Shon Faye - 'well, it's over' - a brief eulogy for the "trans rights" movement.

Oh bless him, he’s just trying to create a place for himself as the head of transness, only Shonself can decide who is TRULY worthy.

He did mention "medical transition" a couple of times and made it clear that he had medically transitioned himself - I think he's trying to differentiate (in his mind, anyway) between the bepenised transgender and the now-not-bepenised transexual.

So it's not so much the preferred term so much as it's his preferred term, because he doesn't want to be considered the same as all those who are not 'true' transwomen. He writes:

"I see trans women online blaming the NGOs (like Stonewall) and more discursive trends that tended to frame ‘transness’ as a matter of individual self-expression and cosmopolitan values than a material need (the right to access medical transition and to live and work in safety)."

I think he's looking down his nose at "individual self-expression and cosmopolitan values" as not really being trans in his eyes. Only he (and those like him) who cut off their penis can claim to be trans. A hierarchy of trans, with transsexual being more trans than transgender.

Elsewhere, "And as oblivious as the well-meaning cis gays and others who do not medically transition can be, ..." - he doesn't even use the term 'transgender', just 'others who do not medically transition'. You have to wonder if he considers men who keep their penis can claim to be trans at all, or just men self-expressing their cosmopolitan values.

A fascinating thread with some really sane, sensible comments. This stood out and made Shon Faye's article look shallow and unevidenced.

Meh. It’s bleak, things are going to be hard, but let’s not forget that most of us do have jobs.
I saw Shon Faye host a panel at Glastonbury a year and a half ago on trans liberation, on the panel were other trans writers. One of the things that came across then and is explicit in her writing here is that she cannot compute that a trans person puts on a lanyard in the morning and just goes to work. You are either a sex worker or in some other form of valid but precarious desperation work, or you had carved your independence from the system by writing, or you worked trans rights professionally.
Just putting on some moderately smart clothes on, grabbing your lanyard, water bottle and handbag and going to work did not compute, nobody on the panel had anything at all to say when a young trans person asked about their concerns around navigating the office whilst trans because none had ever done so.
And I’m sure her talking engagements are down and publishing may be harder, but there are many of us with open ended contracts at secure work places who are employable on merit and not working on a anything related to being trans.
Will life be harder for us? Yup! Will moving to new employers be harder than before? Probably! But it’s through this critical pathway where qualifications and experience are achieved and built upon that trans future in Britain lies.
Any young trans person reading this, go crush your A-levels, go study something with a strong future and solid job security, go develop yourself knowing that it is worth while because you don’t need to work in EDI, after dinner speaking, writing or sex work, because your future is yours to craft.
Trans life is harder than cis life, and that means we must work harder and smarter than cis people. Not that it’s fair, but it is doable and the foundational stone that is laid first is belief. And I don’t want to see trans people losing the belief in their own ability to carve out a life, because this is the pathway to trans people bleakening our own lives. Don’t do terfs work for them.
Edit: just add in case this is useful to anyone that some of the secure employment areas that I know trans people have jobs in are as follows: academia, teaching, coding, software development, software support, accounting, marketing and so many areas all across the NHS.
I don’t know a single trans person who does or ever has done sex work, I don’t know a single trans person who has ever worked in EDI or been paid as an after dinner speaking.
I move in different circles to Shon obviously, but what underpins job security and employability are developed demonstrable skills and experience of deploying them. These are simply not cisgender exclusive commodities. Fuck Shon for the message she is sending her own community here, she needs to touch some grass and start engaging with anyone with a normal job if she wants to have any relevance at all.

won't somebody think of the Tarquins?

Triple cooked hand fried chips, surely?

I mean Shon has a degree of some description from Oxford. God forbid that Shon would have to lower Shonself to asking the plebs if they want fries with that.

Or, just, have a job like any other person?

I agree, although I'm not sure 'fought for' is the right term. Wangled, fiddled, snatched and grabbed, deceived and conned to trample women's legal rights and equalities, those would be interesting words to consider. None of it done in the open, with #nodebate being shouted loudly and women threatened for resisting. This was at no point a civil rights movement or anything to admire.

Then they shouldn't have tacitly agreed with such people and taken the privileges TAs fought for as rights. They shouldn't have stood back and allowed the transing and indoctrination of kids. No innocents in this movement. Except the children. No sympathy from me.

It's starting - detransitioner Chloe Cole's medical malpractice suit against Kaiser is going to court, alleging medical malpractice, negligence, battery, and lack of informed consent.

Well Shon, trans activists like you didn’t just try to take a mile instead of an inch, you tried to take the whole fucking lot.
Thank fuck for those pesky women on TERF island.

And this 🎯

Agree. It wouldn’t surprise me at all what with the creepy suggestions to slide into DMs he made to SF.

cos Labour still recognise them innit

That’s what you get as a budgie for pecking your reflection in the mirror more than exercising your wings. When you need them to fly to the sun, they let you down.

Agree.

I don't wish anybody ill.

But I have no pity or time for someone having a pout and whine because they're angry that they are no longer able to get away with abusing and using non consenting women, and seeing children medically harmed. That would be a 'them' problem.

So basically this whole piece is one long whinge, they thought they'd found the gravy train but now it's hit the buffers. If they hadn't been so threatening, demanding and all round spiteful I might feel an iota of pity but they blew that long ago.

Good grief what a lot of drama and hyperbole.

As usual most of the claimed ills exist only the head of the writer, with absolute refusal to let any any of the reasons raised in the very long court cases about why and how this has not worked for women and is not acceptable or legal, get anywhere near them.

This is why women need protections in law. Some men aren't ever going to acknowledge those women having inconvenient rights or see them as anything more than service resources.

Well if they are that's their own fault 🤷🏼‍♀️

He's the prime age for a trip to Malaga, but IME the middle aged men who make that trip are not nearly as camp as JM.

I don't think this is the end for the trans movement just the end of its runaway success and the beginning of a pushback. There are enough people still deeply invested in the movement to keep it rolling for a decade or two.

There is a substantial cohort of bisexual men(married or pretending to be straight) who are trans chasers. JM is more likely to be in this cohort than gay or trans.

So an openly gay flamboyant young man who likes to wear makeup ends up claiming womanhood? Not saying ‘poor shon’ here but more widely it really is a world that got lost in lie after lie with many younger vulnerable, likely autistic, adults susceptible to the narrative that they could somehow (drugs, surgery, or just long hair and clothes) change sex.

There never will be anyone held to account for this tragedy though. It’ll never be known as to who was the person or group of men that were ground zero for this ‘movement’. And that’s a shame.

Though I disagree with shon’s hyperbole in this article as the trans movement is still running and TW still being applauded for their authentic selves and vulnerable young people are still being sold a lie about changing sex, pronouns still being asked, toilets still changing to gender neutral, and men still being included in wsss’s. This is very deeply embedded and will take years for any significant shifts.

Likely only if and when enough young people subject to experimental surgery go on to sue the doctors, surgeons, counsellors and psychiatrists who affirmed their gender identity. The biggest impact is if young adults ever sue their parents for facilitating the transition, drugs and surgeries whilst they were under age.

feeling vulnerable is all part of the thrill of the role play. there will be a part of Shon that is loving this

Transmisia is strong with SF.

SF complains about the financial penalty involved in some choices. I should think that women whose career and finances have been derailed by motherhood don’t feel the need to fake surprise at this observation. Likewise the transwidows and children who feel the financial consequences.