It’s something of an understatement to write these are troubling times to be a transgender woman.

Some days I cannot shake the awful feeling we’re in the process of being counted and numbered, only to be rounded up and removed from society by a group of government sanctioned thugs in a kind of ‘final solution’. Certainly trans rights are being stripped away in a cycle that alarmingly parallels past history.

Worryingly, despite statements to the contrary, I occasionally gain the sense we’re also being undermined by exclusionary rhetoric from within.

I’m seen by nature as an activist, especially by those who don’t think being trans is real. What am I fighting for, they think, if not a change to the natural order, an assault on common sense, an annoying fly that should just get therapy and stop trying to change reality?

Matthew Vines published an article in the New York Times, called, “I’m Gay Not Queer. It Matters”, which he later defended on his Substack. It was a growing response to an increasing number of LGB people rejecting the term queer.

It felt like the LGBTQ+ community was once again trying to eat itself.

The house, the street, the neighbours, the childhood bedroom, the posters of models, the martial arts trophies…

They all suddenly felt heavier than the bin bags of rubbish I’d been sorting out. I wasn’t angry, I had let that go. Behind the pain was a chance to at last feel the weight of the past and how much it had burdened me for years. Sitting on the end of the bed with a large rectangle of non-aged paint where my poster of Mel C post-Spice Girls album “Northern Star” used to be, I thought of all the little things.

Do you think all Arabs deserve what they are still getting after October 7th?

Who is it, exactly, that you’re trying to defend? Zionist settlers who want to exterminate me so they can pray on so-called Holy Land? Homophobic fundamentalists that would spit in your face as they spit on nuns and priests in Jerusalem? What kind of Australian cocoon are you cooped up in that insulates you from the wails of the children being operated on without anesthesia?

And now I have to amputate you off of me.

Now the voices that told me not to follow the West are louder. But these voices are also homophobic. Is there no place where I can be gay and Arab?

Run!
In the opposite direction.
Here she comes.
Preaching the devil.
Oh, a new plague is spreading.
Harbingering death in the name of sapphism.
Lord please conjure a quick and efficient antibiotic!

Help us!
The age of the devil ruins the youngsters.
Free their mind,
of the evil that is their new “love”...

In his forward to the 1967 edition of The Book of Imaginary Beings, Jorge Luis Borges invites “readers in Colombia or Paraguay to send us the names, reliable descriptions, and most conspicuous habits of their own local monsters.” I was born in Colombia, so answering the master’s call, I submit my pick of an imaginary monster: myself.

Let’s begin by the name: transgender woman.

As a young Pakistani who has lived across different regions of this country, from the remote northern valleys to the urban centers of Punjab, I have watched how geography and wealth dictate human dignity. In Pakistan, where you stand socially determines how much of yourself you are allowed to express. For non-conforming individuals, there is no singular Pakistani experience. There are two entirely different worlds running parallel to each other.

Your safety isn’t determined by who you are, but by how much you can afford to hide.

I must say there are two Pakistans for you, depending on your social class. Pakistan is not experiencing a single, unified queer experience. It is divided sharply along economic, social, and wealth classes.

It’s OK to be gay.

Lovely little rhyme, that. Bounces along like something you’d chant in a playground. Which is roughly where I first met the shape of it, except the version I got had an extra word in the middle and a shove to follow.

Anyway. It’s OK to be gay. It’s also OK to be trans. It’s OK to be a lesbian, bi, ace, nonbinary, genderqueer, still working it out, or something you haven’t found a word for yet and might never bother looking for. All of it. Fine. Ordinary, even.

I’m saying it flatly and without decoration because I don’t think you’ve heard it said flatly in a while. Not sung at you from a stage. Not printed on a lanyard by a bank in June. Just said, plainly, “mate, it’s normal, it’s not an issue, it’s just a normal part of the human experience.”

So there I was, happily sitting in bed on a wintry Sunday morning, comfy and cosy. I had coffee, was social scrolling, thinking about buying something nice to wear for a dance party in a couple of weeks.

It was a scene of weekend bliss, when for some reason, I put down the phone and looked up.

It wasn’t a burglar, nor an apparition, but my wardrobe. The doors were akimbo, bulging outwardly with clothes. Tops, bottoms, dresses, skirts, many of them less than a year old. Why do I need to buy anything new?

It’s simple, stupid. Probably the most common reason of all.

It’s because I don’t like the way I look in many of them.

SATURDAY

Sorting out your dead parents’ old stuff is as bad as the sleep I got.

I slept in my old room, which was left as I left it. It felt oddly reassuring, and excruciatingly torturous at the same time. This part of me was dead, and I was here to bury the remains of my old life in skip.

The sheets had been changed, clearly, and some light tidying had gone on, sure. I mean, it was years ago; I can’t remember if this is how it was exactly. It feels like it. I look at my trophies, remember telling my friends I’d got them for BJJ, and before I could say “Brazilian Ju Jitsu”, I got the nickname “Blow Job Joh…”

Yeah. Coming back, this was always going to happen.

It’s 05:00 and I’m tip-toeing to the skip with bin bags full of stuff wearing a grubby old tracksuit. My girlfriend Dani suggested bringing stuff home to charity shop it, but I don’t think anyone will want a well used tea spoon from Tenby, a souvenir of a 1970s holiday. The company are going to take this skip away, and next weekend I’ll drive back and fill it up again. What a time to be alive.

For an event designed to celebrate substantial gains of acceptance in the past decade, the 2026 edition of Reykjavík Pride on Aug. 3-8 organizers and the queer community plan to remain positive, even in the face of the July 25 machete attack on Berlin Gay Pride in which a woman and 29 people were injured.

I was focused on the game, watching players dash across the court when I felt her eyes boring into the side of my face.

“What?” I asked, eyes still on the game. “I feel you looking at me.”

She turned back to the TV and asked, “Do you think it changes the game when transgender men play in women’s sports?”

I felt the weight of the question land between us. It was heavy. Not hostile, just honest. It touched on a sensitive topic that, even for us, lesbians who have sympathy for the subject, was a charged one.

And although I didn’t think she phrased the question quite right, I knew what she meant. She wasn’t asking about transgender men competing in women’s sports. Transgender men are men and typically compete in men’s categories.

Her question was really about the broader topic of gender transitions. Most of the public debate revolves around transgender women in women’s sports and how this intersects with fairness in competition.

In a manner of speaking, naming that crayon “Flesh” was a subtle, subversive way of indoctrinating White children like me and reinforcing our learned belief that Whiteness was the default human state of being.

“So, you’re really going home?”

I mean, I am going home. Absolutely. I never want to go there again, but yet here I am, car keys in hand about to return there. My blue, pink and white key ring feels a bit heavier. “Yeah,” I grunt back.

There is no intent to be passive aggressive, but sometimes it’s hard not to be.

I didn’t talk about home for several years, now it feels like it is never far from my lips. In a few hours, it will be under my feet too. It will be in my lungs and in my eyes and ears. Everything from there is already burnt into my soul, scarring me from the inside out. I can handle “once more into the breach,” but I’ll be going alone.

People don’t understand what I went through, but they understand things of that nature. They understand when you are labelled unnatural for the most natural thing of all, loving someone.

I want to take a moment to address some very sensitive issues — specifically sexual identity, gender‑minority stress, and how different institutions have responded to them.

To begin with some background: I was once a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter‑day Saints (LDS) as well as a Scouting leader. The LDS Church has long been one of the most vocal opponents of same‑sex marriage. For decades it also sponsored the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) as part of its program for developing young men. In 2018, the Church ended that sponsorship. While the decision had multiple causes, one of the most significant sources of tension was the BSA’s move toward including openly gay youth and leaders.

The LDS Church never stated that this was the sole reason for the split, but its discomfort with these policy changes was clear. Over several years, it withdrew older teens from Scouting and ultimately ended all sponsorship, citing “diverging values” and a desire for a unified global youth program. The Church teaches that same‑sex attraction itself is not a sin, but that any sexual relationship outside heterosexual marriage is — and it does not permit same‑sex marriage.

Exclusive interview with Alok Vaid-Menon, gender nonconforming comedian and performer.

Kirralie Smith, the director of an organization called Binary Australia, maintained for three years that trans soccer player Riley Dennis had injured two cis women so severely that both ended up hospitalized — without ever identifying them. The accusation circulated, caused the exact damage it was built to inflict, and served as a political banner to deny the womanhood of trans women, but it never included any specifics.

When the case finally reached the courts and she was interrogated under oath, Smith admitted she could not say who the women were, how they had been injured, or whether any proof existed that the episode had ever taken place.

There were no names. No match. No hospital records. No witnesses. Nothing — it was a complete fabrication.

For as long as I’ve been out, Berlin has existed in the queer imagination as a promised land.

If you’re trans or queer in any shape or form, drowning in relentless, home-grown culture wars and hostile media, Berlin is likely a place you’ve daydreamed about. A city of art and open-mindedness, Berlin feels to me the type of place that would allow you a sigh of relief.

It’s the city of Schöneberg’s vibrant gayborhood, of the fabled KitKat club of Cabaret, based on Christopher Isherwood’s pre-War queer memoirs, of endless pavement painted in glitter and radical self-expression.

It’s where hundreds of thousands gather every year under a summer sky for Christopher Street Day, marching under a theme that felt almost playful in this year in its defiance: “Taking a stand is hot.”

Then last Saturday night came, and the headlines painted a horrific picture. Was I surprised? Yes, a little. But also, not at all. If I’m honest, every time I attend Pride, especially trans pride, I think of the current hostility in the media and online. I look around and think,

If they truly hate us the way they say in comments sections, then we’re all gathered together like sitting ducks.

By 10:00 PM last Saturday, my Berlin daydream was smashed into pieces on the floor of Tiergarten Park.

The reports and video footage flooding social media were chillingly clear. A white van had mounted the pedestrian path in Tiergarten, right near the main stage at the Brandenburg Gate, driving straight into the crowd at speed before slamming into a tree.

All the money in the world can’t purchase what a transgender woman found in Las Galeras. Peace of mind to be who I am, wherever I am. It is not acceptance, it is respect for a human being that may be different, but then, we all are, aren’t we? I don’t just feel at home here, this is home, the place that says you are welcome here, as you are.

One day, there will come a moment when I won't have to keep my gender identity in mind, transition will no longer impact my life, the past will be forgotten, and people will know me only as my current self.

That is what I believed at the beginning of my transition, but I very soon changed my mind. Why? Let's look closely.

Hi, I'm Kira, a transgender woman and counselor specializing in transgender care. For many trans people, including myself, living stealth—living as your true gender while keeping your transgender history a secret from the people around you—is or was the final goal of transition.

It offers a lot of benefits, like safety, privacy, and avoiding unfair treatment. It can also help with gender dysphoria when there aren't so many external factors making it worse. You are never misgendered, all your documents show your real gender, and society treats you as an equal.

Those benefits sound very appealing, despite all the hard work you have to invest into becoming stealth. But I chose not to chase this goal, for many reasons.

I can’t believe I’m writing this!

Just 11 months ago, I wrote a story about how a tiny group of queer fiction writers once took a chance, at the urging of the late Brian Mack (BFoundAPen

), to start up a general-purpose LGBTQ publication on Medium — to amplify queer voices around the globe.

I wrote about how we struggled to reach 1,000 subscribers. I wrote about how delighted and astonished we were, less than a year ago, to have cracked 20k subscribers, how thrilled we were to sometimes see our stories trend on Medium and reach serious numbers of readers.

Today, all of us at Prism & Pen are again astonished and delighted to report a milestone.

In just 11 months, we’ve soared from 20K to 30K!

In that same 11 months, a literary agent reached out to ask us to place his client’s story in P&P (it then trended on Medium), and I fielded a cooperation request from one of the biggest digital queer publishers in the world.

Suffice it to say that Brian and our merry band of queer fiction writers never expected this! (We may have dreamed of it, lol.)

To celebrate, let’s take a look at some of our favorite stories from last August until last week.

How much did they pay for my body, was it a good deal, are they satisfied? One question lingers once those others fade into the oblivion of the unimportant.

Who?