The horror at the heart of things

So today is the 26 July 2025 and this is what's on my mind.

Children starving not because of some natural disaster but because a criminal man of about my age wants to avoid the consequence of his crimes.

His name is Benjamin Netanyahu, he is 75 years old, and he has successfully co-opted the resources of the Israeli state to be the accomplice in these crimes.

And I live in a state – the United Kingdom – which has always provided itself on being the land of the free. But now if I hold up a placard on the street in support of the state of Palestine and to protest against the deliberate starvation of these children…

…I am apparently a terrorist and at risk of spending the rest of my life in jail.

And I no longer know how to live. I don’t know if any of us do.

I didn't want to publish this photograph. I wanted to put it to the back of my mind.

We all do. Put it to the back of our minds, and try to keep on living.

Try to keep on living in a way that does not make us complicit in these crimes.

At this point, I have to stop.

I have to stop because I cannot bear to go on thinking about this.

So I practice some Xi Gong.

Then I lie on my back in the corpse position and try, as I breathe, to let go of all tension in my back.

I do the morning’s reading, and I try to meditate.

I understand if I stay in this state of impotent despairing rage it will destroy me.

And my suicide will do no one any good.

It's Saturday, so I go to the market.

I buy a cucumber and a watermelon because they have been grown in Palestine and the proceeds are going to Medical Aid for Palestine.

I find myself buying rice and cards from a charity called “The Mamie Martin Fund” which supports the seconday education of girls in Malawi.

I am friendly with everyone I meet.

None of this solves anything.

These are tiny teasspoonfuls that hardly touch the ocean of suffering.

But at least it doesn't make the situation worse.

Perhaps that's all I can do just now.

I remember a play I wrote many years ago that I wrote for the Edinburgh Puppet Company and dedicated it to my daughters.

It tells the story of a young girl’s dreaming as she enters adolescence.

Towards the end she enters a devastated landscape:

“I'm walking

I'm slowly and silently walking

Walking through a dead land

Jeannie walks. She is a tiny figure in a vast landscape

1

The fruit was rotting on the tree

2

There were no birds singing

1

Nothing moved

2

Nothing would ever move

3

Nothing would ever move again

1

All the windows are open

2

All the windows sag open

3

All the windows and doors

1

And the only sound

Is the windows

Banging in the wind

JEANNIE

What's happened?

2

And she walked through the country of the dead

3

and the dead lay where death had caught them

JEANNIE

Women.

Young men.

Old men old women

children. babies.

babies and their mothers!

Who could do this?

1

And she came upon a child

2

Lying as if she were asleep.

3

And the spirit child

The spirit child opened her eyes and spoke

SPIRIT CHILD

It didn't happen suddenly

It wasn't a flash of fire from the sky

Or a machine exploding on the earth

It didn't happen the way we'd been prepared

The way that we'd prepared for our defence.

It happened bit by bit

Birds began falling out of the sky

But one by one so no-one noticed they had gone.

And then we started losing colours

All the deep reds and the indigos

Bit by bit and one by one

And no-one, ever, noticed them go.

And everyone stopped listening to each other But little by little

And bit by bit

And so we never noticed what we'd lost

And when we started not to feel things

And when we started not to think things

No-one noticed because we'd lost...
Because we'd lost the capacity to notice

And when we forgot

We'd soon forgotten what it was

We had forgot

And when we died

mostly we didn't notice that we'd died

JEANNIE

And she took my hand

And we walked on together

There was a kind of beauty in the stillness
And I didn't feel afraid

She was silent for a while,

And then she said

SPIRIT CHILD

I'm summoning up all my strength

All the strength of my brothers and sisters the strength of all the dead!

We hear the spirits very close

SPIRITS

Don't settle for the easy option

don't settle for the "there is no other way"

Don't believe them when they tell you

human nature's just like that

and things will never change

I feel pity for you

setting out so full of strength and hope setting out on so dangerous a road

don't be afraid remember kindness

its kindness that banishes all fear.”

I think about Netanyahu, and Putin, and Trump.

These men who embody the cruelty of our times.

These men round about my age who will have received more or less the same training in manhood as I did.

Who, like me, were taught to suppress their capacity for fellow feeling.

Suppress their own feelings of weakness and fear.

See themselves as isolated individuals in an endless competition for status and for power.

These three men who despise trans women like myself, and would like to eliminate us from the face of the earth.

And so it matters that I survive. It matters that I try to communicate what it's like to be me.

It matters, that I do my best to witness to the truth:

That the traditional ideas of what it means to be a man and what it means to be a woman are archaic and dangerous.

And that the task facing humanity is to discover a new way of being human and of organising our relations with each other and with the world.

Don't ask me how it's to be done.

All I know is that I am one of millions who, one way or another, are trying to do the same.

Minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day…

And perhaps we are moving towards a fuller understanding of what we are doing.

And from that, we will be able to unite our efforts.

And then the change that is happening now will accelerate…

And the criminal tyrants that rule us now will pass into oblivion.

Because, to quote queen Jesus,

“Hatred is the only thing they have.

And it doesn't amount to much.

For no matter what they say or what they do,

They cannot stop the change that is coming.

And one day, we will all be free”.

Medical Aid for Palestine

Mamie Martin Fund