Dian Cathal: On making trans art on TERF island
As the Supreme Court moves to make the UK an even more hostile place for trans people than it is already, Dian Cathal writes about the act of making art as a trans person.
I was doing the final edit of this piece when the UK Supreme Court ruling came which effectively erases trans people in law.
I’m a transgender performer and writer from New York. There is a weird paradox for transgender artists in the UK. In an attention economy, love or hate both equal the same amount of money. And in a cost of living crisis, with arts getting cut from every side, what are a few death threats if it sells tickets?
Over the last five years, the UK has earned a new nickname. Queer people and bigots alike know it as TERF Island. TERF, an acronym standing for Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist, was first coined in 2008 by Viv Smythe, although Smythe gives credit to activists in online trans spaces. Unfortunately, these spaces have been lost to internet decay, like Club Penguin, which was a queer haven in itself — all those penguins were gender neutral after all.
I and many other trans people find this acronym inaccurate but the name has become so mainstream, once it trends on Twitter (sorry, X, don’t mean to deadname), it’s hard to change it. TERFs are a loosely organized, reactionary collective of transphobes with seemingly nothing better to do than harass trans people online. They are just another flavor of the rise in the rightwing, outrage and loneliness epidemic we’ve all been witnessing since 2016. And like all rabid attack trolls they will go after whatever trans person or ally they can.
There are several big names that often use their platforms to sic transphobes on anyone they please. Some of these accounts had fewer than 100 followers, now they’re flooded with thousands of vile messages and death threats. Posie Parker, Graham Linehan and the Queen TERF JK Rowling are the most famous ones. Transphobes genuinely call Jo their queen, they claim to be “joking” but we’ve learned from 4Chan not to believe that line.
I've never come up against the final boss herself but I’ve gone a few rounds with Mumsnet and Graham Linehan. A short play I wrote in 2020 caught Graham’s attention and he sent out a call-to-action to get the show canceled and reported to the Arts Council of England. He did call the show, “a comedy apparently”, one of my favorite pull quotes and ironically, great publicity.
A run of my last comedy hour was retweeted by Wizarding News, a vocal critic of JK Rowling. I was immediately inundated with death threats and people promising they would come to the show and spend the whole time glaring with their arms crossed. I’m not the first trans performer this has happened to, and no one wants to perform to a hostile room but when ticket sales are low…an audience of transphobes is still a paying audience.
I am always aware that every time I step on stage it may be the first time someone in the audience has seen or heard a trans person in real life. My body, content and talent will, for better or worse, be the standard set for all trans people in that person’s mind. If I charm them, I will have done a service for trans liberation, if I bomb or they just don’t like me, I’ve set queer rights back 20 years.
Is it arrogant and egotistical to think my art could have such an impact on the world? Yes. It is also the core of being an artist, a want to change the world. Trans people are not the first to suffer under oppressive regimes and I take comfort in the strength and wisdom of all the marginalized artists before me that made the tools I now use to fight back.
Now is the time for trans artists to be loud, proud and defiant. It’s our moral duty. But it doesn’t feel great to be called slurs on TikTok, even if every comment makes me money. It’s only £0.30, but still, that’s at least a Freddo.
There are many people who see being an artist as “not a real job” and now the UK Supreme Court has declared that trans people aren’t real either.
So, as trans artists find ourselves in a place that doesn’t exist, I guess we can make whatever the fuck we want.
Dian Cathal is performing in two shows at Brighton Fringe: Trans*Atlantic at the Walrus (Hideaway) from May 6-9th, and Deadnamed at Rotunda Theatre (Pip) from May 13-17th.
