Thank you for sharing your story and describing how trans identities are being treated in the UK! I am happy to hear that it seems like there is some genuinely progressive change happening there and that collective lobbying efforts seem to have been effective.

I unfortunately don’t think the US is anywhere near as progressive as the UK is in this regard, for we are a country wherein public television shows entertain the masses with murder and violence while breasts, penises, vaginas, and buttcracks are too scandalous for public consumption. Naked bodies and curse words are somehow more dangerous to our culture than guns and death, which unfortunately makes a lot of sense given our puritanical origins and history of horrific violence and gun obsession. We are still arguing about where trans people should use the restroom because some of us conflate “trans person” with “child molester.” These rumblings signify to me that it is sex that disturbs the US the most, and that trans people threaten American ideology because we show that genitals are neither necessary nor sufficient markers of gender, and that any gender can be embodied independently of these biological features.

I think another significant reason why we in the US are behind in progress is because it is unclear to the dominant group (i.e., straight cisgender white men) whether trans people are fuckable: as in, “I was attracted to you as a woman, but because you have a dick I now feel like a faggot, my heterosexuality and masculinity are injured, and now you must die!” I feel this repressed sexual urge and subsequently displaced anger from straight white guys whenever I wear makeup in public — it’s like they are attracted to my femininity and upset with me for displaying it on my male body, so they’re unsure whether they want to fuck or fight me, which is why I usually walk with my head down and feel terrified by every genuine flirt.

Thanks again for sharing! I am hopeful we will see exciting cultural changes in our lifetime; I can only imagine how it must feel for you to have seen as much progress as you have in yours.