Time to take a stand allies.
It’s 2024 and more than ever we are both progressing and regressing as a society.
We’re one Tory election away from reintroducing workhouses for the poor (though, probably refugees at first), and criminalising LGBTQ people. Not that other political parties are better in some regards Labour is becoming Tory-lite. The Lib Dem’s have been Tory-lite since they got into bed with them and fucked the students over. Maybe longer, my understanding of the history of the Lib Dem’s is lacking somewhat.
Other parties have stood up for trans people, for LGBTQ people as a whole, put out statements, which is reassuring. I live in a Plaid Cymru controlled county, and it’s not a bad thing. When I was a kid, you Plaid were the nationalists, like tiny Welsh terrorists to hear my step-dad’s parents talk about them. Civilised people (re – english) people didn’t vote for Plaid.
Times have changed and those nationalists actually probably understand the fight for freedom and identity we face as trans people more than anyone else. The English tried (and almost succeeded) stripping away Welsh language, culture, identity and freedom. Children were literally beaten and forced to wear a massive piece of wood if they spoke Welsh (called the Welsh Not)
That identity, the deference to English (both language and culture) is what drives a lot of opinions about Wales from older people that they have passed down to their children and grandchildren (like me).
Trans Rights and Queer Identity
Now we face the same with LGBTQ rights and lives. Our elders lived through criminalisation of gay people, gay panics, HIV, we as the middle generation have lived through section 28 and we will live through this trans panic (the gay panic repackaged and resold for the 21st Century).
Now is the time to pass on the culture of acceptance and identity. That we stop telling kids that they’re too young to learn about gay people, too young to know if they’re LGBTQ themselves, that they’re confused, it’s a phase. It’s time to embrace every divergence from the norm in the face of overwhelming cis and het conformity. that’s right, conformity.
Bit by bit, like the Welsh, LGBTQ people are being made to conform with the rest of world, in their image, with their identity and ideals. We are having are own beaten out of us, doxxed and harassed like a digital Welsh Not and publicly outed simplycause I’m not the same gender I was assigned at birth and I married and had kids with someone the same sex as me.
We’re always fighting, by protesting, by shouting, writing, making art, by merely existing and more than ever we can survive this. We can regain our identity, freedom, lives and pass this on to our children and grandchildren but it’s not enough for just us to do this.
Cishet allies need to stand up. Need to fight and write and protest. We need more voice, cause regardless of what the Daily Fail tells you, trans people are a minority. LGBTQ people are a minority and it’s time the majority added their voices.
It’s 2024 people, time to leave the Welsh nots and pink triangles in the past.
