Back

I have said here before that I am an optimist; for me, the glass is always more than half-full. This can sometimes mean that I am caught off-guard by things I should perhaps have seen, and that is maybe the reason for what I am about to write but nevertheless: I can’t shake the feeling that the current “culture war” being waged against trans people by conservatives is going to end up having the absolute opposite effect that they intend. And it all goes down to visibility.

Here’s the thing: whenever right-wing extremists launch on tirades against a marginalised community, they ended up normalising their existence among regular folks. The groups they tend to attack are usually sitting on the fringes: not quite accepted, but in many places tolerated or, more often than not, simply ignored. Now this is not a good place to be, obviously, but one could argue that it is better than being attacked by prominent politicians, right?

Well, yes, of course. The oppression felt in moments like these can be suffocating. But it also provides a spotlight that did not exist before. Sure, that spotlight will often be filled with aggression and negative overtones, but it also brings with it a platform in news outlets that wouldn’t have otherwise existed. Naturally, this is a platform that at the moment we need to use to fight for our very existence, but at the same time it will put us on the minds of people that would normally prefer to pretend we don’t even exist.

And this changes everything. Just look at what happened with gay marriage in the US. When Republicans picked it as a fight, the majority of people in the country were against it; that was the very reason for them to rail against it in the first place. But as they brought the spotlight onto this conversation, more and more regular folks started reading and listening in the news to stories from the gay community, stories that would have never made it to the mainstream otherwise.

And what happened then? Public opinion started to turn, slowly at first, then abruptly. This is because regular people don’t, for the most part, care about how others live their lives. They might have opinions that follow the line from their religion or political party, but at the end of the day, as they become acquainted with people from these communities (sometimes through the news or media, other times in person) they come to realise the obvious truth: they are regular folks, just like us, who just want to live their lives in peace.

None of this is to say that the present is not dangerous; it is, specially in countries like the UK or the US, where this anti-trans sentiment is very prevalent. But given that the fight has been brought to our doorstep, this is the moment to make sure that it will never be brought to us again. The normalisation of transness can only be achieved with visibility, and with the entertainment industry only now slowly catching up, the platform we will have in the media must be used to ensure the beginning of this process.

Perhaps I am being naive or overly optimistic, but I really do think that this moment in time is the beginning of a new phase in trans communities’ lives, at least in some parts of Europe and in North America. There may be tough times ahead (there are, for sure) but I can see a future in which, perhaps a decade down the road, transness will be normalised and accepted by society at large.

(And if you think for one second that the culture wars being waged by conservatives on any marginalised group have anything to do with beliefs or morals, girl do I have a Marxist story to tell you…)