Welcome to Hell Island Reports, talking to the groups and organisers on the frontlines of the UK's struggle for Trans Rights. This time, we talk to Trans Liberation Cambridge, an affinity group based in the city. Their links follow: Twitter: twitter.com/TransLibCam Instagram: instagram.com/trans.liberation.cambridge/ Queer Radicals Self Defence sessions: instagram.com/p/CuRO5kaMsvd/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA== - Follow Hell Island Reports' other work at: Instagram: instagram.com/hellislandreps/ Substack: hellislandreports.substack.com/ - Music is MINDBREAK.018m by FREE.99: Bandcamp: xfree99x.bandcamp.com/ Newgrounds: free99.newgrounds.com Twitter: twitter.com/xfree99x - TRANSCRIPTION [Machine transcription, apologies for inaccuracy]: K: This is the Hell Island Reports podcast talking to groups and their organizers on the frontlines of the fight for Trans Rights in the United Kingdom. I'm “K”. And this episode I talk to “A” from the affinity group Trans Liberation Cambridge. Now, before we begin, on the 20th of July, there was a demo at Westminster Magistrates Court in solidarity with political prisoner Sarah Jane Baker, and there likely be more demos against her imprisonment. K: So do keep your eyes peeled for more details. Trans Liberation Front Bristol are co-hosting a fundraiser for Themselves and Trans Safety Network with Bristol Anarchist Federation with drag and music, including musician Evan Greer at the Exchange on the 28th of August. Now onto Trans Liberation Cambridge. A: So Trans Liberation Cambridge. First of all, it's an affinity group. And just to give a small, short definition for people who might not know what an affinity group is, so an affinity group is a group of people who come together to organize a campaign on a specific issue. And this kind of group might often exist in a wider network of activists. A: They could be members of this group, could be from multiple different groups or could be it could be a subset of a larger group. And the point of having this affinity group is to facilitate these people to work together, either to change something, either in a wider group they're part of or in wider society. And what Chelsea does more or less is we organize it, promote protests and actions. A: We do community building, community building, which includes things like, for example, the clubs swaps that Chelsea has been doing for a while now, the open mic nights, social events. We also monitor local anti trans people, so to speak, including to prevent local institutional capture. We also do solidarity and support for student actions and solidarity and support for some of the London actions, like, for example, on the rock or the happenings with Posy Parker. K: You talk about monitoring in Cambridge. What what is the situation like in Cambridge? I mean, with the university, but also just in generally in the town. A: So the thing is, with Cambridge, I think I've heard that from some of trade union pals some good years ago. Some some of them described to Cambridge as being the I like the council, the birthplace, but like a like a strong stronghold. The turf is the military used to call it, because it has a bit of a history when it comes to specific people within politics and the academia that have launched themselves on a platform of either, well, concerns or anti-trans hate, for example. A: And since it used to be a Cambridge councilor that resigned after the council renewed a basically a fair equality policy around the use of gendered facilities by trans people. But the use of those specific facilities of their gender and she kind of resigned in protest over the inclusive policy that up till then was no and no problem at all. A: But for mostly no one. She then went on to co-found the LGB Alliance, which is quite interesting, seeing that she is a married straight woman. But, you know, I guess things like that do happen. I mean, there's there's other people and groups who have felt, well, like, for example, because because Cambridge University and it's quite the place of renown. A: There's people that do like things like, you know, coming here to do certain talks, like for something caffeine stock came to Harvard the Cambridge debater in free speech union. I don't know what the full name of it is. It's called Cambridge University. In short, it's sort of like a debate society. So we did organize with students supporting for that one to do a protest, basically to show that, you know, expressing both sides views when it comes to trans people is really not an okay thing to do. A: Basically. Other things that have happened, I mean, there has been like for a while there was this thing called the respect my sex campaign or respect my sex if you want my ex, which sounds weird when you say it. I think it makes more sense when it's written. There was this was a group formed between the group Sex Matters founded by me for Start There, the Women's Rights Network, which is a countrywide, let's say, MIT level activism group, trying to push back gender critical anti-trans narratives. A: And another group called Women Uniting, which was a cross-party group trying to do this similar thing. And it was basically those between like different people from different political parties, including Labor, conservatives, Greens and so on, people who in their particular party may not have been happy about, let's say their political party was necessary at that time, pushing for anti-trans narratives. A: And they from this campaign to pressure or at least sort of like publicly highlight, like to pressure politicians into into giving into their narrative or then to see if more people agreed with them and or to highlight the politicians that already agreed with their narrative. And but at the time, TLC, that was to counter that by first and foremost well, in sending questions to our local councilors or candidates for council and simply asking them basically about, you know, their support for trans rights. A: And then, of course, publishing that. So everyone who wants to vote can know what their councilor thinks about trans rights and not pressuring, of course, because, you know, no one can pressure a I mean, no one should be pressuring a local politician into doing one thing or another. But, you know, we should know what the people we vote for think and want to do. A: And in my opinion, that was quite a good action that TLC did, because we showed very well that the vast majority of the local councilors were either indifferent or supportive of trans rights. That's reassuring trans people and allies within Cambridge that they can safely vote for someone that will not take their rights away when we try to. That might lead to indignity towards trans people. A: And in the process, it caused a lot of the those who were in that respect my sex campaign to, well, first of all, lose steam and morale because they saw very well that none of them were supportive of their narrative. One single candidate was, but that was insufficient to actually, well, gain anything. And that person actually didn't get any support. A: Funny enough, the funniest thing to me was when we got the results of the census and it turned out that the ward with which that candidate was in had more trans people than the votes the candidate got. K: So a lot of that, at least statistically speaking. A: But yeah. K: So do you think a lot of the like you called it a stronghold of Terf is but then does a lot of that like academic Terf is not really transfer over into like community in Cambridge like is there a divide between like people coming in and doing debates and talks, giving like very gender critical ideas, But then actually in the town itself, it's a lot more chill than that. A: Yeah, I mean, the thing is like I personally didn't call it the stronghold of academic TERFism. I've heard that it being called by some pals who have been here for a long, long time. And you are right in that there's that veneer of like, okay, this is like a majority opinion. You know, they're coming. They come here and they start, you know, doing these like academy academic debates and they want to position themselves as being the commonsense position when you are very, very much right. A: Like most people in town, I would say would not have an opinion to start with when it comes to trans people in general. And in my experience, most people, if they do have an opinion, it tends to be like neutral to positive. Like very few people share those like very specific ideological points that people who align themselves with, let's say, gender critical transphobia. A: Very few people have those those ideological points in mind. K: Have you seen a shift in Cambridge? And like with the current panic around trans people, is that been like a shift in Cambridge around those views or is it still most people are quite neutral on the issue? A: Honestly, I think most of the changes that happen to people's attitudes don't necessarily come from the academics. They mostly influence the people in the higher strata of society. So for example, Kathleen Stock or even Helen Joyce and I'll be coming back to the Helen Choice bit in a bit, you know, talking either in, let's say a big paper or writing, you know, article or fancy articles or even coming to have talks with other people who go to these kind of debates because, you know, most people won't go actually, most people won't even have money to have membership to, let's say, the Cambridge Debates Union. A: Right. So your average person from Cambridge doesn't tend to listen to these kind of things rather, most people will be influenced by broad newspapers like The Daily Mail and even other kinds of newspapers, because even the Cambridge Independent, for example, has at one time published a more let's let's call it a trans skeptical article. So, yeah, those those kind of things tend to influence people rather than these kind of deba
