The University of Cambridge Students Union LGBT Campaign and multidisciplinary network for LGBTQ+ research, lgbtQ+@cam, are delighted to host writer and presenter Shon Faye in conversation with celebrated civil rights and equality campaigner Christine Burns MBE to explore what what lies ahead following the release of Ms Faye's book, The Transgender Issue, in September 2021.

An immediate Sunday Times and Penguin bestseller, The Transgender Issue provides a required counterpart to the usual media discussion of trans rights in Britain. Ms Faye's work follows Reni Eddo-Lodge's Why I'm No Longer Talking To White People About Race (2017) and Juno Mac and Molly Smith's Revolting Prostitutes (2018) to advocate for liberation for a targeted minority class and imagine what that may look like for society as a whole, rather than to fire-fight distracting hostile "talking points".

The Press For Change era in British trans politics, of which Ms Burns was a foundational part, came at a fundamentally different time which required different methods for enacting legislative progress. So what is required now?

As a thematic follow up to their conversation hosted by Blackwell's in Manchester back in September, Ms Burns and Ms Faye are reunited to anticipate potential ways forward for trans rights in Britain today.

About the Speakers

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. Faye recently launched an acclaimed podcast series, Call Me Mother, interviewing trailblazing LGBTQ elders.

Christine Burns MBE has campaigned for thirty years for the civil rights of transgender people, and has been involved with the trans community more widely for more than forty years. She has worked as an equalities consultant, helped to put together new employment legislation and the Gender Recognition Act, and wrote the first ever official guidance about trans people for the Department of Health. She is the editor of Trans Britain: Our Journey from the Shadows. Ms Burns is a member of the lgbtQ+@cam advisory board, and it is a privilege and joy to welcome her back to the University of Cambridge.

About the Book

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 her powerful 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, providing 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. 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.

This event will be online, with a recording available afterwards.