'There’s Hope Yet' – Shon Faye Believes in a Brighter Future for Trans Rights in the UK

The backlash started before The Transgender Issue: An Argument for Justice was even published, but Shon Faye was ready for it. Debate and abuse are part and parcel of being a trans journalist or public figure in the UK. When I asked if she’d been expecting it, we both laughed. "Absolutely," she said. It was a daft question with an obvious answer. "I've also taken up smoking again," she added.

When we spoke, the Times had just published their review alongside one written by an author known to be hostile to trans people. While Faye’s calls for a radical overhaul of many aspects of society to the benefit of everyone who is oppressed, the other seems to call for more marginalisation, judging by its ecstatic reception from transphobes. "I won't read it," she said of the Times review. Why would she? Most of those commenting on the review with hateful abuse hadn't bothered reading her book, but felt free to attack her for things that weren’t even in it.

If anything, it was the perfect example of just why a book like The Transgender Issue is needed. For too long, trans people have been at the mercy of everybody else’s opinions about us. This book sets the record straight on a lot of subjects, many of which are hard to misrepresent with the facts in front of you. “Actual trans people are rarely to be seen,” Faye writes. “This book intentionally and deliberately re-appropriates the phrase ‘transgender issue’, in order to outline the reality of the issues facing trans people today, rather than as they are imagined by people who do not face them.”

In other words, trans people are not the issue, but we have plenty of issues we need to talk about urgently.

I didn't know what to expect when The Transgender Issue arrived. As a trans person, I don't really like reading trans things – I never quite sure what way they are going to go. Once picked up, however, the book was hard to set down.

The story for trans people in the UK is grim on the brightest of days. Faye challenges readers to face the reality of that life, not the monster that has been constructed in the media and on social media that bears no resemblance to us. There’s no sugar coating here to help the bitter medicine go down and no place to hide. It asks you to step back from the salacious headlines designed specifically to provoke, and look at what is really happening to trans people.

The Transgender Issue puts the “issue” that has been laid at the feet of trans people squarely back where it belongs. For many, that’s going to be uncomfortable. It is a depressing read, for sure, but it is not depressive. It's impossible to tell the story of life as a trans person in the UK today, or in any place on the planet, without talking about how 45 percent of young trans people have tried to kill themselves, the rise in hate crimes and the fear of reporting to the police or how many trans people enter sex work because they can’t find other employment. Family alienation, spousal abuse, murder – these are not happy topics. Faye covers them all with a pointed sensitivity, taking readers deep into subjects most seem inclined to avoid.

Faye is aware that statistics can only move people so far and what's needed to shift the needle are stories, and she rallies many in defence of her arguments. The parents of a trans child, homeless trans people, those in the prison system and education and healthcare – she delivers the lives of those ignored by the media (unless they’re being demonised) into your hands, where their own words are much harder to ignore.

Given the extensive list of “transgressions” against trans people listed in Faye's book, she could have been forgiven for being hostile towards those responsible or wallowing in self-pity, but there is none of that. Opponents are offered an understanding that is rarely reciprocated. You get the sense that Faye would see self-pity as a terrible waste of time.

In a book that covers trans life – health care, class, sex work, the state, T’s place in the LGBTQ+ community and transgender people’s role in feminism – two topics are conspicuous by their absence. “There’s no sport, no bathrooms,” Faye tells me. “Those topics are all we hear about.” While others debate the right of trans people to play sport or use a changing room, trans people are struggling to access healthcare, committing suicide at rates that should horrify and shame everybody, and are subjected to abuse and discrimination at all levels of society. 

“As trans people face a broken healthcare system - which in turn leaves them with a desperate lack of support, both with their gender and the mental health impacts of the all too-commonly associated problems of family rejection, bullying, homelessness and unemployment - trans people with any kind of platform access have tried to focus media reporting on these issues, to no avail,” she says.

“Instead, we are invited on television to debate whether trans people should be allowed to use public toilets. Trans people have been dehumanised, reduced to a talking point or conceptual problem: an ‘issue’ to be discussed and debated endlessly. It turns out when the media want to talk about trans issues, it means they want to talk about their issues with us, not the issues facing us.”

For those who feel being trans is a new phenomenon, Faye also provides copious examples from history to show how the gender binary is a Western construct, one that serves only to reinforce capitalism. It should be noted here that this book will seek out any right-wing ideology you have lurking undetected in your brain. It is unashamedly left-wing and Faye is clear that the chances of her recommendations being put in place depend largely on a Labour government being in power. Core to Faye’s argument is that resolving the issues faced by trans people would make things better for other minorities and oppressed people by default. 

But the book isn’t just about highlighting problems – there are plenty of solutions offered, many of them radical. "You have to have hope," Faye said about the massive ideas contained within the book to completely change housing, the way we think about prisons, education, the police, and society as a whole. "Look at how we've overhauled how we do things with the pandemic – it's possible."

Whether or not those who can make a difference will read The Transgender Issue, however, is another matter entirely. Thankfully, to that end, a social media campaign is building to crowdfund getting copies to every member of the UK parliament. There’s considerable hope yet.

The Transgender Issue: An Argument for Justice is out now.

@HLeeHurley