In this special, mostly light-hearted end-of-year retrospective, we look at all that happened in 2024. The good, the bad, the complicated, the profane, the ugly and the yawning chasm of the human soul!!
Featuring:
- Album, film, television show and video game of the year.
- Worst news story, loser and villain the the year.
- Best news story, ally and coming-out of the year!
- Ally, journalist and activist of the year,
And many more!
Explore our voting numbers (featuring pie charts!)
Voice actor
Community vote: Kit Connor – IMDb
WTT Team choice: Erika Ishii – IMDb
Content creator
Community vote: Abigail Thorn. Philosophy Tube – YouTube
WTT team choice: Khadija Mbowe. Khadija Mbowe – YouTube
Album
Community vote: Brat – Charli xcx
WTT team choice: SOPHIE – SOPHIE
Musician
Community vote: Chappell Roan
WTT team choice: Jason Kwan
Game
Community vote: Dragon Age: Veilguard. Save 35% on Dragon Age™: The Veilguard on Steam
WTT team choice: Webfishing. WEBFISHING on Steam
Book
Community vote: Judith Butler – Who’s Afraid of Gender?
WTT team choice: C. Riley Snorton – Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity: Amazon.co.uk
TV show
Community vote: Doctor Who
WTT team choice: Kaos
Film
Community vote: I Saw the TV Glow
WTT team choice: Orlando: My Political Biography (2023) – IMDb
Podcast
Community vote: Trans Radio UK
WTT team choice: The Anti-Trans Hate Machine | A TransLash Media Project
Cracked Egg
Community vote: F1nnster. F1nn5terLIVE – YouTube
WTT team choice: Izak Theo Adu-Watts
Worst News Story
Villain
Wes Streeting
Loser
Community vote: The wizard lady with the mouldy house
WTT team choice: The Tickle v Giggle story
Best News Story
Community vote: David Tennant telling Kemi Badenoch to shut up.
WTT team choice: The German self-ID law.
Ally
Community vote: David Tennant
WTT team choice: Caroline Litman
Lawyer
Community vote: Trans Legal Clinic
WTT team choice: ReactiveAshley
Journalist
Community vote: Erin Reed. Erin In The Morning
WTT team choice: Shivani Dave. Shivani Dave
Protest Sign
Community vote: Cardboard coffins left outside Wes Streeting’s offices in Ilford
WTT team choice: “You wouldn’t steal a cis persons hormones”
Protest Action
Community vote: Trans Kids Deserve Better releasing crickets at the LGB Alliance conference
WTT team choice: Trans Strike Back TDoR vigil outside Tavistock
Activist
Community vote: Trans Kids Deserve Better
WTT team choice: Dr. Ronx
Transcript
[intro music]Flint: Welcome everyone to What The Trans?!
Alyx & Ashleigh: What The Trans?!
Ashleigh: Hi everyone!
Flint: How are we doing?
Ashleigh: Good, yes, yes, yes indeed. We’re recording this real quick after the last episode went out, but this episode’s only going to be coming out in a couple of weeks. So, fun times, hello all of our listeners in the future.
Flint: Woooo!
Alyx: Woo!
Ashleigh: Yeah, we hope everything’s okay there and that the world hasn’t devolved any, well, too much further than it already has. How are you two?
Flint: I’m vibing, I’m vibing. It’s been a good time. Yeah, yeah.
Alyx: Yeah, I’m staying alive I suppose is the best way of putting it… I got back from Rome, and that went well and then my damn friend gave me his bloomin’ cold.
Flint: Aw!
Ashleigh: Not helpful.
Alyx: Yes, if I sound a bit shit, I can blame Archie.
Flint: I’ve now got all of the food and all of the things organised and arranged for my little yuletide meal that I do with my friends, so I’m really excited to get that done because it’s nice. We gather on the solstice like the filthy fucking pagans that we are and we just get together and have a good old time. It’s very gay and fun.
Ashleigh: Hell yeah, yeah, that’s what we’re doing. That’s what we’re doing for yule.
Flint: Sick.
Ashleigh: Which is this coming weekend as we record this, but it will be a couple of weekends ago as you’re listening to this.
Flint: Yeah. [laughs]
Ashleigh: Dear listener. But yeah, filthy fucking pagans all the way down.
Flint: Way!
Ashleigh: Way. Which… there’s a whole episode in there, I’m sure.
Flint: [laughs] There is, one day we’ll do it.
Ashleigh: Yeah, indeed.
Flint: When the news isn’t quite such an avalanche. [laughs]
Ashleigh: [sighs] Okay, well, let’s do what we came here to do, shall we? This is, of course, the first annual What the Trans?! Awards Show.
[award show music]Flint: It is time. It is time for the inaugural first ever, never before happened, newly created, fresh out of the oven What the Trans?! Awards Show. If you have followed our socials or listened to the pod for the last couple of episodes, you’ll know that we’ve been working on this for like the last few months now and can finally present to you, wonderful listeners, the results of your votes. But first, housekeeping.
[sound effect: hoover]Flint: How is this going to work? How did we go about it? Who reads spreadsheets anyway? Well, see, we want to make sure that this operation actually has integrity and we want to be transparent with you about the entire process, including things we thought worked, things we thought didn’t, etc. So, let’s set that foundation by telling you about our methodology. Don’t worry, we’ll get into the juicy stuff in just a second.
[retro video game music]Alyx: Firstly, we decided to have public and open nominations as opposed to providing our own for you to vote on. This means that every single person nominated was by you, the listeners. We then created a voting form with those nominees for people to vote on. Doing things this way has its own set of pros and cons that we’ll get into in a moment.
Ashleigh: Now, we are aware that there’s often been very valid criticism of some award shows using favouritism or completely ignoring their popular vote, bias, changing results, etc. So we want to make sure that we provide no room for this in the first instance. We figured that the best way to ensure that was simply to have our own staff picks. Yes, that’s right. For every category, there will be two winners. One, the winner of the popular vote, and the other is a What The Trans?! team pick. So you know where our votes would go, and so we have no reason to massage any results in any particular direction, because we’ve got our own space to reward people.
They are of equal value to each other. By no means is the team pick a bigger deal than the popular vote or vice-versa, because this is about showcasing and uplifting the community first, and having a bit of a reflection on the year second. We may first consider nominees on the list, but we may also decide on people who were not nominated, but that we think it deserves recognition nonetheless.
Flint: Now, we do reserve the right in exceptional circumstances to take a nominee out of the running before voting, or to choose the second runner-up. But A, we will tell you who and why out of respect for your votes and the nominations, and B, when picking a runner up, this will only happen in circumstances where us, What The Trans?!, awarding a nominee would be against our core values and ethics. So, we try to do some research on the winners and nominees to help prevent that.
However, we can’t promise to be perfect, and are working with a set amount of nominees of those that have been provided to us. If ever you notice someone is up for nomination, who you feel is a bad choice on basis of their actions, morals or ethics, you know, engaging in any of the isms, providing that they aren’t villain or loser of the Year, because that’s kind of the point with them, then please, do genuinely get in touch.
Alyx: So let’s get into the good, the bad and the ugly of this data set before we get into winners. The good is that we’ve got about 50 responses with nominees, which honestly was more than we first anticipated and are very grateful for. Now, looking at the voting, this is where things get pretty wild.
We got just under 1,100 votes. More than we imagined was possible. Certainly for a first-time show like this, and honestly, we were not prepared. Thank you so much for everyone who took the time to do so, and we are overwhelmed in the best way, and honestly did not anticipate this to become as big as it did. Some of the nominations have been fantastic, and clearly, the voters responded to that well, as some winners won by a landslide.
Ashleigh: Now, the bad is a little more tricky. As the nominations and voting rolled in, we realised we’d not done a good enough job making clear what some of the actual categories meant. This is in part because we figured this would end up as, like a fun, small thing for the What The Trans?! Patreon and regular listeners, so we didn’t think to explicitly explain every category, which we should have.
For example, in our category, Loser of the Year, it was initially in reference to those who’d been featured in our… [singing] Loser’s Corner… segment. But the nominees ended up being people that we think are losers, which is fine. And it makes sense as a reading of the category as we provided no explanation on that, which, that’s us. That’s our bad.
Now, that doesn’t mean any nominations that weren’t in line with what we intend for the category are null and void, in fact, the opposite. We are going to honour the votes as they turn out and make sure we provide better information next year on category meanings, so that even if you don’t listen, read or follow us, you know what we’re asking for. To continue the example, this would mean, for Loser of the Year, we would put something similar to “who has taken the biggest L against the trans community either in court or through a failed attempt to transphobia that backfired, etc.” The point is they tried to move against us and they failed.
Flint: We also noticed that quite a lot of nominees were cis in categories that we didn’t expect. In our mind, most of the awardees would be trans people, unless we were talking about categories like ally or villain or some such. As for us, these were awards to give to trans people, not awards simply given out by the trans community. This is another oversight caused by us not being explicit enough in the scope and parameters of our categories.
Where cis people have won, we will still respect that of course, but next year, and moving forward, we’ll be making it clearer that our categories, unless stated otherwise, are first and foremost, to nominate trans people, who are much more likely to be overlooked in their field next to their cis counterparts.
Alyx: Now, fully ugly. Our nomination results were not as diverse as we hoped or anticipated, which is the biggest problem we came across. As we already mentioned, we did not provide any nominations. These were all submissions from you, our audience, be you pod listeners, Discord dwellers or Blue Sky followers, but it would be cowardly to pretend that the buck stops there. In the nominations form, we should have been encouraging people to consider intersectionality from the off, and we didn’t, as we naively assumed, that it would be considered anyway.
Being that this show is a response to the bias in other awards shows that have been widely spoken about, that was a big failing by us, and we are not going to let ourselves off lightly for this. Now, we had to figure out a way to address this, but the most obvious solution of providing our own nominations of people we expected to have been brought up who won would have been tampering with a public vote, which we vowed not to do.
Ashleigh: So our response to this is that this year our team picks are first and foremost going to be focused on providing balance to the lack of representation within the public nominees. We have a lot of winners and nominees that are white, and so we’ve set our focus on people that aren’t, as we do not wish to recreate some of the same issues with poor representation that we initially set out to counteract. Now, this is something we intended to do regardless, like we said, part of the reason for doing this award show in the first place was to address the lack of representation that trans people, disabled people, people of colour, etc. But the specific focus of addressing poor representation in the nominations is not what we created the staff picks for.
Flint: So, time for some less gentle encouragement. Over this next year, we challenge you to widen your focus, diversify your algorithms and your listening, reading and watching habits. This time next year, we hope to see a nominations pool that better reflects the diversity we all know exists in our communities. We are also going to focus on providing better representation in our own reporting, as the onus is also on us to be sharing more of the work, stories, art and actions of people that we want to see. If we want to see more diversity, we have to provide more as well. So we will. But, now that the washing up is done and the laundry has been folded, let’s get stuck into the feast that is the inaugural What The Trans?! Events of 2024.
[pompous music, winding down]Ashleigh: Events or awards?
Flint: Did I say events?
Ashleigh: You did. Sorry darling.
[pompous music, winds up]Flint: Agh! The inaugural What The Trans Awards of 2024. So, first we’re starting off with the arts awards. There’s a fair few of these, which we’re choosing to interpret as a positive thing, trans people being a smart and creative bunch after all. So let’s get right into it.
Alyx: So, starting with Voice Actor of the Year, which made me realise we didn’t have Actor of the Year, but we do have Voice Actor, which is quite funny. And maybe we do an Actor of the Year next year, alongside this. Who knows, the possibilities are endless. Our nominees for this category were Kit Connor, Jacob Tobiah, Erica Ishii, Atlas Morgan and Mel Blanc.
Flint: Which honestly was a really funny and weird one, because he’s been dead since 1989. [laughs] [sound effects]
Daffy Duck: Who is responsible for this? I demand that you show yourself. Who are you?
Bugs Bunny: Ain’t I a stinker?
[sound effects end]Flint: He’s the guy of the voice acting.
[laughter]Alyx: But this time…
[16-bit fanfare]Alyx: Our winner was Kit Connor, who most people will know for playing Nick Nelson in Heartstopper over the last few years. But this year voiced Bright Bill in the film the Wild Robot, which none of us have seen, but I’ve heard described as a film that is not explicitly queer, but nonetheless focuses on found family and learning to be in a community with people different from you, which is lovely and something a lot of trans and queer people will likely relate to.
Now for the team pick, we decided to award Erica Ishii, who came second in the voting and so is the trans person with the most votes, who also has done amazing voice work in shows like Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, Dragon Age: The Veilguard and has recently been cast as the protagonist in Ghost of Yotai, the sequel to Ghost of Tsushima.
We felt it was fitting they get the top spot from us. Erica has spoken about being gender fluid, uses any pronouns, is active in their support for non-profits and generally are looking for any way to bring chaotic gremlin energy into this world and we salute you for it.
[sample] But also, can I say… [bleep] TERFs! Can I say… [bleep] TERFs!Flint: Too fucking right, honestly, sibling in arms, sibling in arms.
Ashleigh: Yeah, you’ve gotta give respect to someone who just promises to bring chaotic gremlin energy.
Flint: If anyone has not seen Erica Ishii in true, full chaotic form, I beg of thee, watch some Drop Out, because the way that they just… Ah, ah, tour de force, I love them, I love them so much.
Ashleigh: Fabulous.
Flint: I was very happy to see them in the nomination. I was like, fuck yes!
Ashleigh: There’s a good few of these where the voting’s kind of gone the way you expect and some of the others where it kind of hasn’t. So with that said, let’s talk about Content Creator of the Year. As we’ll get into a little bit later on, some people who won their award did so by a significant margin and this is kind of the case here. With our winner taking 22% of all the votes cast and the closest contender receiving only 16.3.
We had a lot of really worthy nominations here. So Lily Simpson, Erin Reed, F1NN5TER and Dee Wittnell from Trans Kids Deserve to Grow Up and now as of quite recently also working with Queer AF. But the winner, of course, was Abigail Thorne.
[clip from PhilosophyTube] Abigail Thorne: Met this girl at my uni and I said, hey dude! And she said, I’m actually a woman. I’m a trans woman. And I said, what’s that? And she told me and I was like… Oh that’s fucking gay! [clip ends]Ashleigh: Known for her YouTube content on PhilosophyTube, in recent years she’s become more widely known for her acting too. Her short film on Nebula from earlier this year, Dracula’s Ex-Girlfriend is fantastic and is much darker in tone than that title might lead you to believe. So congratulations to Abigail and here’s to onwards and upwards.
For our team pick we’ve chosen Khadija Mbawe, a black YouTuber who uses they/them pronouns and whose name you might have heard if you watched all the way to the end of HBomberGuy’s video about YouTube plagiarism. Their work looks at a lot of things from your pop culture to your politics and philosophy. They do great work, so seriously, give them a spin.
Flint: Yeah, no for sure. I’ve actually watched Khadija for quite a while now and I really love their content. I’m very, very happy to give a chance to be like, go, go, look at stuff. [laughs]
Ashleigh: Yeah, absolutely.
Flint: It’s one of those things where like, each time that I see a video from them they’ve got a really interesting like, title and thesis. They treat everything with a kind of like, social science-y gravitas that just really, really is very cool. And I love it. I love it because it always ties back into cool like pop culture stuff and everything. It’s great.
Ashleigh: It is. It is. We’ll include links of course.
Flint: Also Khadija is, I believe, a trained opera singer and does have music out, which is just very cool. And speaking of music, our next one is Album of the Year, which we actually only had four nominations for, which were Chromacorpia by Tyler the Creator, Growing Up on the Internet by No Offence, which was in close competition with Sophie, the posthumous album of the iconic artists of the same name, who many listeners will already know. Noah got 21.7% of the vote, but Sophie was just ahead with 29.8%. Our winner, however, which features a track dedicated to Sophie, titled So I…
[Zelda treasure music]Flint: …is Brat, the iconic album by Charli XCX, who was a friend to Sophie and won 37.2% of the vote, being our community pick for the album of the Year. As someone who loves green, I just really got to say that I want to personally thank Charli and Tyler for their popularization of the beautiful hue. Between that and Wicked, this really has been a great year for the colour green in whatever shade, and I’m here for it.
And now for the Team Choice Awards, we have decided with sadness in our hearts to give the award to Sophie, because, well, it was released this year, three years after her death. It’s our last chance to give this gifted trans woman, well, our only chance, realistically, to give this gifted trans woman an Album of the Year award. So we’re going to take it. We miss you, Sophie. Gutted that this is the last we’ll hear from you, and rest in peace.
Ashleigh: So which of these was your favourite, then?
Flint: Oh, okay. So…
Ashleigh: Both of you.
Flint: I really liked the album, Sophie, but I don’t feel it was the best of what I’ve heard from Sophie, which makes sense, right?
Ashleigh: Yeah. Yeah.
Flint: I listened most to Brat, probably. And I’ve listened to a lot of ChromaCorpia as well. But they are such different distinct vibes that it’s kind of like asking me if I prefer apples or chess boards more. Like, sure. [laughs] I can give you an answer. It’s going to mean very little, because I love them both in very, very different ways. But realistically, yeah, it’s Brat and ChromaCorpia are like tied. It’s just what Vibe I want. What about you?
Ashleigh: For me, it was the Sophie album all the way. You know, as soon as I saw it, it was like, holy crap, okay. You know, the final Sophie album. Your criticism about it not being the best of Sophie’s work, yeah, agreed. But like, it was the last she’ll do, you know? So…
Flint: Yeah. It’s not about necessarily that. It’s more about being able to have a chance to say goodbye and to be able to see and feel, you know, what she was creating, what she was working towards. And that’s a really cool thing that, like, you know, just because it didn’t hit me in the exact same way doesn’t mean it’s worth any less or has any less of a good album.
Ashleigh: Absolutely.
Alyx: I think the only one I’ve properly listened to was Brat. And I remember specifically before a podcast recording, asking Flint, what does Brat mean?
Flint: And I, yeah, I’d be like, Brat is not – because I think it was someone who was like, who is Brat? And I was like, Brat is not a who. Brat is an experience. It’s a lifestyle. It’s a dedication.
Ashleigh: It sure is.
Alyx: Yeah, so I was like, Charlie said Kamala is Brat, but does that mean, but she’s part of an establishment, so Brat for me sounded a bit like a rebellious phase.
Flint: But yeah, she was, she was –
Alyx: But then became like, no, it wasn’t quite that.
Flint: Yeah, I think she was trying to do like one of those, you know, like girl power things where she was like, yeah, Kamala is Brat, like she just is Brat, which, you know, that’s a choice. I personally don’t think of… if I think of Brat behaviour, if I think of the lyrics to Charlie XCX’s songs, Kamala Harris doesn’t really come into the same actions and vibes and feelings that I think of when I think of the word bump and that. But you know, different strokes with different folks. It’s all good. [laughs]
Alyx: Got to see some more, talk about some more musicians as next up we have Musician of the Year. This category had double the nominations, but some were double features with Noah Finch and Sophie making second appearances. Janelle Monáe was also a nominee alongside some very niche names like Traventillium.
Flint: Yeah, this is really funny because Traventillium have under 30 listeners on Spotify, meaning that either one of their listeners really, really – like either one of our listeners really, really loves them or one of their band members submitted themselves and is a listener to our pod. Like…
Alyx: Either way, we respect the hustle. Unfortunately it didn’t place high, but that’s because no one stood a chance against this winner. When no doubt most of you will have lyrics memorised too. She is queer and has been everywhere this year.
[music: The Rocky Horror Picture Show]Alyx: It’s your favourite artist’s favourite artist, Chapell Roan, who got a whopping 51.5%. For the team choice, we went with Jason Kwan, who was another nominee, non-binary, glam pop artist based in London. There’s an EP that was out this year called Deja Vu, and we encourage you to check it out if you like pop vibes.
Ashleigh: Yeah.
Alyx: I sounded like a bit of a boomer when I said pop vibes.
Ashleigh: Pop vibes, yeah, indeed. I think for me, being the old, crusty punk that I am, this was only going to go one way. If we’d allowed ourselves to vote in these things, I would have voted for Laura Jane Grace, because she of course had a new album out this year, Hole in My Head, which was brilliant. I saw her on the tour for it, as I mentioned a couple of weeks back. So… yeah. Laura Jane Grace is just wonderful for me, so that’s who I’d have gone for personally and who I advocated for in the team chat before being thoroughly out pointed. So…
[laughter]Flint: The thing is though, is that the musician that I would have… The musician that first came to mind, of like, ooh, who? Was someone who hasn’t put out any music this year, I think, aside from stuff that they’ve put on their YouTube, which is JER, or a Ska Tune Network, as most people will know them. They’re non-binary, they do ska music, fucking great. They’re very big on, like, you know, teaching people the real history of ska music and being very pro-Palestine, anti-transphobia. Like, it’s like proper actual ska, like protest ska, it’s back.
If they had released stuff this year, it felt kind of like we’re looking at artists and I didn’t want to be like, well, there’s these YouTube videos that are really cool, but anything that they’ve released on any of the Spotify’s or SoundClouds haven’t been within the last year, I don’t think, aside from the Ska Tune Network stuff, which is very cool, but is mainly covers, which is why it felt a bit different.
But yeah, that’s who I would have picked, but I am still very glad that we’ve gotten… Like honestly, I didn’t know of Jason Kwan beforehand, and looking through the nominations is what made me look them up and listen to their music. And I really dig it, it’s quite vibes. So, you know, I’m glad that we’ve gotten a chance to showcase someone that even we kind of didn’t quite know of immediately before.
Ashleigh: And in a sense, that was kind of a sneaky, what do you call it, ulterior motive for doing an award show. It was like, hey, let’s crowdsource some media suggestions, and then we as the team can enjoy them.
Flint: That’s true.
Alyx: Exactly, and also finally found out from the team how you pronounce Chapell Roan. I kept saying Chappelle Roan.
Ashleigh: But next, so sticking with the kind of media sphere, next up we have Video Game of the Year, which is a bit of an awkward one, if we’re honest. So we had five nominations of small games like Nightmare Cart, made by the trans game dev known for the Bloodborne Demake, Bunlith, and big ones like Dragon Age: The Veilguard, that came second alongside Dragon’s Dogma 2. But the winner of the vote was The Last of Us Part 2.
Hmm, OK, but where’s the awkwardness you might be asking? Well, it’s because when we were doing research on the nominees, we found that The Last of Us draws inspiration from, and may be directly modelled after, the occupation and circumstances that have led to the genocide in Gaza. Now if you’re a listener, you will know our stance is pretty clear on supporting anything with connections to a literal genocide.
We absolutely respect that people voting were unaware of this, and if they weren’t, then that’s fine, it happens, that’s your choice. But we would feel like hypocrites to offer the reward given our previous statements in support of Palestine. So in this rare instance, we have instead decided to award the second runner-up with the prize…
[musical sting]Ashleigh: Dragon Age: The Veilguard. That has not only queer voice actors in it, but also a character creator that allows you to make trans people that look like you or me, you can even put top surgery scars on your character, and we think that’s pretty neat. So for the team choice, we went with another nomination that was provided to us, Webfishing. A cute little game where you get to fish, and you can get to be a cat or a dog. It’s online and allows for you to wear pride shirts and have little labels attached to your character like trans or queer.
The final thing that cinched this as the choice though, was that when a player complained about there being no straight labels, the devs obliged and made one. For 9999 in-game currency, which is top tier trolling really, you love to see it, honestly. So yeah, slightly awkward. This one, wasn’t it?
Flint: Yeah, like full transparency. We discovered this whilst doing the research when it was late enough into the voting that it was clear that the Last Of Us had already won. And, you know, we didn’t want to just be like, well, okay then, and just kind of throw some of the other things that we had said in the bin or bring up a hypocrisy kind of vibe. You know?
As much as we want to respect the vote, we can’t give an award to a game that has those connections, and we hope that listeners understand why. This isn’t any kind of judgement on anyone that’s bought it. It’s not any kind of statement on, you know, people being morally bad or evil if they played the game or enjoy the game. It’s just what can we as an organisation say, yes, this is great and we support? I don’t know.
Ashleigh: So we’re going to include an article about this very topic in the description for the podcast. So do please check that out. It’s a Vice article, the not so hidden Israeli politics of The Last Of Us Part Two. So as a stickler, as one of life’s natural sticklers, there is another point that I want to raise about The Last Of Us Part Two, which is that it’s been re-released this year as a remastered edition after having been initially released, what, five years ago?
Flint: It was released in like 2020, I think. It’s not even five years old, I’m pretty sure.
Ashleigh: Okay. So it’s like it’s not a new game though, is it? So I was surprised when I saw it doing so well because I was like, but that’s an old game, that’s been out for years. And I get, yes, so there is, there’s a queer relationship in it, isn’t there?
Flint: Yes, yes, there is.
Ashleigh: I suspect that’s why it’s here. And you know, good, you know, you want, that’s exactly what you want to see in top tier gaming now is queer relationships. But there’s some other stuff that’s in it that we cannot support.
Flint: Yeah, yeah, then it’s a shame. I mean, I think also part of the reason why it was there is that Bella Ramsey is involved in it and is non-binary. And obviously, Pedro Pascal’s in the TV show and is very vocally supportive of his trans sister. So like, completely understand why people were like, oh, this, it’s just on our due diligence. You were like, oh, this is a shame. And we hate to break it to you that way. I’m so sorry.
Ashleigh: So yeah, let’s move on.
Flint: Well…
[whip cracks] [sound effect: tape player stops]Editing Amber: Hello, editing Amber here. Just want to let you know I didn’t add that sound in. Flint apparently records with a whip. [laughs] [sound effect: tape player starts]
Flint: Next up, we move on from polygons to the printed word as it’s time for Book of the Year. There were a fair few nominations, a baker’s dozen, in fact. And well, since this is the first year that we’ve done this, we have accepted some submissions from the last few years rather than exclusively from 2024, such as 2021’s Detransition Baby or Julián is a Mermaid, which came out a few years ago. And I think you bought, didn’t you, Ashleigh?
Ashleigh: Yes, I did. I bought it for my nephew for Christmas a couple of years ago.
Flint: But this is another example of a winner cruising comfortably to victory with 37.5% or just under 250 votes. We have…
[music: Sonic the Hedgehog]Flint: Who’s Afraid of Gender by Judith Butler as our winner for Book of the Year. And for our team pick, we’re going to highlight a book from a few years ago as well. In 2017, when C. Riley Snoughton wrote Black on Both Sides, a racial history of trans identity, which we’re going to read you some of the blurb just so you understand the book itself in the book’s own terms.
It identifies multiple intersections between blackness and transness from the mid-19th century to present day anti-black and anti-trans legislation and violence. It’s some really good stuff and we really recommend giving it a read. And actually on the cover of it, I believe it has the picture of William Dorsey Swann, who was the first drag queen that we kind of can conceptualise of, in the colloquial way in America, which is a very interesting cool bit of history. And yeah, go check it out.
Alyx: Moving on from books, we’re now going to talk about TV. And this category is a bit of a landslide. There were many good picks out there, shows like The Life You Wanted, House of the Dragon, Kaos, Ludwig. But given how we have a whole podcasting series dedicated to this thing, it comes to no surprise that 31.7% of the audience voted for Doctor Who to become the TV show of the Year. Of course.
[WhoTheTrans?! theme music]Ashleigh: And for the team’s choice, we’ve decided to award Kaos. Flint, you’ve seen it info dump away.
Flint: Okay, okay, okay, okay. So aside from the fact that it has the iconic Suzy Izzard as one of the fates, beautiful casting, beautiful casting. And many, many talented, wonderful people. The thing for me that really was like, oh, okay. And I actually forgot to bring this up the last time I brought up Kaos on the pod. They have a character who is a trans man played by a trans man, and it’s some of the most straightforward, chilled out rep I’ve seen in a while. And they tie his transness into the story really beautifully.
For anyone who hasn’t seen it, warning, brief spoiler, character in question, Canaeus is actually an Amazonian. And so has to leave the Amazons when he realises who he is. And it’s a very interesting – it’s just beautiful, the way that they weave it all in together. And it feels like, you know, there’s clearly that discussion of having to leave behind a part of your life as you transition to things like that. But it’s also not set up in the immediate, TERFy way that you think it will be.
And it’s more of a, we know and respect who you are, and we want you to live as that. But obviously, the community that we operate in, it means what it means. And if we’re going to respect you as who you are, then we have to treat you the same as we would treat any other man, right? And that’s, it’s just very interesting. It’s very cool, very interesting. Yes, I’m still crying over it being canceled. We move. [laughs]
Ashleigh: Yeah. Well, I’ll have to check it out.
Flint: And this next category, which is also focused on visual media, is another landslide, to be honest. But it’s actually with a lot of strong contenders in the other nominations. And by no means was this an easy feat. Notable mentions to Envy/Desire and to Close To You, which was beat out by The People’s Joker, which got just under 10% of the vote. The main players, however, were The Substance, a great film that I actually saw recently and really recommend, followed by The Wild Robot. That’s the one that Kit Connors starred in. So maybe we should check it out.
[music]But our winner with nearly half of all the votes was the iconic masterful heart wrencher that is I Saw the TV Glow, which is honestly already one of my all time favorites that I have seen about five times. And I’m the kind of person, like, my ADHD means that I do not rewatch things unless I’m like, watching them with someone else that hasn’t seen it before. It’s like that thing of like it’s a new experience then. But if I just put it on and I’ve already seen it, it’s not a new experience. But I’ve seen that film easily about five times.
So that’s how good it is. That’s how much it means to me. I’m at this point willing to just drag people on the street and go Have you seen I Saw the TV Glow and do you want to see it? [laughs] Very glad that that got the popular vote. For the team choice, we picked something that we actually reviewed. Orlando, My Political Biography, which is a wonderful nonfiction question mark film. It is a adaptation of the story of Orlando by Virginia Woolf. But in the same sort of way as a documentary.
Let me try explaining that again. You might notice this is a bit of a weird one, right? So you have the story of Orlando by Virginia Woolf, right? And different trans people, real life trans people are playing out different sections of the story of Orlando interspersed with those people talking about their own experiences with gender. The director, Paul B. Pricario, who previously wrote Test or Junkies and has a long history, actually, of being really vocal on trans rights, being a trans person himself.
I just got to say, like, it’s such a beautiful film that – The kind of central essence of it is that transness is a planetary revolution. And I just – I just think it’s beautiful. And yeah, out of all the other options that we had, there were some lovely ones, but I just when we were looking through it, we were like, yeah, but Orlando. [laughs] We aren’t going to get many more chances to bring up Orlando. So Orlando. [laughs]
Alyx: The review you did on it was fantastic. And you even spoke to some of the filmmakers there as well, didn’t you?
Flint: I spoke to the director. It was actually one of the first things I did for What The Trans?!, so I was sweating out of every possible orifice. I was so nervous. I was like, hang on, I responded to an email like fucking two months ago and now all of a sudden I’m talking to a director that’s been at Sundance. Agh! It’s fine. It’s fine. But no, he was really lovely. And it was a great time. The review is on our site and the interview full transcript is on our site as well. If you wish to hear the words of the man himself.
Alyx: Nice. Some of us just throwing you in the deep end the moment you started, right? [laughs]
Ashleigh: That’s how it works, right? The first thing that we went and did like, as a team reporting with you, Alyx was, hey, let’s go and watch that play by Abigail Thorne.
Flint: Oh, nice.
Alyx: Oh, yeah. I was very thankful that you took the position of the interviewer.
Ashleigh: So am I. You were very drunk.
[laughter]Flint: Okay. Well, that’s – Though I mean, to be fair, the actual first thing I ever wrote for What The Trans?! was the exclusive about Akua Reindorf.
Ashleigh: Oh, yeah.
Alyx: Oh, yeah.
Flint: Yeah. Which again was like, whoa, these people are trusting me a lot. I better not fuck this up. [laughs]
Ashleigh: Smashing it so far, babe.
Flint: Thank you. Well, speaking of people that are in our sort of line of work. What’s the next one?
Alyx: So now we’re going to be talking about podcasts.
Flint: Woo!
Alyx: Our specialty. An award a couple of you decided to nominate us for some reason. But as mentioned before, we have pulled out of our own awards show.
[clip from Brooklyn 99] Humble five? * You know it! * Ahh, I couldn’t possibly.Alyx: But we still have a fantastic selection of podcasts, The Hidden Bookshelf, The Anti-Trans Hate Machine and many more, but known for their fantastic radio shows and live reporting at times…
[16-bit fanfare]Alyx: …the winner of this year’s podcast of the Year goes to Trans Radio UK. And for the team pick, for her gripping wave words and drawing connections between the far right and the anti-trans hate movement that we ourselves have covered many times. The staff pick goes to Imara Jones’ The Anti-Trans Hate Machine.
All: Yeah.
Flint: Yeah. I like these. Yeah. Cool. I like the fact that we’ve got one that’s like much more radio based and then one that’s much more our kind of vibe of like, here’s all the ways they’re fucking us over! I mean, I love that.
Ashleigh: I mean, The Anti-Trans Hate Machine is fucking gripping like hard hitting stuff really. Because obviously the situation in America is continuing to escalate terrifyingly. And so it’s – they’ve done like three seasons of The Anti-Trans Hate Machine now. And so the third season is this year. Goddess only knows what the fourth and fifth seasons are going to be like, right? So, so yeah. Anti-Trans Hate Machine is brilliant. Give it a listen.
Alyx: I mean, the news rumbles on like, with The Anti-Trans Hate Machine.
Flint: Well, yeah. And I mean, you know, if you thought that we were going to have a week free from current affairs. Oh, sweet children, the cycle stops for no one. But it’s not all bad. I mean, okay, it is maybe about 60% bad if we considered each category by their proportional amount in relation to the whole. But that does not mean that it’s not cathartic.
[music]Ashleigh: So.
Flint: So.
Alyx: So yes. So the first one we have is of course, it’s always big news when we get new members of our community. And we’ve all been there when we realised we aren’t quite as cis we thought we were. And as a community, we’re always keen to welcome new members to the community. And with this award, we can recognise some of the new people who have recently joined us. And on the note of someone learning new things about themselves, our winner this year goes to…
[clip by F1NN5TER] I want to show you something, chat. I started HRT. [Pokemon, pokeball capture music]Alyx: F1NN5TER, a streamer and a content creator who has cracked many eggs, including myself.
F1NN5TER: I’m picturing, like a round of applause as chat goes and says woo.
Alyx: We almost got Finn onto our cis allies special. But alas, it was a bit too late for that one. For our team pick, we went with another nominee, Isaac Fiorado, who came after his mother Sadé dedicated a song to him on her new album, which is a lovely, endearing thing to do and a kind of parental love we need to see more of in this world.
Ashleigh: Yeah. And like F1NN5TER has wasted no time getting on with helping the community with the money that they’ve put forward for helping out in terms of people’s transitions and just immediately throwing their resources into, you know, being such a pillar of the community is fantastic. You love to see it.
Flint: You do. You really, really do. Like, it’s one of those things that would have been a phenomenal pick for ally of the Year, but then took herself out of the running. [laughter] Understandable. Yeah.
Ashleigh: So going from, you know, some really good positive news to something a lot less good and positive. From welcoming new members to our community, we go on to the worst parts of it. When those in power often want to prevent new people from joining our community and use us as political pawns in their own self interest. This is the worst news story of 2024.
There was a large range of stories to choose from. And we did receive some nominations for the ongoing genocide in Palestine, with these new stories showing the worst in humanity. And you may notice that they did not appear on the list. We all know that that was the worst news story of the year. Horrors which feature in it means it’s in absolutely its own league. And with that as a team, that is what we want to award as the worst news story. What else could it be?
Flint: Yeah.
Ashleigh: In the main vote, however, we still have a list of villains which you, dear listeners, have voted for. This was one of the most voted for categories with 961 votes submitted overall. But by numbers, it was split basically between two stories. The US election and, prepare that bell, because it’s the Cass Review.
[sound effect: Bell. Many bells, glitching. Explosion]Ashleigh: And it was close. With 312 votes, the US election was just about beaten by the Cass Review with 337. It was close, right? 25 votes decided it. So, fun times. Like, there is nothing else that we could have said was Worst Story of the Year as a team choice.
Flint: Oh, absolutely. And it felt really distasteful to put that on the list with all of the other things as if it is the same as those other things. So, that’s why we went, well, that’s going to be the staff pick because we wanted to do that anyway. I think it also might make it a bit clearer now why we also could not award The Last Of Us. Because if we have these categories and we’re talking about these things, you know, continuity.
Ashleigh: Yep. Through lines.
Alyx: Yep. That’s exactly it.
Ashleigh: So, onwards. So, we’ve talked about a lot of bad news stories on this show. A few, you know, a cast of characters does keep popping up. So, let’s talk about the villains.
[spooky organ music]Ashleigh: When the Cass Review was released, there was always going to be a revolving door of bastards ready to come welcome this horror show into the NHS. And in this case, one particular villain has stood out more than most. And with a permanent ban now being put in place. With 281 votes or a full 28% of the vote, Wes Streeting is the audience’s pick for Villain of the Year. Out of all the bastards on the list, Trump, Elon Musk, Hilary Cass, he became the top pick.
And alongside this, as you might imagine, Benjamin Netanyahu was also nominated, an evil so despicable that words struggle to truly portray the violence that the state of Israel has unleashed upon Palestine. We decided the level of harm he has caused was so, so, so far above the others that we couldn’t fairly include it alongside people like Ben Shapiro and Hilary Cass. So, we chose him as our team choice for Villain of the Year because it would be ahistorical not to, honestly.
Alyx: Yeah. Simple.
Flint: Yeah. Simple. Like, we can’t, we can’t hold in the water, talk about Villain of the Year and not bring up that dude.
Ashleigh: Yeah. Pretty much. So, okay.
Flint: And now, well, now we have one of the more misconstrued categories, but nonetheless, there were definitely many submissions. It is time for the last Loser’s Corner of the year, everybody.
[singing: Loser’s Corner]Flint: Moment for Jingle. [laughter] So, mainly amongst our submissions, we saw the biggest anti-trans names you know, like that Irish dude who keeps harassing people and the lady who got chased out of Brighton and really likes soup or the rich fascist guy whose daughter went no contact with them. Oh, okay, that one’s actually a bit too vague. We were talking about Elon Musk.
The winner of this category was the wizard lady with the moldy house. Yep, her. But here’s the rub, dear listener. We have a little bit of an in-house rule that some of the worst anti-trans agitators, the ones who are trying the hardest to stay in the news cycle in order to victimise us, don’t deserve space on our platform because it helps further their career and distracts us for silly cultural wars instead of real news.
So, yes, she is the winner. But at what cost to us? The thing is, is that obviously it’s no shade. It completely makes sense why people filled out the way that they did. And obviously, they did pick people that we do consider to be losers really in the grand scheme of things. But the way that we envisioned this would work more along the lines of like, quote, the person that got owned the hardest while trying to do a transphobia. So our team choice was Giggle. The app taken to court that forced the question, what is a woman? And got the answer, not your definition.
[sample: Oops!]Flint: It tickled us greatly, and they lost the case. And we hope you being reminded of it now provides a good Giggle.
[sound effect: laughter]Alyx: Oh yes, that’s my favourite court case name ever.
Ashleigh: Mine too. Tickle versus Giggle. Yeah, fantastic. No notes.
Flint: Honestly yes. Yes. Brilliant. And honestly, well done, taking ‘em to court. Proving ‘em wrong. We love to see it.
Alyx: And thank you for having the best name for it, honestly. Otherwise it wouldn’t be so memorable. We’re like, oh, that one. The moment we were thinking up ideas.
Flint: The one that sounds like it’s primed and ready for a pantomime job.
[laughter]Alyx: That was a good story to see that you fuck around and you find out.
Flint: Yeah, I mean, why not move on to happier shores, eh? [laughs]
Alyx: Exactly. And from losers, we now have winners. And the news doesn’t always have to be about the evils and who is doing the evil. It’s also about our successes and moments of joy. Successes like in Germany, where they passed their self ID law, the Prides and Wales this year and the rejection of the Tory party. And one Tory who got particularly rejected was Kemi Badenoch, getting told to shut up by David Tennant. And with that, with over 400 votes, this was the positive news story of the Year.
[sample: Tennant as The Doctor] Oh yes!Alyx: That’s all pretty cool. But also for us, our team choice was we chose one of the other nominations. Specifically, the change to the self identification model of gender in Germany, because that’s absolutely a plus wherever it takes place. So congratulations to our German trans comrades.
Flint: Yeah, honestly, that’s – it’s just sick. Good news. It’s probably the new story that I think benefits the most people. And yeah, I think it’s really easy to let little bits of news like this be like, oh, yeah, well, they brought it in there. Okay, that’s cool. And then you move on to the next horror show of like, but what are they doing to us now? And it’s nice to just be like, no, wait, hold on to that information for a second, take it in. They passed it. They passed it. That’s great. That’s fucking good. And we shouldn’t allow it to just be something we scroll past on the next thing that can make us angry.
Ashleigh: Well said.
Flint: Thank you. [laughs]
Ashleigh: So we now move on to the Action Awards, by which we mean not just the obvious protests and direct actions that have happened, but in general, this is to celebrate those who have been actively working towards bettering our rights and/or standing up for us. So let’s talk about the Ally of the Year.
Now remember what we said about some of our nominees winning by a significant margin? Yeah, this is another one of those. So we’re on to Ally of the Year. And again, some big names here too, like Jamie Lee Curtis and Janey Godley. But our winner with an outstanding 65% of all votes…
[sample: Tennant as The Doctor] Oh yes!Ashleigh: …was David Tennant.
[sample: Tennant as The Doctor] Oh yes!Ashleigh: The Scottish actor has a trans child, so he’s got some skin in the game and has loudly defended them on several occasions. He was pictured wearing a trans flag t-shirt that said, “you will have to go through me”. And quite famously, picked a fight with Kemi Badenoch, which she immediately turned into a misogynoir argument without addressing the substance of his criticisms. So I’d say Tennant won that one on points.
However, for our team choice, we’re in slightly more somber territory, because our team pick is someone who was pushed into being an ally in the very worst of circumstances. Caroline Littman lost her trans daughter Alice to suicide and has spent many days since coming out to bat for the trans community in memory of her. She is frequently writing letters and sending FOI requests to hold government figures to account. And the work she does is tremendous.
And it’s sickening that she recently found out that Alice had been left out of the report compiled into trans suicide, despite her very obviously and definitely fitting the criteria. So if you see Caroline at an event, give her a hug from us. Two different fields there. But I think I was really surprised by just how much David Tennant won this by.
Flint: I kind of was and I wasn’t on the one hand, I was like, wow, but on the other ones, once I took a second, I was like, I mean, it’s David Tennant, you’ve got the queers and you got the nerds. All writing…. Like, this makes a lot of sense. This is giving very tumblr. I say that as someone that was on tumblr during those years. Okay, I’m calling myself out. It’s fine.
But yeah, I think it’s bittersweet with Caroline being the choice. But we felt considering the circumstances and considering the amount of work that we’ve seen her do, it would be kind of cruel to not bring that up and to talk about it because she’s doing what we, you know, always want people to do and it’s a shame that she’s doing it under the circumstances that she is. Because no one should have to.
Ashleigh: Yeah. Yeah.
Alyx: So we always seem to have an endless stream of news about legal challenges and changes to the law. Always seeming to be those wanting to make our lives worse. But there are so many folks who have been fighting in the courts for us. And this award is meant to highlight those who have been on our side of the court. And this year with 41% of the vote or 333 votes overall…
[music]Alyx: …is Trans Legal Clinic, a trans legal practice whose mission is to provide free and accessible legal help to transgender and non-binary people in need. For runners up, there’s also Robin White and Good Law Project who have done some fantastic work and we look forward to seeing what they got up to this year.
But for the team’s choice awards, you may have seen her constantly appearing in our episodes, but she just keeps doing amazing work busting out FOIs for essential information that trans people need to know, putting together live threads detailing important events like the Supreme Court case. So this year we are awarding ReactiveAshley as our team choice award for Lawyer of the Year.
Ashleigh: Yeah.
Flint: Yeah.
Ashleigh: Glad we finally got an interview with ReactiveAshley.
Flint: The amount of times that we’ve had to say like, thank you to ReactiveAshley for this, and thank you to ReactiveAshley for following this up. Thank you. Like, honestly, woman’s doing amazing work.
Alyx: I don’t know, she keeps track of so many FOIs all the same.
Ashleigh: [laughs] Yeah, I know.
Flint: Oh, it’s some Charles Xavier gigabrain ability that I just wish I could have.
Alyx: I must presume there must be a pretty good spreadsheet going on.
[laughter]Ashleigh: Just one?
Flint: The question of who uses spreadsheets anyway.
Ashleigh: Well, really, you know, we’ve answered our own question. It’s us.
Flint: It’s us. It’s us. We’re the spreadsheet nerds.
Ashleigh: But also definitely ReactiveAshley. And fantastic for the work that she will continue to do. Great to see Trans Legal Clinic getting representation as well.
Alyx: Yeah, we’ve been hearing some good stuff about them in the background, but never really had the chance to bring them up. So it’s just been really good to show them here as well.
Ashleigh: Someone else we should probably try and get an interview with at some point.
Flint: I mean, that’s what we made this for. It’s because there’s so many times that we are wanting to take a moment to be like, by the way, this person’s really fucking cool and is doing cool stuff. And we should talk about that. And, you know, that’s why we have this here. So we can do that. Yeah.
Alyx: So that was Lawyer Of The Year and help with our journalistic work. And I’m sure many other journalists really appreciate the work that Ashley’s done. And I suppose for the next one, we have Journalist of the Year. And for this one, we ended up going pretty international. Now, some people while voting were very kind enough to nominate What The Trans as a whole or some of our individual contributors, which was lovely to see. But we didn’t want to turn this into a let’s congratulate ourselves exercise. We do that in all of our other episodes.
[clip from Brooklyn 99] Ahh, I couldn’t possibly.Alyx: If you nominated us for this, thank you so much. It really does mean a lot for people to rate us like this. But the whole point of this exercise is to highlight other people. So that’s what we’ll do. So this was another really contested category with some fantastic people being nominated. But equally with one very clear winner, Jess O’Thompson, Vic Parsons, and Lee Hurley all got dozens or hundreds of votes each. But the winner with 283 or 37.3%…
[Sonic the Hedgehog music]Alyx: Was Erin Reed. Reed is based in the US and is a fearless independent journalist relying on crowdfunding for her wage. If you’ve not checked her work out, we will definitely be signposting to it.
Flint: Yeah, she recently got married as well to representative Zooey Zephyr.
Ashleigh: She did indeed.
Flint: Which is a beautiful wedding from what I saw online and also Abigail Thorn was there, which is also just very cool. And what a small world.
Ashleigh: Trans World is yeah.
Flint: It’s a smaller world.
[laughter]Alyx: And of course, we’ve now got the team’s choice award. So picking Journalist of the Year was really tricky. There are some really cool journalists in that community doing some brilliant work. And as someone who regularly appears on TV, regular radio appearances and Virgin Radio or writing for other outlets, we are excited to award Shivani Darve with Journalist of the Year.
Ashleigh: Yeah.
Flint: Yeah. This is a part because we noticed that Shivani had been nominated for the Content Creator of the Year. And that was a really cool savvy nomination. But we also know that they’ve done writing for Queer AF and we’ve seen them on radio and have even had appearances on TV. So yeah, we figured maybe this is more than content actually, like self described as journalist, then yeah, journalist. So let’s give the accolades, right?
Alyx: Yeah.
Flint: And so with the next category, we’re getting a little bit more focused on the artistic side of direct action. It’s time for the Best Protest Sign. And we had some really, really great contenders here, like including the really punny surf and turf with a picture of the famous wizard ladies face superimposed onto a shrimp. Another voter favorite was just a David Tennant cardboard cutout, which is pretty funny. But you know, that dude’s already gotten enough now, I think. I think he’s got enough awards from us, I don’t know. [laughs] And then there’s the more direct I don’t want to attend another trans kids funeral sign that was, you know, very hard hitting and very true and was just behind it in the polls.
But the winner of this category is not actually a sign per se. They were made out of cardboard with statements on them though. And we’re going to say that that counts. These are the coffins that have been made by Trans Kids Deserve Better and left outside the office of Wes Streeting, which in the last episode we told how they had upped their game, making a life size one with “we will live out spite” on it. Nice one. A lot of these coffins have different statements on them. Please go look them up and see the ones that you can see because several people have left them in different places.
Alyx: And it’s been like one coffin every day for 100 days. Which is insane.
Flint: It is an action in and of itself, which is very, very cool. And for the team choice, we picked one that came up during the summer. I think it was actually at London Trans Pride. It’s made me chuckle every time since – that I thought about it. Amber, if you can put in music that’s similar to the famous piracy advert, that’d be fucking great.
[music: you wouldn’t steal a car]Flint: Thank you so much. For the team choice, we picked one that came up during summer, I think at London Trans Pride and has made us chuckle every time since. Certainly me every time I think about it I’m like ha ha. It is “you wouldn’t steal a cis person’s hormones” in the same font as the classic advert that funnily enough got sued for not paying the musician properly. So yes, the anti-piracy advert got done for piracy. That’s your totally unrelated trivia fact of the day. But yeah, that’s that. What do we think? How are we feeling about these?
Ashleigh: There was some very, there was a very strong sign game.
Flint: Really, really was, really was with funny people, the trans community. We’re funny people.
Alyx: Yeah, our community are damn good at signs.
Ashleigh: Yeah.
Flint: We keep having to make them. [laughs]
Ashleigh: Yeah, unfortunately, we keep having things to write protest signs for. So…
Alyx: No, and the one problem for me is that you all make such good protest signs. But when I’m out at protests, I spend half my photos… just taking photos of protest signs, because they’re all so damn good. And it takes up so much space, but it’s so worth it.
Flint: Hmm. And it’s also really great because it’s a great way to show what people are thinking and what people are saying without having to put their face and their identity on such a public platform, which is also a really good important part of protest actions as well. Speaking of actions, we’ve got another one, don’t we?
Ashleigh: Yes, indeed. So we have a whole ass category for Action of the Year or Protest of the Year. And I think now that I’ve said the category out loud, a lot of you will know who the winner is. So this is the protest action of the Year, and it’s another one where the winner wasn’t even close. Honourable mentions, of course, to London Trans Pride and Brighton’s protest against Posey Parker, aka Kelly J. Keen. And Trans Kids Deserve Better occupation actions at the Department of Education and at the NHS were both strong contenders. But the winner, of course, with nearly half of all votes cast…
[music]Ashleigh: …was the aforementioned Trans Kids Deserve Better releasing crickets inside of the LGBT alliances conference. What else could it have been? In fact, you can go right ahead and interpret this as a kind of foreshadowing before we move on to the next one. Now for our own Action of the Year, we went with the Trans Day of Remembrance vigil that lasted 12 hours and was fairly recent, taking place in late November, of course, and was organised by Trans Strikeback.
And it was a very long action with not a massive amount of people there, but it clearly meant so much to every individual. And that kind of community spirit is needed in the darkest of times. So well done, Strikeback for all the work you do and for leading the vigil so effectively. Obviously, it was going to be the release of the crickets.
Flint: Yeah. Yeah, I mean…
Ashleigh: So we had 48.4% of all of the votes for Protest of the Year, of which there were 895 in particular, which means 433 votes were for the release of the crickets.
Flint: Which I love when we say it as the release of the crickets.
Ashleigh: Yes. Release the crickets!
Flint: [laughs] Yes, it really gives it that…
Alyx: We plagued them with the crickets.
Flint: Yeah.
Alyx: I would suggest a bit of calculating and even and if you include and Trans kids deserve better really dominated.
Ashleigh: They did.
Flint: They absolutely did.
Alyx: The competition. I’ve just added together the crickets, the Department of Education and the NHS ledge and that adds up to 85% of the vote.
Ashleigh: Really? So they kind of cornered it there, didn’t they?
Flint: Yeah, I love it. They kind of, they – I was about to say they got a monopoly, but they’re anti-capitalist; we aren’t going to want to say that.
[laughter]Flint: Finally, after all of these, finally, we have the last reward. And it is another award that was won by quite a comfortable margin. In fact, over half of the vote. This is Activist of the Year. And there are a lot of solid choices here too. Faye Johnston, Shivani Dave again and Trans Actual with Erin Reed popping up in here too. But storming to victory with fully 52.1% of all of the votes was again…
[fanfare]Flint: Trans Kids Deserve Better. This group of young intrepid insurrectionists first popped up this year and within weeks had made a significant statement with their occupations and leaving of small coffins outside Wes Streeting’s constituency. Obviously, it makes sense that they have been the MVP of this year in terms of direct actions. And yeah, I mean, this is probably the least surprising result out of all of them. Now, when it comes to the team choice awards, the pick for fantastic activist was actually a really tough one.
But on this occasion, we kept noticing someone that was turning up to protest a lot that we kept seeing on vox pops of talking really good stuff on trans healthcare. This is of course, the Dr Ronx, who also has done great work hosting many important documentaries and has some fantastic published books and podcasts. We really encourage you to go and check them out. Yeah, final one, we’ve done it!
[musical sting]Ashleigh: We did it! It was did by us. So yeah, I mean, as you say, TKDB, definitely the MVPs of 2024. Well done to them. Fantastic work. I’m excited to see what they do next.
Flint: Yes. Same.
Alyx: Oh, definitely. They’ve done some great work. It was a great honor to be there at pretty much the majority of their protests as well.
Ashleigh: Yes indeed.
Alyx: And it’s just been iconic. And…
Ashleigh: Yes.
Flint: Hmm.
Alyx: It was literally not a surprise. I was pretty much bet – I would have bet £1,000 that they would’ve won, even before seeing the results.
Ashleigh: Yeah, for sure. I mean, who else could it have been really? Although I guess like if we’d changed Activist to Activists of the Year, we’d have given the game away.
Flint: Yeah, it’s really interesting, the way that we kind of will have something in mind we’ll write it out and then people will respond in a way we’re like, ah, we didn’t consider this.
Alyx: Definitely. It’s like we’ve learned a lot of lessons. And it’s sort of, we realized, okay, things might not have gone as we’d hoped for this year, but we’ve now got a solid foundation to then build upon for the next time and hopefully a couple of times we do this.
Flint: Yeah. Oh, and also, since we’re talking about reconfiguring, you know, awards, it’s a good thing to note. Can’t guarantee that all of these awards are going to make it to next year. Can’t guarantee there won’t be some new different awards next year. But if you have any suggestions for categories that you would like to see, please send them in.
If you also have any pointers because you’re a data nerd, or because you’ve done awards stuff in the past, and you have any pointers or tips for us because you’re seeing how much we are winging this on a hope and a dream, then by all means, lend us your expertise, dear sweet listener, we will very much be thankful for them.
Alyx: Exactly. I think what was it on the chats we had Oh, let’s do an award show. How hard could it be?
[It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia theme]Ashleigh: Famous last words.
Flint: Turns out it was very hard. [laughter] But I mean, okay, we’re at the end of it now, right? And we’re at the end of the Year as well. So how has this year been for everyone? Like, what are we thinking on the year? How would you like to reflect a little bit on what this year has been like for us each?
Ashleigh: Well, I’d certainly say it’s radicalised me a bit more. You know, in terms of the structures, you know, the power structures that exist will not save us. So we have to, we have to look after each other. I think mutual aid is going to become very, very important for probably all trans people in the UK. I think we’re going to have to rely on each other. As this embarrassment of a Labour government continues. Yeah, I shouldn’t have answered first, because I’ve just really depressed everybody again.
Flint: No!
Ashleigh: But let’s legit let it radicalise you. Don’t… don’t get just, you know, despondent, don’t get depressed and sad. Fucking get angry.
Flint; Mmm.
Alyx: It’s definitely more we need to make, because we’ve been seeing all these iconic actions, these works of just brilliant protests and allyship coming together. And as a community, there’s a lot of shit being thrown at us. And even in this year, it can show that we’ve been able to come together and work together to fight this shit. And the fight continues next year is essentially part of it. And as we’ve learned lessons, you’ve all no doubt learned some as well. And as I said, and you’re pulling together and my God, what a year it’s been.
Flint: I feel like this year for me has been an exceptionally weird one. It’s been kind of nebulous in like the extremities of it, I guess. Like, I don’t know, I started out this year in a sort of grayscale, right? Like, I didn’t realise that it was kind of my normal at the time to… but when you’re trans and disabled, it’s very easy to get, like, really isolated and to just feel like any potential you have is just kind of wasting away. And I didn’t realise I was as far into that mindset.
And it’s, honestly, a lot of that’s changed because I like emailed into What The Trans?! when you put out a call out for people. Like on a very serious note, like, I was like, well, fuck it, I’ll help out proof reading a little bit if someone needs to write up a little something, I’ll do it, you know, it’s a vibe. And then within like, I don’t know, a couple of months, I was, like, surrounded by really incredibly talented people with a shit ton of knowledge, who are all not just, like, happy to teach you, but eager to teach you and eager for you to learn. I’ve learned so much about production, about editing, about journalism. It’s been phenomenal.
And like, I don’t know, I think that that while the world has been crumbling, it feels like, is a crazy thing to grapple with at the same time. Like, I feel like I’m doing better and everything else is getting worse. So what can I do to help not make things get worse on the outside, right? And yeah, like, I don’t know, being connected to this community, not just for the trans, but like the wider community has, you know, because of the work that I’ve been able to do for you, like, I mean, for us, it’s like, it’s been able to help me realise as well that like, transition like medical transition for me is the next natural step.
And it’s a step towards comfort for myself and not away from my comfort zone, if that makes sense. Like, there’s so many, I think, really wonderful things that have happened. And yet at the same time, we’ve seen this like vice grip, just kind of clenching and on around us. And it’s weird. It’s weird holding that duality. And it’s very, very cool to feel like we’re in a space where we get to not let that just end there. And we get to be like, well, what can we do? How can we do it? Let’s do it.
Right? There are protesters out there that need to get their message out. Let’s fucking do it. There’s someone out there that’s got some art that they really want to share. And they don’t know if it’s going to get to the right people. Let’s help share it. Right? Like, I’ve been able to rep my community and the area that I live in in the northeast. And that’s something that I don’t know, feels very cool and powerful and quite intimidating as well.
Because it’s like, ah, you know, like that ability to showcase the cool queer stuff from around me and be like knowing that there’s like people, like in so many far away places that now know about like cute little queer bookshops that are in the northeast and things like that. Like that’s, I don’t know, it’s very cool. It’s very cool. And it’s very weird when I think about this year and I reflect on it. And then I’m like, ah, so much, so much of everything. So many colors, all of them vibrant, not necessarily pleasant, but all of them vibrant.
Alyx: No, definitely. Other points you made about What The Trans?!, it has been a bit of a crazy year. We’ve had massive changes in leadership and we’ve had lots of new people join and new stuff prop up like Who The Trans?! and quite frankly, it’s just been a bit of a busy year for us as well.
Ashleigh: It has, yeah.
Alyx: And just I suppose, I just want to thank the audience for sticking with us this year as well.
Flint: Yes. Yes. Also because like, it’s very weird and intimidating being a new voice on a podcast.
Ashleigh: I think you’ve fitted in really nicely.
Flint: Thank you. I appreciate it. Like it’s funny because like I say when I responded to the email, I was like, oh, I’ll help out writing. And then you’se were like, hey, do you want to talk about Doctor Who for an hour and we’ll put it on the Patreon? I’m like, okay, yeah, sure. I can handle that. I can info dump about one of my favorite TV shows. And then when you were like, do you want to try out the main pod? I was like, sure. Hey, if you want me to do that, I’ll try to. But inside I was very nervous, like really nervous. [laughs]
Ashleigh: Honestly, it didn’t show. Nicely done.
Flint: Thank you.
Ashleigh: You’re taking it in your stride.
Flint: Well, it’s been, it’s honestly been in part because you’se have been so helpful and encouraging and supportive. And I think that this little team that we have is something really cool and really special. And I’m glad that we’re making it stronger and bigger. And we’re like, you know, doing the cool stuff with it.
Ashleigh: Oh, stop it, you.
Flint: Never.
Ashleigh: Yeah, well, thank you for saying that. I think it’s, I guess, so often we, because I spend so much of my time up to the elbows in the really depressing news and writing about it and stuff. And so kind of hearing something, hearing somebody with something positive to say about What The Trans?! about this thing that we have built together. That’s really nice. And I think I needed to hear that. So thank you.
Flint: Yeah, I’m glad. I’m glad.
Ashleigh: And yeah, so on that note, thank you all for listening. I hope you’ve had a wonderful Christmas and have a happy new year, whatever it is you’ll be doing. We’ll be back next year, of course. And yeah, you can find us in all the usual places, Blue Sky, Facebook, the hellsite still, even though we don’t really post very much there.
Flint: [laughs]
Ashleigh: We’ll be back and look after yourselves and check out our website, which is we’ve referred to several reviews that we’ve done of I Saw the TV glow, among other things. It’s on our website. That’s where you can find it. And we’ll speak to you soon.
[outro music]Flint: And of course, none of this at all would be possible without our sponsors, by which I mean our Patreons.
Alyx: Yes.
Ashleigh: Yes, indeed. Our Patreons who…
Ashleigh, Alyx & Flint: Carly Silver, B2, Smiley, friend of Candy from across the pond, The Socialist Party of Great British (SPGB est 1904), Alyssa, Sarah, Alison Cole, Erris, Tim Rufo, Maestrum, Lex Phoenix, Sebastian Sings Soprano, Joe the low-quality enby, Andrea Brooks, Jack Edwards, Dulcie, Stefan Blakemore, [unclear], needles and threads, Flaming Dathne, Dr McGee, Gen, Rachel Harris, Katie Reynolds, Georgia Holden Burnett, Grabilicious, Mx Aphen, Rootminusone, Grey, Elisabeth Anderson, Bernice Roust, Ellen Mellor, Jay Hoskins, Trowan, Ashley, Setcab, Jane, Roberto de Prunk, Rose Absolute, Sarah, Sinna, Kiki T, Dee, Skye Kilaen, Eric Widman, Bee, Jude, [French accordion plays] monsieur squirrel, Fergus Evans, anubisajackal, Camina, Brandon Craig, braykthasistim, Sian Phillips, Heidi Rearden, Ezra, Lentil, clara vulliamy, Amelia, Samantha Raven, Ravenheart bringer of the heavy metal, Tabitha Jo Cox aka Candy, Fiona Macdonell, Murgatroid, ontologicallyunjust, Stella, Cyndergosa, Rebecca Prentice, [crazy reverb] Crazzee Richard, danoblivion, Florence Stanley, Helen_, Elle Hollingsworth, Melody Nix, Fiona Punchard, John, a mysterious, anonymous patron (ooooh! [X-Flies theme]), CB Bailey, Gordon Cameron, Ted Delphos, Kai Luren, Vic Parsons, Patreon User, Vic Kelly, Katherine, Sabrina McVeigh, Cassius Adair, Melissa Brooks, Karaken12, April Heller, Sofie Lewis, Alexandra Lilly, Claire Scott, Ariadne Pena, Lauren O’Nions, Bernard’s Pink Jellybean, Lenos, and Chris Hubbly.
Alyx: Thank you all for watching.
Flint: Thank you so much.
Alyx: Thank you, have a happy new year.
Flint: Yeah have a wonderful year, be good to yourselves, be good to others, bye.
Alyx: Bye.
Ashleigh: What they said.
[laughter]
