Trans people have always existed. A 76-year-old trans woman who received NHS gender-affirming surgery in 1967 says that today's climate is the most alarming she has seen in six decades. Young trans people now face years of waiting, uncertainty, and hostility that her generation, for all its imperfections, did not.

A February morning that changed everything

She was 76, making toast, pouring tea, turning on the news. Then she froze. The story breaking was the murder of Brianna Ghey, a 16-year-old trans girl. That moment, she says, was when she understood that trans people were in deeper trouble than she had imagined.

I read that and felt it too. Not just as a piece of news, but as a reckoning. Brianna was a child. She was murdered for who she was, in a country whose cultural and political temperature had been rising against trans people for years. When a 76-year-old woman who has lived through six decades of it all says this is the worst she has seen, I think we owe her our full attention.

What her life actually looked like

She transitioned in the early 1960s and was among the first people to receive gender-affirming surgery on the NHS, in 1967, aged 17. She describes being placed on the women's ward afterwards: relief, joy, calm, women rallying around her, laughter, friendship. Her words are "coming home." After that she travelled Europe as a go-go dancer, billed as a beautiful young woman, and by her own account adored everywhere she went. She married. She felt free. She thrived.

At 15, she could access hormones. Her doctors celebrated her self-discovery and offered encouragement at monthly check-ups. The system met her where she was.

There is something almost unbearable in the contrast. In 1967, a 17-year-old trans girl received gender-affirming surgery on the NHS, was treated with respect, and placed on the women's ward. In 2026, trans young people cannot access puberty blockers on a private prescription in this country. The NHS waiting list for a first appointment runs to years. And a trans woman who pre-assessed for a routine knee operation was told she would not be placed on the women's ward.

The same country. Nearly sixty years apart. And the direction of travel is backwards.

The numbers are not abstract

The UK was ranked first in Europe on the Rainbow Map in 2015, which measures LGBTQ+ legal and policy protections. By 2026, it has dropped to 22nd. Police-recorded hate crime based on trans identity rose by 50% between 2020/21 and 2024/25. These are not theoretical shifts. They are the texture of daily life for trans people: the abuse, the weekly drip of hostile opinion, the sense that your existence is permanently up for public debate.

She describes trans rights becoming a political football, kicked around by MPs without much thought for the people whose lives are actually affected. I have watched that happen from close quarters, and the phrase fits. The Supreme Court ruling on the Equality Act, the bans on puberty blockers, the draft EHRC guidance, the constant framing of trans women as a threat to other women: none of this emerged naturally from evidence or from public appetite. It was constructed, steadily, by a well-funded and well-organised campaign, and the people who paid the price were trans people, above all trans young people.

What today's young people are being asked to bear

She puts it plainly: at 15, her doctors celebrated her. Today's trans young people jump through hoops and experience years of uncertainty while they wait for other people to make decisions for them.

That is exactly right. Puberty does not pause while a waiting list runs. Every month of an unwanted puberty is a permanent physical change. The harm is not a risk of future treatment; it is happening now, quietly, to real young people, and the people making the decisions that extend those waits are not the ones who pay for them.

She says it is the uncertainty that really penetrates. I believe her. Not knowing what rights you will have from one day to the next is exhausting in a way that is difficult to explain to anyone who has not lived it. It erodes the ordinary confidence that most people take for granted: the confidence to plan, to hope, to know roughly what your life will look like.

She is writing a book

She is working on a chronicle of her trans history, aiming to offer joy and hope to the next generation: proof that trans people can not only survive but thrive. I find that genuinely moving. At nearly 77, after six decades of living openly, after everything she has watched happen to her community in recent years, her instinct is to reach for the young people coming after her and hand them something useful.

That is what trans elders do. They carry the history that keeps getting erased, and they pass it forward. Trans people were there in 1967, living full lives, loved and adored and free in ways that today's political climate seems determined to undo. The story exists. She lived it. And she is determined that the next generation will know it.

I hope her book finds every young trans person who needs it.

If there is a news story you would like me to cover then just let Sammy know.

Dr Helen Webberley is a Gender Specialist, Medical Educator, and founder of GenderGP. She writes about gender diversity, trans healthcare, and the lives of trans people and their families.