With risks of getting arrested and worse, why do kids continue to protest?

Three masked protesters climbed onto the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) office ledge in Glasgow to protest an interim guidance set out after a Supreme Court ruling.

Direct organisation group Trans Kids Deserve Better (TKDB) have claimed they were behind the action.

Sylv (not its real name), 17, TKDB activist, said: “Trans Kids Deserve Better is primarily an action network and we specialise in direct action to try sway public interests and political movements in favour of trans rights and trans advocacy to take a stand for the rights of trans youth and try make a difference and saying to policymakers and politicians, whoever is listening or not listening in most cases that we are here and we are going to do something if our rights continue to be stripped.”

In the press release, one activist said: “We should be free to study for exams, but we can’t do that because we’re too busy FIGHTING FOR OUR LIVES! We deserve a life, so give us one!”

Sylv said: “Activism crept its way into my life. It was never something that I thought about a lot. I would sometimes see people on the news doing activism but then when I came out, I noticed my life got a lot harder.

“People aren’t very nice especially in Scotland about this stuff [being trans]. I started advocating for my own rights and it spiralled from there.

“When I was younger, I would always tell people to recycle and things like that, so I was a bit predisposed to activism even then.

“It came naturally to me and when I thought ‘hey wait it sucks existing, and people need to know they can’t walk all over me in society’ so I decided to stand up for myself and I found out that there are others who do that too.”

With all the current negativity in the UK around transgender rights with the ban on puberty blockers, the Supreme Court ruling and other issues, what keeps activists involved?

Sylv said: “What doesn’t inspire me is sitting and watching my rights being stripped back a bit every day. It makes me angry and people say ‘just vote for what you want to happen in your government’ but you can’t vote for this, im too young to vote for things like that and if I did vote there’s no one, in this landscape, who is going to stand up for me, there’s nobody who I can get to listen.

“I’ve gotta stand up and do something, for example, the action we had in Glasgow, that was a big version of us standing up for what we believe in. People had protested outside that office many times but when we [TKDB] did our action, we make it on the front page of the news.”

Image: TRANS kIDS dESERVE bETTER

As Sylv has said, direct action is how they get the decision makers to listen, but what are they protesting?

Sylv said: “That ledge was outside the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s office and that was a protest against their interim guidance with them basically policing single-sex spaces and telling trans people what bathroom they should use.

“It’s also contradictory guidance because at some points it said if you’re trans one way you can’t go into the bathroom of your preferred gender, but you also couldn’t go in the bathroom of your assigned sex.”

With a government that doesn’t listen to the experiences of the marginalised groups their policies effect, how can they say that they are ‘for the people’?

Sylv said: “Just listen to us. We exist and we’re not going to fall for your lies or misinformation. If you start by listening to us, you will learn so much more than your assumptions will get you. Listen to the research you conduct, the suicide report on trans youth is still being withheld and I think we all know why, because it shows that gender affirming care saves lives.

“We’re here and you can’t try push us back in the closet it doesn’t work like that. I just wish my government would treat me like a real person and an equal citizen.”