This is the text of the show, a monologue, an essay – a personal reflection, but of course the personal is, is always, political.
Grace charts her journey to self-acceptance as a Butch lesbian, that it was the Butch rather than the lesbian part of that identity that she found hard for a long time.
But the twist, the heart of the story, comes because her self-acceptance coincides with the up-tick in attention for “gender-critical” view-points, and the sense that an increasing number of people have been vocalising that “threat” trans people represent is a particular threat to Butch lesbians.
Grace is both puzzled and troubled by this, feeling at times she is unwillingly co-opted into an anti-Trans narrative. She points to the fact that some of the loudest gender-critical voices are people that seem to have said or done little to promote the interests of Queer people, prior to latterly climbing on the gender-critical soap-box.
When the marginalised are set in opposition to one another it is the patriarchy, the powerful, that win – we do the patriarchy’s work for it, dragging ourselves down when we should be lifting each other up.
There are lots of things that make our society unsafe for women, for lesbians, for LGB people – but Grace is forthright in her belief that Trans people are not one of those things.
The rage that this topic creates, on both sides, especially when played out across social media means there is little or no space to listen to the genuine and deep felt beliefs, the fears and the generations of pain, that need to be acknowledged if we are to find a shared future. Is it is we seem unable to do anything but scream across the street at each other.
