__
To the women shrieking transphobic abuse on Mumsnet, in the name of women's rights,
Ten, fifteen years from now, when the world you wish for has come to pass, I ask you to remember me.
Remember me when you have your first baby and the trans woman by the bed next to you, who was with her wife every step of the way is consistently humiliated, dehumanised and denied her true value as a mother, because the best people can manage is to call her a facsimile of a woman, a pseudo-father, and she wishes that just for once, at this most transformative of moments, they would call her a woman, a mother, because that's what she is. But they can’t or they won’t, because they think that denying her the right to be a mother somehow gives them more rights or keeps them safe.
Remember me when your trans neighbour, who is waiting to have children before he starts hormone therapy, gives birth, and feels vulnerable and exposed, because the one person who would truly have been able to understand how he feels (and the best midwife on the ward) has been drummed out by transphobic haters who call her "a man in a dress.". Remember me when the doctors refuse to let your trans cousin see a female doctor, because they won’t record her sex as ‘female.’ Remember me when they laugh at her genitalia, when strangers ask to see what’s under her dress, when they force her to show them, even though her body is screaming no.
Remember me when your elderly mother, who is still reeling from you declaring her “lost to dementia” despite being every bit a feeling, thinking human being, goes into a care home and, despite having lived as a woman all her adult life, is called Sam, and cared for with the men. And even in her addled state of mind, she knows that she is Susan, and you know she is your mother, but you cannot object, and can only sit by while her confusion is compounded with depression, anxiety and grief.
Remember me when your daughter comes home from school crying, the daughter who has spent the last five years training to be the best athlete in her class, her school, her district, she's crying because transphobic mothers won’t allow her to run in the girls' race, but she can't go into the boys' changing rooms for fear of being beaten, and she knows it doesn't matter how hard she trains, she will never be allowed to compete, or even if she does, people would never accept her victories.
Remember me when you go into a toilet late at night, perhaps in a bar, and there's no one else around, and a guy walks in, he has a beard and is wearing jeans and a t shirt, and the way he looks at you seems off, and you feel afraid and unsettled and worried he might hurt you. But you can't challenge him, because the law says he is a woman, because he wasn’t born with a penis.
Remember me when your niece goes for a promotion, for a board position at work that's designated for a woman. She’s put in the hours, she’s worked so hard, she knows she deserves it. And the position goes to Lola, who has spent the last year subjecting her to transphobic bullying her at every opportunity, and making her life so miserable that she’s considered suicide more than once. Lola will never do anything inconvenient like needing time off to have surgery, or to recover from the latest transphobic beating she received when walking home, (though either of them could get breast cancer because it doesn’t just affect people who were born female).
Remember me when you read on the news that crime statistics for trans men and women being raped, murdered, beaten and driven to suicide are on the increase, and that, not only did you do anything to challenge or prevent this, but you spurred it on, in the name of women’s rights. Remember me too, when vulnerable trans women, who look for all the world like you and me, are locked up in male prisons and cannot escape, even though they are imprisoned with the very people who abused them and drove them to the edge.
Remember me when your son comes home from school and says that he's learned at school that you can change sex and that some girls have penises and some boys have vaginas, and he tells you that this was the first time he ever felt like there was a truly place for him in the world. But then his teacher told him it is wrong and immoral to be like this. And you realise that all this time, when you preached transphobia, you were teaching others that your son was wrong, was a misogynist in women’s clothing. And you realise that your son, your wonderful, unique, son, will only be happy when you accept him as your daughter. Remember me when a few months down the line the teacher calls you in and says she's concerned that your son is depressed, that he is being bullied by people who were once his friends, but she doesn't want to have to involve their parents in this, because it’s really just a lifestyle choice and people should be free to tell him what they think of him, after all it’s really just protecting the rights of the girls in the class. But you are afraid – of yourself, your son, your friends, and you don’t know what to do.
In this brave new world that you helped to create, look around for your transphobic friends, the ones who called trans women “six foot men with stubble in a dress” and yet still claimed these ‘men’ were “benefitting from the patriarchy.” Look around and maybe you will finally see that this has cost trans women everything, it has made the world a harder, crueller place for them, and yet they still did this. Despite the odds, the pain, the abuse, despite never being considered to be one thing or another, they still chose to live as women.
And me? I'll be where I've always been. Fighting for all our rights. Fighting to tell you that you do not do this in my name. Fighting to undo the damage.
Watch your own backs, we’ve got ours.