Shon Faye – The Transgender Issue – An Argument for Justice

I thought to review this book in full, but as of today, December 2022, Shon Faye’s “The Transgender Issue” is well-installed on the Christmas bookstands and seems to have reached paperback and some kind of best-seller status. You may well have seen it and considered it for purchase. This is not bad for a book which is an “argument” and an argument about gender and society. Good news all round, although I have asked myself why it, in particular, has achieved such acclaim. I think it has to do with the idea of “justice”. We live in manifestly unfair, unequal, unbalanced times and justice seems like it is needed more than ever. Transgender has also, in the last few years, achieved the status of a “real” issue, something which concerns the wider public, and has even become quite central to who we think we are. If trans has posed a conundrum or two and stimulated some hard-to-resolve arguments in social circles then the answer maybe to read a book about it . This is of course no less than Shon Faye’s intention. We trans are not an issue, justice is the issue. The world is an unjust place and trans people are currently prominent amongst the many who suffer from that injustice. If in this era there is something about body and identity which attracts a particular form of injustice perhaps trans can also be a source of resistance to oppression generally. Whether it’s a right-wing resurgence, the anti-social dimension of social media, the corruption of old media or the current commitment to identitarian causes there are enough dragons to slay and “The Transgender Issue” takes us on a fact-finding tour of their hang-outs. Facts, of course, are not the only component of an argument. Principles and ideas are also needed, and a healthy helping of history. Shon Faye, like many commentators, gives us all of these things, but the backbone of the “argument” is a sometimes depressing and often enraging review of injustices in everything from housing to the law to medicine, from prisons to the army – all the places in this sceptred isle in fact (and internationally) where established practice has become not merely retrograde but downright vicious. This even includes the “frontline” of feminism. In each case the book outlines injustices, often with case-studies, and calls out untruths. If you have energy for outrage and polemic your ammunition is here. There are some examples of good practice, individual resilience and plain common-sense, but the take-away is simple enough and familiar enough to anyone with an eye on the bigger picture – the justice we need will not come under capitalism. Much of what you read and are told about justice and about trans will be inflected towards containment. In some cases downright suppression will be on someone’s agenda. It is society, therefore, which needs to change. What then can we do about the situation? The idea which is emerging from humanitarian liberalism at the moment is that we must formulate our ideals and act in the spirit of them. Shon Faye is not totally pessimistic despite the pervasive injustices uncovered for the book. In her conclusion she says, - “My hope wrote this book…..the thing that will liberate trans people is our shared hope for a better world…. Our existence enriches this world.”