The UK edition of The Guardian hasn’t exactly covered itself in glory with its coverage of trans-related issues – this week marks a year since it last commissioned any UK-based trans writer on the topic despite running many, many pieces by anti-trans writers in the same period. So this, a feature about trans key workers in COVID, is a pleasant surprise.

With the coronavirus pandemic as a backdrop to the event [Trans Pride London], we spoke to five trans key workers about their experiences over the past six months.

It’s an interesting read about five interesting people.

Update:

Writer and researcher Robin Craig suggests on Twitter that articles whose basic message is “trans people have jobs, are maybe not freaks” are deeply patronising. It’s a fair point. I don’t think that was the writer’s intention and I think that humanising trans people instead of demonising them is of course an improvement for a paper that’s been very guilty of the latter. But in context it does feel awfully close to “hey, maybe we shouldn’t be nasty to all the trans people! One or two of them might be useful!”. Your worth as a human being is not dependent on having a job that’s useful to others.