Trans* Liminality

What is trans* life like in this moment and place? Rowan Fortune, a trans fem, writes a statement of intent for a substack on trans* liminality and broadening the communicable.

For a while, I wondered about the use I might have for this blog. I write a lot for a socialist organisation, which I’m immensely proud of. But my writing there is explicitly political. That is not to say it is impersonal, but it strikes a balance. I wish to write more on my old personal blog again, where I have a catalogue of archived material to sort and which could be a good hub for otherwise scattered scribblings.

What I have realised in recent weeks is that I have a lot else to say, and I need somewhere to say it besides ephemeral posts on social media. Notably, I wish to write on the more subjective aspects of being a late transitioning, neurodivergent, chronically ill, depressed trans fem in today’s Britain.

Part of those experiences is forever explaining and caveating oneself. When I access doctors, mental health support, or negotiate (cis) dating and friendship, so often there is a wall of incomprehension. Talking to a trans friend, we routinely share frustrations about this, especially now the struggle for trans* liberation is so acute.

Since the profoundly bigoted Dr Hilary Cass's assault on trans* humanity, I have written plenty on the subject. Writing chiefly with others. And I will write considerably more. I want more to be said, and not just by me. And not even just by trans* folk. I want to see cis people grapple with this crisis, too, which means overcoming learned ignorance.

That task is also demanded by the sadist enthusiasm for denying trans* life expressed by every "side" of our media and across all the revered institutions of the British state. By vacant politicians calculating our lives as games of electoral arithmetic. By has-been celebs remaking sordid careers out of peddling hackneyed prejudices. But in undertaking this, I must also admit that I have never felt words fail me so often.

Watching new generations of trans* people be told hopes I never imagined for myself should now be denied to them is traumatic. It opens pains on which prose finds no anchoring. Hoping for others is one way to live with deep loss. Losing those hopes confronts me with no longer having a way.

This fight is existential. That is minimally what every cis person must grasp. But there is more, in ellipses too easily mistaken for silence. Here, I will try to push those ellipses back to clarify what words can express about a single experience of trans* liminality.

I will touch on politics because that is what society makes of our lives, but I will attempt to give a window into the trans* ordinary. Only this is an ordinary, an everyday, that too few cis people even perceive exists. I will never banalise trans* life but endeavour to give a richer depiction of the contours and rhythms, the rituals and habits trans* people adopt to find transcendence in survival.