Mrs Benn

At Walnut Creek BART Station

San Francisco is one of my favourite places to visit. California reminds us that “America” is not a homogeneous entity, and San Francisco revels in mould-breaking. It is the epicentre not just of tolerance but of the celebration of creative individuality, difference and diversity. In San Francisco, you can be whoever you are, whatever that means.

We watch aghast as proto-fascist Ron De Santis spouts bile on TV, we hear Donald Trump announcing the dawn of “alternative facts” and inciting insurrection at the heart of American democracy, and, in a year in which Pheonix, Arizona broke temperature records day after day, we see a succession of Republican presidential hopefuls asserting that the burning of fossil fuels is essential for American well-being. We are incredulous. How can the nation that put men on the moon and gave us the integrated circuit be so utterly ignorant and full of hate? For Europeans, “America” is an enigma.

But if one travels to California one sees a very different America. That Arnold Schwarznegger could be elected Governator seems extraordinary, as though exemplifying all that Europeans find incongruent about the United States. And yet this thoughtful, intelligent Republican – it is hard to believe that he is a member of the same party as Trump and De Santis – understands the climate crisis and the threat of fascism. California was an early adopter at scale of hybrid vehicles, and has been world-leading in driving forward green technologies. The West Coast of the USA – from San Diego to Seattle – breaks all the imagined moulds. In 1991 I lived in Seattle, which had a bus system to match that of any European city, with compulsory recycling in my apartment block (involving strict segregation of waste into different categories) when landfill was the only destination for my trash at home in the UK.

The importance of California is not just its difference, but also its size – for the state is home to one in six Americans. But in truth, while California is a beacon of liberal values, and undeniably world-leading in the fight against climate change, much of the rest of the US does so much better at state level than many Europeans might imagine. One finds investment in alternative technologies even in conservative states, and down the eastern seaboard of the US there are many states whose values are deeply liberal and progressive. Republicans proudly burning gasoline cannot erase the fact that Tesla made it cool to drive green. I once sat in a frock listening to a gay black man singing country songs at a karaoke evening in a lesbian bar in Texas. After that, all bets were off; I was left forever mindful that this vast, extraordinary country presents surprises at every turn.

Work took me to San Francisco in August. I was there for just a week and very busy for most of the time, but I packed a few frocks and where there is a will, there is a way…Landing on Friday at 3 pm (11 pm at home), I reached my hotel by about 4:30, and at 6 pm I found myself showered and made up in Union Square snapping a few selfies before the sun went down. I spent a happy hour reacquainting myself with familiar sights, before dinner. By the time I hauled myself into bed it was after 5 am GMT, and I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised at my staying power.

The next morning I was up fairly early to take BART to the charmingly named (and charming) Walnut Creek (the photo at the top of the page was taken at Walnut Creek station). En route I was amused to be able to check in to Facebook “under the San Francisco Bay”. I spent a few happy hours in Walnut Creek with my friend Becky. It was wonderful to catch up with her; we took up just where we left off the last time I was in San Francisco six years ago. Becky was in male mode, but it didn’t really change anything; she was still the same sweet person. One of the intriguing things I’ve learned is that for some of us, coming to terms with our gender dysphoria brings an unexpected but wonderful wholeness. It is something I never expected to find; rather I expected that giving free expression to my feminine tendencies would produce a kind of schizophrenia. However, my experience has been that giving up the fight to “cure” myself and accepting my trans-ness has instead brought wholeness; I don’t flit between male and female personae, and I’m the same person whatever I wear.

I returned from Walnut Creek for dinner, which was followed by whiskies at the Tunnel Top Bar (I particularly enjoyed High West Rendezvous), where one of the locals engaged me in conversation. He’d spent several months in a Travelodge in Reading during a long business trip, which left him with an unsurprising lack of enthusiasm for life in the UK. I tried to explain that we don’t all live in Travelodges but I don’t think he was buying it.

Painting by Frank Bowling

After a busy conference, an opportunity arose for an excursion before returning home, and I took the cable car from Powell Street to Fisherman’s Wharf. Although it wasn’t hot, I caught the sun on my arms and neck – the sea breeze and fog can make San Francisco feel deceptively cool, when a few miles inland it can be 10 degrees warmer. Returning downtown, I spent a couple of hours in the fabulous Museum of Modern Art, where there was a particularly memorable exhibition of work by Frank Bowling. Many of the paintings on display (like the one above) consist of blocks of colour and I was entranced by them.

View across the Bay from Ghirardelli Square, with Alcatraz in the distance.

I dined in John’s Steak House, where two complete strangers – a gay man who lived locally and a businesswoman about to head out of town – engaged me in conversation at the bar. My trans-ness was not only unremarked, but apparently unnoticed – because in San Francisco you simply are who you are. The ease with which these people entered into conversation with folks so different from themselves was notable.

In the UK we have moved a very long way since the Blair government began its transformational programme of equalities legislation. In San Francisco, I had a reminder of what an open, accepting society can be like. The war on woke threatens the progress made in the last 20 years. I hope the war will be lost, and there are grounds to believe that it will be, because it is serving an agenda that is not shared even by the majority of Conservative voters. But we mustn’t take that for granted; what we have is precious and we must work to protect it.