Designs on Life

I miss the gentle caress of my arm as you walk past,

I miss the little things you do,

I miss cooking for you and baking treats for after your run,

I miss making you a packed lunch and slipping in a brownie you will complain about but eat anyway,

I miss tidying up and sorting your laundry,

I miss hearing your laugh,

I miss hearing your bustle and music as you warm up and down,

I miss waking in the night to feel your arm holding me,

I miss you,

I will be strong,

I will be healthy,

I will be mindfull,

I will be waiting when you return.

Our womanhood is not an opinion to be debated: it is real

Words P. Eldridge

On 16 April, the UK Supreme Court moved to exclude trans women from legal definitions of womanhood: a decision which shocked trans and LGBTQIA+ communities across the UK. Let's be clear, without any caveats: regardless of what the law says, trans women are women, trans men are men and non-binary people exist.

Below, one writer pens a moving call to arms following the devastating ruling.

We do not need the permission of courts or pundits or politicians. We do not require validation from panels, party manifestos, or editorial columns. Our womanhood is not contingent on your consensus. It is not open for discussion. It is not up for democratic vote. It is not yours to approve. It is ours: lived, sacred, defiant.

Our womanhood is not an opinion to be debated. It is not a position on a talk show, a point of controversy in a manifesto, or a hypothetical for white men in robes to argue about. It is real. It is felt in our bones, in our blood, in every moment we step out the door and dare to exist anyway. It is a lived truth, tested by fire, carried with scars, and proclaimed with every breath we have left.

"You do not get to legislate our lives like we are clutter in the margins of your cis histories"

You do not get to redefine us out of existence. You do not get to write policy that renders us statistical ghosts, then feign neutrality. You do not get to draw a red pen through our lives and call it feminism. You do not get to control the narrative and pretend it’s science. You do not get to kill us – through systems, through silence, through neglect – and then misname us on our gravestones as if we weren’t here at all.

You do not get to dictate the terms of our survival. You do not get to decide who is “woman enough” to be protected from violence. You do not get to weaponise biology as if it were a gun you could point at our identities. You do not get to legislate our lives like we are clutter in the margins of your cis histories.

We will not let you erase us.

We are not your rhetorical device. We are not your institutional afterthought. We are not tokens. We are not costumes. We are not missteps or misunderstandings or mistakes. We are not some philosophical edge case in your tired debate about the “limits” of inclusion. We are not your moral panic. We are not your social experiment. We are not the enemy.

We are women.

Not because a government database agrees. Not because a court has ratified our humanity. But because we say so. Because we live it. Because we have always been. Because we carved space for ourselves in a world that left none.

"To every cis person reading this: now is your moment. Choose your role in this history"

And we are women in the fullest, richest, most radical sense. We are women who’ve had to build our womanhood in the ruins of state neglect, in the aftermath of family rejection, under the weight of public scorn. We are women who have loved each other through grief and terror. We are women who have taught ourselves how to survive when survival was not guaranteed. We are women who mourn every sister lost and carry their names into every room we enter.

We are women who do not apologise.

We are women who will not make ourselves smaller so that you can feel safe in your ignorance. We will not dilute our identities into something more palatable for your sensibilities. We will not shrink our truths to fit within the boundaries of your institutions. If you cannot stretch your understanding of womanhood to include us, that is a failure of your imagination, not our legitimacy.

We are women.

And no court, no government, no right-wing columnist, no bitter social media troll can take that from us. Not today. Not ever.