Transgender Life

I don’t want this site to be solely about being transgender. From my experiences so far, it’s not even something I could write about every week – being in the closet is far more intense and frustrating and writeable. However, there are moments when things happen, unique to trans people. I’d like to share those moments with you, and let you into the mystery.

What if gender-critical feminism came to power?

Transgender Life
Gender_Critical_Dreamin
This scenario is inspired by a dialogue I had yesterday evening with a gender-critical feminist just before I went to bed. Here is what I dreamed: In the summer of 2021, the Conservative minister Liz Truss introduces legislation, making women-only spaces legally accessible only to those born female. This U.K. law includes a provision for funding al...
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Responses to my blog post (1)

Transgender Life
A_Response
A frustrating aspect of my website is that when people write in, there's no trace of an email address so no way of getting back to people, and also no way of publishing their messages. However, I received such a nice response to my article just now that I'd like to include it here. It's from some who for the sake of confidentiality (in case it's ne...
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On adopting a more gender-critical transgender activism

Transgender Life
Gina_Vale_Kate_Leslie_Maya_Summer
On adopting a more gender-critical transgender activism Note to the reader: This post is intended as a contribution to addressing the current tensions between transgender activism and gender-critical feminism. The way I see myself in relation to female i dentity, and the ideas I express here, are not a prescription for other trans women. The t...
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Sterile like the moon: the joys of transgender healthcare

Edinburgh Cinema Transgender Life
Gina_Frozen_08.03.2020
Sterile like the moon: the joys of transgender healthcare Summer, 2016: Gina's Big Bang, as transitioning begins A bureaucratic question in a sun-lit room. My medical practitioner asks me if I intend to have children. The question lingers, but the self-loathing is instant. No, I won't be having children. The practitioner nods. She moves on to the n...
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General Election

Transgender Life
Brexit-Collage-III
General Election 12 December 2019 I spent the last election in an office, alone but for the company of a colleague. We watched the BBC's coverage while I drank wine, downbeat and expecting austerity and the absence of hope to triumph. Then we saw the exit poll and hung around, disbelieving at the sight of the kindled embers and lukewarm glow of a f...
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While transphobes get more hateful, I become more freckly

Edinburgh Cinema Transgender Life
Gina-Freckly-03.08.19
While transphobes got more hateful, I became more freckly Written weeks after the conference Transgender: Intersectional/International There's nothing good to say, even the films I enjoyed watching this past week, Midsommar and Apollo 11 , I've lost the Sunday will to write. Perhaps Brexit Britain will become like the village cult in Midsommar , bu...
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Personal Reflections on Transgender: Intersectional/International

Transgender Life
Gina-and-Valentina-TransConEdin_28.05.19
Personal reflections on the conference Transgender: Intersectional/International (28-29 May) ​​Note: these reflections do not represent anyone else who contributed to Transgender: Intersectional/International I got involved with Transgender: Intersectional/International in order to create an LGBT/queer space that accommodated discussions on racism,...
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Gina's Moving Castle

Transgender Life
Gina_Moving_Castle
Saturday afternoon 27.04.19 Enough with marking papers. Enough about conferences. Outside is a blue sky. There's a book shop nearby, my temple, its owners are trying to remove stickers of transphobic messages pasted on their door. Yesterday I met a guy who'd been set upon by a group of 17-year-olds. He still had the scars, and the trauma. They saw ...
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A Brexit Feminism That Fears And Excludes

Transgender Life
Jussie-Smollett_Ellen-Page_Sarah-McBride
This article follows a number of events that shook me this week. First of all, the filmed harassment by two Trans-Exclusionary-Radical-Feminists (TERFs) of trans woman Sarah McBride at McBride's workplace. I watched it online and thought: that could be me, caught out, disoriented. How do you respond to the equivalent of door-stepping, as out of the...
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2019 I am ready for you

Transgender Life
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2019 I am ready for you After a Christmas of deadnaming, trans-shaming and get-in-the-car-quick confidence-maiming, I am back, like a fist through a million-dollar painting. I am adult enough now to disregard what's not important, as I survey the field before me. I am unlikely to romance or murder anyone. I'm also not planning to die. I will work h...
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Transgender milestone (#5): visiting a foreign country

Transgender Life
GinaCyanotype4
It means nothing to me This means nothing to me Oh, Vienna (' Vienna ' by Ultravox) It's up there with your first full day as an out trans female, with the admin changes, your first job and that conversation with your family. I went to Vienna this weekend to a conference, my first time out of the country with my passport grasped at my tender bosom,...
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San Francisco Forty-Something

Transgender Life
San-Francisco-Gina
San Francisco Forty-Something San Francisco, my city. I have never been there. I met a San Franciscan last Friday in a bar, like a Catholic meeting the Pope; or a younger version of me discovering you've been to Disney World in Florida. We sit there, two forty-something cis and trans. I hang on the person's every snippet of daily existence, ad...
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The Whiteness of LGBT+ Spaces

Transgender Life
Whiteness-in-LGBT-Spaces
The Whiteness of LGBT+ Spaces I'm not writing this in a fit of white self-hate. I've noticed recently that as a transgender white person, I inhabit mainly all-white spaces. I unconsciously select the company of those I'll have things in common with – company that's identifiable to me, company that feels unconsciously familiar. I may not like this p...
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Fragments

Transgender Life
Ex-Machina
  Fragments Yesterday evening I completed my move across town from one apartment to another. The experience was, and continues to be, disorientating. I guess everyone needs a place to call home. I start from scratch, again. I woke up from an anxiety nightmare early this morning. Soon after, was lying on the floor doing stre...
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Forbidden Androgynies

Transgender Life
Battle-of-the-Planets-I
Forbidden Androgynies Growing up in the 1980s, I remember particular cartoons that seemed indispensable and which even today seem impressively cool in their inventiveness. In no particular order, these include the disturbingly Satanic Thundercats with female icon Cheetara , as well as the more gently uplifting Dungeons and Dragons – with the wonder...
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Gruff Rhys: Resist Phony Encores

Transgender Life
Gruff-Rhys
Gruff Rhys: Resist Phony Encores Haunting, disarming, his voice trembling then strong and soothing. Gruff Rhys played and talked for an hour, songs sometimes in Welsh, sometimes English, occasionally mixing recorded sounds, adding voice over voice or gentle squeaking bird calls from a tiny machine. This performance was a rare and intimate plea...
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What Lies Behind the Smile

Transgender Life
Gina-Maya-Smiling-18.07.18
What Lies Behind the Smile The image I've included is my new favourite photo. I'm smiling, showing teeth more than ever, in a way so unfamiliar I barely recognize myself. In this image I radiate confidence, happiness, wholesome fuckability. Hardly Hollywood good-looks, but I feel beautiful. Let alien technologies millennia from now recrea...
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Learning to Smile

Transgender Life
Gina-learning-to-smile
  Learning to Smile When I smiled, it was always awkward. My tightly closed lips – if you look at the other pictures of me in my Transgender Diary, you'll notice that you never see my teeth. In no photo of me going back to early childhood will you ever see my teeth. But then, in the final years before I came out as trans, you'll stru...
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My World Cup diary (I)

Transgender Life
Gina-World-Cup-diary-I
​ My World Cup diary (I) Saturday Night My flatmate and I hosted a Beatles-themed party a few weeks ago. I chose the simple route for my Beatles-themed outfit, using string to tie lots of paperback novels to my waist, signifying  Paperback Writer.  It wasn't very inspired, but I did also create some mash-up posters for my flatmate (see pi...
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Anxiety Dreams and the Cisgender Label

Transgender Life
Gina-before-bed-II-08.09.18
Anxiety Dreams and the Cisgender Label I know it's bad form to talk about one's dreams but I'd like to start this post by talking about how I woke up in darkness last night, after an evolving, unpleasant, anxiety dream about being trans. In the first half of the dream, people saw me in a nice apartment, and wanted to take it for themselves because ...
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