A hymn written by Jay Hulme for the Transgender Day of Remembrance (today, 20th November), music by Yshani Perinpanayagam, performed by St. Wulfram’s Church Choir. It was written to “provide a traditionally-written and classically-composed hymn to enable Anglican (and other) choirs to make a musical contribution to that day within a traditional idiom” as churches increasingly hold services on this day. Jay Hulme, himself a trans man has also written on Twitter on the purpose of holding a Transgender Day of Remembrance service as a Christian church:
That’s the core of a TDoR service. Trans people are dying, often because of a social climate that has been ignored or approved by Christians.
The job of a Church is to create a safe space for people to mourn and rage and lament, not to justify our religion and their place in it.
An atheist myself, but there’s a deep comfort in seeing at least some people within the Christian faith to make these attempts to be inclusive. Seeing how their faith gives people like Hulme the strength to fight for a better world gives me joy and hope.
Them: Hello, I’m sorry, this is going to sound weird but please give me a chance. When you were eighteen, did you have a childhood friend named Carli that you lost contact with after you left to go to college?
Scrum is a short documentary directed by Isabelle Alan about trans people playing rugby and the attempts to bar them from doing so.
I like the attitude of one of the woman players when told about the possibility of playing with a trans team mate. That at first she was like, no, no way but shortly realised that it’s the twentyfirst century and just had to get herself over it. That’s how most normal people respond; it may all seem a bit scary or weird in the abstract, but when confronted with the reality of it most people soon just accept it? Not everybody of course, there is a loud minority of assholes who want nothing more than to drive every trans person from sports and public life in general, but they are a minority.
The whole issue of how the transes are invading our sacred womens sport is such transparant bollocks, isn’t it? Whenever you see some crybaby cis woman whinging that her place was stolen, it’s always some grade a loser who never stood a chance in the first place. Best example was the skateboarder who as it turned out came in 34th out of 36 in the competition she complained about, with even eight year olds beating her. When the only way you came claim second place or higher is if there’s only two riders, it’s hilarious to blame it on trans women. Stop whining, git gud.
The truth is that there very few trans people competing on a level that matters, that the very very few elite trans athletes are not noticably or at all better than their cis competitors and that all of this is just another moral panic to pave the way for trans genocide. Even if being a trans woman gave you an advantage over cis competitors, so fucking what? Nobody is going to transition just to medal and so like with the bathroom panic, you’re left with the idea that some cis bloke will just pretend to be a trans woman. As if any cis male athlete good enough to compete with top female athletes isn’t better off just joining the regular mens competitions.
As with a lot of transphobes’ obsessions, the thin veneer of ‘feminism’ painted over it barely hides the reactionary core behind it. Ultimately transphobes seem to believe men are so much better at everything than women, that any random bloke can just waltz into an elite female competition and win. That core belief that women are frail, vulnerable creators which need to be protected and sheltered in their own spaces from the violent male world is at the heart of what we call terfdom, the fear that men are so much better than women that they would even make for better women. You can call it many things, but you cannot call it feminism.
Here’s a simple story of what happened when a young, uncertain on whether he was gay and what it meant, thinking about self harm, called his local queer bookstore and found a community eager to help him:
And SHE, this 50-something lesbian talks to this stranger on the phone. And a LINE FORMS BEHIND HER. Every customer in that store knows that call, knows that feeling, and every person takes a turn talking to that man.
That story comforts me so much to this day.
Joe also told his story to the queersplaining podcast, going into some more detail. A heartwarming story even if, as the podcast host notes, he shouldn’t have had to call a bookstore to get somebody to listen to and help him.
“British comedian does a bit on trans people” is a phrase that normally strikes fear in the heart, but Joe Lycett here is funny without punching down.
What I like about it is that it’s neither making fun of trans people or the idea of being trans, nor doing easy dunking on transphobes, but that Lycett takes the time to explain these concepts in between the humourous bits. Most of the humour here is aimed at the commercialisation of Pride and how much of it only focuses on the “g” in LGBT at the expense of the other letters and how some of these letters, like trans people feel under attakc by the right wing press, but not as much as they are under attack by “my mum’s friend, Linda”. It’s well thought out and sympathetic and it’s so rare to see this. Going through the rabbit hole of Youtube recommended clips of Channel 4 comedy panel shows and stumbling over this was a very pleasant surprise.