- Joined
- Feb 28, 2021
I'm not sure what the link is there. Transgender Action Bloc seems to have links to We Exist and the London Anti-Fascist Assembly, but they themselves are quiet about their founders. The only concrete link I've found is with Eden Maskill-Watts (followed by Kevin Gibes lol) but it looks like they just did the graphic design pro-bono for the GP pamphlet."Girlfriend"....it's just jarring. Your girlfriend has a penis.
Wow, you're a treasure trove! Yes that does make sense, if TAB is a newer TR organization; small fish in a big pond. I wonder why Olly is associating with them, then? He has friends involved, or it was the only activist group that would have him?
I would LOVE to hear more about this dinner you speak of! And just, like how some of these guys are face to face, IRL. What were some examples of the kinds of stuff they like to talk about with strangers and/or at formal or semi-formal get-togethers? (I guess very fortunately for me I've only known a few trans people and they have been long term passing, not political and basically sane.)
We are Transgender Action Block, a group of activists dedicated to transgender liberation in the United Kingdom.
We do not want to reinvent the wheel; there are pre-existing trans activism groups and organisations which seek social acceptance for transgender individuals. Whilst we are not opposed to these groups, we believe that, alone, they are woefully inadequate to fight for the complete liberation of trans and nonbinary people.
Transgender Action Block came into existence to protest the continued attack on transgender people’s access to healthcare such as hormone replacement therapy (HRT), surgery, and mental health support in the United Kingdom. Whilst other trans activism groups in the UK focus on combatting transphobic attitudes of the general public, we are dedicated to policy change which would ensure that every transgender and nonbinary person, including children, would have free access to HRT, surgery, and mental health support if they so wished.
We also believe that transgender liberation is inextricable from other liberatory politics. It is important that we combat white supremacy alongside transgender and nonbinary people of colour; that we combat imperialism alongside transgender and nonbinary people from imperialised countries; that we combat ableism alongside disabled transgender and nonbinary people; that we realise that nobody is free until we are all free. The continued defunding and privatisation of the NHS has been detrimental to transgender and nonbinary people’s access to healthcare. We cannot achieve our demands without opposing the Conservative Party’s austerity policies. We believe that transgender liberation cannot occur under capitalism, although this does not stop us from fighting for immediate demands which can be implemented under capitalism.
Our Demands
1. An informed consent model of healthcare for transgender and nonbinary people on the NHS, including the depathologisation of transness.
2. Full access to hormones and surgery for under-18s who are shown to be capable of consent and request them; rapid access to puberty blockers for all trans children who request them.
3. Increased funding towards NHS Gender Identity Clinics (GICs), for the purpose of reducing the unacceptable waiting times for GICs.
4. GP training on transgender issues, and making it NHS policy for GPs to prescribe bridging hormones for those on waiting lists who request them.
5. Remodel GIC training to include understanding of nonbinary and gender non-conforming people; ensure that the current guidelines for the treatment of nonbinary and gender non-conforming people are followed; parity of access to treatment for nonbinary, gender non-conforming, and transgender people.
6. Self-identification for an expanded range of gender markers; legal recognition for nonbinary and gender non-conforming people.
We do not want to reinvent the wheel; there are pre-existing trans activism groups and organisations which seek social acceptance for transgender individuals. Whilst we are not opposed to these groups, we believe that, alone, they are woefully inadequate to fight for the complete liberation of trans and nonbinary people.
Transgender Action Block came into existence to protest the continued attack on transgender people’s access to healthcare such as hormone replacement therapy (HRT), surgery, and mental health support in the United Kingdom. Whilst other trans activism groups in the UK focus on combatting transphobic attitudes of the general public, we are dedicated to policy change which would ensure that every transgender and nonbinary person, including children, would have free access to HRT, surgery, and mental health support if they so wished.
We also believe that transgender liberation is inextricable from other liberatory politics. It is important that we combat white supremacy alongside transgender and nonbinary people of colour; that we combat imperialism alongside transgender and nonbinary people from imperialised countries; that we combat ableism alongside disabled transgender and nonbinary people; that we realise that nobody is free until we are all free. The continued defunding and privatisation of the NHS has been detrimental to transgender and nonbinary people’s access to healthcare. We cannot achieve our demands without opposing the Conservative Party’s austerity policies. We believe that transgender liberation cannot occur under capitalism, although this does not stop us from fighting for immediate demands which can be implemented under capitalism.
Our Demands
1. An informed consent model of healthcare for transgender and nonbinary people on the NHS, including the depathologisation of transness.
2. Full access to hormones and surgery for under-18s who are shown to be capable of consent and request them; rapid access to puberty blockers for all trans children who request them.
3. Increased funding towards NHS Gender Identity Clinics (GICs), for the purpose of reducing the unacceptable waiting times for GICs.
4. GP training on transgender issues, and making it NHS policy for GPs to prescribe bridging hormones for those on waiting lists who request them.
5. Remodel GIC training to include understanding of nonbinary and gender non-conforming people; ensure that the current guidelines for the treatment of nonbinary and gender non-conforming people are followed; parity of access to treatment for nonbinary, gender non-conforming, and transgender people.
6. Self-identification for an expanded range of gender markers; legal recognition for nonbinary and gender non-conforming people.
You'll notice in the year since their founding they've switched from demanding more money for gender identity clinics to demanding that gender identity clinics be abolished. Here they are hosting a "Reclaim Pride" protest in Highbury Fields (audio rip is terrible, sorry):
I have no idea why they picked Highbury Fields for a protest (it's really not near anything of any relevance) other than it's a big park that's nice to sit in and have a few drinks in summer, but there you go. They use riseup.net for their email host and cryptpad for their documents, and I notice that their GP information leaflet refers to Minidoxil as "Rogaine" (the American name, it's sold as Regaine here), which leads me to surmise that this absolutely pangs of antifa and student activists.
I don't imagine Ollie really hangs out with those sorts, although perhaps he did get some networking opportunities out of Trans Pride, although maybe he hitched his wagon to them because they're going to protest the NHS and they'll let him self promote by doing a speech.
I can't reveal too much about the convo without basically outing my irl identity, but suffice to say a light hearted conversation about tofu got immediately derailed by this person interrupting and talking about culinary imperialism and how wealthy Westerners were pricing out indigenous communities from cheap access to their staple soy. They made even the most innocuous and banal topics of conversation political and I was exhausted by the end of the evening.
Oh wow, you know the people who... did that to Goldsmiths? I'm not in the area very often but I have noticed if you nip into the Marquis of Gransbury you'll see a sea of danger hair genderblobs and the Goldsmith Students Union is never not occupied by some sort of protest.lol, fucking and how.
their psyches are also prone to utterly collapse under even the slightest amount of ribbing.
sadly any details, hilarious as they are, would fully unmask me here as a literal fascist, but yeah, the horrendous people who I was also forced to spend some time with thanks to a housemate, were pretty high profile early architects of the fuckspace that is now only finally starting to crumble, and are to a man and woman, total shit-pieces of the highest order, while fragile to a dangerous degree.
Woudnt you know, this was also in proximity to Goldsmiths, which they later fully invaded- (after it had already been utterly wrecked by the parasites that moved in following the ballooning of tuition fees- they then helped to effectively castrate it into an id-pol cul de sac; absolute scum, the lot of them.)
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