“I’m in a bad place right now. Not mentally – just the UK.”
Trying to find words to write at the minute and I am reduced to that old joke. Not that it rings at all funny any more – it just sounds the dead knell of worn truth. We are in a bad place right now.
It is a strange time to be a researcher on trans law. It is an even stranger time to be someone who flits and flirts at the edge of gender. As a cis-passing person, they are not coming for me yet. But as a genderqueer person, my community is screaming, drowning. The attacks are coming from all sides and it is a rare day that something new and horrible does not come down the political or media pipes.
From this writer’s point of view, this past year has been a time of separation from my work and my causes. I have been suffering from Long Covid, a legacy of a bout of the virus I picked up, ironically, on a work trip. For twelve long months I have been staring at the world as if through clouded glass – my senses dulled, my mental acuity all but deadened. For someone who lives through their mind and their words, it would have been torturous had I been able to feel acutely. In reality, though, it has felt like a combination of a new grief and an old bruise.
In such a numbness, then, I have watched the things being done to the trans community here and abroad. I have watched the rising voice of the anti-gender conservative movement across legacy and new media and, somewhere in the back of my mind, I have been afraid. I have sat staring at my computer for hours trying to dredge up words to counter it, and failed. I have been failing over and over.
I am trying not to fail any more.
I am trying to feel again.
I am trying to contribute.
My work, such as it has been, has been leading me down the path of studying anti-gender actors. I don’t really want this to be my path, if I am honest – I prefer to think about making things better rather than the people who make them worse. But I would like to know more. I would like to better understand the political currents flowing through the anti-gender movement. I know they are motivated by hate and fear, but there are other factors. Money, religion, a drive for purity. Racism, too, and misogyny. But mostly hate and fear.
I don’t know how to counter the hate, or the fear. But I am a researcher, and I can try to pull things into the light somewhat. I am a legal academic and I can show where they twist and break the law. I am a human rights lawyer, and I can argue for the rights of my community.
It’s been a long year.
But I’m back.
Sandra Duffy 