Last night I couldn’t sleep.

Today I can hardly breathe.

The weight on my chest and heart and spirit feels too much to bear.

In the UK right now, as a trans person, as a parent of a trans little person:

• I do not feel safe
• I do not feel hope
• We do not feel safe
• We do not feel hope

How do we protect those we care about from a society where there is so much hate. So much prejudice. So much injustice. So much indifference.

How do we endure such overwhelming oppression?

I’m trying to help my child stay afloat in the face of injustice and persecution. I’m trying to keep us afloat. But it is rough. It has been rough for years and keeps getting rougher. I am tired of the struggle. We are all so tired.

• I can’t withstand this on my own.
• My child can’t withstand this on her own
• We can’t withstand this on our own.

We need community. We need solidarity. We need resistance.

I feel particularly isolated and alienated (and gaslit) when I see supposed allies participating in our oppression. Seeing a prominent LGBT org ‘welcome’ the Cass Review felt like a stab in the heart. Over the past few years I continue to feel let down by UK civil society. The child rights or LGBT or trans rights organisations who look the other way, who do not stand with trans kids, who minimise current harms

As we face and endure state violence, it hurts to see parts of civil society complicit in such violence.

We need ‘allies’ to call out state violence and systemic oppression. Instead too many are afraid to challenge the Cass Review – too afraid to challenge the opinion of a medical doctor, even when the approach and findings are so clearly wrapped in prejudice. Instead staying quiet or siding with our oppressors.

It is not good enough.

We are all sinking.

So many trans folks I know are struggling right now. I’m struggling. So many trans kids I know are struggling.

We need to acknowledge state violence. That is a very low expectation of our supposed allies.

We need to acknowledge systemic oppression and persecution.

We need to be talking about strategies of resistance.

Trans communities, and especially trans children, need to resist state violence in the UK right now. Trans kids need to resist and endure the violence endorsed and recommended in the Cass Review, the violence in government policy, in media discourse, in school policy, in hostile and abusive homes.

Now is not the time for complicity in such oppression.

Now is the time for reaching out to trans people who are scared and without hope. I have a lot of relative privilege, and I am scared and low on hope today.

Now is the time for those of us with any privilege or power to stand up and be counted. Now is the time to pull together, acknowledging state violence and oppression, and focusing on strategies of resistance.

It is not easy to resist state violence. Especially for a child.

It is not easy to support a child to resist state violence, especially when isolated and threatened.

We all need hope. We all need community. We need genuine solidarity.

None of that can come from denial or minimisation of current harms.

We need to acknowledge that the UK is a seriously hostile location for trans people and especially trans children. We need to talk about resistance and survival.

We need to support each other. We especially need to support the trans children we know and love, to withstand the many current injustices, and those we see on the horizon looming down on us.

Solidarity. Justice. Resistance.

Sending love to all who are struggling. Sending love to all who will help. We need each other.