TransActual
We are glad to see an announcement from the government today, but the contents of the announcement are disappointing. The changes are minimal. Of course, we are happy that steps will be taken to address the cost of obtaining a Gender Recognition Certificate and there will be a move to reduce some of the bureaucracy involved in the application process.
As a transgender woman I’ve often seen my human rights questioned and debated by others, and by extension, the rights of all transgender people have come into question and debate. The same can be said for many marginalized groups and individuals in the present and throughout history.
Make no mistake, as far as the public conversation is concerned, there is no debate. There are no new ideas being suggested and tested, no scrutiny of evidence, nothing edifying or educational being added to public knowledge and attitudes. The flurries of angry tweets, dogwhistles and media clickbait are at best a waste of time and attention, and at worst a downwards spiral reinforcing negative stereotypes and peddling misinformation.
The connotations of describing a transgender person as a “trap” is significant, especially nowadays because there is more overlap with the real world and the internet than in the past
It’s not easy for me to speak publicly about my autism, in large part because I’ve been taught all my life that ‘good’ autistic people are those who are not visibly autistic.
I sit here with so much more knowledge about my culture and my religion. Hinduism has a wide and varied history and mythology full of queer figures. This is a religion of genderflipping deities and queer heroes. It is a religion which recognises that people aren’t always male or female; there is a ‘tritiya prakriti’, a third nature. Which then begs the question, where did all that pressure to conform to normative society come from? What caused my self-hatred and denial and hurt for all those years? Why did I have this idea that I couldn’t be Hindu and queer?