Kira Herdman

So far, 2024 has felt worse than 2023 in regards to being transgender in the UK. Just going out and about I seem to be getting more and more stares and faces of disgust chucked my way. So far, no one has come up to me and said anything but it feels like it will only be a matter of time.   I think the main reason for this is the mainstream media never letting go of the constant transphobia they put out and the up and coming General Election. As Rushi Sunak clearly demonstrated on a recent PMQ’s the election is going to be fought on the “woke agenda”, whatever that is. I also thought that the coverage of the murder trial of Brianna Ghay, may she rest in power, by the mainstream media, especially the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph, was very condescending. This is how bad it is, the mainstream media in the UK have put out 154 articles on trans issues every month for the past 7 years. That’s 13,500 articles covering a minority group of less than 0.5% of the population. We get called

Issue 2 of Standing Tall has been released. Here is my editorial from the issue ! ! Welcome to the second edition of Standing Tall, the LGBT+ Magazine for Blackburn with Darwen, By LGBT+ people for LGBT+ People. So, a new year is upon us and it is a very important one for all LGBT+ people in the UK as it is an election year. While Labour is on course for a crushing landslides according to the polls it is not guaranteed. Why is this important for LGBT+ People? Well the current government has set a dangerous president so far regarding LGBT+ rights. Especially against Transgender people but the community at large. The National press is no better also. The latest census puts the LGBT+ population at about 5 million in England and Wales, while the transgender population is 260k, with non-binary, intersex and a-gender people included. The breakdown is there are 48k Trans Men and 48k Trans Women in England and Wales yet daily newspapers like the Daily Mail put out derogative articles about tr