I've always found it extremely weird when there's a post like 'society has evolved past the need for england', or 'let's sink britain into the sea' in the context of transphobia and then theres a million comments like um actually british trans people are the most affected by transphobia in britain how dare you suggest that bc like. ok.

1. I live in poland. I'm trans. poland is extremely transphobic. I make jokes about getting rid of this entire country every day of my life, and so do many trans people i know. I've never seen someone go but uwu I'm polish and trans how dare you say that

2. there are british trans people who do the same

3. if someone is saying we should get rid of england because it's transphobic they're like... pretty fucking obviously not advocating getting rid of trans people

4. It is in fact, a joke. like try as we might tumblr gays are not actually capable of sinking an entire country into the sea

5. Why the fuck is your attachment to the label of "british" strong enough to overlook all of that and jump into defensiveness?

Idk i feel like it ties into the whole "british people say yewchewb- YEAH AND AMERICANS MURDER CHILDREN WITH GUNS" thing. apparently there's now discourse about english breakfasts now, of which ive thankfully only seen the tip of the iceberg, where people went HOW DARE YOU INSULT WORKING CLASS FOOD, for something that turned out to be 100% aristocratic in origin.

I just think it's interesting how joking about getting rid of the us, hungary, poland, canada etc are all acceptable, but not britain, especially since a lot of discourse online focuses on how blatant the nationalistic propaganda is in the us, and how We Europeans would never recite a pledge. But maybe because it's so obvious in the us, people actually see it for what it is. If you're british, and trans/an ally, and your first reaction to someone saying "we should destroy britain because it's transphobic" is "how dare you say someone should destroy me" maybe you should reavaluate why your gut reaction is to think of yourself as british first and trans second. How you're willing to argue with people calling out transphobia just to defend your identity as part of a nation that colonized half the world and is currently actively harming you.

I think a lot of how people have been reacting to transphobia in england stems from this idea that the uk is a First World Country after all, of course those barbaric eastern europeans would have their draconian catholic abortion and lgbt laws, but we the woke, we the civilized would never, so they just react surprised pikachu meme to any reactionary politics in their home country. (relevant anecdote: when I was 11 I went on a school trip to the uk and the british girls there were shocked to see we had our little flip phones. Like they genuinely thought poland was just overgrown with woods and we had bears roaming the dirt roads). Well, I hate to break it to you but poland gave women the right to vote at the same time the uk did. we had legal abortion earlier. the age of consent has been the same for all sexualities since 1948 (compared to... 2000 in the uk. that's insane. like i'm literally older than the most basic aspect of gay rights in the uk) I'm not saying that just because we didn't have laws against it poland was a gay heaven or anything, far from it, but british people need to reexamine the way they have been indoctrinated into believing themselves better than everyone else by virtue of being british if they ever want to contribute something valuable to progressive politics