Dear Ruth Hunt,

On the Stonewall website you asked trans people to give their opinions on the question of closer cooperation between your organization and the trans community. Here I am offering my 2 cents as to why and how we should work together.

Much of this is, of course, naked self-interest. In the UK, and doubtless in most other countries as well, political progress doesn’t happen because you have the moral high ground, it happens because you have wealth, influence and power. These are things that Stonewall has, but which trans people find it very hard to obtain.

I should add also that, at least from this side of the fence, Stonewall appears in the past to have viewed trans rights as a bargaining chip that can be “given away” (as if they were yours to give) so as to provide the right wing with a victory to crow about while leaving your core objectives intact. Clearly that is very bad for us, though superficially useful to you.

However, the mere fact that our respective causes can be intertwined in this way — that our enemies can perceive a defeat for us as being a defeat for you as well — illustrates just how closely our interests coincide. Even the name of your organization bears this out, because you are named after a riot that was, in a large part, led by trans people.

It goes without saying that many trans people identify as gay, lesbian or bi in their preferred gender. It has often been suggested that the proportion of non-heterosexuals in our community is higher than amongst cis folk, and given that many of us eschew the gender binary altogether that’s hardly surprising. More generally, support for your cause is, I suspect, far higher amongst trans people than amongst cis people.

In addition I suspect that many of those you regard as your natural constituency have much in common with us. You may have achieved some stunning victories over the past few years, but there is a perception that they have been won at the cost of a requirement for LGB people to look and behave like heterosexuals. I suspect that the recent growth in the numbers of young people openly identifying as genderqueer, and therefore trans, is in part a result of a perception that LGB people who are not gender conformant have been abandoned by their political leadership.

Finally I note that, even if we had nothing in common, some of the issues we face are shared. An obvious example is that of discrimination faced by older people who are in care.

The question remains, however: how can we go forward from here in an atmosphere of mutual trust and support, given all that has happened in recent decades? Here are some things I think need to happen.

Whatever trans campaigning group is set up to work with(in) Stonewall needs to be led (and visibly led) by trans people. There should be actual paid jobs for trans people. You can’t do proper political activism without full time staff.

That group needs to represent all trans people, not just a subset of them. There should be no exclusion of people because they identify as heterosexual, or because they are somehow the “wrong sort” of trans person. You will need to be fairly careful in your choice of which trans activists to work with, because we are a notoriously fractious lot.

Talking of representation, while your organization needs, for obvious reasons, to be based in London, it would be nice if it remembered that the rest of the country exists. (Which of course goes for trans activists as well.)

In particular there should be no appeasement of the TERFs. A quick examination of their positions will show that most of them are “political lesbians” and that they are just as opposed to actual same-sex relations as any other homophobe. They are not allies you need to keep onside.

Finally all parts of your organization need to work together towards a common goal. We can’t have turf wars in which, for example, the trans activists in your organization are condemning the non-trans people for lauding an openly transphobic gay person, or vice versa.

If we can manage all of this, I’m sure we can move forward together to make the world a better place for all of us. The Scots appear to have been doing it well for some time, so I don’t see why the rest of the country can’t follow suit.

Oh, and while you are thinking about diversification, could you try to recruit a few non-white people as well, please?