One crucial reason why LGBT people have cause to organize together politically is that, even though we see ourselves as distinct tribes, the rest of … - Shon Faye

Globally, trans sex workers make up 62 per cent of all trans murder victims, where the victim’s profession is known. [...] Trans sex workers around the world are often at most risk from the very same men to whom they sell their services. This is not some puzzling ‘hypocrisy’, but a horrifying and sometimes deadly reality. It should also be an urgent wake-up call for society and workers’ movements to better protect and support trans sex workers. Trans people’s increased likelihood of experiencing family rejection and homelessness, combined with substantial healthcare costs and a struggle to secure other forms of employment, means that many engage in the stigmatized work of selling sex. And, as we have already seen, trans sex workers experience unique and severe forms of vulnerability and violence. Therefore, the issue of sex-worker rights and safety must be at the heart of the trans liberation movement.

Reliance on policing to solve transphobic hatred among teenagers and young adults, instead of questioning the underlying causes of their hate, is what some radical activists call ‘carceral logic’: a punishment mentality, which is more concerned with being seen to punish violence with greater force than with working towards the creation of a less violent society. Preventing a culture from developing in which hatred towards trans people is normalized is much more likely to reduce harm than the ineffective use of hate-crime legislation and police powers.

To this end, much of the mainstream media exists to entertain people, for which purposes it clings to tried and tested formulas and conventions, to avoid any risk to its revenue streams. In the case of trans people, it tends to focus less on what wider society might recognize as familiar about our experience, instead foregrounding what makes us different, peculiar, titillating, aggravating or freakish. Cisgender people, media bosses conclude, do not want to watch a news item about a trans call-centre worker talking about his poor pay and how his shift patterns make medical appointments difficult – because it is depressing and, arguably, familiar to many low-paid non-trans people with medical conditions of their own. [...] Trans bodies when objectified are entertainment; trans bodies when at work in the service of profit are not.