Being trans in Britain takes “you’ve got to laugh or you’ll cry” to new, nightmarish levels. Before I come across all Rishi Sunak, rest assured I’m not being flippant: I don’t mean “laugh” as in anything is remotely funny. I mean like when your jaw is slack and you scoff slightly, as if you can’t believe something you’ve just heard. The scoff is actually a panicked bid to rebut the “something” and, at the same time, there’s terror in your eyes. That kind of laugh. Hearing that our prime minister had insulted trans people to score cheap political points did not surprise me (nor does the lack of self-awareness it takes for Sunak and the business secretary, Kemi Badenoch, et al, to level the same accusation at Starmer). To be honest, it wasn’t even a surprise that it might have happened in the presence of the mother of a murdered trans girl. I cannot imagine it surprised any trans person who’s lived in Britain during the past six-odd years of relentless, coordinated, cynical and very loud attacks, not just on our legal protections but our very humanity. What surprised me – and triggered that scoff-so-you-don’t-break feeling – was the wider reaction. Starmer looked dismayed. Political journalists roundly identified that it was a terrible moment for the prime minister. This analysis even echoed, for the rest of the day at least, within Downing Street. For the first time in years, a powerful public figure said something insulting, inaccurate and dehumanising about trans people and everyone reacted – well, as they should. Instead of glossing over or praising evidence of anti-trans bias as “common sense”, the mainstream verdict, beyond a few publications parroting No 10’s defence of the comment, was: this was unacceptable; worthy of the kind of outrage that demands a public apology; unbecoming of civil discourse in a modern democracy. Hang on a minute, I thought, I don’t understand. How can this strike everyone as wrong when senior Tory and Labour politicians have been saying that a woman cannot have a penis for months? How can journalists and commentators react without cringing, when for a while “Can a woman have a penis?” and “What is a woman?” were somehow the most pressing questions on the lips of reporters across this green and pleasant land?