A statement and call to cis allies.

Over the last few days, my notifications have been filled to the brim with comments after I shared the graphic at the top of this post. If you follow me on Twitter, you'll likely know what sort of comments. The reason I'm posting this is because I want to share personal reflections on the barrage I've gotten, and I feel I need to make a call out to any cis allies who read my posts.

Please be advised, this post has quotes containing hateful language I've received in tweets addressed to me.

Since I posted the above graphic, my tweet has had thousands of interactions on it. The majority of these, very likely, have come from some gender critical group chat with the aim of dog piling my comments section. I see all of these comments and they're like water off a duck's back to me, but there are some which I feel define the people who are criticising my post.

In the last few posts I've put up, I've been called a Nazi. I've been called a fascist. I've been called a "groomer", the exact same trope used against queer people in the 1980s. I've even had people talking about my genitals, which frankly is nobody's business. Those words and slurs don't hurt me (I guess it's quite alarming how normalised I am to this sort of hate) but it goes to show the mindset of those who have shown opposition. It's also incredibly distressing to me to see that members younger than myself - who are friends of mine - are facing the same level of hate, some of whom are struggling to deal with this level of interaction. I don't understand how someone could have hate in their heart to dox a 16 year old, but again - that says it all about those who are popping up in my notifications.

I've nothing more to say other than what I've already said in my posts, but I do have one more important thing to say to trans allies. We need you. Trans Awareness Week starts today and I'm going to be the first to say it's not enough to just repost a graphic about trans rights, or like a tweet from somebody you follow saying "Trans Rights Are Human Rights!". I'm sorry, but it's not good enough.

We need you supporting us, calling out transphobia in all its forms. We need you signing petitions to reform the Gender Recognition Act. We need you on the streets with us when we demonstrate. We need you to stand with us when we're facing this sort of vitriol and hate, because that's what allyship is. I remember hosting Jonathan Blake from LGSM when I ran the LGBTQ+ Network at York, and he was such an eloquent speaker. The whole point of LGSM was that queer people showed solidarity to mining communities because they were being marginalised in the same way they were back in the 1980s; eventually the NUM (National Union of Mineworkers) showed the same solidarity at the Labour Party conference and helped get the Labour Party to stand up for LGBTQ+ rights.

So if you're an ally to the trans community, then please actively stand with us. We're seeing history repeat itself with the hate targeted at the trans community and we're heading for another Section 28. It's terrifying, and we need you.