Brass tacks: Building a trans inclusive movement
A central issue with fighting back against gender critical politics is funding and organisation. As has been repeated across the media this week J K Rowling has stumped up north of £70,000 in support of the For Women Scotland case, and with £10,000s more in support of the likes of Maya Forstater. Gender critics have backers with deep pockets, all of whom have kept their identities behind the scenes. The trans community and their allies have historically not had this level of funding, in part because the community has been small and in part because being trans has usually come with a degree of socially derived poverty. Here I want to break down the actual costs necessary to fight back against gender critical politics and how we can effectively go about both organising and raising those funds.
It is crucial to note that there are plenty of trans related grassroots organisations doing sterling work in their local communities and a handful of larger organisations such as Translucent who do advocacy work. What I am envisaging is something broader, deeper, and fosters a narrative of hospitality between transgender people and their cisgender allies. A trans inclusive movement needs research, court cases, policy documents, advocates getting in contact with lawmakers and civil servants, content creators, project managers, indeed a whole machine which costs time and money to put together, run, and make effective.
The last great British trans lobbying group was Press for Change in the 1990s and early 2000s who were instrumental in getting the Gender Recognition Act 2004 passed. They were a small tight knit group with the ear of key politicians and knowledge of how to get legislation through Parliament based on compromise. They trusted each other, and while there were disagreements, they helped progress trans rights. The landscape in 2025 is much different, especially as virtually everyone has a smart phone and access to social media. What worked in 2004 will not work today because the media environment is different and the skills needed to overcome require a grassroots army not a small group.
Then comes the financial reality of putting this together. The costs of building even a small organisation are daunting, especially when you factor in things like pensions and National Insurance contributions. Assuming everyone works from home and lives outside of London, the costs of setting this up in the UK are likely to be per year:
· Director: £40,000 — £50,000 depending on experience
· Policy specialist: £40,000
· Post-doctoral researcher: £40,000
· Content creator: £35,000
· Project manager: £35,000
· Campaign co-ordinator: £35,000
· Campaign costs: £36,000+
· Legal fees: £100,000+ per year depending on the number of claims
· Events: £36,000
· Travel expenses: £50,000
· Operating costs: £80,000 including pension contributions, NI, server costs, software etc
Total: £527,000 to £537,000 per year
Even a shoestring campaign with just a director, legal costs, operating costs, events and travel expenses would come in north of £200,000 and likely burn that person out with the workload. This is why campaigning is expensive because it requires experts in the field who are organisationally supported to effectively do their work. Most transgender organisations operate using volunteers in their spare time because the funding is not available to them. If funding is the roadblock, how do we resolve this.
I suggest we do the following base on the model used by the Democrats in 2008 and 2012:
· Union backing — get every union to support and possibly fund this because it is in the best interests of all their members to have a trans inclusive society where everyone can be free to exist as themselves irrespective of what others think of them.
· Grassroots donations from a broad section of society — The figures are daunting, but if we can get 20,000 people giving £3 per month that is £720,000 a year, more than enough to support the movement. Each supporter is then invested in the movement’s success and becomes a member of a broader community.
· Public figures — Even relatively small donations from public figures go a long way to highlighting the cause.
If this sounds a lot like the content creation model it is. Content creators have shown how to both raise awareness about niche issues while also developing a business model which draws in large incomes based on lots of small contributions. If you can get enough people invested in your success you can build a groundswell of support that the gender critics simply do not have. What the content creation model also shows is that it takes a huge amount of time, energy, and effort to get it off the ground from a dedicated time.
Building a grassroots approach based on many small amounts means that we are not sucking the pots of money already being used by other trans organisations to further their ends. The net positive of this approach is that any excess raised can go straight back into the community. Trans healthcare, mental health, and community project desperately need funds, so once the primary funding goals are met the rest can be used to support local trans organisations who are helping on the ground.
There is no one perfect way of building a movement, and this approach will only work if it can be shown to having a positive impact on the trans community both in the UK and globally. There is no point in reinventing the wheel, especially as the wheel at the moment is based on requesting pots of money from organisations who are not inclined to fund trans related work. If it is money we need then we need to mobilise the entire community, our allies, and those who care about a pluralistic trans inclusive society. I can see how this can be done, it is now a matter of getting things in place and organising against those who seek to diminish everyone they do not like.
