 Hello and welcome to Tiskey Sauer. It's a family affair today. I'm very excited to be joined by Ash Sarkar senior editor of Navarra Media And Sean Fay of Sean this way fame. Hi Also prolific writer campaigner and stand-up comedian. Yeah, how's the how's the comedian career going? It's going okay I'm doing a fundraiser for the new LGBTQ community center in East London on Friday night this Friday Yeah, amazing. Yeah, so come on. I've only seen your stand-up on Twitter and it's I was very impressed But I'd love to say my friend just doing on a phone But I'm gonna have to get some more touch-cote video me one time, but only when it's good. Gary. Yeah, Gary Like the little Winnie coming from like the tech desk of like you're giving me more work I can't believe you called it a family affair and we didn't say anything about Hateration in the Dancery I don't know that's gone over my head. It's Mary J. Blige Shit, that's embarrassing isn't it? I hate when things get said about pop culture that just go over my head and it's live on you Whatever anyway We're gonna talk about some big issues today the current state of trans rights in Britain transphobia online and offline The limits of what should be up for debate But before that there's an issue so central to social justice It would be remiss for us to ignore it In fact, it's a controversy considered so important that Theresa May spokesperson was asked about it today Whether or not number 10 would intervene This is the issue of probably one of the most marginalised groups in Britain gammon Ash I mean gammon a racial slur. I mean, I don't know if it's a racial slur, but it's certainly Haram so Gammon refers to a particular kind of property owning middle-aged middle England white dude who Wants nothing more than for top gear to you know, bring back Jeremy Clarkson and it for you know Be pride of place in the BBC and also for us all to die in a nuclear holocaust. Those are the two central demands of the gammonites and After I mean that's you know, there's kind of you know, is it or is it not a racial slur has been ticking along for a Little bit and then Lucy Fisher at the Times wrote an article about it saying that was very upsetting to lots of people And Aaron Aaron Bostani was was quoted in it as Mike Gape's King Gammon of the gammon Gape's long-term friend of the show. I was described him as the man whose names are full sentence, which no one else finds funny Yeah, I was gonna say gates. You don't need to be you don't need gammon. That's your name What I find hilarious about this having you know been front and center of some of the Twitter fraff today is That it's a term that white people most notably and with the most panache Mazab Call other white people and yet it's now like is it racist against white people? Would it be okay if you know, for instance, we called, you know, Asian people packy then it's like no Did you bring us into this we were sitting down over there with our samosas Quite happily before we brought us into it and I think that it's really striking for a number of reasons And I think we can get into the value judgment in it because I know that Sean's got a lot to say about it but I think one of the reasons why people are really upset by it is because it takes a Demographic who has seen as the arbiter of common-sense politics property owning middle England male White and says well hang on you don't have a natural authority or credibility here And we're still to make fun of some of their more absurd positions like would you commit to a first strike? Nuclear policy which defeats the fucking point of deterrence. That's what the word deterrence is there for It's that it undermines this whole like a priori claim to Power and to whose concerns are deemed legitimate and whose aren't that's why people are upset. That's the real tea on the gammon beef So that's where it emerged wasn't it? It has Some relation to like physical features I mean Matt's a white guy calling up a white guy's gammon, but Matt's kind of like young and hot, you know, I mean Of course according to me But it emerged the phrase emerged because in the debate during the general election There was all these men in the audience of question time who were asking Would you blow up a country of a nuclear bomb and they were being sort of posited as the voice of common sense and sort of like the everyday normal person so this was to sort of Point they just came up a bit of all of them with some Sean what do you think? Yeah, so like I think I get picking up on what I said well the first thing about whether or not it's a slur I don't think it's a racial slur or at least I feel like when you say racist obviously it's about whether or not that has the power dynamics to be you know to name People whether that has kind of any kind of like social impact in the same way that it does when it's for reverse White people with people of color, so I think that racist slur are complete if it's a slur I think it's about whether or not you consider I actually do think a lot of the things that like a contested probably ask us, but it's like whether or not it's necessarily bad I think like I think it's interesting. Yeah, because I think like Ash said it's like the one group who I'm not used to I think that any minority group and all women pretty much are used to like Some kind of feature being used metonymically to like reduce you to something and like just that group being like reduced to a Pinkish hue and kind of like a round face Like they're not used to it and obviously there's like a huge outcry. I'm not sure where to place those feelings. I don't know I Feel like there's been a lot on Twitter about I feel like it can get a little bit like close shop anyway and people endlessly debating this It sort of becomes like a sideshow that can become quite exclusive and quite boring to watch and I'm never really sure how much like if you make a flippant joke at like an old white guy who's rich It's kind of fine, but like endlessly defending Using the same tactics as bigger to people Do you know do you agree with Helen Lewis that it's problematic that people chose gammon and not prosciutto Prosciutto darling prosciutto. So how do you pronounce it? She said another ham that I didn't I'd never heard of. Priscilla. No, that Priscilla, I think. Okay. Yeah Is it classist? I mean the thing is is that like it's up there. No, look, I'm sorry I can't hold it in anymore. Gammon is such a loaded insult because it implies in a sneering way that the person you're talking about It's working class. People aren't being called pastrami, parma ham Why would you call them on parma ham? Look at the shape of a gammon. It's like a much thicker consistency of the meat But also like I could kind of imagine calling parma ham sort of like the twink version of a gammon Yeah, maybe. All right. I mean who would you call parma ham then like? That maybe that guy who's the Tory the Tory young twink who talks about Brexit on TV Yeah He's the right wing. Yeah, I was drawing blanks. I was just like Also, like can I just say in this space as a minority cisgender heterosexual woman I find some of this language very exclusionary like I don't know what a twink is Isn't that like the Milky Bar kid? You don't know what twink is. I have inferred that it's Milky Bar kid adjacent Well, you can look it up. We'll tell you afterwards Let's move on. We're gonna move on from salted meats to the serious issue of the day Which is trans rights because I've been in the public spotlight over the last year or so because of proposed changes to the Regenda Recognition Act and organized opposition to these changes from trans exclusionary radical feminists working in alliance with sections of the mainstream press most viciously probably the times or most consistently It's in this context that last week Channel 4 held a debate as part of their gender quake series with public figures Including Caitlyn Jenner, Jermaine Greer, Monroe Bergdorf and our very own Ash Sarkar This show was quite controversial in the end. Ash, can you explain to us what happened in this debate? So, I mean just to talk through the format for people that didn't watch it because I don't know they have lives It was set up like a really plush chintzy bear pit So there were kind of these deep Velvety sofas in the middle of a big hall and that was where myself and the other panelists and the chair Kathy Newman were Arranged and then surrounding us like, you know in concentric circles kind of was the audience and There'd been really tight security like we weren't allowed to know the venues straight away But it emerged like quite quickly that they're just been either really shoddy or completely absent vetting because I walked in and Even as someone who isn't particularly plugged into lots of the stuff around like trans rights and trans activism I recognized like some of the most prominent turfs some of whom had already had a pop-up pop at me before sitting right behind me and As for the debate itself, I think There was very little conversation between the panelists It was kind of like everyone had their set piece and it made it sort of hard to challenge and come back on particular points But I think that even the most vile Aspects of the formal debate would have been manageable Had it not been for the audience? So like I said, there was some very prominent Trans-exclusion radical feminist there who were just heckling in particular Monro Bergdorf relentlessly and I don't know how much of it was audible to the audience at home, but it was incredibly aggressive incredibly dehumanizing and Really purile like it descended into literally people just howling the word penis at Monroe going from things Which like was syntactically I could recognize the sentences just bellowing body parts over the course of an hour and Despite a floor manager coming up to me and assuring me that should certain people have cool again They'd be removed when they did heckle again. They were not removed Monroe asked on camera for someone to be removed No, that didn't happen. So you say it was a controversial show. I would say it was a cluster fuck I think you're also being too kind to channel for when you say it was a failure in vetting because it seemed quite Specific that they'd invited a lot of trans exclusionary radical feminists and they'd given them front row seats So I was there I ended up a friend texted me at the last minute saying do you want to go see this? Oh ashes in it. I'll go along, but we we didn't get free drinks But the turfs all got free drinks and they all got so they were on a specific guest list They've been it wasn't they hadn't been vetted out It's they'd been specifically invited and given front row seats and the producer said sort of like we're encouraging Sort of like noise and participation from the audience and whoop if you'd like a whoop if you like a point You know it was an invite for people to be loud and what they had done is they invited some Trans activists trans people and surrounded them with people who are known Trans folks which just seemed incredibly responsible. It was crazy like when the show finished I think I got caught in the credits like turning around and like giving someone both barrels because Just woman was like you're a handmaiden, you know, you're fucking disgusting this and the other like really abusive And I was just like if you want to go we can go like First offense time out of good behavior. I'll take the years Sean you are you tweeted that you asked for you turned down. Yeah an appearance Do you want to explain why? Yeah, I guess like so for context like well from my kind of vantage point and I Came out as trans and started my transition two years ago I also like literally around the same time started like a career in the media and Like start working with Navarra and other places And this is just when this is kind of stepped up around in terms of like the trans Inquiry the government had it was also in 2015. So that's like over the last two and a half years So I've had kind of my own personal journey my media career happening at the same time So it's like huge upswell in transphobia and what I have like learned in that time very quickly is I am asked several times a month I'll have a conversation with a television producer who is very nice are run through all the main points about The legislation that's under review about the dispute with trans exclusionary radical feminists if we want to call them that and Yeah, what would you want to call them? Sorry? Well, I mean like I would say that it's kind of a strange cohort of like certainly That is the banner that you can most easily say they gather under but I would say it's kind of a odd mixture of kind of like Odd reactionaries who actually remind me more of kind of like Anita Bryant and Mary White House kind of like Like Middle England conservatives that don't often like a quite sexually conservative also for example don't like drag Queens You know just like quite prim then there's obviously a lesbian Separatism radical feminist politics, which obviously there are some women from that kind of feminist tradition who are there and Then there are just sort of bitter internet haters and then they all sort of gather under what you could call turf But I think actually when you look at it more closely. Anyway, there's also an irony, right? It's not trans exclusionary. In fact, they're whole you're the identity is centered around the policing of trans women Out of public life. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, definitely and and in some cases, I Mean like historically there is a feminist tradition that goes back to the 70s in which like like Janice Raymond These kind of radical feminist from the 70s who wrote texts that basically said transsexualism should be morally mandated out of existence and You know like essentially Janice Raymond wrote all transsexuals and she only meant trans women all transsexuals rape women's bodies by Appropriating that body for themselves. So like there is a kind of really nasty vicious theoretical strain in feminism but I don't believe that everyone now who harasses trans women Or who was probably at that quite falls into that category. I think it's I think a lot of women have become radicalized online In certain forums, I've been very public on Twitter about mum's net Which obviously people can be like, that's that's a strange organization, but they're good true because it's just forums that are obviously moderated There can be, you know, extensive conversations like if you look at the feminism ball, it's almost entirely about transphobia But yeah, so like I think like every week it feels like I've been asked to comment on this I have a very nice conversation with a television producer or pretty much every major news channel in the UK and Then I say by the way, I'm not gonna participate in a debate on my identity Or I'm not gonna be on a platform with a share platform with anyone that would like has or would call me a man or other Trans women men and they go okay, and then it's always what happens like it's always when they come back and I push them and Yeah, I just have had a policy of not engaging in those kind of things I felt like Ash and I spoke about it before and it's very different I think it was good to have and that's not something that's typical is to have a cisgender woman Who's a lied with like because the you know, that's why they can often frame it as feminists Yeah, yeah, exactly. So that was actually pretty important pretty unique But I believe that all of this television as as what happened showed is this essentially It's a theater of trans misogyny trans misogyny being the hatred of transgender women for being trans and women and trans women To the exclusion there were trans masculine people on that panel, but Almost like there is no discussion. It is entirely about the spectacle of the man in the dress and the women who won't accept it and I feel like whenever I've engaged in those kind of forums even like a little bit It's like I'm almost more worried about how I look than what I say because I'm thinking do I look too much like a man? Am I being assessed on how feminine I am? I might are people weighing up like am I too tall would I be a risk in women's toilets? All things I do by the way use women's toilets use change women's changing rooms And suddenly I'm having to like explain myself and there's something for me that I find a media system That draws trans people in To do that toxic and I won't take part in it And with channel for what I didn't like as well as that they I Suppose like there's a group of people that are professional journalists who choose this But they increasingly approach trans people who are newer and newer or further remote to media work Some of whom have never engaged with like mainstream media before and offer them large sums of money And I think that's deeply unethical for a community that often doesn't have very much money because in a way watching it I was I almost felt like it was strategically Useful that this was happening because the turfs were being so unpleasant You know it was so clear what was going on and that that was all live on TV If I was sort of like a turf campaign writer thought oh that was a shit show for a sort of like our campaign because it's out It does as being really horrible But at the same time it's subjected to trans people to live trans Live on TV, which you have to think to the West Pro-Baptist Church care about looking horrible when they did a documentary There is a call there are some respectable people in the media who want to dress up in kind of feminist respectability And would be published by like editors at the Guardian the Observer the New Statesman or who go through a editorial process who are Presenting a respectable face to legitimate concerns around trans people particularly trans women But then there are just zealots like the West Pro-Baptist Church who do not care They believe so so earnestly that they are correct and that they are on the side of right and they must speak out and they must name Trans women as men it doesn't matter with them what they look like on TV and almost there can be a bunker mentality again like Religious extremists where the more that people tell them they're wrong the more it's almost of indication that they're right because the more that They're a sole voice against a madness that has taken hold of society in the form of like trans acceptance The more that they prove that like yeah that they're on the side of right I mean I think in terms of like breaking out of the confines of that room a bit and then thinking about how it's received by The audience at large that my mom watched gender quake and my mom's journey in terms of thinking about trans rights it's very very similar to my own which is a Few years ago. I would never have thought of myself as actively transphobic But I certainly held a lot of lazily Exclusionary assumptions and views because they simply never had to come up against someone else's lived experience and the lion's share of my learning was done not in Explicitly politicized spaces. It wasn't through reading. It was through developing a friendship with a trans woman at university and Her just sort of sharing bits of her life with me so we would be out and suddenly I would see how she was navigating the world navigating toilets navigating changing rooms and That had a tremendous and powerful impact on me now not everyone is Lucky enough to have a friendship like that for lots of different reasons. Also. It is not Trans women's job to like, you know befriend a clueless cisgender person be like, okay Like this is like my zaka. It's like I guess I have to do this I paint ties of some sort, but that's how I learned and it was it was through something that was very very human and my mom watching gender quake was again someone who you know Wouldn't have thought of herself as transphobic, but certainly when it you know came to things like Those hormone blockers were like delaying puberty like would have been like all that sounds too young You know a knee-jerk response is that for her listening to Kenny Jones was Tremendously powerful and she was like it has made me check myself on all these different things and to see someone be able to Communicate something so specific about their experience, which has really challenged me in the face of these like, you know howling coyotes was tremendously powerful and it was both those things together was like seeing the hostility and Also seeing the kind of the grace and poise in front of that now that doesn't make it any less aspectacle but in terms of you know, does it serve a purpose of further isolating a Particularly virulent tendency of like, you know transphobic discourse. I think ultimately yes. Should it have happened? No, yeah, and I think that's the difficult. Yeah And I would say yeah, it requires like yeah, the phrase I would probably yeah Look at like a trans sacrificial lamb, which obviously like, you know I'm a rowboat officer friend of mine. I've spoken to her about it before I think she knew I don't think she knew it's gonna be quite that bad But like I think she knew that she was like, you know, and I think like any of us that Do media work as trans women? Appreciate that that's a large part of what we do and we have to take a lot of abuse And that is almost like a kind of like weird built-in part of the quote If I was advising a young trans woman who wants to like work in the media I'd be like you have to like you have to get some kind of coping strategy The abuse that's gonna come because that's part of it. It's worth saying how incredible Monroe Bergdorff's sort of response was she acted with like You have to be poised and graceful. I mean, I suppose she's done it a lot She's had abuse on TV Yeah, and I feel like yeah And she will have and she will have like there's nothing that someone could shout at you in that TV studio We wouldn't have heard a million times before and she was incredibly graceful and she kind of is and I think that's always like been her strength, actually And she's a pro. Yeah, just when she yeah I mean even when she's spoken about race in the past like I think Piers Morgan when he had her on like was expecting You know like an angry black woman and that was what was being like, you know She managed to actually largely turn around quite a lot of opinion surprisingly in that forum. So I think she's like Yeah, I want to talk a little bit about the actual debate because there was some surprising elements of it The most surprising element for me. Maybe you as well was Jermaine Greer Not seeming to hold any Position, I mean she was the most controversial person on the panel because she said some awfully transphobic things in the past But she just claimed to have forgotten all of them. So when she was trying on it She said I don't even remember going on the Victoria Derbyshire show Am I allowed to spill some tea or am I opening myself up to a libel suit? Well, if it's true It's true like she was half-cut like the whole time Like She was like that's why she couldn't remember anything. That's why like She was just like I mean my god like she was drinking like harder than me at Eid like it was You know spectacular And so, you know, what position does she hold? I don't think she holds a position. I think that she's a deeply Nasty person. I think her feminism has always been nasty It's always been predicated on the exclusion or degradation of either trans people or people of color more generally And yeah, actually during one of the breaks we got into it about Casta Semenya Because she's been slagging off Casta Semenya and saying no one ever asked Casta Semenya's Do you want to explain who Casta Semenya is? Oh, Casta Semenya the South African 800 meters runner? Yeah, I don't know about running I do know I love Casta Semenya. And I think we all know more about Casta Semenya than we do about running I generally like sports. I just I really like the sprinty ones because I don't have to focus for very long Yeah, I mean the 800 meters doesn't last that long. I have a very short attention to that Michael Sorry, go on explain who Casta Semenya is. Anyway, so and I think she has a Hormone condition. Yeah Hyperandrogen is essentially in excess of testosterone within normal cisgender female range. Okay, okay and She's been subject to the most Invasive kind of medical testing because people are saying that she has an unfair advantage against white female competitors essentially And Jermaine Greer was like was saying no one ever asked her competitors how they feel and then when we cut to an ad break I was like that's just simply not true as someone who both loves sports and journalism I can tell you that every single sports journalist and whenever Casta Semenya wins a race You know it goes and interviews from crying white woman or her teammates and that's always the story Jermaine was like, oh, well, I've never seen it and then I was like, you know And I think it's quite striking that we're pouring over a black woman's body and saying Compared to white women in her field She doesn't serve to be hit because there's something in her anymore masculine about her and Jermaine Greer was like Well, I just don't think that's true. I think casta Semenya is Suspicious because of this this this and this and I couldn't help myself. I was like Well, I just think it's very impressive that in addition to being a writer and an academic that you're also cast a Semenya's trainer To which Jermaine Greer was like, are you sneering at me? And I was like, I think I am sneering at you Yes, and and then Jermaine Greer went from what position do you think you were able to sneer at me? And I was like, well, my writer and the academic team in equal and she did not like that and like she didn't you know And that's the thing is that like actually there is this whole and I think was also mirrored in like some of her comments on the panel She's going she's talking about the marginalization of older women and I think that there is a tremendously You know horrendous Facet of patriarchy is the marginalization of older women She kept going about like mrs. Brown boy mrs. Brown's boys, which I've never watched If the worst thing you can think of affecting your life is the existence of mrs. Brown's boys like get some bigger Kind of obsessive centering of like, you know, what is my experience of yeah, and how can that be the I mean, I feel I feel like that's like very Common And I feel like it's a dynamic that's replicated for example when women of color addressing our problems with white women like though As white women we can tend to be like mmm. Well, okay But what about sexism that we experience when all in a color is trying to raise something about The dynamic between white women and women of color and similarly with trans women and cisgender women I find so often that I will attempt to explain something about the experience of transphobia and instantly a cisgender woman will respond with something about the fact that she's given birth or You know the gender delay that she's had to perform throughout her life or whatever and it's like, you know, that's true But it's not about transphobia. Like why you can't just replicate. That's not a that's not an equal and fair discussion and That can be done even when the person isn't transphobic like overtly is that Yeah, there would just be this kind of like re-centering of like actually no, I'm I'd like to talk about So, you know, this happens a lot of the time with Biology is that I think like often trans women is saying but like Our our biology our reproductive issues, which we do have like I'm not centered in feminism at all and instantly there'll be like a What about abortion? Look at what's happening in the Republic of Ireland, you know, yeah That that's true. That's not what was under discussion though. I feel like that derailment is quite common What's a why do we have to be the same like what like what and also like You can go through things that I don't experience. I don't even have to understand half of it Yeah, you know, all that matters is that like we have equality under the law and I'm not gonna be a prick to you And I'll make some attempt to understand even if I can't like yeah, my head around some stuff And that's the most I expect from white people as well. Yeah, and I don't understand why there has to be this insistence on, you know a Homogenizing of subjectivities. I think there's a really unhealthy thing in politics Apart from uniformity of opinion around Beyonce and Tottenham Hotspur, which is fine. I Don't want I don't sign up for Beyonce To be totally set by Tufts, but I think it would be remiss not to mention the Ferroire that you're currently involved in all the shit show going on in your mentions. Let's go Well, no, no, I've blocked a lot of them It's going on amnesty international the human rights charities mentioned On Sunday, yeah, and lots of people have taken offense. Yeah, which I will still be I'll be hosting the women making history event Amnesty International headquarters. It's free in the daytime. You can buy a ticket for the evening I think you might have to get a ticket anyway And yeah, I am comparing I will be very sparkling and charming as I always am But I will be primarily introducing panels and discussions of activists I am very young very recent to activism as a trans woman. I do not consider myself an expert on my own like own turf you are So, you know some of the women that will be there will be really impressive most of them Of course asked this gender women because most women asked this gender women. It's not all about me So let's just say that But when but seriously I went the minute as is common as it happened with Paris Lee's when she was in vogue for their new Suffragettes piece as when Lily Madigan was elected women's officer when they said that they would like me to host I was like a trans woman at the center of an event that's listed specifically for women will be controversial and they were They said they got that and I don't think they quite got How controversial it would be so yeah, um, I'm a man. I'm a male impostor blah blah blah But I'll still be doing it so on the positive side you've got loads of oh, yeah Yeah, and thank you for everyone that did do that anyone that's watching. Thank you if you did Was there a surprising who left your defense my surprising mean fit or rich? No, um, no, sometimes it's quite like how you think yeah, I know I know Yeah, um, but yeah, and I feel like that taps into I mean like the I have seen some of the abuse I have like obviously skim read it. It's the same as ever. It's like, you know, it's the idea that essentially I'm a patriarchy in a dress. I'm not wearing a dress. I'm very rarely do that never gets old Um, I I am a patriarchy in a dress coming to tell women Oddly how to this gender women how to be women that amnesty have given me a platform to get up and with a mic and Like I have been living as a trans woman for the last three years and you've all been doing fucking it up for like However long since you were babies Here's how to woman correctly which I won't be doing the thing I looked at the to be honest I didn't read the whole fucking petition. It seemed a bit bizarre But I just looked at the image at the top and they'd screenshot, you know When anyone tries to attack anyone online, they find the most offensive to eat they can find and I was disappointed at how Inoffensive the tweet they'd screenshot. It was it was you saying I know I have children aged 18 and 19 Following me listen to aunt Sean when she said be sluttier than you are while you can well It was because one I really wasn't and I really like I wasn't and I regret it Yeah, and I believe in context at the time It was part of a tweet thread and I think it was quite obvious that I was doing children in the kind of Paris is burning drag By the way, because I specifically list the fact that like, you know, their ages are not those of children but um, yeah, but what's really distressing about that petition, I guess is that like The kind of twisting of that like so for example some of the signatures say It's sexually inappropriate towards children and again this like fits into this really really The sharp end of transphobia as it was with homophobia is to like and trans women to sexual deviants to pedophiles in particular Which is something I've read about myself and pretty much every other trans woman I can think of who has like any kind of public platform And I feel like that's the problem with like the media debate that's going on obviously no one's going to say that you know, no editor or A television producer is going to claim that that's what they're trying to promote But when you invite this kind of interrogation knowing that we live in such a transphobic society You invite the people that have this kind of a level of vitriol To feel emboldened to spew it and feel like that they may have a chance to derail trans rights in this country And it's they they can go hard or go home So they go hard and that's what's been happening for like the last year And like I know I say this a lot and I catch a lot of shit for saying this is that there are so many parallels between trans misogyny and The misogyny that I face as one of color and racism more generally and they're not reducible I'm not saying the same thing, but there are so many shared techniques And one of the things I found really striking and it came up in the gender quake debate And it's also coming up with the way that you were talking about a lot of the hateful comments that you receive Is that when you are of that marginalized subject position and you know, you are Particularly singled out for deviants in some way. So it's not just that you're marginalized It's when you're also hyper visible. Yeah, is that you are never allowed to be an individual and you must get this as well Which is whenever there is some act of public violence in my head I'm always going please don't be Muslim. Please don't be Muslim. Please don't be Muslim And it must be the case that if anything Like fucked up happens regarding the trans But you must be thinking like please don't be trans Yeah, I have to say I think a lot of the cohort of the types of feminism That provide provide a cover for transphobia also provide a cover for Islamophobia It's something that I've like distinctly noted again. I'm always a bit concerned as a white person not to flatten out Oppressions, but I mean like I just think it's also good sometimes to be like How do we learn to even relate to other people? Sometimes it's like by seeing the similar patterns And it is obviously one of those things that's really conscious. So for example, just like There are of course trans women who have committed violent crimes that exist in the world That's just there will be where people so like having those people reply to me It's exactly the same as like being you know a Muslim being made to answer for terrorism Because you don't either to apologize or to explain it away when I cannot explain the actions of another person Also, like because you're not allowed to be an individual. You're just not allowed to you know White men never have to deal with this shit white men never felt an ounce of responsibility for Jimmy Savile They never had to they never had to whereas I know when there's an issue of sexual violence Which I take really seriously because that's part of my politics and the perpetrator is South Asian or is Muslim I know that I have to do this kind of like weird to front battle of dealing with Demic violent patriarchy and then also the like racialized othering that's that play there And then you know, and what was funny is after doing gender quake had loads of these tufts in my mentions It's obviously like pales in comparison to what you get But what was really like funny to me is that lots of people are saying that, you know, I Had outed myself. I came out as trans during this gender quake debate. Yeah me and You know people were like combing over my body for like, you know telltale signs that I'm trans and it was in the most racialized way possible. Yeah, and it was kind of it was kind of jokes to me because You know I'm it's one of those things which like hang on you intend something as a derogatory comment But it's not actually because like trans isn't loaded with like derogatory meaning for me Like anymore, you know, maybe five years ago. This would have been upsetting But you know things have changed in my thinking and so, you know, though Sort of saying that, you know, it's obviously trans someone's like, yeah, look at her five o'clock shadow That's just like pitch and Bengali, right? We all have that I'm just brown I feel like there is like obviously there's a huge element of kind of like Racist ways of perceiving gender to and I've had conversations obviously with like trans women and trans feminine people of color Who have like, you know, I've interviewed them or whatever in my own journalism and there's a dial-up there about how Even like in trans femininity, it's easier for me as a white trans woman to access a kind of approved form of femininity And like for example, like black trans women are already contesting with the idea of like, you know Like blackness being associated to masculinity even for cisgender of black women. So like, you know, and I think Caster Semenya is another one, but even like Serena Williams who like who doesn't have what kind of like a hyper antrogenic, I think condition like racialized ways in which she's spoken like being like, you know, DD like I don't de-womaned like femininity being refused Yeah, obviously it's incredibly affected by race as well, but I think that offers like a neat counterpoint to one of the Genuinely trans exclusion radical feminist positions, which is well Don't trans women ultimately reify patriarchal constructions of femininity by wanting to assimilate into them and You know, there are certainly hugely patriarchal elements to all of our gender performances as women Whether you're trans or cisgender, but I know that for me personally That it's not always the most woke impulse that I've felt in my life But because I feel so Consistently excluded from femininity to have that be recognized sometimes and in order and to be recognized as sometimes Delicate or whether you're protection and I know that these are deeply patriarchal constructs Feels like having my humanity recognized. So yes in some regards it holds that patriarchy But in other regards it is also a site of resistance and comfort. Well, the weird thing I think the strange thing about the way that in particular against trans women trans misogyny works is that it tries to place us back Into the category of men But knowing that we have none of the structural power of men So like it's not like you think well, they're just they're just calling you a man. It's not bad to be a man What's the problem? It's a yeah, but I don't actually have the power agency of a man Like I still actually do you have to like think about where I walk how I look like all that happens Is that I've had people like I've written for the Guardian when I wrote about Guardian a piece of the Guardian about trans women and women's refugees I Wrote about like my own experience of like having men follow me home Or ever like late at night or whatever and some people's reaction some radical feminist reaction to that was that I looked To male to really realistically have men follow me or treat me as a woman which is really bizarre because it's like You know like I date men that have only ever dated cisgender women before and like what's they put me in the woman box Like that could mean that they could be abusive I think that one of the most powerful moments of the gender quake show I mean again sort of like horrible was very sad But powerful moment was when Monroe was sort of contextualizing the fact that there were people in the audience Calling her a man because it's like not only is that sort of deeply offensive, but I've spent my whole life with dysphoria feeling quite Self-conscious about sort of like my gender identity So the fact that I've dealt with this for for decades and it's been really difficult for me And now I'm here and you're all you're all you're saying to me is exactly the thing that I've had the most Conflicted Relationship the thing is I want to say like about misgendering for example if like for it's very hard but what I kind of try and get cisgender people to grasp is that there's the kind of like You know if you just want to understand it superficially it's polite you call people what they want to be called That's true, but it's not just about like impoliteness because fundamentally what someone is saying on the misgender you is everything You've like worked so hard to assert about yourself against like all odds people whose families over this people over as violence is I have the power always to take that away and to say that you are not what you say you are and that there are some Essence that you can never run away from which is what trans people have been told over a lifetime So like it's an inherently, you know, it's inherently a very psychologically dominant act And one that's upheld, you know by the power stretches in society like ultimately if all society and state chooses not to recognize us Then we have no, you know, we have no power and that we were aware that we're a minority So it's a very dominant bullying act on a deeper level as well as just being rude I mean it is again like talking about these parallels hearing the way that you were talking about that is like You know despite all the work that you've done yourself There is this thing this essence you will never be able to escape so oh my god That is how it feels when in particular there's a racist lexicon which has centered around like dirt smell hair Yeah, like my best friend who's Turkish used to get called kebab at school Like, you know people still will yell stuff about like curry at me or stuff about like my skin being the color of feces like all things have been said and It's not like I'm angry because as you said it's impolite It's like suddenly you feel stained and tainted and there is this thing that's holding you back from like humanity and You know legitimate social space that you can never escape no matter how hard you try. Yeah, exactly And that's how it feels. I mean that's that's that's the like experiential heart of being marginalized in that way Yeah, and it shifts as well. It shifts like so even in the media sometimes like mainstream media you get flashes of like frankly People's obsession with the idea that like can there be a woman with a penis? In fact, I think that was a question the researchers are yeah So people are obsessed with this idea because it's like the body-shock image Isn't it of like what a trans woman or a transsexual is and fundamentally though? It's not that because like there are trans women who've had sex reassignment surgery But they don't like ultimately it's an ever-narrowing thing because fundamentally then it's your chromosomes or it's your male socialization Or if you display any anger any confidence anything It's suddenly that's evidence of your essential maleness and thuggishness. I mean, can I just say that from Limited amount of time of you know trying to argue for a more trans inclusive feminism I've been sent more dick pics by trans exclusion radical feminists in like two months than I ever had in 25 years of heterosexuality Which made me think that my flirting game was a whack like what was I doing? It's like the new grinder We should compare I want to move on the conversation to the Gender Recognition Act because obviously it's not an accident that this has Become such a controversial such an ever-present issue Let's call it that in sort of the media at the moment and that's because the Tories two years ago I think proposed changes to the Gender Recognition Act to change the The hoops you have to jump through basically or the hoops someone would have to jump through to be recognized legally as their As their preferred gender Do you want to explain a little bit about what the gender recognition? Yes reform would mean Yes, actually your legal sex is kind of a watery concept in English law. So like essentially like in 2004 Trans people Steven Whittle and Christine Burns who impressed for change they kind of like Through the through a judgment the European Court of Human Rights got the Gender Recognition Act 2004 permitted And it allowed trans people to change their legal sex on their birth certificate by a mechanism called a Gender Recognition Certificate and that was done because Trans people had a fundamental right to privacy To not have been outed about their past There had been instances for example marriages that trans people have entered and obviously same-sex marriage wasn't permissible So like marriages have been annulled when it had been, you know Well, there were cases like April Ashley the model the trans model in the 60s Like her husband knew she was trans when he married her But it wasn't a valid marriage and then when he like when they were going to come to divorce He didn't want to give her illegal settlements. He just had the marriage in old like revealed, you know, she was born male Is that the case even now that gay marriage is no legal? No, so things have moved on It was a very progressive piece of legislation at its time It's not so much now very few trans people use it what it requires is like You have to have lived in your acquired gender for two years, which again is quite difficult to prove So they go on stuff like when you change your name whether you're in work Which what does that have to do with anything to prove that you've been living appropriately which one? Trans people are unemployed. Yeah, Juliet. Yeah, Juliet. Jake's writes about this like it was quite common I think it's less than I see trans women working in charity shops because we've got a volunteer job That would fulfill the requirements. What and they'll ask your boss Well, what yeah, it's like if you have pay slips So you have to produce pay slips like things that show consistently like use of like misses or miss almost So you have to show life evidence Then you also have to have two medical reports and you have to answer about surgery and the trans inquiry the government launched in 2015 it found like, you know, there was evidence about like trans girls who are 18 or ever transition at 16 being asked really inappropriate questions about whether or not they're planning to have Sex reassignment surgery and they hadn't even you know had sex yet and stuff like that So it's invasive. It's dehumanizing It's been a kind of principle of international law So for geeks who care it's at the Agata principles, which is an international legal agreement on like gender and sexuality And then European Council resolution 2048 has like set the kind of standard internationally should be that trans people should be able to Have a mechanism for declaring their own gender in a de-medicalized process That there's no panel that you send off a pack of evidence to as this happens now Where they decide on the evidence whether or not you are who you say you are whether you're not you're a man or a woman enough and There's no form of appeal as well if they say no So yeah, the principle in international law. So it it's law in Argentina, Colombia, Malta, Denmark, Norway It's going to come to force in Sweden the Republic of Ireland and exists and Portugal has just introduced it that's like a total population of 64 million women and The I don't believe that womanhood has been radically redefined as is often alleged in those countries All it does is it just provides you swear a statutory decoration and then you file that and it allows you to change your documents more quickly So like I already changed my driving license on self-decoration I changed my passport and so I have a female passport and female driving license It would just allow me to do that in a quicker way because I've had to like each time I've learned to different agencies Oh, that's interesting. So there's different so at the moment you it's it's not there's one certificate Like when's the last time you've got your birth certificate out? I've never I don't know if I've ever seen my Yeah, exactly, you know, like you're not even actually supposed to reduce it like people are my father So for you is this a big is this a big fuss about nothing? Yeah Yeah, it is I know like it's one of these things when you say it's a big fuss about people just can't believe That's true and they think obviously I'm pushing an agenda But really like there are things that there are more radical beliefs that I have about gender and about Transfeminism then whether or not we should be able to change our birth certificate changing our birth certificate won't affect anything it literally gives me no more of a right to Enter a women's space then I have already because I don't produce a birth certificate It's a bit like the analogy I use is like with gay marriage is that like Gay men can get married in this country But can they actually walk down the street holding hands in a lot of places? They wouldn't feel safe to because of like social norms and actually what governs my entry to women's faces are It's kind of a social fabric that determines. I have to look a certain way. I have to pass certain amount I have to behave in a certain way All of which I feel forced to adhere to so like the fact I'm five foot seven is an assist But my voice isn't so like It's a oh my god. Are we being? Oh, this is like Eurovision all over again We're about to have like, you know, some I don't know if they might pick that up But there was like a stampede down the corridor, which felt like we might all have been under attack Yeah So like all of these things and like I think that's you know a lot of what When trends women are aiming for femininity as well a lot of it is about safety and about allowing us access to those bases like so actually it's governed by that it's not governed by the Gender Recognition Act and What I'm starting to notice now is even the media is starting to pick up on that And they're starting to talk more about the Equality Act and other provisions because they've kind of realized that they're they're plugging a dead hole to this Like there is literally no I mean in terms of to what extent does this present a challenge to assist gender womanhood? I mean not at all. It's about I mean, it's about equality under the law But I think this takes us to some quite interesting territory about To what extent does a demand for trans equality under the law mean that there is some kind of public recognition on a view of gender and a non-essentialist view of gender because there's something I've been thinking about a lot, which is I do think that One's rights in a country are About a lot more than just equality under the law like you were saying that there are all these social barriers to equality Which means that you do have to achieve some kind of cultural shift and there will always be friction in achieving that cultural shift and then you've got to ask yourself what kind of friction is acceptable and What how big is that cultural shift anyway? I'm one of the things I was thinking is that ultimately it doesn't really matter who has a Biologically essentialist view of gender. I mean, I probably still have loads of biologically essentialist views about my own gender and how I think about it But what does it matter to me if someone doesn't have those same views about my gender or their gender? It doesn't you know either weaken or strengthen my relationship to my own body and as for you know equality under the law like we all have Ideas and unconscious biases which don't manifest themselves in the law and like the law actually actively holds us back from acting upon and That's a good thing. So I think like where the conversation is has to be able to I think Strike a Middle ground which is unsurprisingly very rare in politics, which is thinking about like well Actually, where do we want to go and what are the acceptable compromises on the way to getting there? And I'm talking about socially not not in terms of law where yeah compromises dangerous But I think that's a good sort of point to move the question on a bit in terms of at the moment There's as you were describing earlier sort of like quite an unhealthy logjam In the media where it's all debating these quite abstract things about self-definition and they're getting on people who are quite sort of obsessed with Excluding trans people from all sorts of places and groups and theories But and this is all about the gender recognition act It's all sort of centered on this concept of self-definition Which from what you're saying seems to me won a bit of a red herring for the people who are arguing against it Because it won't actually change much, but to potentially should that even be the priority for Trans rights activists or should we just be changing the subject to talk about something all together different? I mean, I could feel like the kind of standard thing Well, there's a huge breadth of opinion amongst trans people right as well So like middle-class trans people as they're rising like say gay politics It's like there's always been this tension between like The kind of middle the idea of the bourgeois white middle-class gay man Who's pursuing kind of like a set of legal rights for himself and where does that fit into like? the gay asylum seeker who is a risk of deportation and where do the politics of those two men meet probably nowhere and And there's the same exists for trans people So there are fundamentally different priorities and there is a kind of legitimate criticism that obviously like when you pursue legal rights In Parliament, you know in the media, which itself is very white very middle-class It is already an agenda that benefits some trans people quicker than others and that's true I don't think it's frankly the most urgent priority facing trans people. I think transphobic violence is I do think like Like you know the state state detention of trans asylum seekers and healthcare because healthcare is like access to healthcare is one of the biggest things in terms of like Mental health and therefore physical health ultimately of trans people. Is there anything that gives you positivity about public? understanding of The life of a trans person because I mean as as you were saying Ash sort of like what you learned was a lot from a particular experience of a particular person I've changed my sort of like I've gained a lot more understanding reading this book by Julius Serrano but and I was admit I was a little bit confused before then about what I thought about everything and Both of those experiences are quite rare not not the majority of the British public aren't going to pick up that particular book by Julius Serrano Or have a close friendship in university with someone who's trans. Yeah, so what do you think is the most effective way? Yeah, that we can move forward towards sort of like a better public understanding of what's going on and do you see any positive? Beginnings of that happening. Yeah, well, I mean, I think there's been the kind of idea Which I've always been a bit critical of I wrote a piece for trans day of visibility this year that like The idea of like media Representation and diversity and I think that goes for any kind of diversity had its limits because it's like this idea that what people see And other person be able to like See them empathize and then like accept them and actually that's proven again again to be faulty like It's a start though. Is it not a start? It is limited Yeah, it's limited I think it's predicated on an assumption that we experienced a shared humanity Which I don't think has existed in any point in history That's quite an extreme statement Well That's just my view. I mean, I think and yeah, and I think What it also requires I I feel I mean like you know to a certain extent I engage in it So one of the things like on a personal note like the trolling one of like really vicious stuff that happens to me I'm trolled by Like transphobic troll accounts is the ones that like obsessively follow everything I do and we'll write really tailored nasty tweets For example about like all using male pronouns, but like I'll just spends all his time on dating apps or whatever, you know Like and it's like who doesn't yeah, but actually the weird thing is that I actually do consciously on my twitter and stuff like that I do talk about I do make jokes about my personal life Knowing that I have like MPs follow me knowing that I have people in the media follow me Who are essentially following my feed to learn more about trans people is I feel like I have to humanize myself by being like Look, I'm going on a date like aren't men trash or like I'm just a girl like the rest of you I feel like I have to perform that kind of relatable womanhood as much as I perform the the other trans person Yeah, and I feel like but I feel like that's incredibly exhausting a lot of the time and not everyone wants to do it and that's the problem I think is You know Julia Serrano can want to do it in a book and then not want to do it the next day And I can want to do it like in a tweet one day, but they're not necessarily want to do it Like you know on a news item. Yeah, but is that not like the issue with the identity at the heart of identity politics? which is the minute you start doing some work, which is based on Representational inequalities and that's before you even get to read just redistributive inequalities Which I think are much more powerful determining factors in terms of trans people's vulnerabilities in terms of homelessness in terms of employment in terms of assets In terms of street violence and the uneven handling of that By the criminal justice system one can follow from the other I mean these things have I mean gay people it became much easier to get a job when sort of like the legal debate Sort of increased acceptance of yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, these things have a relationship. I'm not denying that they do but I'm saying that you know we can I think because of the the relative democratization of Media platforms because of social media we can map out a representational strategy in which It is possible to see diverse models of womanhood and have that be very very successful, but it might not have any traction in terms of Dispossession or state violence and I think that that's the one of the Impasses that we're reaching in liberation politics more generally and that's not just do with trans rights I think that's also a huge issue with anti-racism with feminism and so on and so forth But in terms of that representational aspect is that it is deeply deeply exhausting Like not just to do that work of humanizing yourself but to um turn yourself inside out in many ways and to have You know the entirety of who you are or A version of who you are which is predicated on a sense of candor Be for public consumption all the time because one of the most precious learning tools that we have in our arsenal as human beings is making mistakes and To not be able to do that or to feel that those mistakes will be scrutinized in such a way is I think Can be deeply atrophying in terms of personal development And that's one of the other things that we'll have to think about in terms of you know As we map out strategies for liberation politics, which are able to marry the representational and the redistributive It's thinking about that representational aspect essentially not You know stealing your soul. Yeah, I said yeah, and I agree with that I think um Yeah, and I think also like awareness for like the who controls the forums in which that takes place because obviously That's always one person essentially being on the stand and also it will be like and I think again. This is something that I Yeah, I feel like it brought me into greater awareness perhaps than I would have had about How other forms of the bigotry like racism, etc Like function is about the sheer repetition and one of the things that I see I often don't I know I do it, but I see it when other trans women do it It's like how experience repeatedly experiences are denied to us So for example the it will just be stated almost that we don't fear male violence or that we we don't know what it's like to experience sexual assault Um, whereas, you know, and that that's actually very common and then to see trans women having to like disclose Like it's really sick me too with no sympathy Like again and again, it's really really common and particularly I see a lot on social media And I just sometimes like, you know, I've I've felt compelled to do that at times But actually sometimes I just want to like grab some like Like, you know, trans women being like don't do this. You don't owe this person an explanation of trauma You don't have your trauma shouldn't have to be your evidence. Do you think that's in part a I mean We've talked about this on the show before about sort of like how debates on the left often cash out at the moment, which is sort of like A competition. I mean that's a particularly sort of unsympathetic way to put it But sort of like the debate is often about who's more privileged or who's had a sort of worse experience and That seems to be to some degree how this debate is happening in some circles. It's the idea of where cis Well, well this particular set of cis female feminists say sort of like we experienced an oppression which Someone who was assigned a male at birth has an experience and then that forces Trans people to say no actually we've experienced all these oppressions and it sort of requires a lot of Opening yourself up to sort of like what potentially quite painful experiences and whether or not it would be Possible to move to a more sort of like affirmative Politics which say it doesn't matter who's been more oppressed like we're here. I mean that was that was the thing of gay rights Wasn't it we're here we queer get used to it. Yeah born this way deal with it Like it's not necessarily saying you weren't competing with anyone else to say Yeah, I feel that discourse often arises though from a I feel like it's like a Heavy-handed response to like people trying to deny you experience any oppression at all. There's almost like a slippery slope Like yeah, and the reality is is it's really weird too because I'm not just you know, I'm not just a trans person So obviously like I can't really Like yeah, I feel like there is a kind of productive sort of like absurd element to I much would rather look at like What are the shared experiences? But I feel like it's a kind of anxiety This is a kind of broad point like an anxiety within womanhood itself I feel like the way that patriarchy kind of works sometimes is that like the worst Kind of violence is a committed by men But then quite a lot of policing of gender or women's gender is is like handed To women in a kind of hierarchy I think in terms of the stuff about suffering vulnerability is that um, you don't know throw the baby out of the bath water It's actually really important to have spaces in which Um, we deal with people's pain Yeah, and and the pain of existing under various power structures I do think though that there is a kind of fetishization of suffering sometimes within feminism Um, which compels Women into the strange dynamic of being seen to be the most abject Um, and kind of like piling suffering upon suffering It you know as a way of of claiming space and I do think that that's something which is distinct and quite unhealthy Um, and that's not to say Do not be open about having suffered, but it's also recognizing That that is also determinist within the logic of womanhood where to be a woman is to suffer and that's you know, there's nothing currency Yeah, you know, and that's not there's nothing particularly radical in that either. I think that um You know the the history of women's collective identity self-organization And um progress that's been made is not a history of you know, that the suffering saints like you know pierced by arrows with like tears in eyes It's one of resistance and resilience and coping strategies and joy and affirmation as well In the face of tremendous violence And I think that that's one of the things that in all forms of politics needs to be returned to the center Is that essentially um all liberation politics are a politics of vitality and of hope and of joy And the idea that we do not have to lead quite such immiserated lives. Yeah, and to me. That's a really powerful organizing tool Yeah Well, it's very interesting to me that for example the other side of this kind of divide of feminism That would call themselves gender critical because actually I just think like well Accepting the gender itself is a system that like we're all subscribed to but also is like is violent Is dangerous is toxic is like, yeah, I find almost I've always found in trans feminism kind of like Like you say vitality in the idea of like of autonomy that We do not we do not have to be it's like when people will say Yeah, but what about I I prefer facts not your feelings and it's like but why why is there this like idea that feelings or emotions should be always surrendered to kind of like if you like the flesh to Biology to the oppression that someone tries to tell you you are nothing more than your body and your biological processes Why like why wouldn't you want liberation from that and see a similar kind of liberation for trans people who are trying to say I am Essentially more than like the narratives that have been imposed on my body It's post-modernity though, isn't it and this is what wendy brown gets so right in edge work phenomenal phenomenal collection of essays on feminism And I think I might have even like sent it to use like months ago being like I found the explanation for trans exclusion Rearticle feminism and I think I read it out in the fix as well So it's one of these things which he reads and you just go like No head and it was you know there And you know she identifies it as a distinctly post-cold war phenomenon And so when we think about post-modern feminism, we normally think about like, you know third wave feminism Indeed trans inclusive feminism because I think it just means that you're breaking down the old dynamics whereas when d brown says no post-modern feminism is that feminism which has um admitted defeat on the front that feminism can be in some way Revolutionary and so this is a feminism which has a you know More than fleeting attachment to the present circumstances of immiseration It doesn't really think that those things can be changed and I think about trans exclusionary radical feminism that uh failure to imagine um You know what collective identities outside of this rigid coupling of you know the body And gender what this could look like is that post-modern feminism which is ultimately feminism cannot change Yeah, one's relationship to One's own body or indeed the body politic. Yeah, and you see it approaching it sometimes. So sometimes discussions where they're, you know Transphobic people are desperate to talk about the medicalization of dysphoria and so forth. It's very interesting that the idea that they don't believe that within trans Uh, like, you know trans inclusive not just trans inclusive feminism like trans feminism itself trans Uh feminism led by trans people that we don't also consider issues about how You know, I'm someone that seeks medical treatment for my dysphoria But I recognize that there could be the potential of a future of a world where it wouldn't be medicalized in such a way That doesn't mean I should be deprived of it now Just like, you know, there are ways that we can envision a kind of utopian world in which actually that might become less important And that can be something you can do without being like This is bad. You shouldn't exist. We're gonna take away your hormones I can imagine that being on their t-shirt next time channel But they have been like this is what I mean is like when I mentioned Janice Raymond earlier 70s radical feminist is that she was She advised john hop the john hopkins hospital Like there were radical feminists in the 70s who presented papers to advisory groups advising not to include In, you know in the american health insurance system not to include transition related to health care because they believed it was like, you know Essentially a negative thing should be mandated out of existence and kind of like a patriarchal medical construct That if you didn't, you know, if you didn't encourage it by funding it And that was that was radical feminists that provided that kind of like if you like sign off And and there is a history of that and I do believe that if I don't believe radical feminism in this country in 2018 is empowered enough I think we're seeing it's like trans exclusionary radical feminism We're seeing it's kind of um death rattle But I believe that if they if they gained any traction at all they would take trans people's health care. Yeah But you that was I was going to ask for I think we should start to wrap up I was going to ask for sort of like a A hopeful note or a positive note at the end of it because I mean obviously A lot is I mean there's the the last two years and especially sort of like from your account Today it just sounds like relentless, you know the amount of pressure and the amount of sort of like public vitriol sort of like that you receive like Yeah, I really feel That sounds so tiring, but also a lot does seem to be changing quite quickly um And understanding seems to be growing quite quite rapidly And I don't know if you sort of like do feel hope that sort of like future generations of trans people will find life Easier and sort of like where you see those signs of hope at the moment. Yeah, definitely, of course Like I'm I'm actually very hopeful. I can be like the thing is like it's one of those things like Yes, I'm being like trolled right now on twitter, but I am also Being like offered a place to speak about some issues to an audience full of like cisgender women and feminists who are campaigners who are in that space on sunday To talk about this stuff like, you know, and You know There is constant hope like actually, you know, like obviously I've done work with stonewall with other lgbt charities when you see like Young people's attitude towards gender. I mean because I do think like the generational divide narrative About like all all people are transphobic and all young people are perfectly accepting obviously is reductive But on the whole like I do think younger people as a rule are much more relaxed about this In a way that they Were like became much more relaxed about sexuality than their parents. You had yeah, you had exactly the same thing Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean like and on the whole, you know, I do think Yeah, there are spaces for people and there are movements um For for for a lot of trans people not all but for a lot of trans people in british society to like find a space to to work towards collective action Um and to build solidarity with other people. There are those opportunities Ash some hope I feel really hopeful I feel really really hopeful and the reason why I feel hopeful is because I was teaching on um Like trans exclusionary radical feminism for my politics third years last semester and lots of them are like, you know Real lads in lots of ways and so I was trying to teach it in an even-handed way Where it was very clear where my own sympathy is like lie, but I also kind of wanted to Present a counter argument because it's it's not healthy in a seminar to just be like It's all right. I don't We're not gonna have a go at you for platforming So I was trying to explain like the whole like bathroom debate and all of my students every single one of them And not all of them identified as feminists not all of them, you know I like left-wing actually most of them aren't Um just looked at me like I was completely batshit when I was trying to explain this position about like, you know Why trans people shouldn't be able to use the choilers of their choice? They just looked at me like why are you wasting our time at this? This is clearly an unreasonable position and as that scorn was being heaped on me by my own students I felt a tremendous and overwhelming sense of hope that they couldn't even entertain This position anymore. Yeah, it doesn't mean transphobia is over doesn't mean that it wasn't Present in that classroom at all, but it meant that on that issue. There was, you know Significant step forward from where things were even five years ago Great. I feel more positive now. Yeah. Yeah, uh, yeah, thank you so much for both coming on. Thanks. Uh, well, we should do this again soon Without the mic And uh, good luck with your talk on sunday. Thanks. You'll be sick. Thank you This was tisky. So we'll be back next monday I'm sure there'll be loads of things going on on navarra media in the meantime, but I didn't do my research about what they were so in the meantime Support dot navarra media dot com We always need some money To pay for the upkeep of this studio pay for gary. Keep me in lip gloss and like vodka. Please These haircuts don't come for free. Actually, mine does my best friend cuts my hair. Really? Yeah, um Yeah, it looks great, babe. Yeah, I know I pay him in beer. It's great also buy a t-shirt very comfortable Uh, this was tisky. So uh, good night. Bye