Beauty

Trans people just want to be asked, not debated

Dr Helen Webberley on Heretics: the gender debate, with Andrew Gold, Heretics

What people think

Trans people want to be the subject of a grand philosophical argument about biology and categories. That the question of who someone is belongs to everyone in the room except the person themselves.

What is actually true

What I hear, over and over, is something so much simpler than the debate suggests. Not a demand, not a manifesto: just a request. Ask me. That's it. The people I've spoken with across years of this work aren't asking the world to resolve every philosophical question about sex and gender before they can be treated with basic courtesy. They're asking to be included in the conversation about themselves. There is something quietly devastating about watching someone sit in a room while others argue over what category they belong in, as though their own answer doesn't count as evidence. It does. It always has.

Whatever brought you here, I'm glad you came. Tell me what is on your mind and we can talk it through.

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