Please, someone throw a brick.

Lexi Bowen
6 min readApr 11, 2024

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According to legend, in 1969 Marsha P. Johnson threw the brick that ignited the Stonewall riots. It was that brick then, that in turn led to the uprising of the LGBTQ+ rights movement. And in recent days, as I’ve sat and stared at an empty screen, haunted by the cursor’s incessant blink, I’ve been thinking about that brick.

That’s probably partly because I feel as if I’ve just had a brick thrown at me. The vicious sting of the Cass Review — riddled as it is with anti-trans thinking, purposefully creating an impossible standard by which it excused the exclusion of 98% of all the research papers submitted — while entirely expected, has left me shaken. I’m torn between the urge to speak out and the paralysis of uncertainty. Questions gnaw at me: “What do I want to say? What even can I say?” I should be writing the script for my next video, watching a film, or doing literally anything else, but instead, I’m sitting here gazing into a digital abyss, and I’m thinking about that brick.

I want to write about how I feel, about how I often find myself wondering whether I’m even really human anymore. How do I know? The only thing I can be certain of is myself, and I keep being told that being myself is wrong. I keep being told that I am not myself, I’m someone else, and I should be that person because being myself is an unreasonable thing to do. If who I am — or who I think I am — does not exist then, well… do I? But the thoughts fade away, and all that’s left is the brick.

I want to write about my identity, and more specifically whether my identity, my very sense of self, somehow makes me lesser. Am I lesser for who I am? Do I not deserve to be that person? Do I not deserve to feel the confidence, certainty, and freedom that comes with simply just being me? Am I lesser for wanting to be able to go to the shop or take a shower or look in the mirror without being struck by an overwhelming and almost disorientating sense that how I look, how I sound, how I appear to others, and how others treat me is all wrong? But I don’t know how to have that conversation, so instead, there’s just the brick.

I want to write about how impossible patriarchal standards have turned my life into an absolute mess. I want to explain to you all that being myself is as much about how you perceive me as it is about how I perceive myself. I want to tell you that I no longer feel quite so off-balance, that the way I present and the way those I interact with respond to me now feels right. And I want to write about how I’m terrified that I will have to go backward, that I will have to hide myself once more, and that I will ultimately wind up hurting myself again. But that’s depressing, so instead, I think about the brick.

I want to write about the Cass Review specifically, about its denial of science and refusal to acknowledge existing research, and about its absurd and unethical recommendations, and the damage they will do. I want to say that claiming what toys boys and girls play with is something biological is not only ridiculous but also outright disproves the argument because, well… I used to play with Barbies, so what do you want from me? I want to point out that of course trans people socialize with other trans people, that’s not a social contagion anymore than Marvel fans hanging out with other Marvel fans is a social contagion. But, do you even care about that? Would anyone even listen? I’m better off just thinking about the brick.

I want to talk about the government. I want to talk about how Rishi Sunak’s claim that, “It is categorical that social transitioning is not a neutral act and no one should be forced to use preferred pronouns or accept contested beliefs as fact” is not only an incredibly harmful thing to say but also an utterly stupid one. I want to talk about how, if you get into it, nothing is a neutral act and that the only people contesting the facts are the ones who constantly conflate me and people like me with violent sexual predators, dabble in holocaust revisionism, align with neo-nazis and prominent far-right figures, and push a dangerous rhetoric that has already led to violence and murder. But I’ve already talked about that and it’s not made any difference — so… brick.

I want to call out the Opposition. I want to call out Keir Starmer, Wes Streeting, and Rosie Duffield, and I want to tell them that they are stoking up the fires of hatred, that they’re pandering to a specific kind of person and feeding into a culture war that has already left people dead, and will no doubt leave more bodies in its wake before it’s done. I want to ask what purpose an Opposition serves when it doesn’t seem to oppose anything, and I want to know why I matter so little to them that they will happily throw me under the bus while talking about how much they want to make life better for people. But I know that it won’t make one iota of difference if I do, and so I return to the brick.

I ponder our collective history, seeing the ominous parallels, and I think, “We all know there are only two possible outcomes here.” Either we keep on barrelling down this road and soon we’ll be lined up with our backs to the wall or we need to figure out how to fight it effectively. And in thoughts of that fight, in the swirling dream of a resistance that never seems to materialise, I once again find myself back to the brick.

I sit here on my bed, in my room, in my flat, in a building, on a street, in a town, in a county, in a country that seems to hate me for simply being who I am, and I think about all of these things. I stare into that digital abyss and I try to work out what to say and how to say it, but the words never seem to fully come together. How do I do this? How do I convince people to do what we all know needs to be done? I talk to my trans siblings and I see my fear, pain, and anger reflected in them, and all I can think is, “Why is no one doing anything? Why is no one helping us? Why doesn’t anyone seem to care?”

Like most of us, all I wanted to do was to be myself. I just wanted a life that I could actually live, not one filled with depression and self-loathing and uncertainty. I didn’t ask to be who I am, I just am. And I didn’t ask to be targeted either. I didn’t ask to be under attack, I didn’t even ask to exist. But I’m here now, and I am targeted, and I am under attack, and I do exist, and there’s nothing I can do about that. And I don’t know how much more I can take. I don’t know how much lesser I can be made to feel, how much more dehumanised I can become, how much more scared I can be. I’m reaching my limit, and it’s frightening. What do I do? What do we do? How do we survive this? And how do we fight it? Please, God, won’t someone finally throw a fucking brick!?

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Lexi Bowen
Lexi Bowen

Written by Lexi Bowen

trans girl. horror fan. the real nightmare is telling people i make video essays.

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