Shon Faye: "Trans visibility has become toxic"

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She is only 33 years old, but Shon Faye has long since become the most widely read and influential trans writer of recent decades.

Her essay

(Blackie Books) has sold more than

and now reaches Spanish bookstores translated by the trans activist Rosa María García.

In it, Faye makes a strong case for public education and public health to improve the lives of trans people in England.

The first sentence of the book is: "The liberation of trans people would improve the lives of everyone in our society." How? In recent years, especially in England, there has been a lot of controversy about the trans issue. The majority of the population sees it as a challenge to accommodate trans people to normal life. I wanted to turn that argument around: trans people are the ones who suffer the most marginalization and discrimination and

.

For example: access to trans healthcare is closely related to autonomy over one's own body, which is something that has a lot to do with sexual and reproductive health policies.

The right to walk down the street without being harassed would also benefit gays and any non-binary person.

And

. The tools to make trans lives freer would have an effect on the lives of many others and make a freer and fairer society, with less discrimination. Why are people so afraid of what is different? Discrimination is based on fear. We now know that children are not born with prejudices, but rather acquire them, probably at an earlier age than we would like to admit. From a young age we learn to fear what we do not know. And in the case of the trans population, it is such a small minority that

.

The response to fear is always the threat, because you think that in this way you are protecting your family and your community.

It's something that has happened since the days when foreign travelers came to Rome, that's how anti-Semitism worked, and in the '80s and '90s the gay community experienced the same thing during the AIDS crisis.

The cycle of prejudice is repeated over and over again. In the book she talks about trans visibility and how it has gone from non-existent to being totally disproportionate.

The percentage of the trans population is 0.6%, and yet the subject is talked about in the British media almost every day.

Do you wish there was less talk about it? The English press is obsessed with trans.

Every day they talk about trans more than I do, and I dedicate myself to writing about it!

We are a very small minority and although we have some needs to fight for, our effect is very limited.

All we want is to lead a normal life.

Visibility is necessary and can be positive.

I am 33 years old and I grew up without references, there were no trans people on TV, the movies or the books I read, and that is difficult.

The problem is that visibility is almost always in the hands of people who are not trans and that can make it toxic, that it exploits us, that it is a distraction from the really important issues such as

Instead there is talk of the bathrooms and changing rooms that trans people should use, and there is not much evidence that there are real problems there. A part of the current narrative treats the trans community as trolls or the new thugs of Twitter, what do you think about it? Social networks are like the wild west, a lawless territory where people do not behave the same as in real life.

In my opinion, characterizing trans people as thugs is a very clever mechanism to frame people who in real life have no power.

In the UK there are no trans politicians or trans judges and no major publisher or journalist is trans.

For a long time, the media has portrayed trans people as they wanted, ridiculed them and told lies about them.

But that has changed in the last 15 years.

Now when you write an article or a tweet, someone can reply and say that what you have said does not seem right to them.

And for those who have been used to giving their opinion without reply for 30 years, that's hard, it terrifies them. It's much easier to simplify and say that trans people are bullies.

What do you think about identity politics and being blamed for the failure of the left? It's no surprise, the left has been doing that all my life. In the 1970s, radical feminists moved away from the left because their leaders told them: first the revolution and then we'll deal with equality. In the 1980s the same thing happened with the struggle for homosexual rights, it was seen as something bourgeois and the priority, they said, was the class struggle. Now the same thing happens with minorities, we are a distraction. The left must make alliances with other groups:

In the end, what the majority of the population wants when they go to vote is for their children to have a better future: better schools and hospitals.

And that is what I advocate in the book, to strengthen the public.

Is that a distraction? What are the most common mistakes people make when talking about trans people?

In the book he mentions the expression "being born in the wrong body." A few decades ago, that metaphor was popularized so that people could understand how trans people feel.

But it makes it sound simpler than it is, it doesn't express the complexity of the matter.

The most frequent mistake of cisgender people is to think that all trans people go through the same thing, when the experience of gender dysphoria depends on each individual.

When you say you were "born in the wrong body"

you run the risk of people taking it literally, and soon a feminist will come along and tell you: it's impossible, it's your body, so it can't be "wrong", there's nothing wrong with it.

And in a way that's true, but what that trans person is trying to tell you is that she's not comfortable with the way society treats that body.

There are cases of people who regret having transitioned, how to treat them? We know that people who regret a transition are very few, the percentage is lower than women who regret having aborted, but it is curious how it is exploited very similar shape.

and that is something that the Conservatives squeezed very well in Ireland in 2018, when the referendum was voted.

Obviously, whoever repents has every right to feel that way and it's a shame.

But that implies taking advantage of certain feelings.

And you cannot limit the right to decide and restrict the autonomy of all women over their bodies for one case.

That said, most people who decide to stop transitioning do so for reasons of discrimination: because they've lost their job, because their family and friends have stopped talking to them and they're left alone...

and that they do not continue to face dysphoria every day.

Being a trans person is not easy.

I also think we should be more understanding towards people who regret it.

Many times the message is: oh, you have ruined your life and your body forever.

We should all be a little more flexible.

Everything would be healthier.

In the book, he addresses one of the most controversial issues, that of gender dysphoria in childhood. Are many lies told? In England, sex change surgery is not performed on anyone under the age of 18.

The only thing you can do until you come of age is take puberty blockers, and if you decide to stop taking them, your body will go back to the way it was before.

The number is very low

.

In reality, the number of children and adolescents who are suffering from experiencing gender dysphoria must be much higher.

Medicating a minor is a very important decision, that's why I think it's difficult to make rules that work for everyone, you have to analyze case by case.

Every child and teen is different.

Not everyone wants the same thing and not everyone will want to take sunscreens, the important thing is that everyone should receive psychological support and protection from bullies at school or college.

Instead, the media loves to spread panic and tell lies about children undergoing surgeries. You've also been pinkwashed, have you ever felt used? All the time.

Recently an airline company offered me to star in a television commercial, they wanted me to be "the face of modern England".

But I investigated and discovered that this airline is the same one that deports LGBTI refugees for the government, the one that takes gay and trans immigrants, puts them on a plane and returns them to their countries of origin.

I told them no, because they clearly wanted to use me.

In England, Labor are specialists in changing their opinion: they go progressive when they see that trans is popular, but they disappear as soon as they need the votes of the Tories.

The healthiest thing is to always suspect that someone approaches you to ask you for something.

Years ago some TERF started a petition on Change.org to prevent their participation in a feminist festival.

Why is feminism so transphobic in England? In the 1970s, many feminists split from the left, became radicalized and focused on the idea that men are the great oppressors of women.

From there emerged the separatist lesbians, who wanted to live without men, and even women who abandoned their relationships because it meant sleeping with the enemy.

In those circles in the 70s and 80s the theory began to spread that

and that they were nothing more than men with their privileges who also turned out to be impostors.

Some of those ideas have reached today.

This is combined with the fact that in England there are parts of society that are very conservative and think that trans people are basically perverts, it is a feeling similar to homophobia in the 80s.

.

And realistically, that's one area where we haven't improved.

Feminism has done a lot to advance the work, but not so much in the field of domestic violence.

With austerity and cuts, many protection and support programs for women have disappeared.

I think there are a lot of women who are angry that things haven't gotten better for them in the last decade, there's still a lot of misogyny in society.

In the book you quote famous transphobes like Piers Morgan, Ricky Gervais or JK Rowling, who has received very serious threats, what is your opinion about her? When you have a platform as huge as JK Rowling it is normal to receive a gigantic reaction to your opinions .

There is no excuse for threats of violence and abusive comments, they are unacceptable. I carefully read the essay you published in June 2020 on your website about trans people. In it he explained that he had suffered

and that this had led her to a life with episodes of anxiety, and I think that relates to what we were talking about before: cis women and trans women are the main victims of violence by men.

And that is something that JK Rowling and trans women have in common: the risk comes from the same place. What do you disagree with her? How she uses that example to explain the anxiety that trans women can go to the same social services.

The problem is that she believes that by doing this she is defending cis women and children, but what she is doing is defending discrimination.

And it's a shame.

I don't understand why she doesn't take advantage of a speaker like hers to, for example, ask for more funds for battered women.

I think there is a serious misunderstanding there.

Being trans is not that you like masculine things or feel like a tomboy, a little girl, it's something deeper.

JK Rowling is an intelligent but uninformed woman with a very unpleasant personal experience and what that has ended up producing is the totally wrong reaction.

I don't think she intends to hurt the trans community, but she's gotten to a point where she doesn't listen.

A trans woman is not the same as an abusive husband, and a young trans man is not the same as a girl who feels tomboyish.

It's a shame she got to this point because

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