YouTube star Abigail Thorn comes out as trans: ‘Even when other people make it hard, being trans is a gift’
Abigail Thorn. (Screen capture via YouTube)
Abigail Thorn, the British YouTube veteran who has sought to educate the world with her videos that blend theatre production with topical issues, has come out as trans.
Taking to social media on Saturday (30 January), the Philosophy Tube star explained that she came out “ages ago” to her inner circle, but in both a written and filmed statement, has now decided to tell her 843,000 subscribers.
Thorn, 27, also decried the discrimination trans people are pelted with daily in Britain, saying: “trans people, especially trans people of colour, are hit hardest by unemployment, homelessness, and domestic, sexual, and police violence, but the conversation always focuses on wealthy white cis women tweeting about toilets.”
A torchbearer of the modern online left, she also candidly took aim at the razor-thin trans healthcare available as well as at the “pseudoscience and fear-mongering” spewed by anti-trans figures and groups that have stymied trans rights in the nation.
If you’d like to see a video of this statement rather than reading it, you can watch it here: https://t.co/DJNmVYF71q pic.twitter.com/q7mi4DM5qq
— Abigail Thorn (@PhilosophyTube) January 30, 2021
Abigail Thorn: ‘Even when other people make it hard, being trans is a gift’
“Hello friends!” she began. “I’m delighted to say I’m a trans woman; my name is Abigail and you can refer to me with she/her [pronouns].
“Thank you to everyone who kept my secret for such a long time as I prepared to come out publicly! I’m excited to continue my acting career and Philosophy Tube.
“Please respect my privacy and treat everyone with kindness and patience, even those who don’t treat me kindly.
“It’s so lovely now to finally relax, to sleep well with sweet dreams and be at home in myself.
“But I’m also scared. Things are very, very bad for trans people in the UK and they’re getting worse.
“My existing following means I have now instantly become one of the most recognisable transgender people in the country and I feel an enormous pressure to be ‘good at it’ like if I could only be clever enough, or pretty or funny or articulate enough, things would magically come right!
“Alas, I can’t be a perfect paragon of trans Britain. I’m only an actress but I can relay the following facts.”
Thorn stressed that even though trans folk “have existed for as long as there has been a Britain”, the community still faces a tirade of challenges.
Even when other people make it hard, being trans is a gift.
With a National Healthcare Service (NHS) gutted by a decade of austerity policies and so-called “gender-critical feminists” seeking to chip away at the already threadbare state of trans rights, Thorn said she is well aware of the struggle.
She explained how if a cis woman wanted to get hormone replacement therapy, she could do so through her general practitioner.
A trans person, however, must visit one of the few and often far-flung specialist Gender Identity Clinics and be, she said, “interrogated” by psychiatrists and experience months and even years of waiting on lengthy lists for crucial appointments, therapies and surgeries.
Moreover, while a cis woman can simply use her passport as proof of identity when they get married for adopt children, Thorn said she essentially has to “beg for the government’s permission to become a wife or a mother” – even though her passport has a female gender marker.
“Trans rights must be part of a huge redistribution of power and resources so society serves human need instead of profit,” she rallied (Thorn is clearly well-versed in Britney Spearsism).
Thorn concluded: “Even when other people make it hard, being trans is a gift. My love goes out to every trans person reading my words in Britain or overseas, especially those who can’t come out – yet!”
