Hello friends! I’m delighted to say I’m a trans woman; my name is Abigail and you can refer to me with she/her.
Thank you to everyone who kept my secret for such a long time as I prepared to come out publicly! I’m excited to continue my acting career and Philosophy Tube. Please respect my privacy and treat everyone with kindness and patience, even those who don’t treat me kindly. It’s so lovely to finally relax, to sleep well with sweet dreams and be at home in myself! But I’m also scared. Things are very, very bad for trans people in the UK and they’re getting worse. My existing following means I have now instantly become one of the most recognisable transgender people in the country and I feel an enormous pressure to be “good at it,” like if I could only be clever enough, or pretty or funny or articulate enough, things would magically come right! Alas. I can’t be a perfect paragon of trans Britain, I’m just an actress, but I can relay the following facts:
Trans people have existed for as long as there has been a Britain (longer!) but even after a century of feminism the government still dictates what we may do with our own bodies. The NHS is forced by outdated rules to discriminate against us: if a cisgender (i.e. not trans) woman wants hormone replacement therapy for menopause she can get it from the GP, but if a trans person needs it to transition we have to travel to a separate clinic and be interrogated by psychiatrists. Because of this discrimination waiting lists are several years long. Women like me die waiting for the exact same medicines that bald men get from the GP to treat hair loss. Trans men die waiting for breast reduction surgery that cis women get for back pain. In England and Wales people under 16 can get an abortion, which is permanent, but trans children can’t get life-saving puberty blockers, which are reversible. Some polticians promise to reduce waiting times, but that’s not equality; it’s just more efficient discrimination. We don’t have equal legal rights either. Cis people can use their passport as proof of ID when they get married or adopt children, but we can’t - even though my passport says ‘F’ for Female I’d have to beg the government’s permission to become a wife or mother. There has never been a trans MP, member of the House of Lords, MSP, MS, or MLA. No party has equal rights as a policy goal. Trans people, especially trans people of colour, are hit hardest by unemployment, homelessness, and domestic, sexual, and police violence, but the conversation always focuses on wealthy white cis women tweeting about toilets. Overworked journalists often don’t know much about our lives, so antifeminists and religious extremists feed them pseudoscience and fear mongering. Antisemitic conspiracy theories about a mythical “trans lobby” controlling universities or government are printed without criticism alongside
calls to have us “cured” with conversion therapy, which, shockingly, is still legal. Well-meaning folks worry about embarrassing themselves by ‘saying the wrong thing,’ so they never speak up to help us. Like Suffragettes and black civil rights movements before us we are told to watch our tone lest the people denying us the means to live get hurt feelings.
I might only be an actress, but as a feminist I can’t submit to civic inferiority or give up control of my body. In my view feminism isn’t a tea party with the Queen or a girlboss brunch with #femspirational CEOs, it’s our common struggle to be free. Today I’d like to add my voice to the many demanding new legislation for trans equal rights: an informed consent system of medical transition and a self-ID system of legal transition for all who desire it, including nonbinary people. Everyone else in Britain already gets their healthcare and gendered services that way; surely it’s only fair that we should too? In my mind there’s no question about it, just as there was no legitimate “debate” about whether to give gay and lesbian people equal rights; we don’t “cancel" or “silence” Flat Earthers when we set aside their concerns about space travel and start listening to cosmonauts! That said, “equal rights” won’t fix the poverty, criminalisation, surveillance, and state violence facing all those who work for a living rather than own property and capital. Trans equality must be part of a huge redistribution of power and resources so society serves human need instead of profit. I hope that someday soon people of all ages realise that being trans is perfectly normal. Like all human beings we are inherently valuable and entitled to self-determination, and if that makes others upset then it’s only because they’re choosing not to live in reality. These are scary times, but “courage calls to courage everywhere and its voice cannot be denied.” Even when other people make it hard, being trans is a gift. My love goes out to every trans person reading my words in Britain or overseas, especially those who can’t come out - yet!
[italics:] This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man! [end italics]
Abigail XXx
