A Trans Woman Stripped Naked on Live UK TV… and it was Necessary

During the popular Channel 4 television variety show, Comedian Jordan Gray performed a hilarious song, and to the shock and awe of the nation, had her clothes stripped off for the finale.

Gray, who has a wonderful, lighthearted air to her comedy, but most certainly- and perhaps most importantly, self affirming themes, decided to use the platform lent to her last week to do more than sing, dance and play the keyboard for the live audience, but to do something many found unexpected, abhorrent and extremely offensive; Show her naked body.

And it was absolutely a choice that was necessary.

Transgender women are under fire every single day in the US and UK simply for existing. Every part of their lives and activities have been dissected, criticized, scrutinized, often blatantly condemned and the community has witnessed state after state, on both sides of the Atlantic, weaponize legislation against them. There is no “bone” to pick that has been too small to be inflated in a national crisis. From bathrooms, to sports, bakeries to acceptable dress all the way to healthcare and military accommodation, both conservatives and far-right evangelists have vilified transgender people in pursuit of exiling them from society.

Quite often the discussion of trans bodies rears its head in the ongoing attacks against transgender women, especially, with antagonists such as JK Rowling claiming she doesn’t know what a woman is anymore if Transgender women are allowed to exist. “‘People who menstruate.’ I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?” She tweeted, offended over a headline that trans women had not been excluded from.

It’s a typical tangent from a small but vocal league of radicals known formally as Gender Criticals who have been convinced that the whole spectrum of their identity is being erased because transgender women walk among us. They’ve tried many ways to discredit transgender women, relentlessly bringing up their genitals and chromosomes, claiming it’s a mental illness or or pervasion, or even a…