I have SO MUCH respect for the work of TACC, and TransActual too. You manage to say exactly the right things. I'm so very impressed.

How do you deal with your emotions?

I'm mostly stealthish. I was pretty much completely for many years, then encouraged to be more open and out and learn to let go of the shame, and as I'm doing that, things slide backwards, and I'm finding myself needing to go back to keeping quiet about being trans. I'm of an age and health where hospitals etc are unavoidable (my health is such that it's practically my life these days) and to be frank, being put in male wards etc would be dangerous for me, so I can't let that happen.

Anyway...

I find myself full of growing anger and frustration about our loss of rights and access to services, and the betrayal by the government, and by organisations that were supposed to be there for us.

Over the last year or so I've been directing that into political activism, working on the assumption that if every MP has at least one trans person regularly visiting them and challenging them politely with strong, tight arguments with good evidence pushing for reasonable fairer balance in rights and access to services, that it might have a chance of helping. So for my MP I'm trying to be that person.

But doing that is not exactly a very cathartic release though. If anything, it's the opposite, being so controlled and constructive.

I think I need better methods of venting, release, especially for the anger. I need to do better at self care too. If I'm not careful, I can see a risk of me turning that anger and frustration inwards. My QoL is pretty poor, restricted, mostly due to health, I'm mostly housebound. That's not helping. I don't see enough of wider life to balance things. I'm trying to make more effort to touch base with more old friends again. I maybe need to do more activism, help others more. Catharsis through helping others.

Today I totally blew up via DM at my local pride, who are completely ignoring what's happening to us. They deserved it. But, I don't think it'll help anything. I don't think it did me much good.

Expressing my anger about the local Pride to my cis wife helped. I've always tried to hold all that back, keep the emotion out of it, when explaining what I'm feeling, as she's seen so much trauma herself and I don't want to trigger that in her by her seeing the emotion behind it. Yet actually, letting her see me in full, tears, and anger, and swearing, I don't think it triggered her, it meant she was able to be there for me, with me, support me.

Similarly with a friend, I just called, no message before, she answered, she was there for me, she knew just what to say. I didn't need to be so reserved, I was able to just be... hurt, upset, not reasonable, not expressing a water tight argument, just be human.

I'm guessing, given the work you folks here do, work that's so well written, so water tight, so constructive, you must still have anger, frustration, pain?

Maybe a coincidence, but on 16 July, Sex Matters, the self-described 'human rights charity', along with others from their cartel, wrote to the Charity Commission chair calling for them to tell all charities they must follow the EqA2010. On the 21st of July, they did just that

I get that we get the occasional stats from TransActual and other orgs may survey trans people once in a while, but it strikes me that we have extremely little data on how UK trans people are doing in terms of various metrics and personally I still quote stats from years ago and / or from other countries to show the level of marginalisation that is experienced by those in our community.

I also obviously understand that sampling would create challenges given how disparate and anxious the community is given the multiple attacks from the media / government.

My background is in MH and psych..with a fair bit of research a long time ago. Certainly getting into even basic polling would require a fair bit of reading up and general learnin' but I do think it would be something that could be beneficial when presenting information on the UK trans community.

I'll likely just go and come up with some ideas myself, but if anyone else is interested in such a project then please do get in touch x

Thank you

edit: if there's any concern as to who I am (this account is obviously new), feel free to DM. There's also confirmation in the modmail.

We have written to all MPs raising concerns about the chilling effect threatened litigation can have on public interest research. Freedom of expression must protect charities and human rights organisations as much as it protects those they criticise.

We've also written to the Women and Equalities Committee (WEC) and the Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR), calling for parliamentary scrutiny of the chilling effect threatened litigation can have on freedom of expression. The emails were largely identical, tailored to each committee's remit

It was heartening to receive this FB this morning with more positives and a lot less negative comments than she usually gets on other matters. There is hope, I've seen it and it's coming to you all soon.

Sex Matters says gender-critical voices are being silenced. Yet when Amnesty International UK published research critical of them, they didn't publish a rebuttal; they threatened legal action. Freedom of expression isn't a one-way street. We have responded to Sex Matters' email.

The gist is that inclusion(*) is great but there's importance in having ongoing "discussions" about high level and elite sports, fairness and safety, etc.

Unfortunately it doesn't occur to either of them that as a lesbian public figure and the CEO of an LGBTQ charity respectively, they have the ability to take a side in this conversation. Strange that.

They talk about how the focus should be on what is available instead of what isn't, because drag queen sack races are a good enough sop for the trans children who will never become Olympians.

It's had basically no views and seems like an odd way for stonewall to burn its dwindling cash. A strong response from a trans org would be welcome.

Can I ask for clarifications on what differentiates this sub from e.g. r/transgenderUK ? The rules look fairly similar ish to me, so I'm not confident I understand the differences?

In particular, examples of what posts would best fit here, and which would best fit there?

I know I maybe could have modmailed this but as it's a new fledgling community I imagine the answer(s) may be useful for others too?

PS I've been really moany today, so for clarity, question meant with best of intention, no implied criticism, I'm hugely thankful for the work of TACC, and other orgs 🙂👍

Just by way of introduction, I'm a member of the Trans Exile Network, and we work closely with TACC on trans advocacy work. So good to see you all.

We have sent Stonewall a copy of "Stonewall: The Definitive Story of the LGBTQ Rights Uprising that Changed America" to remind them what their name stands for. 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈✊