The Old Boy's / New Ladys' Network (Trans Complaint Ecology #1)

Helen Belcher, Sophie Cook, Katie Neeves, Claire Prosho - birds of a feather, flock together. In conference foyers, complaints departments and on the radio.

I'm, mad, me. And I don't mean like Laurie Penny, I'm-"a wild and untameable trauma-twitchy anarcha-feminist" pansexual gender-queer - but married - to a man?!  

No, my affliction is far more niche. 

I'm mad about a certain trans rights activist who, unusually, is a married father, involved in the media, the Lib Dems and tech. 

Oh, you guessed it - it's Helen Belcher (pronounced "Bell-chair" by posh people on the radio). 

And I know it's stupid, but there's a phenomenon broader than even him at play here: the swift rise to prominence, the plaudits, connections, uncritical press and near identical politics and stories. So much for unique identities!  

It's almost as if, rather than a painful journey which needs numerous legal protections and a fastidiously obliging society, it really functions as a transition-career-rejuvenation pipeline.  

I'll be hammering my girlish Belcher fanzine into shape for the foreseeable, as he's a prolific prodder of pies, so much I end up in lots of different places with just too many thoughts in my little head. And some of those places, as I explained in Light The Beacons, are angry, bitter and full of burning self pity. 

But for now let's begin with the coterie of fellow family men-turned-late-middle age transwomen, starting with Sophie Cook (links to an earlier blog). 

Cook, a married father who's wife stayed, was catapulted into political relevance, replete with media coverage, Ted Talks and book deals because, well, transition. 

After a life of photographing Bournemouth football club and Pete Doherty, Steve (as he was then) felt intensely sad, alone in a Midlands' Ibis hotel. There was no possible alternative account for it - Steve was a lady. 

So, swathed in dresses and hair weaves, he twirled and spun and ultimately shed his cocoon, re-emerging metamorphosed. An ex-man. Sophie. 

Praise the Lord, he was supported by his club and fans, and even ran for Parliament soon after:

When Cook stood for MP, despite bracing himself “for a renewed onslaught of hatred” the response was surprising:

“Something unexpected happened. Instead of the abuse, I was greeted with love and support" 

 

And while he was warned he'd never be accepted:

"most attention [was] due to my profile from working in football and TV"

Isn't this evidence that everything is in fact not so bad? Are they allowed to say that? It seems like no, that's the last thing they would say. 

On his Ted Talk, Cook fires off a few one-liners with a blokey irreverence that's not unlike Ricky Gervais. Look at the title of his talk - 'Grab Life By The Balls". Ha. Such a good sentence; I enjoy humour jokes, one's which we can all relate to.

He seems pretty robust, but one look at Cook's twitter or the above blog will show you where Cook's sensitivities and priorities lie. That is, when it comes to the darker aspects being a woman can entail - domestic and sexual abuse - he's pretty damn competitive. 

So that resilient, go-lucky veneer isn't so tough. Sadly, it appears Cook is very much embattled. Abuse, that he must turn into entirely illegible collages. Men saying things behind him in the street that could be mean and could be directed at him. 

The fact you can't even have sex with someone while keeping you're biological sex private, without being accused of deception. TV segments on rape crisis centres which open with interviews with "cis women" when in fact transwomen get raped - even by other women. Yeah.

It's a strange dichotomy, is it not, that these often large, confident, opportunity-grasping males who speak assertively and without pause or inhibition, detailing depression and disenfranchisement, find a rizla-thin skin and whole new, booming career when they trans? 

There's also Katie Neeves - another photographer, delivering important, edifying insights about wearing his sister's knickers with an endearing, grinch-like grin. 

In the image above we can witness Neeves' absolute last day 'pretending to be a man'. Apparently he would have dropped the pretense earlier, but clipping the hedge behind him would be impossible as a 'woman', what with the necessary girly accoutrements - I shit you not. Do not inform Charley Dimmock. 

IMPORTANT - This was taken in April - please do not cut hedges at this time of the year, it tends to eviscerate nesting birds as strimmers become an impromptu bird blender - this is not a Jack Monroe hack, and I do not have a PayPal.

Like Cook, Neeves was also a married father and his wife also stayed. In fact, cursory Facebook searches make it clear he was in fact married, or renewed vows, less than a year before he exited manhood. 

In his blog, and everywhere else, he explains - to what I can only guess is a horrified audience - just how senseless and archaic our binary notions of sex and gender are:

"I was assigned male at birth, based purely on my sex characteristics (as is still the established practice)" 

Looking closely, you can still see elements of Neeves' earlier caterpillar state. The notion that these men 'discover' they are trans, or even discover that they are women, rather than accepting transition is the best option to manage dysphoria, troubles me

Neeves clearly sussed his opportunity to benefit from the media buzz early on, having announced his final life stage on LinkedIn, and launching his new, trans-based venture very soon after, having documented everything in advance. Despite allegedly fearing for his career. 

Now, he has a new career, giving trans awareness talks, advice and media interviews. 

Neeves is also not afraid of ball-based puns, although I imagine that both he and Sophie will complain about the use of male pronouns. In my defence, I counter, as a red-blooded heterosexual female, I am the victim, because bollocks are the aesthetic equivalent of dead body smell and they keep wafting that shit at me. 

Swinging his racket on Talk Radio Neeves begins the familiar ordeal, this time on Ian Collins, claiming JK Rowling is taking advantage of the poor public education of sex and gender. This is a bold move for a man who starts his story with the above quote, insisting his sex was 'assigned' based on... his sex.

He launches into a monologue of quickfire TRA cliche bingo as if in a memory test. He talks about nature being 'messy', attempting a coquetteish giggle and flutter while citing 'the things between' our legs and ears, and claims we "all begin as female", as something - mumble - something - maternal hormone levels and "depending on how male we get". It's a spectrum! 

In my mind, I see a broken Robert Winston on a hallucinogen-fuelled derangement spiral, swirling scotch around a tumbler and uttering obscenities. 

And it doesn't stop - "and then we have chromosomes..." and "many people can have extra chromosomes" these people "are called intersex" "they amount to just under 2% of the population.." 

He says he knows 'intersex' isn't trans, but he 'needs' to explain all this first. 

What he achieves is complicating the shit out of everything, and thoroughly washing JK Rowling from our minds so he can eventually come to a stop - with us gasping with relief - assuming he probably made some point that reflects badly on her.

He previously accused Rowling of inciting suicide in a shameless, self-promoting open letter: "Sadly, your diatribe directly caused some trans children to self-harm and others to attempt suicide" he ventured, without evidence, below a portrait of him appearing as a happy Gail Platt at a local church coffee morning.

I may be preaching to the choir here, but I am fucking done with agenda-driven activists hijacking the unspeakable tragedy of suicide, seemingly just to affirm the validity and importance of their padded bras.

Neeves' whole shtick rests upon listing enough weary tropes, with enough speed and fluctuating tone, to suggest something original may have been said. It's a dull, inauthentic gish gallop interspersed with uncomfortable testimonials of what people on reddit call gender euphoria. 

Page 3, at 52?! Much laughs on Neeves' blog

He promotes himself as light-hearted and jocular on his site, but it all manifests as a bit of a grotty jolly rather than an educational mission. 

There is also the same habit of brethren new-age car dealer and shadow crawler, one Jeremy Kyle, delivering entirely regular sentences as if they are jokes. For example, he remarks 'jestingly' to Ian Collins that as many people are 'intersex' as are redheads, but not necessarily the same people. A resigned Collins obliges a fleeting, meaningless chuckle, because he's a professional and besides, looking at his defeated visage, nothing matters anymore, anyway . What even is laughter - what does it mean? 

And so it was around this point I realised I couldn't bear to listen to anymore, as the urge to pause on a still, find my steel toe caps, and run out to the street for a bit of curb stomping catharsis was rapidly passing the threshold of resistable. 

On his website, Cool2BTrans, (ingeniously named to appeal to the youth, with its street vernacular, substituting numbers as words) Neeves sneaks in some infamously dubious stats on trans people and suicide, just one paragraph down from "being trans isn’t anything to feel sorry for".

He says he wants to help lower suicide rates, although I imagine profits well from his talks (reviewed with caustic excellence by Sarah Summers). Could Neeves attend a talk, perhaps by The Samaritans, explaining the (frankly, crystal) consequences of this kind of rhetoric? My guess is no. 

If there's one cardinal rule when speaking publicly about suicide, it's that attaching it to specific circumstances, simplifying the reasons for it and speaking of it as an understandable response to particular emotions is intensely dangerous and reckless. Transgender Trend do brilliant, much needed work here. 

Sadly, Neeves is far from alone in this. 

Claire Prosho is one funny, but decidedly buzz-kill, fish. An electric eel, perhaps. 

The "senior investigative reporter" at Steph's Place, now rebranded as Translucent (and pulling on the heartstrings of even a cretin like me, since they themselves angered the trans-stasi - a story for another day) Prosho has a background I know nothing of. 

Prosho's talk "The Radical Idea Transgender People Are People" - somehow suggesting we didn't already fucking know this - stacks up the tragedy tropes like nobody's business, and indulges us with a strikingly original take on the origins of transphobia:

Ahh, yes. All from the far-right internet cliques. Like, for example, Mumsnet. 

This would work if Prosho was describing abuse from incels, neo-fash or whatever. But still, it's awful, and I cannot imagine how it is to face such vituperation. 

Gotta give it to Prosho, however - he's quite the raconteur, treating us to exceptional, visceral fly-on-the-wall insight into his intense misery. 

A prime specimen in Prosho's fight for trans equality is the intractability of society to accept him:

"I use the gender neutral title Mx. And a while ago I needed some new glasses. So off I went to the opticians and while registering my details I found there was something like 50 titles to choose from, but not one gender neutral option. I felt pressured into using Mr."

"And, despite telling them I wanted women's glasses, I was ignored and taken to the men's section instead. And when I insisted they listen to me, they acted shocked, and a little bit confused"

I wish I could adequately convey the gravity of delivery here, I guess you need to watch it or trust me, it is heavy. You get the feeling life is an unabated drag. 

 

The battle is immense:

This minor farce, to Prosho, is erasure, but quite why someone who insists he a woman feels the need for the additional stipulation of gender neutral prefixes, or, when 'pressured', falls back onto 'Mr', is beyond me. Like Neeves, Prosho has become an expert, just by accepting his 'true self'. 

I know a lot of transsexuals, they did what they needed to manage dysphoria and want to be over the bureaucratic fuckery, not seeking out new battle grounds. 

Prosho's Ted talk is gripping. It's the discordance: his scowl from the stage, proclaiming fragility and persecution, with the comportment of a jobsworth ticket inspector experiencing the absolute worst day of his entire fucking life. 

He exudes a deep disapproval of existence itself; cradling the microphone with manicured hands, a curiously trim waste and great, hunched shoulders, gruffly reeling off a series of perceived slights and 'facts' he clearly finds outrageous or unconscionably cruel. 

 

🎼 Hello darkness, my old friend 🎶

He also commits the suicide gambit, crudely and brazenly;

It's

 

It's a startling juxtaposition: the husky voice, the humourless visage; the talk of people not accepting others for "who they truly are" inducing the perplexed and defeatist expression of an elderly bulldog, confronted with the brutal reality dinner tonight is very delicious indeed, but only if you can scale a climbing wall to get it. 

Having lost people to suicide, and watched people I love try to regain themselves after the suicide of a loved one, this makes me very angry. 

To me, the ultimate opt-out has been a frequently ruminating thought throughout my life, and I don't know if that's so rare. 

But I do know that those who actually do it tend to enter a tunnel vision that blinds almost everything else from view. That tunnel vision is a temporary madness that can be thwarted by something as simple as automatic sparks on a gas cooker, or having to visit several shops to get enough over-the-counter drugs. 

It's not a simple thing, but it is often rash. 

If I thought using preferred pronouns had a detectable impact on suicidality, I would use them, although I'd still push for acceptance that 'misgendering' ie correctly sexing, is not necessarily an antagonistic act.

I don't believe it, though, and am loathe to crumple at what we dinosaurs call emotional blackmail. So, instead I'm left with absolute contempt for the audacity and recklessness of what I believe is a cynical move to flatten any criticism or pushback as they aggressively grab for anti feminist, anti woman policy and legislature. 

These men-to-transwomen are assertive and successful, but somewhere along the road acquired the emotional delicacy of freeze-dried butterfly wings. 

Simultaneously, however, their lives seem to flourish - new meaning, purpose; new community and, still, devoted wives. Prosho is still married. In fact, he claims it was his wife who prompted his transition, confronting him with his hotel dress-up photos he (claims) he never looked at, asking him to consider how happy he looked. I wonder how proud and vindicated little wifey felt, gazing at him up on the stage floor? 

Now, these career transwomen become experts. Advisors, ambassadors, champions, advocates. They do talks, become Stonewall experts, 'educators', media pundits and panelists - often with the shit-fit veto rights of A-list celebs. 

They undoubtedly had a period of feeling the fear, and did it anyway, but this narrative facilitating a rejuvenated - or entirely new - career, it goes unmentioned. 

It's a fascinating phenomena that sits on the boundaries of histrionic egocentrism, turmoil-driven evangelism, entitlement and resentment, denial and calculated, prospector-like machinations. 

It's a desire for recognition, a doomed quest for an acceptance which feels too far from reach, because in truth, the struggle for it is within. 

It's born-again ideological fervour with authoritarian impulses and a hair-trigger reflex that extinguishes any need for justification, except for when that justification is not sought. 

People who have been victims do not, in my experience, use that vulnerability as a shield and battering ram. It's an incongruous sight, where such fragile sensibilities are pitched alongside bellicose complaint, finger jabbing condemnation and a certainty anyone listening will see it as they do. 

I must remind myself to try to view this with my cynicism suspended, because, as I'm often reminded, I am not trans and apparently cannot begin to imagine the suffering of being so. I continue to try and raise my feminine instinct to nurture and relate, but somehow I appear to have a blind spot for the sincerity and authenticity.