Fighting back

I have been thinking about how I can be active in trans without necessarily being a trans “activist”. I have always taken the view that trying to be a positive example was enough, just to get on with leading my life without drawing attention to myself but not hiding the fact I am trans. I tend to be put off by strident articulation of any point of view, for example, the newly converted non-smokers, the newly converted born again religious people who all know what is best for you.

So by deciding not to go “stealth” (if and when that possibility was available to me) was a way of being out there and trying to live life without hiding and being real seemed to me to be the best way, a positive example.

On January 8^th  “What The Trans”  a very long thread on Twitter outlining a detailed history of transphobia in the UK which quite frankly is concerning.  It is a pinned tweet at the top of their page and any interested person should read it. It has changed my perspective and made me feel that my previous stance was perhaps a bit close to the doing nothing position stated by Edmund Burke “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Or in this case “The only thing necessary for the triumph of transphobia is for good trans-people to do nothing.” On 10^th January it posted a thread on how to start fighting back.

Graham Norton recently supported Trans people in an interview with the Independent in which he said “I feel like Trans people are a very vulnerable group and a tiny group and it has been conflated into this thing, as if there are trans armies coming over the hills” also saying he believed trans people “need to be protected, rather than feared…….I know there’s some aggression, but any group looking for equality and progress will only get there if there’s an extremist vanguard, and that’s how you shift things to the middle ground.”

I am not sure about being part of an extremist vanguard , right now that feels outside my comfort zone. It is probably the time to take tentative steps towards doing something rather than nothing.