Pull Up A Chair is a weekly newsletter containing all the things I’d like to be chatting about if we could hang out together in real life.
📚 Quit by Annie Duke. Like a lot of people in this post-2020 world - and maybe this is also to do with hitting my ‘Saturn return’ as I approach 30 - I’m re-evaluating decisions I made previously and wanting to check in if they’re still the right thing for me. Quit, by champion poker player Annie Duke, is all about how to use the brain’s irrationalities to help you. Setting ‘quitting points’, whether in mountain climbing, in the casino, or at work, is one example to help us get over sunk cost fallacies. A problem I have with a lot of business and ‘smart thinking’ books is that I think they’re just overgrown TED talks. While you could certainly get the core idea of this book into a TED talk, I appreciated the huge range of case studies and examples Duke gave - and as a former Economics student I will always be a fan of books about how to make better decisions (Amazon | Bookshop affiliate links - ad)
👖 Flared Jeans. Who do I think I am, Daisy Jones? Having said I would hold onto my skinny jeans with the determination of Gollum holding the Ring, I bought the Fly Flare jeans from Fat Face (the 20% offer that’s still running helped!), along with a few other things to freshen up my wardrobe for spring summer (casual sweatshirt, cute blouse, Breton top). I love them. Go down a size for the best fit - and Fat Face get extra bonus points for actually including details of the inside leg length of their three length options on the website.
🍫 Maltesers. I am obsessed with Maltesers right now. Every year when the Easter chocolate comes out, I buy one Maltesers Bunny, and it reminds me how much I love them. (Cadbury Creme Eggs are just too sweet for me). I have a core memory that when my grandad would occasionally pick my brother and I up from primary school, he’d bring a box of Maltesers with him to share out. I found this ‘mini Easter cheesecakes’ recipe on the BBC website and knew I had to make them for a cocktail night I had with some friends earlier this week. I can’t even remember the last time (if ever) I made a baked cheesecake, but these were super simple and really delicious.
After some fun stuff to start us off, I’m afraid there’s a heavy subject I need to talk about. If it’s one you’re not in the right place to read today, no stress - I’ll see you next week.
Right now, there are a whole load of transphobes out there claiming to speak for cis women like me to justify their hatefulness. I want to use my platform - small as it is - to say this: while there have been lots of men in my life who have harassed me, and a mercifully small number who have groped me, they have all done it in public. None have ever needed to pretend to be anything they weren’t to sneak into spaces they shouldn’t. Claiming ‘single-sex spaces’ as a way to prevent people living their lives is concern-trolling and a red herring.
While we’ve not yet reached the situation they have in the US (drag queens and Kinder eggs are apparently the most dangerous things to children there…), there’s an extremely active group of people, across the political spectrum here in the UK, who are seeking to more strictly define the definition of ‘womanhood.’ Who does this benefit? Not me. Not any of the other cis women who dare to step outside of our historic gender norms. The ‘sex-based rights’ objections remind me of nothing quite so much as the arguments Phyllis Schlafly and her supporters made against the Equal Rights Amendment: that if men and women had equal rights, women would lose our privileges around staying home to look after our children. And, while I’m usually wary of invoking Godwin’s Law: if self-proclaimed Nazis and white supremacists are showing up to support your cause, you should probably take a long hard look at yourself.
What can you do?
First, if you’re lucky enough to not have an MP who’s an active transphobe (side-eying mine, who always bats back my emails by saying that gender recognition is deferred to the Scottish Parliament, which doesn’t stop her spouting rubbish on UK-wide news), write to your MP and let them know that this is an issue for you. My local Scottish National Party sent out a constituency survey recently and asked what my top issues were. Decarbonisation was my biggest issue, I said, along with LGBTQ rights and women’s issues. I then emphasised that, for me, those two aren’t in conflict with each other, so that there was no way my words could be twisted.
Second, if you’re in the UK, you can sign this Government Petition to try and prevent the definition of ‘sex’ in the Equality Act 2010 being amended in such a way that would remove what legal protections exist for trans people.
Third, donating to groups like Mermaids and TransActual, who advocate for better rights and fairer press dialogue around gender issues. As it’s Easter Sunday today, I’ve given some cash to a proudly inclusive church to help them fix their gender-neutral and accessible loo.
And then lastly, being a visible ally. I was so proud to see an unabashedly political post on my employer’s LinkedIn page for Trans Day of Visibility last week, and it was a privilege to be able to share it. One of the things that really disgusts me is when transphobes - especially cis men - claim to be defending my safety as a woman to justify their hatred. By staying silent, I would be allowing and condoning this. I refuse to do that. So, this is me, using my platform, to say: Trans rights are human rights.
If you want to argue with me on this, please don’t do so in the comments. Trans and gender non-conforming people already have to see too many comments that make them feel unwelcome, and I want to keep my comments as a safe space. I’m easy to find on Twitter and Instagram (at LilyMWrites on both) - if you want to debate me, come and do it in my DMs.
Speak soon - I’ll write about something lighter next week, I promise,
Lily
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