Trans healthcare must be revolutionized urgently: it was created not to help us but to conceal that which is unpalatable to cisgender people and to e… - Shon Faye

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Trans healthcare must be revolutionized urgently: it was created not to help us but to conceal that which is unpalatable to cisgender people and to erase the implications of our existence for the rest of society. That is why we were not permitted families in so many cultures and why authoritarian governments always attack our access to care. Yet in this we are not unique. Cisgender women, disabled people, fat people, black people, HIV-positive people and trans people are all groups that experience high degrees of medical discrimination and abuse, historically and currently. Our struggle is, then, a shared one – and it should not be left to us alone. In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic especially, the 2020s and beyond will see us all struggle in a new era of recession and growing about who deserves healthcare investment. This is a daunting, frightening time, but solidarity between all of us who are pushed to the margins may yield new health activist movements and resistance.

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About Shon Faye

(born 27 March 1988) is an English writer, editor, journalist, and presenter, known for her commentary on LGBTQ+, women's, and mental health issues. She hosts the podcast Call Me Mother and is the author of the 2021 book .

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Additional quotes by Shon Faye

Gender dysphoria is a rare experience in society as a whole, affecting about 0.4 per cent of the population, which can make it hard to explain to the vast majority of people, who have not experienced it. To get around this, we often rely on metaphors. The clumsy phrase ‘born in the wrong body’ has become the favoured soundbite in popular media. Clumsy because – and this must be stressed – many trans people do not think this describes dysphoria at all well. To my mind, the trans writer expresses it more accurately: ‘Dysphoria,’ she says, ‘can feel like heartbreak.’ Heartbreak, its incapacitating grief and the sense of absence and loss which activate the same parts of the brain as physical pain, can be so all-consuming it interferes with your everyday life. So, too, dysphoria. For me, at least, this is a much richer way of describing how many trans people experience distress with their bodies – indeed, how I felt until I medically transitioned.

The experience of being trans is shaped by social class. While there are trans people, the vast majority are working class – just as the vast majority of the total population is working class. Trans workers are often employed in lower paid and more precarious jobs, with a high risk of discrimination and bullying in the workplace. As a result, trans political struggle is part of a wider class struggle. Despite this, trans politics is commonly misrepresented as coddled, bourgeois and anti-working class.

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Transfeminism is a term used to describe a collection of perspectives on feminism that centre the experiences of trans people. This perspective recognizes trans people as a group who, like cis women, suffer greatly at the hands of patriarchy, which punishes us for transgressing the roles laid out for us from birth. It is not a rival movement to other forms of feminism, nor is it a subdivision. It is a specific approach to feminist thought and organizing that begins with trans experience, rather than seeking to slot trans people into a cis feminist theory that is often articulated without us in mind.

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