and resistance against hate are essential. 

I have been particularly affected by her death, not because I knew her but because it brings back memories of my violent upbringing and the terror I lived in so often. Had I had the courage to be out as trans like Brianna when I was her age, it would likely have ended brutally. There was enough to be frightened of without complicating things further by making my femininity known and I have lived with caution ever since. It shouldn't have ended badly for her, but this is where we are now at.

There is a very hard-hitting article on the role of the press in promoting transphobia in satirical newssite The Onion: It Is Journalism's Sacred Duty to Endanger the Lives of as Many Trans People as Possible. The hostile atmosphere promoted in Britain by the government and the press is palpable. Britain has always had an atrocious press (it's only since moving to Italy that, for the first time in my life, I am taking a daily paper as independent, objective journalism is still alive here); however, it's pretty clear that transphobia is now everyday fare in the UK papers.

Evil, violent people are a minority but they dominate life and here's yet another example of how being a child, especially a trans child, is dangerous. I had felt, when I got out in public at last, from 2010 onwards, that we were moving away from this repression, and that trans rights were progressing, but in the last few years the world has been embracing the hatreds of the 1930s and '40s again, including repression, racism and transphobia, and I am very worried. It's only the incompetence of the current crop of dictatorial leaders that is keeping the world from disaster. With the direct threats on me, my family and my industry following the Brexit vote in the UK, and on me now as a trans person, I feel like a Jewish person must have felt in 1930s Germany and I, too, have cleared out of England to another country where I feel less persecuted.

It's a pity I didn't get to Spain last week as intended but I will try again soon. The Spanish parliament has just voted not only to allow trans people to self-identify from age 14 (even 12 if allowed by a court) but also to stop conversion therapy. I will live wherever I feel less threatened, and moving there is an option. Watch this space.

 

Sue x