Culture Slut: Terf Island and Anonhi
Words: Misha MN
The sun rises higher every day and the promise of summer approaches, but the cold harsh winds of oppression are blowing on TERF Island.
The UK is once again being hit by devastating anti-trans rhetoric, funded by the grand high witch herself JK Rowling – and this time she’s nabbed a win from the UK Supreme Court. As of the 16th of April, the legal definition of “woman” is determined by biological sex, not by self identification, gender recognition certificates or any other means of legalising an affirmed gender during or after gender transition. A group of judges, none of whom permitted any trans people to speak up during their rulings, have decided that “the concept of sex is binary.” The implications this has for single sex spaces like changing rooms or gyms is enormous, not to mention vital services like domestic abuse shelters, hospital wards, or even public toilets.
For Women Scotland is a campaign group that, whilst claiming to be in support of rights for women and girls, seems hell bent on putting some of the most vulnerable women at further risk of male violence, social isolation, and criminal persecution. Like the anti-gay groups of the 70s and 80s, they claim that trans women pose a threat in single sex spaces, despite overwhelming evidence that this is not the case.
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What makes this so depressing and frightening is that for so long, we all assumed that progress could only go one way, that hard earned wins in courts and protective legislation could not be reversed. Elder queers and trans people may roll their eyes at youth’s naivete, for they have spent years on the front lines, in the trenches, living loudly and powerfully despite the inches of territory gained, or the miles lost. Now it is time for us to learn what they have already discovered. Being trans isn’t easy. Being queer isn’t easy. We come out, not because it makes our lives simpler, per se, but because a future in the closet is no longer an option for us.
There is a point in every queer or trans person’s life where they can pinpoint something that intensified their feelings for the first time. It might be something that caused a total awakening, out of the blue, or maybe just something that helped them take their own instincts a little more seriously. Chronically online lesbians often cite Shego from Kim Possible as their sapphic genesis, or the Hex Girls from one of those TV Scooby Doo movies, bad girls with sass and spunk.
“There is a point in every queer or trans person’s life where they can pinpoint something that intensified their feelings for the first time.”
For me, it was the fairy prince Cornelius from Thumbelina, specifically when he pulls Thumbelina onto his bumble bee motorcycle to whisk her away and sing her a romantic ballad, and she grasps onto his waist and buries her face in his back. He was so dreamy. To be honest, he could be swapped out for any other Don Bluth animated hero – like Dimitri from Anastasia – because they were all hot as fuck, and had a lot more personality than the Disney boys.
My trans awakening was very different. There had been rumblings of gender trouble in my heart ever since I knew there was meant to be differences between boys and girls, but it wasn’t until I was a teenager that I really started to contend with what it meant. In 2005, the year I turned 14, Anohni released her second album I Am A Bird Now, and the world was changed forever. I received this record as a gift for my birthday from my dad, who had read that it was emotive, tragic, sinister and gender ambiguous, and thought it sounded like something I might like. He was extremely right.
I Am A Bird Now, credited to Anohni and The Johnsons (formerly Antony and The Johnsons) won the Mercury Prize in 2005, and topped many critics’ lists as best album of the year. Described as chamber pop, it’s a deeply resonant, emotional, personal look at gender, hope, and growing up trans. The instrumentation is lush, with soaring vocals and thundering pianos, organs, string quartets whipped into tragic frenzies.
Both mournful and optimistic, the duality of its storytelling was striking. It spoke about transness in ways that no other mainstream album in recent memory had, and the fact that it became critically acclaimed only compounded its message that this was something important, something worth taking note of. Its credentials were further bolstered by the famous artists that appeared on some of its songs, including Rufus Wainwright, Boy George, and the legendary Lou Reed. Even the cover, a Peter Hujar photograph of Warhol Superstar and trans icon Candy Darling on her deathbed, denoted this album as a defining moment of queer history.
The album opens with “Hope There’s Someone”, now considered to be one of the band’s signature hits with its swelling piano crescendos and vulnerable vocals. From the very first line, we are let into Anohni’s world, she tells us that she hopes there's someone who’ll take care of me when I die. The vulnerability is immediately arresting, a direct arrow to the heart of every queer person who fears dying alone because of who they are. 2005 was only a few years out from the repeal of Section 28, the legislation that prohibited the mention of homosexuality in schools, and the country was still fraught with fears of isolation, recovering from the worst of the AIDS crisis. I’m scared of the middle place between light and nowhere, I don’t want to be the only one left in there. 14-year-old me is hooked, line and sinker – the operatic nature of the music combined with the tragic intimacy of the lyric is spellbinding.
Following on, we come to “My Lady Story”, a more subdued affair, featuring some of the poetry Anohni became famous for. I’m a hole in love. I’m a bride on fire. I’ve been your slave, my womb’s an ocean full of grief and rage. I’m a crippled dog, I’ve got nothing to give. I’m so broken babe, but I want to see some of my beauty, my lost beauty. The weariness is palpable.
“One day I’ll grow up and be a beautiful woman, but for today I am a boy. This still echoes around my head every now and then.”
The next song is more rousing, almost anthemic. One day I’ll grow up, I’ll be a beautiful woman, one day I’ll grow up, I’ll be a beautiful girl, but for today, I am a child, for today, I am a boy. It speaks to us about the possibility of the future, of how your life is yours to command. One day I’ll be a beautiful woman, but today I am a child. I think it was this song more than anything that started my trans awakening in earnest. It doesn’t matter what you are today: one day you’ll grow up and be who you really are. The lyric is repeated over and over, almost to abstraction, it becomes a chant, a mantra, a prayer. One day I’ll grow up and be a beautiful woman, but for today I am a boy. This still echoes around my head every now and then.
“You Are My Sister” is another positive affirmation, a heartfelt duet with Boy George.You are my sister and I love you, may all of your dreams come true. This intergenerational sisterhood feels protective, welcoming. Gay pop’s past reaching out to welcome its future. Our queer and trans elders embracing the new generations. I was so afraid of the night, you seemed to move through all the places that I feared. This is an ode to all the women who came before us, the women who paved the way, fought for rights that we took for granted for so long, women who survived the removal of their rights and never faltered, never deviated from their path of light.
The final song is “Bird Gerhl”, a phonetic spelling of ‘Bird Girl’, and it rounds out the album with an empowering climax. I’ve got my heart here in my hands now, I’ve been searching for my wings for some time. I’m going to be born into the sky, because I’m a Bird Girl now. We have moved forward. We are no longer a child, a boy, we have finally become a girl. And the Bird Girls go to Heaven, and the Bird Girls can fly. Again we revisit the opening theme of death. No longer are we afraid of a lonely death, of the space between, now we can fly with all of our sisters, up, up to the skies, a boundless freedom, a joyful Heaven.
No matter how bad our governments get, how many protective legislations get removed or reversed, they will never be able to eliminate trans people from public life, prevent them from making art, or from lifting each other up. We have always existed, in every culture, and in spite of every conservative-led purge, we have persisted.
If Anohni can write Bird Girl to inspire a new generation of queers, Anohni who spent most of the 90s stomping around New York in fashion armour with FUCK OFF written across her forehead, then we can continue to make great art and welcome the new kids into the sisterhood. We can fight the courts, the TERFs, the transphobes, we celebrate each other, our lives and our loves, our achievements. Our existence cannot be quantified by gender identity cards, government certificates, or bureaucratic tick boxes. There will never be a world without us, there never has been. We have every yesterday, every today, and every day yet to come. The future is trans, and one day, I’ll grow up and be a beautiful woman. One day I’ll grow up and be a beautiful girl. But for today I am a child. Today, I am a boy.