Rise Where Shadows Fall

Illustration by Rosie Payne

Hi! I wasn’t sure whether or not I should answer this message, as I get the impression you didn’t send it to me to engage in debate. To start with I think the fact that you are so ready to believe that those making violent threats on twitter represent trans women as a whole and aren’t just a very loud minority, or even that they are trans woman at all and not just trolls makes me think you’ll be less open minded about listening to my answer as you clearly have a lot invested in your opinion.  

But anyway, thanks to you I did a load of reading last night about the proposed changes to the law in the UK regarding trans rights, and I’ll try and paraphrase a little of what I learnt. I’m not trans, I don’t have any trans friends in real life and so up till now I haven’t been heavily invested in the issue. I’m interested and I have strong opinions about what I hear and read, but I don’t know tonnes about the legal side, so forgive me if I’m wrong about any of the following, (and please please forgive me if I get any jargon mixed up or wrong and I hope no offence is caused to anyone reading this.) I’m going to stick to facts I’ve read on the Guardian and The Oxford Human Rights Hub so hopefully I can’t go too wrong. (Though of course lots of this is down to interpretations of the law.) 

So the proposed change to the law is to take away the intrusive process trans people have to go through to legally change their gender and get a Gender Recognition Certificate, and to replace it with a far simpler process, perhaps even a straight forward self-declaration of gender, (but this is still just one of the options.) Potentially no panel interview, no proving they’ve been living as the opposite gender, no evidence to show how ‘female’ or ‘male’ they are, (which, the dehumanising element aside, and forgive the segue into opinion but I think at the very least this is bullshit. How often as a cisgendered woman do I wear feminine clothing and makeup? Hardly ever.) You are arguing that this might mean that any man can declare himself a woman so he can access female only safe spaces in order to assault the women inside. However, the proposed change in law won’t actually change that much. Already, under section 7 of the 2010 Equality Act, a person who has ‘gender reassignment’ characteristics, (and those characteristics are defined as: “a person [who] is proposing to undergo, is undergoing or has undergone a process (or part of a process) for the purpose of reassigning the person’s sex by changing physiological or other attributes of sex” (i.e. the person need not be undertaking a medical transition,) can access female only spaces, such as single sex hospital wards. This is irrespective of whether or not they have a Gender Recognition Certificate, even if they have taken no steps towards gender reassignment surgery. 

There are 2 instances in the 2010 Act where trans women may not access a single gender service and communal living. One of those is a counselling service for vulnerable women, where service users may refuse to attend if trans women are in attendance. However, a trans woman may only be excluded as a “proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim,” (Schedule 3, Part 7(28); Schedule 23(3)) and in practise (in the public sector,) this schedule has rarely been applied as showing a ‘legitimate aim,’ is difficult and people, both councillors and service users respect trans identities and do not believe they pose a threat, (though this is assumption based on how rarely this has happened.)  Schedule 3 and 23 both operate even if the trans woman in question holds a Gender Recognition Certificate (so their gender has been legally changed,) and if the government retains these two provisions on the 2010 Equalities Act, (which apparently is the direction the conversation is going,) then even if the legal process to switch gender changes to a simple self-declaration, then a trans woman will not have access to this space if the high-bar of ‘legitimate aim,’ has been satisfied. 

TLDR; all that to say that the law changing won’t change much. There is a huge amount of male pattern violence against women, including within women only spaces which they access through illegal means, for instance, sneaking into a woman’s toilet, (or he could just wait outside for the woman to come out.) There’s really no need for a disguise. I really really don’t believe that a male to-be-rapist will be going to the trouble to legally declaring himself a woman just to access a space full of vulnerable woman that he can assault, when he can violate the law and get in there already. And since the equalities act only requires ‘gender reassignment’ characteristics in trans people wanting to use single gendered services, surely more dishonest men would have tried this already if that’s something that was going to happen in the future once the law changes? 

I really believe the conversation should be about protecting vulnerable transgender people from real threats. The conversation should be about taking the onus off women to protect themselves from rape, and putting it on the perpetrators not to become rapists. We should be taking about the 23% drop in rape charges in the UK in 2017-2018, despite that the number of reported rapes doubled since 2014. We should be talking about the steady rise in hate crime against transgender people year on year, and the sharp rise in hate crime against all minority groups since the Brexit vote. 

Bisexual men with a preference for men aren’t gay, they’re just bisexual with a preference.

Both bisexual men and women who have a preference for the opposite sex or gender aren’t straight or lord forbid, “bihets”. They’re bisexual with a preference.

just two days ago, i was thinking, “you know what i haven’t done in a while? write a story about some stupid and embarrassing thing i’ve done. i wonder if this is because i’m twenty-seven and no longer a bumbling idiot who can’t make it through her day without bringing shame on her family?”

haha! said the universe. this bitch really thinks!!!!!

so this morning i was riding the bus to work, because i’m a grown up, who has a job, and i must take not one but two busses to get there. and i get off the first bus feeling a lot of hope for not just the day but the whole week. last week was cloudy and overcast, but this week! this week is going to be different. it’s sunny. i’m going to be productive. i’m going to be focused. i’m going to get things done.

spoiler: i’m going to abandon all these plans immediately.

i reach into my pocket to retrieve my wallet, which has my transit pass in it, and realize: it’s not there. it is also not in my other pocket. it is also not in my gym bag.

it is still on the bus.

you know that feeling when you’ve lost something where like, just before you go to see if you lost it you already know that you lost it?

it’s like how neo slows down time to dodge bullets in the matrix except instead of being that, it’s me realizing i have already done something incredibly stupid.

the problem with my wallet still being on the bus is that i myself am not still on the bus, which means that with every second, my wallet is getting farther away from me. this is distressing for many reasons but primarily i’d say that i don’t like it when my money and i are parted. i don’t have a lot of money, but what i do have i like to keep a very close eye on, because i need it to live, you see. still, there are lots of other things in that wallet that i don’t want to be parted from:

my drivers’ license, which i don’t use to drive anymore but is a nice picture of me and is also the world’s most ANNOYING thing to replace,

my work credit card and ID to get into the building,

my ventra transit card,

a wine punchcard on which i am only THREE WINES away from a $1 bottle of wine, and

a little post-it with the combination to my gym lock, which i am too dumb to remember but which i desperately need if i ever want to retrieve my running shoes from my gym locker.

i mean … y’all know that the only thing to do is chase that bus down. i’m not gonna cross my fingers and hope my wallet makes it to the lost and found. i don’t have that kind of luck.

my outfit for today was very, “90s straight girl meets her boyfriend’s sister and IMMEDIATELY becomes a lesbian,” so i was wearing 5-inch heels that weren’t conducive to running, which means i did the only sensible thing there was to do and kicked them off so that i could chase the bus in my bareass feet down the streets of chicago. 

was this “safe”????? no.

but was it liberating???? also no.

did my foot my foot bleed and did it probably contract the black plague????? FOLKS IT DID!!! 

anyway, there i went, sprinting down the sidewalk in my yellow floral romper and white jacket, heels in my hand, gym bag swinging behind me like a cartoonish ball & chain, and of course, because of who i am as a person, i almost immediately took a bad step.

friends, to say that i fell is to miss what happened, which is that i took an eight-foot vertical leap and did not land on my feet.

you know those cartoons where a cat gets scared and it jumps so far into the sky it touches the moon?

you know those videos of people with those water jetpacks where they can’t control them and they go rocketing through walls like the kool-aid man?

you know when a basketball player does that thing where they’re gonna dunk but they just absolutely whiff and end up lying dazed on the basketball court while whole stadiums of people laugh at them?

“oh my god,” someone yelled, maybe from their car, maybe from the bus stop, maybe literally god himself.

i looked up, dazed. there was a crowd of at least five people around me, all of them helping me to my feet, gathering my things. one very kind and very brave man ran out into traffic to retrieve my travel coffee mug, which – shoutout to my hometown’s endodontics practice, spilled not one single drop. 

“are you all right?” one of the good samaritans asked. “holy shit you were – you were airborne for so long.”

you know when your brain has been scrambled and you know there’s some way you need to be reacting but you can’t make your body react that way? 

i was like: “i have to catch that bus.”

“there are other buses coming,” Coffee Savior said. “like – in just a couple minutes.”

“no, i need that one,” i said, for some reason not realizing that i ought to clarify that my wallet was on that bus. one of the women, very kindly and warmly, stepped in close to me and put her arm around my shoulders and said, “between us girls, your boob is out.”

i looked down. the strap of my jumpsuit had popped off my shoulder, and indeed, my boob was out. i zipped up my white (WHITE. IT WAS WHITE. WHY DID I WEAR WHITE TODAY? YOU NEVER WEAR WHITE AFTER LABOR DAY!!!) jacket to hide this problem, which feels like a problem for Later Molly to deal with.

i took my things back from them, put my heels in my hand, and inexplicably left them with a cry of, “thanks, i love you,” before sprinting off again.

“THANKS, I LOVE YOU,” Shouts Bloodied Area Woman To Crowd Of Strangers While Running Barefoot Through Urban Center

i thought i’d become A Runner in the past few years by some weird fluky accident, but it turns out that i’d done it specifically so that i could chase this bus through not one but TWO intersections, because just as i reached it both times the light turned green. but when you’re already bleeding for a cause, giving up just feels like a waste.

this is called the fallacy of sunk cost, and it’s a stupid things human do that we shouldn’t.

i know this but i chased a bus for three blocks anyway and that just goes to show that the human mind is an enigma.

eventually, while turning a corner, the bus driver noticed me. he slowed down, looking perturbed by how far my fortunes had fallen since the last time we saw each other – which was less than five minutes ago – when i was, a) not bleeding, and b) not yelling at him.

he opened the door.

“i left my wallet,” i explained.

he blinked at me, but before i could get on, a man from the back row came running up to the front, holding my wallet in his hand. “you left your wallet,” he said, as if this would be news to me.

“you left your wallet?” asked the bus driver, in a tone that indicated what he meant was, why are you bleeding??????????

i took my wallet very gratefully from the other passenger.

what was the last thing you read?

favourite movie?

favourite book?

dream date?

do you have a crush?

what are your hobbies?

what’s your favourite time of day?

if you could look like anything, what would you look like?

are you a romantic?

what’s your favourite type of weather?

what do you like talking about?

what are your turn ons?

turn offs?

if you got a tattoo, what would it be and where would you get it?

do you want any pets?

dream job?

dream place to live?

dream vacation?

do you want any piercings?

if you had kids, what would you name them?

what are your best traits?

worst traits?

what’s your worst fear?

what do you want to eat right now?

what’s the best vacation you’ve been on?

favourite city?

favourite social media platform?

favourite article of clothing?

do you play any sports?

favourite meal of the day?

what are you excited for?

not excited for?

when was the last time you cried?

dream house?

what’s something you hate about the world?

what’s something you love about the world?

what scents do you like?

what kind of sleeper are you?

sweet or savoury?

are you a cat or dog person?

how long would you survive in a zombie apocalypse?

free! ask anything

when do you feel safe?

are you trusting?

what fictional characters do you identify with?

what labels do you commonly get?

what soung would be your life anthem?

what issues are you dealing with right now?

how can someone win you over?