The Transgender Issue - An Argument for Justice by Shon Faye

Updated with a New Introduction  
 
 2022 Books Are My Bag Readers Awards Non-Fiction winner. 

Trans people in Britain today have become a culture war 'issue'. Despite making up less than one per cent of the country's population, they are the subjects of a toxic and increasingly polarized 'debate' which generates reliable controversy for newspapers and talk shows. This media frenzy conceals a simple fact: that we are having the wrong conversation, a conversation in which trans people themselves are reduced to a talking point and denied a meaningful voice.

In this powerful new book, Shon Faye reclaims the idea of the 'transgender issue' to uncover the reality of what it means to be trans in a transphobic society. In doing so, she provides a compelling, wide-ranging analysis of trans lives from youth to old age, exploring work, family, housing, healthcare, the prison system and trans participation in the LGBTQ+ and feminist communities, in contemporary Britain and beyond.

The Transgender Issue is a landmark work that signals the beginning of a new, healthier conversation about trans life. It is a manifesto for change, and a call for justice and solidarity between all marginalized people and minorities. Trans liberation, as Faye sees it, goes to the root of what our society is and what it could be; it offers the possibility of a more just, free and joyful world for all of us.
 
Shon Faye was born in Bristol, and is now based in London. After training as a lawyer, she left the law to pursue writing and campaigning, working in the charity sector with Amnesty International and Stonewall. She was an editor-at-large at Dazed, and her writing has been published by the Guardian, the Independent and Vice, among others.
 
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'Fundamentally not a culture-war book. It operates outside the narrow coverage of trans people in the mainstream, and lays bare the inarguable facts.' - New Statesman
 
'Monumental and utterly convincing - crystal clear in its understanding of how the world should be.' - Judith Butler
 
'I am profoundly grateful that [this book] exists ... A book such as this one, in which a trans person has the opportunity to speak clearly and compellingly on their own terms, is a vitally needed antidote ... One book cannot, of course, outweigh such a continual outpouring of animosity. Nevertheless, as drops in the bucket go, this book is an important and weighty one.'  - Felix Moore ― The Observer