Editor's Letter: Together we have power, but we have to buckle in for a fight

Words by Megan Wallace

When I was a child, you couldn’t keep me out of trees. Scaling trunks, then using my twig-like arms to grab branches, I’d pop my head above the leafy parapet and look up into the sky – grey (this was Dundee, mind) but limitless. 

I think about this sense of freedom, how easy it was to grasp with my bark-stained, grabby hands. As an adult, I can sometimes feel the expansiveness of that sky. It could be in an airy shirt and tie that skirts over my chest and makes me feel like my body is mine rather than someone else’s projection. It could be in a brash, bright mini dress that reminds me of the power of hyperfemininity. The fluidity to perform gender in different ways depending on the day, to embrace alternate versions of selfhood, is a pleasure – but in today’s political climate it’s not just a privilege, but an increasingly contested one. 

The US political administration has effectively declared war on trans people and gender fluidity. With an executive order declaring there to only be “two genders” and denying the existence of non-binary people as well as Indigenous gender identities, President Trump made his stance clear: the anti-trans culture war is only just getting started. The attacks on trans and non-binary dignity, quality of life and medical rights have been sustained and terrifying.

In the UK, where I write this, the slow, bitter siege on trans rights – where prominent gender critical talking heads churn out rage bait and anti-trans shadow groups forge links with the far-right under the guide of ‘protecting women’ – drags on. In the aftermath of the contested Cass Review, reports have emerged of both trans youth and trans adults being blocked from fundamental, life-saving gender-affirming care. 

There is incredible power in trans and non-binary communities, but to have your rights debated and used as a political punching bag is abhorrent. All of us in the community, all of those outside of it who believe in our rights to bodily autonomy, need to come together. Transphobia isn’t just about policing those who are trans, or those who medically transition, or those who put ‘they/them’ pronouns in their Instagram bio. It’s so much more than that. The attacks on trans and non-binary life we’re currently seeing are a coordinated effort to contract the possibilities of gender, to force both women and men into the straitjacket of regressive gender roles, and to limit our freedoms – socially, intellectually and politically. 

To quote Jenny Holzer's truism, which became repopularised under the first Trump administration: "abuse of power comes as no surprise." Clearly, it's time for us to take the power back. In this issue, you'll find explorations of power: both the institutional, anti-trans abuse of those who hoard power at the governmental level, and the small acts of defiance that build up into reclamations of community power.

Opening up the issue is a reflection on Black transmasculine healing and agency, revealed via a conversation between the writer Jess Cole and the photographer Lindsay Perryman. Elsewhere, Jamie Windust explores the freedom that can be found through finding a name which aligns with your confirmed gender. In a must-read feature, Emily Cameron explores the trans employment gap and the work being done by activist Lucia Blayke in order to combat this issue. Finally, Nico Lang explores the impact of Trump's anti-trans attacks on the day-to-day of trans people across the US who feel obliged to go stealth in order to avoid discrimination and harassment. 

We hope that these articles can serve as a call to arms and a reminder: together we have power, but we have to buckle in for a fight.