“Rachel Pollack changed my life, I shall miss her always”
Rachel Pollack, widely known for her Tarot reading and comic books, passed away on April 7th 2023. We wanted to honour her life and commissioned this piece from a friend of hers in her memory. Roz Kaveney writes;
Describing trans healthcare in the UK as in crisis in 2023 is “an understatement”
To say that the NHS is in crisis right now would be something of an understatement. Writes Alexis Chilvers as part of our push to raise the voices of trans people on trans healthcare in the UK in 2023.
Equality Act and the awful anti-trans debate in UK Parliament
On Monday 12 June, MPs met in Westminster Hall for a three hour debate on the definition of sex in the Equality Act 2010. A contentious debate that had been bubbling up for several months. Moss writes;
Fanfiction was my gay-girl-to-gay-guy pipeline, and I’m proud of it
Smutty BL fanfiction was at the heart of me coming into my transness - and I’m proud of it.
Pure trans joy is dancing & butts
Look, lots of people post things they call trans joy but they’re just celebrating having queer friends (set the bar higher!) or consuming other trans people’s creative content (cool, but make your own!). Those things are fun and all, but have you ever tried really living in your body and thriving in it?
The Prince review; Abigail Thorn’s wonderful debut as playwright
Abigail Thorn is absolutely a friend of Trans Writes and has even contributed an essay on the idea of dysphoria which you can check out here. So there was no way we were not going to review her debut play; The Prince. Kestral Gaian writes:
Miss Major Speaks: Conversations with a Black Trans Revolutionary review
As a Black trans person and long-time resident of San Francisco, I was excited for the opportunity to review Miss Major Speaks. While I haven’t had the honor of meeting Miss Major Griffin-Gracy in person, I have met and worked with many trans folks whose lives she has touched, several of whom are named in the book’s Acknowledgements.
VTubing is, perhaps unsurprisingly, incredibly intersectional
At the 2023 Game Awards we didn’t just have Alan Wake the Musical, Jordan Peele coming out of an ominous door and surprise God of War DLC. We also had confirmation that VTubing is taking over the world of livestreaming, and for good reason, as Twitch’s most subscribed female streamer (with an additional 1.87M followers) Ironmouse took home the award for Content Creator of the Year.
Sam Smith and the arseholes
Billy Connolly used to talk about arsehole detectors. Flamboyant trousers. Beards dyed in primary colours. These things upset the arseholes so much, just by existing, that arseholes reveal themselves by complaining loudly. Sam Smith is a perfect arsehole detector. Their body, their music, their gender, their pronouns, their videos: arseholes can’t help but comment loudly and persistently.
Trans healthcare on the NHS; a story of repeated failure
Between striking nurses and ambulance workers, twelve or more hour waits in A&E, and patients getting passed from service to service with no actual care provided, a lot of people are seeing what a non-functioning National Health Service can look like. A sight we are all to familiar with when trying to access trans healthcare on the NHS.