Looking to start political activism

I don’t often post on Reddit because I find it to be a toxic environment: I have taken any number of virtual kickings from other members – sometimes these have left me feeling very depressed and alone: many of these kickings are the result of a post seeking help.

I want to start making a few little political ripples on behalf of our community in the UK; eunuchs are persecuted and penalised by the medical establishment in the UK. I have zero experience in political activism, but I want to make some positive difference. I hope that I will get good advice from friends and allies because I can be quite naïve at times – especially when identifying other people’s motivations.

To make a start, I have made a few posts on various social media. This is the post I made on Reddit r/transgenderuk:

Professional contacts in the NHS

Hello everybody! First time posting here!

I want to raise awareness within the NHS of the plight of the eunuch community. In the latest WPATH Standards of Care for Transgender People (v8), there is a section on the needs of eunuchs, however the NHS is only on version 7 and is unlikely to sit version 8.

I would like to start building contacts within the NHS to build an understanding of people who do not identify as either male nor female and who need a body configuration to match these mid-gender, or agender identities.

I am wondering whether anybody has any ideas for somebody to make first contact with.

In due course, I will also be writing to my MP about this and the waiting times for transgender care. The way I was feeling about my body I do not think I would have lived long enough to make even a first appointment, if you take my meaning. It is as though they want us to end our own lives rather than help us.

Thank you for your attention,

Jay

The kicking begins …

The first person to respond wrote this; I have repeated their words exactly (you’ll see why I’m able to do that later).

This kind of conflation is half the reason we’re in such a mess at the minute. This has nothing to do with being trans or dysphoria. The people who pushed for the eunuch classification as part of trans had seriously messed up backgrounds. I don’t care what someone’s fetish is or what competent adults choose to do to their body but don’t compare it to being trans

I thought “oh no, here comes another kicking – these people are our natural allies and they just hate us”.

I will recognise that there are problems with the Eunuch Archive’s involvement in the creation of the WPATH Standards of care for Transgender Individuals v8 – their fiction archive completely undermines their position, it damages the credibility of the WPATH document, and it’s devastating to the position of eunuchs in society – as the reply above illustrates.

A smart response?

I had a think and posted this answer:

Thank you for your reply. Would you mind if I posted it on my blog as an example of why it is that eunuchs are such a persecuted minority? Whenever I wander into online trans-space, I frequently get a kicking from those who persist in only having the imagination to fall in line with gender binary.

I don’t really know what I expected from this response. I suppose I was expecting to get banned for asking a question again.

A kind response

Another user posted a very kind reply, which I replied with a thank you. They then replied with something like the following; I’ve paraphrased this response to protect the poster:

No problem, it appears that people in your situation encounter many of the same difficulties as those commonly identified as transgender. Therefore, sharing knowledge and support makes perfect sense. If you substituted ‘man/woman’ in that final sentence, it would echo one of the transphobes’ favourite remarks.

> I don’t care what someone’s fetish is or what competent adults choose to do to their body but don’t compare it to being a woman

My feelings about this Reddit changed a little.

Admin intervention

When I went to look at the entire comment thread, I found that the comment by the unkind person was deleted! I thought “coward! Is that because I said that I was going to publish their comments?”. When I looked at the complete set of replies, it wasn’t that person at all! It was a moderator, and they wrote:

Removed:

> r/transgenderUK is not an appropriate place for arguing about who does and does not count as trans. If you’d like to argue about transmedicalist positions, please do so elsewhere.

Given the character of your other comments in this thread, consider this your only warning. Future comments like these will get you permabanned.

I was blown away! r/transgenderuk is a safe space and is vigorously protected by is admins. They also explain why somebody is in trouble, so I feel this is a well run Reddit.

Other feedback

I’ve had a few useful comments on the thread so far; I may still write to my MP. I can say least make her aware and start building a relationship now, even if she’s in no position to do anything to help as yet.