Skip to main content

'The Transgender Issue': Shon Faye in Conversation with Sarah Lamble

When: —
Venue: Online

Book your place

This event will take place online via Collaborate. A link to join the session will be emailed to attendees a few hours before the event.

Please note: this event will be recorded.

Shon Faye, author of the 'Transgender Issue: An Argument for Justice' (Allen Lane, 2021) discusses her new book with Sarah Lamble, Reader in Criminology and Queer Theory in Birkbeck's Department of Criminology. 

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 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.

This event is organised by Birkbeck Gender & Sexuality (BiGS), a forum for innovative interdisciplinary collaboration and exchange in gender and sexuality studies.

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. This is her first book.

Sarah Lamble is Reader in Criminology and Queer Theory in the School of Law, Birkbeck, University of London.  Lamble’s research addresses gender, sexuality and criminal justice, with a focus on grassroots community engagements with transformative justice. Lamble is co-editor of the Routledge Social Justice Book Series and an organising member of Abolitionist Futures. 

Contact name: