It’s been an eventful past few months! I wanted to give everyone some updates on what we’ve got going on, as well as offering my own thoughts on the recent ruling on AB v Tavistock in favor of Good Law Project.
But first, a general recap.
How it started
Ky and I re-emerged into the fray in early December in light of the Bell v Tavistock ruling in the UK. Both of us were increasingly disturbed by the direction things were going in and the ramifications it would have not just on health care but on trans liberation as a whole. Together, we held a lot of knowledge about how things got to this point and where they were headed, and we felt it was imperative to “pull back the curtain” on organized transphobia, so to speak. Ky began writing about her thoughts and experiences with ideologically-motivated detransition on December 21st and I wrote about my experiences with trans-antagonistic NGO organizing in January. But the two of us wanted to go beyond that and work to repair the damage done over the past several years. After hashing things over with a variety of folks from the US and UK, we released the starts of Health Liberation Now! on February 15th.
How it’s going
Since coming forward, the two of us have hit the ground running. Here’s some of the things we’ve been doing in that time.
- Networking with journalists, analysts, and activists in both the US and UK: A number of journalists and activists have reached out in efforts to understand just what the fuck happened, particularly in the UK since influence from the US detrans and radical feminist scenes were largely hidden. As a result, we’ve been able to help inform resistance efforts about the convergence of anti-trans feminism and fascism and sound the alarm on the Gender Offender mapping project that’s gaining traction across the world. On the US side of things, Ky’s experience has been featured in Slate, and we both continue to connect with folks looking to better understand how we got to where we are now.
- Building relationships with national organizations to inform their approaches against organized transphobia: The effects of Bell v Tavistock has been flooding back into the US now that the religious right, anti-trans radical feminists, and gender critical parent groups feel emboldened by the initial ruling. To try to head off the worst of the effects, the two of us began connecting with national organizations combating organized transphobia to help give background on what they’re up against.
- Building relationships with trans-led resources across the US: This serves two purposes. The first is that it allows us to offer support to local efforts based on our awareness of surrounding circumstances or groups targeting those locations. The second is that we can provide people who come to us seeking help with supportive, peer-led resources in their local community should they need it.
- Reparations to on-the-ground efforts led by trans people of color: This actually started long before working on anything else. As one way of making up for the harm done by either of our past organizing efforts, we’ve been donating to trans-led initiatives addressing issues like the prison industrial complex primarily impacting trans people of color. In other instances it’s gone to individual trans women of color who are either in need or doing essential advocacy work right now. We don’t have much to offer, as everything we’ve done so far has come out of our own pockets, but still feel it’s important to channel what resources we do have into the critical work that they’re doing to combat institutional oppression in their local communities.
- Providing informal peer-to-peer support for “ex-detrans/retrans” people: Particularly with Ky’s public platform, a number of folks who have similarly been harmed by ideologically-motivated detrans spaces have reached out for direct support. Her work there has primarily been one-on-one. Meanwhile, I started formulating plans for a more structured, collaborative space.
Which brings me to the next bit.
Building a new support space
As part of our public outreach efforts, there’s been growing interest in constructing a new space where people can support each other without getting sucked into the political chaos we’re all facing right now. It’s becoming evident that there’s immediate need for mutual connection between trans people, detransitioned people, and people exploring their options in a compassionate, nonjudgmental way. I did a (admittedly very rudimentary) Twitter poll and found that at least to start with, people were most interested in a Discord server.
With that in mind, I constructed a survey to get your insights on what would make such a server useful for people and what you would need to feel comfortable there. There’s also a section for those who are interested in helping to moderate the space. As I work full-time and Ky already has a lot to juggle, we’re exploring options of additional support to help us help you.
We also welcome submissions to the new collaborative writing project that was developed in response to Detransition Awareness Day. We were and still remain concerned about gender critical and white supremacist platforms co-opting people’s experiences, including their trauma, and our efforts to challenge the event’s organizers to oppose it for other people’s well-being were dismissed. To our knowledge, we were the only (former) detrans organizers to do so. This is, of course, unacceptable and so the new project serves as an effort to create an alternative space built on explicitly trans-supportive, anti-racist, and anti-fascist principles.
Thoughts on AB v Tavistock (in relation to Bell v Tavistock) and surrounding efforts in the UK
Yesterday, news broke that Good Law Project won their parental consent case against the Tavistock clinic in the wake of the Bell v Tavistock ruling on December 1st. While far from perfect, as it still puts control in the power of parents instead of the youth impacted and it doesn’t give options for trans youth who are in unsupportive or blatantly abusive households, it’s the first step of many to undoing the catastrophic effects that the initial Bell v Tavistock ruling has had on health care access for trans youth.
Addressing issues like this was one of the first that the two of us worked towards. CN Lester reached out to me and Ky on January 3rd to try to understand the surrounding context of the ruling and how their own efforts to combat organized transphobia could be helpful to others. We both offered what insights we could, with Ky focusing on common positions on puberty blockers in detrans circles and past efforts to push back against co-optation from Alliance Defending Freedom, and me focusing on how anti-trans grassroots efforts operate internally and ways of creating more supportive spaces in the trans community for people exploring stopping their transition. They later informed me that said insight was extraordinarily helpful for their continued efforts elsewhere. I don’t know to what extent it’s informed the efforts against the effects of Bell v Tavistock, but I’m relieved to know that we’ve been able to make at least some impact to undo the harm done.
At least on my end, I got involved for three reasons: my unwavering belief in the right to autonomy no matter one’s age or experience, my similarly steadfast belief in the right to equal health care access for all, and my opposition to authoritarian control over others (particularly by the state or the religious right, though it covers the whole gambit). Given the ruling’s explicit framing that minors are somehow unable to consent to medical care when I know from experience that’s not true, my (unfortunately accurate) prediction of its ramifications on access to care, and my knowledge of Alliance Defending Freedom’s historical efforts to use detrans people to undermine health care for trans people, I couldn’t stand by as the blood of my peers and of future generations was shed. I offered what I could and still remain available to do so.
My hope is that this is the beginning of turning the tide against the clusterfuck that the political climate has become. Trans liberation, particularly surrounding health care, is in crisis. Not just in the UK but in the US as well. With legislation targeting trans youth spreading like wildfire, again pushed by Alliance Defending Freedom, and anti-trans groups organizing protests at clinics and the White House, the both of us are dedicated to counteracting it as much as possible. We’re here and we’re not giving up without a fight.