When I was a child, I didn’t have a voice. If I ever dared to tell people how I felt inside, I was shouted down. Silenced. I’ll never forget my mother’s reaction when I finally plucked up the courage to properly come out as trans ten years ago. She was upset because she thought that I would never lead a normal life, or fall in love. I shared her fears and saw nothing but a life of misery, violence and stigma ahead. Truth be told, it wasn’t an unreasonable thing to think – although, at that point, we didn’t know how good I was going to end up looking (thank you, Dr Inglefield!). Still, the world was a different place for girls like us back then. How times change.

In 2014, I interviewed punk rock queen Laura Jane Grace – who’d recently come out as trans in Rolling Stone magazine – and told her I believed we’d reached a tipping point for trans awareness. A few months later, Laverne Cox appeared on the cover of Time magazine heralding just that. She was the first trans person to grace America’s current affairs bible, and certainly the first trans woman of colour. Iconic is an overused word these days – but it was. The public conversation had begun in earnest and, just as gay people had felt increasingly safe to come out twenty years ago, trans people started making themselves known. En masse.

Lea T modelled for Givenchy. Andreja Pejic walked runways in both men’s and women’s wear. Janet Mock published her New York Times best-selling memoir, Redefining Realness. Model Geena Rocero came out as trans in a landmark TED talk. Gucci took on Hari Nef. Caitlyn Jenner swapped the trans closet for the glossy folds of Vanity Fair and became the highest profile trans person in the world. The bloody Wachowski brothers became the Wachowski sisters for goodness sake! Our community was finally stepping out of the shadows – and it felt fabulous.

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In Britain, best-selling young adult author Juno Dawson came out, and Shon Faye joined us as rare trans voices in the British media. Kellie Maloney made headlines, as did radio DJ Stephanie Hirst. Model Munroe Bergdorf became Insta famous and EastEnders featured its first trans character, played by trans actor Riley Carter Millington – along with Annie Wallace in Hollyoaks and Ash Palmero in Coronation Street. Lily Madigan faced horrendous transphobia when she dipped into politics, becoming a cause célèbre and befriending none other than Cara Delevingne. Non-binary couple Fox Fisher and Ugla Stefania appeared on Good Morning Britain. There are many more trans people getting their voices heard, here and worldwide. Too many to name. And, after years of living under a shroud of shame, we won’t be silenced again.

During this period of radical change I’ve taken groups of young trans people to meet with hundreds of media professionals – many of whom had never knowingly even spoken to a trans person before – through a project I co-founded called All About Trans. I’ve found that simply looking into the whites of a trans person’s eyes can have a profound effect on people’s perceptions. It reminds them that, first and foremost, we are human: just like everyone else. Meanwhile, gay campaign group Stonewall has thrown its weight into championing trans rights. And a small charity called Mermaids has risen to national prominence doing life-saving work to support families of trans kids. I wish I’d known about them when I was growing up.

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Visibility is all very well but like any marginalised group of people asking to be treated with basic dignity, the trans community has suffered a cruel backlash. The British media is soiled with anti-trans commentators, foaming at the mouth with visceral prejudices dressed up as ‘concern’ or, in an insult to genuine feminists the world over, ‘feminism’. It’s a peculiar ‘feminism’ that excludes all sorts of women, as outlined in Reni Eddo Lodge’s brilliant best-seller Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race. Read the chapter on the hostility she faced when trying to put forward an anti-racist perspective in feminism. It seems some people think they can speak over black women, trans women, sex workers, working class women and various other marginalised groups. Well, not any more.

These fake ‘feminists’ have also joined forces with the US far right and Britain’s gutter press to create a moral panic about trans children. It echoes the feverish homophobia that led to the introduction of Section 28 in the 1980s, which banned “the promotion of homosexuality” in schools. Back then, gay men were said to be sexual predators, and bigots whipped up fears that children could be influenced by ‘gay propaganda’. Today, there are people who seek to justify discrimination against trans women based on the false and offensive claim that we pose a threat to other women. Sadly, there are awful people from every walk of life, of course, but the research shows trans women are more likely to suffer violence and sexual assault.

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Former US Attorney General Loretta Lynch compared the push for trans equality to the civil rights movement, and warned lawmakers not to repeat the mistakes of the past. In the US, the Trump administration clearly sees trans people as an easy target, the thin edge of a wedge that threatens to undermine human rights across the board. It starts with trying to ban trans people from the military, or making it harder for them to change gender legally – where it ends is anyone’s guess.

But I will tell you this: so long as we have a society that at least aspires to be civilised, trans people are not going to stop asking to be treated with respect. So long as we have a planet there will be trans people, just as there have been in every recorded culture throughout history. In the world I was born into, people like me didn’t win awards, or appear in magazines. We were depicted as objects of pity, ridicule or disgust, if we were depicted at all. Until recently, everything you’d heard about us came from people who were not themselves trans, with nothing to offer but ignorance and stereotypes. In the age of mass media, trans people were actively prevented from speaking. Just as I was silenced as a child, so too was a whole community of people.

That is not the world now. We still have a long way to go, but society will either respect trans people for who we say we are, or not. Just don’t expect us to shut up until we are empowered to live our lives in peace, free from violence and discrimination.

Trans people won’t be erased.