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Original poster

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

181 replies

CassOle · 19/09/2025 20:37

https://shonfaye.substack.com/p/well-its-over

Shon does not understand why the 'trans rights' movement got pushback.

OP posts:
murasaki · 22/09/2025 10:34

SionnachRuadh · 21/09/2025 21:20

I think the Guardian runs a system of perverse incentives.

I remember meeting the late Rachel Pollack, who was such an interesting person with such a wide variety of experiences and knowledge and enthusiasms that after a minute or two you'd forgotten Rachel was trans.

You can see some of that with Roz Kaveney, who again is from the older generation and really does have intellectual depth.

But these days, if you're a young writer with a trans identity, publishers will snap you up, and the Guardian will give you a column... but they just want you to write about being trans. I find it hard to imagine the Guardian running a column on, let's say, films or football or town planning by a bright young writer who happens to be trans identified.

It turns the young writers into terrible navel gazers, even if they weren't already, and I'm sure it must be boring for them, and they never get a chance to stretch themselves. And the Guardian don't even know they're running a trans ghetto.

I suppose there was a moment where they could aspire to be screenwriters on Doctor Who, but RTD torched that to the ground.

The Guardian does have a good trans writer, but then they were writing on football pre transition. There was one self absorbed column and then they just continued writing their comprehensive and interesting column on italian football just as before but with a new name and byeline photo. No more mention of it.

Beowulfa · 22/09/2025 11:47

the personal disappointment about the fact we are no longer fashionable or marketable

Genuinely hilarious.

TheUnusuallyQuerulentMxLauraBrown · 22/09/2025 12:42

I expect I’ve said this before on one of my many other usernames but I actually quite like the writing style of Andrea Long Chu (it’s just a shame he uses it to write misogynistic travel stories that invariably terminate at Malaga Airport).

One of my first WTF moments in Transland (circa 2003) was when I asked a university tutor to recommend Feminist writers and every one of the recommendations given turned out to be a Queer Theorist (eg Judith/Jack Halberstam).

Currently having a little chuckle over the inevitable outcome of ‘normalising’ formerly fringe/marginalised human behaviours (such as cross dressing, kink and transsexualism) in an early 2020s fast-paced, internet trend environment is Faye and Friends rapidly going from ‘stunning & brave’ to ‘tedious old hat’.

PatrickBaitman · 22/09/2025 13:27

This warms my big cis heart. I hope his predictions come true.

I wonder what it will say in history books about this phenomenon in a hundred years. Whatever it says, I hope it will include a lot of examples and pictures of masculine angry men in wigs protesting to get into the girls showers etc., and big transwomen at the podium in sports. And surely something about the great wave of lawsuits against the gender clinics/pharma and its culpable enablers.

viques · 22/09/2025 14:06

Thanks Shon, that’s really cheered me up. No really, it has, more than I can say.

But never mind eh chuck, you have managed to come out of it OK, shame about all those anxious kids in their bedrooms who have been brainwashed by you and your ilk and are now quivering wrecks of pronoun insecurity, also a pity about the confused young women who thought taking testosterone would help them to find their niche place in the world only to discover too late that its effects are permanent, the health risks are real and the outcome not very satisfactory. Maybe you could manage to send a bunch of flowers from your comfortably enhanced bank account to the women who have been hounded out of THEIR careers and financial security by impressionable people who believed the lies you spread in order to secure your own future.

But hey, here’s a little something for you.🍓Sorry it’s a strawberry, I couldn’t find a raspberry. But it’s identified as one so that’s OK.

ArabellaSaurus · 22/09/2025 20:56

SionnachRuadh · 20/09/2025 14:57

Yes, I think Faye does believe in 'true trans', and there are a couple of elements to that.

The first is that Faye as a gay male transsexual really doesn't feel any great affinity with straight male fetishists. So he doesn't believe that all varieties of 'trans' are the same thing.

The second is that Faye is quite politically canny, and I suspect has reached the Hayton position of "these extremists and weirdos are undermining the social acceptance I've always relied on."

The obvious thing for Faye to do - and he's not untalented as a writer - is to transition out of the TQ+ punditocracy and into writing gigs where his trans status isn't the sole selling point. Maybe he can do that, maybe not. But I think his activist phase is at an end.

I'm sorry, but he is supremely untalented as a writer.

SinnerBoy · 22/09/2025 22:19

This may not be the thread, but I can't find the recent one about "what happened to the transvestites "? Has anyone watched After Life?

Me and my daughter watched the last episode of series 2 tonight, where they interview the 50 year old man who "identifies" as an 8 year old girl. Daughter is a TWAW and she was slack jawed in horror.

Penny the photographer had a soliloquy about, "They're all transgender now, what happened to the transvestites, the blokes who dressed up as birds, but didn't say they were actually women?

She didn't make any of the usual comments, I'm really hoping that she's ambling slowly up to the peak.

Im not going to show her any Sham Fake stuff yet.

RayonSunrise · 23/09/2025 08:17

Too late Shon. Who would have imagined, ten years ago when lesbians and lefty women tried raising their concerns about where the dogmatic TWAW position would logically end up and you told them to enjoy their erasure, that it might all go wrong for you?

Well, we did. And we were quite willing to work with you way back then on finding compromises that would have put transactivism in a stronger and more stable position in mainstream society, but you were too busy telling us to fuck off to see it.

FAFO, indeed.

ArabellaSaurus · 23/09/2025 08:19

RayonSunrise · 23/09/2025 08:17

Too late Shon. Who would have imagined, ten years ago when lesbians and lefty women tried raising their concerns about where the dogmatic TWAW position would logically end up and you told them to enjoy their erasure, that it might all go wrong for you?

Well, we did. And we were quite willing to work with you way back then on finding compromises that would have put transactivism in a stronger and more stable position in mainstream society, but you were too busy telling us to fuck off to see it.

FAFO, indeed.

As I said, he's just a bitter, two-bit bully. Enjoyed sneering at women to make up for his own inadequacies.

RuttleTuttle · 23/09/2025 09:32

Skipthisbit · 19/09/2025 23:37

Christ ….. you do realise that “it’s over” because we are all tittering on the fucking edge of right wing fascism taking over - we are a couple of years behind the US. The same people who have pushed back the trans movement will now happily strip women of our rights, bodily autonomy and want us back in the bloody kitchen serving them.
no - not celebrating at all

How dare you. How dare you belittle and forget the enormous effort and emotional (and financial) expense that women in the UK have made for years now to stand up for their own rights, in the face of being cancelled, being threatened, losing their jobs - while men like Faye told us to "enjoy ur erasure" and Stonewall captured huge organisations with their fake law?

Don't even try to lump us in with what's happening in the US, or to play in to the TRAs' "they're a load of far right Christo fascists" schtick. Just fuck off with that.

As for Shon - sad times. Time to actually work for a living. But nice try at dragging all the everyday transes down with you.

finallygettingit · 23/09/2025 10:10

I actually wonder if his next move will be his 'journey to reality and acceptance' sold in memoir form with accompanying interviews, articles, appearances etc
Like a kind of peaking but with additional layers of guilt, regret, remorse. I do actually feel sorry for these people. Or rather, I feel very sorry for the boy he was.

Beowulfa · 23/09/2025 10:20

There's surely never been a time in the history of the human race (in this country at least) when a flamboyant, feminine man can express his personality so freely, marry his boyfriend and have legal protection from discrimination. Like the 80s but with modern equality law.

finallygettingit · 23/09/2025 10:25

you'd hope so wouldn't you but his own story (and the screen version) says otherwise
remember all the stories from the Tavistock about parents wanting to 'trans away the gay'
or Susie Green's poor son
the law is one thing but bigotry still exists

RapidOnsetGenderCritic · 23/09/2025 11:20

Skipthisbit · 19/09/2025 23:37

Christ ….. you do realise that “it’s over” because we are all tittering on the fucking edge of right wing fascism taking over - we are a couple of years behind the US. The same people who have pushed back the trans movement will now happily strip women of our rights, bodily autonomy and want us back in the bloody kitchen serving them.
no - not celebrating at all

The kitchen is a great place to be, now that we have machines to do most of the drudgery. I spend more time in there than DW as she doesn't enjoy cooking as much as I do.

WimbledonWhites · 23/09/2025 12:52

finallygettingit · 23/09/2025 10:25

you'd hope so wouldn't you but his own story (and the screen version) says otherwise
remember all the stories from the Tavistock about parents wanting to 'trans away the gay'
or Susie Green's poor son
the law is one thing but bigotry still exists

I think you might be confusing Shon Faye with Paris Lees.

Merrymouse · 23/09/2025 14:28

eatfigs · 19/09/2025 21:23

I do think that, in the UK context, the all-encompassing focus on the Gender Recognition Act reform from 2017 to 2020 was a grave mistake.

I think he can now see clearly where it all started to go downhill for his activist movement. He and many other men like him were taken by surprise at the tenacity and determination and wisdom and collaboration of so many women to oppose this. Much of it based here on Mumsnet of course!

In the UK, we – transsexuals - are about to become significantly less employable as a class. Especially trans women. The segregation law and reduced access to medical care have rendered us ‘undesirables’ and this will affect how we make money to survive.

I think he's right to be worried about this. It's about to swing way too far in the other direction. Being unemployable and actively discriminated against in society is not a good place to be.

The 'segregation law' just means that he is treated the same as everybody else in, and I think 'reduced access to medical care' just means that treatment in the UK is evidence based.

How does that make him unemployable?

Shortshriftandlethal · 23/09/2025 16:04

Skipthisbit · 19/09/2025 23:37

Christ ….. you do realise that “it’s over” because we are all tittering on the fucking edge of right wing fascism taking over - we are a couple of years behind the US. The same people who have pushed back the trans movement will now happily strip women of our rights, bodily autonomy and want us back in the bloody kitchen serving them.
no - not celebrating at all

We're not a "couple of years behind" in Britain, we're years ahead and leading the way when it comes to pushing back against the trans agenda. The U.S is still shit deep in it all.

Shortshriftandlethal · 23/09/2025 16:10

miraxxx · 20/09/2025 10:23

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.

Yes, there is still a long way to go before the craze exhausts itself......but rolling a boulder uphill is hard work; one that that fewer and fewer will have the endurance or motivation for.

GallantKumquat · 23/09/2025 17:15

Setting aside that Faye's personality makes him uniquely unsympathetic, his whinging illustrates a deeper problem in advocacy generally - the purpose of most advocacy - and this is certainly the case for trans advocacy - is to make yourself redundant, i.e. to create a society that is so equitable for your cause that your services are no longer necessary. So, Faye's level of employment in trans advocacy should be of no concern because it could be correlated with an improvement or deterioration of the trans situation generally.

But this doesn't even occur to Faye. Instead advocacy is a divine right and its necessity must be accepted a priori. This amounts to moral hazard: the advocate benefits from being both ineffective and from choosing causes that really aren't problems to begin with or from exaggerating their plight. And while Faye's extreme level of narcissistic self-regard is unusual, this is a flaw in sits at the heart of the criticism of the quango state: these organizations benefit by making problems worse and thereby self-perpetuating.

This is not to say that all not-for-profits behave this way, and certainly not all people who work in the sector. But it's an obvious risk that remains unaddressed and trans advocacy in particular lays it bare. There seem to be no institutional tools to address it and no way to discuss it frankly without being accused of being on the side of defunding them and abolishing them, i.e. Reform. (adding that I'm not advocating for or against Reform, the entire political spectrum should view this as a problem, the left even more so than the right)

RayonSunrise · 23/09/2025 17:35

GallantKumquat · 23/09/2025 17:15

Setting aside that Faye's personality makes him uniquely unsympathetic, his whinging illustrates a deeper problem in advocacy generally - the purpose of most advocacy - and this is certainly the case for trans advocacy - is to make yourself redundant, i.e. to create a society that is so equitable for your cause that your services are no longer necessary. So, Faye's level of employment in trans advocacy should be of no concern because it could be correlated with an improvement or deterioration of the trans situation generally.

But this doesn't even occur to Faye. Instead advocacy is a divine right and its necessity must be accepted a priori. This amounts to moral hazard: the advocate benefits from being both ineffective and from choosing causes that really aren't problems to begin with or from exaggerating their plight. And while Faye's extreme level of narcissistic self-regard is unusual, this is a flaw in sits at the heart of the criticism of the quango state: these organizations benefit by making problems worse and thereby self-perpetuating.

This is not to say that all not-for-profits behave this way, and certainly not all people who work in the sector. But it's an obvious risk that remains unaddressed and trans advocacy in particular lays it bare. There seem to be no institutional tools to address it and no way to discuss it frankly without being accused of being on the side of defunding them and abolishing them, i.e. Reform. (adding that I'm not advocating for or against Reform, the entire political spectrum should view this as a problem, the left even more so than the right)

Edited

Or you get involved in the hard graft side of non profits, like supporting disabled people or helping people find their feet after leaving prison. The “hearts and minds” type should have an end point when acceptance is achieved.

Daleksatemyshed · 23/09/2025 17:40

@GallantKumquat you post makes a lot of sense to me, especially that the whole point of advocacy is to make yourself unnecessary. Stonewall made this mistake, gay rights had been moved forward but they couldn't bring themselves to stop, they took on trans rights to try and stay relevant, now even the trans community is turning their backs on them. Good manners is knowing when to say enough and leave

finallygettingit · 23/09/2025 19:19

WimbledonWhites · 23/09/2025 12:52

I think you might be confusing Shon Faye with Paris Lees.

Show quote history

ah yes you may be right

Original poster
CassOle · 23/09/2025 19:58

Daleksatemyshed · 23/09/2025 17:40

@GallantKumquat you post makes a lot of sense to me, especially that the whole point of advocacy is to make yourself unnecessary. Stonewall made this mistake, gay rights had been moved forward but they couldn't bring themselves to stop, they took on trans rights to try and stay relevant, now even the trans community is turning their backs on them. Good manners is knowing when to say enough and leave

If Stonewall had turned its campaign towards countries where homosexuality was illegal, it could have done some good and taken on a task that it is hard to see an end to currently.

Taking on the T instead was a huge missed opportunity IMO.

OP posts:
BundleBoogie · 23/09/2025 21:12

I think he's right to be worried about this. It's about to swing way too far in the other direction. Being unemployable and actively discriminated against in society is not a good place to be.

Judging by the behaviour of so many people claiming a trans identity that we come across, they would help their employability by being less disruptive, narcissistic and demanding and start to understand that other people exist in society .

I’m sure it would do them the world of good as well.

RapidOnsetGenderCritic · 24/09/2025 00:15

WimbledonWhites · 20/09/2025 17:20

Has anyone read Shon’s book? I found those few paragraphs genuinely hard to read - is the book any better?

it’s either escorting or the diversity and inclusion panel

Never thought I’d say this but in this instance at least the escorting would be honest work.

I found it largely forgettable. He did a reasonable job of explaining how terribly terribly difficult a trans life is, what with everyone being against you, but this was overshadowed by his naive political take. The abolition of prisons is all very nice for a certain type of person well represented in student politics, but he fails to grapple with the reality of such a policy. Immature and unwilling to think through the consequences on society of his proposals.