Transgender Day of Remembrance

Yesterday marked the 3rd vigil to take place in Manchester in remembrance of all those trans lives lost to transphobia. It was a sombre night as we paid our respects to all those violently victimised just for being who they are. Name-after-hundreth name was read giving the huge scale of stigma and hate directed at trans people world-wide (most of whom were trans women of colour) and those are just the ones we know about. After the service, it was good to dethaw and convert the anger and upset into solidarity during the afer-gathering in Taurus bar - here's a short clip to mark the occasion:

Progress...Let's Hope

In response to Goat's beautiful recent post, I've just found out that:

The Steering Committee of Transgender Europe lends its support to the
joint statement of May 28, 2008 issued by the American organizations
National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE), the Transgender Law
and Policy Institute (TLPI), the Transgender Law Center (TLC) and the
Transgender Youth Family Allies (TYFA). After meeting with the APA,
these four groups reported that “[they] are confident that a fair,
unbiased review of current knowledge can result in a DSM-V that can
move society toward a more rational and humane understanding of
transgender people.” The review process will go on for several years,
and the APA welcomes suggestions from lay persons as well as mental
health professionals in this process.

Transgender Europe expressed in its press release after the Berlin
Council:

Despite much scientific controversy, forms of transgender continue to
be listed in the DSM IV of the American Psychological Association
(APA), just as homosexuality once was, and in the ICD-10 of the World
Health Organization (WHO) as psychological disorders. DSM and ICD are
guideline manuals used in healthcare to standardise the definitions of
what constitutes mental illness. Transgender Europe (TGEU) emphatically
refuses this pathologisation and will assist the next reformulation of
the DSM in a critical manner.”

We, the Steering Committee, are firmly of the conviction that the
stigmatization, which in part is grounded in the mistaken assumption
that gender variance is prima facie a medical disorder, is
discriminatory. Furthermore, we cite the Yogyakarta Principles, Article
18:

No person may be forced to undergo any form of medical or psychological
treatment, procedure, testing or be confined to a medical facility,
based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Notwithstanding any
classifications to the contrary, a person’s sexual orientation and
gender identity are not, in and of themselves, medical conditions and
are not to be treated, cured or suppressed.

A number of national governments and international bodies have passed
resolutions in support of these principles: the European Parliament,
the Council of Europe, Organization of American States.

Any revision of the DSM and the ICD must be carried out with full
compliance to the Yogyakarta Principles.

Vienna, Nov 1st 2008

the Steering Committee of Transgender Europe

Let's talk about race

Writing my thesis, I examined my racial privilege from an assumption that I was white British, simple. But now, since a number of conversations with friends of mixed heritage/race background, I'm not so sure. Up until quite recently I had just assumed that I was white British because I was born in England and had light skin - I didn't know anything about my family heritage. But now, the more I'm read as male, the more my other 'differences' show and creates a recognition from men of colour (specifically Asian or Middle Eastern men). The guy at the cornerstore, for eg, regularly gives me discounts and tries to bond with me about being mixed heritage because he sees me as similar to him - he's from Syria with an Italian ancestry. However, most of the time - and especially by white British people - I'm seen as white and, as a result, I experience racial privilege - I assimilate on account of the pervasive white-washing of 'difference'.

The reason my friend Rocky originally got in touch with me was because he saw a photo of me on the XX Boys website and recognised me as a 'brother' and felt like I was family. When we met for the first time, we had lots of conversations about the need to move away from white/of colour binary (an assumption I make in my thesis) to notice the nuances of race/ethnicity. It was him looking at a photo of my mum and saying 'she ain't white, she black' - ie despite her olive skin, she has dark features - which got me getting back in touch with my aunt and asking more questions (my aunt ignored me for a while when she found out that me - her 'niece' - wanted to be a guy). Rocky has Sicilian and Maori make-up and gets recognised as a brother by aborigini people in Australia but white-washed by white folk. I guess I'm starting to feel the same way as my experiences accumulate. But it's weird because I have no concete proof - I can only go by my mum's appearances (Italian, Middle Eastern looking), my aunt's information (yes - Eastern European Jewishness, Italian, possibly Syrian...) and finding finding fragments of old photos in an effort to piece my family ancestry and my own racial heritage together...an interesting process which is not so straight-foward.

Madness

10 years old and sitting on the back steps of the Frank-the-baker's waiting for mum to break for lunch, chatting with Emma - the new girl - about MADNESS, my favourite band! She's just promised to take me to Hyde Park to see them play. Excited, I rush through the bakery and wait patiently for mum to finish selling bacon butties and cream cakes to the ENDLESS queue of hungry workmen. I can't wait to ask her if I can go. Mistake - I get roped into washing up ENDLESS dishes. It's not all bad - there's a huge cream cake waiting for me when I'm done. And, even better, MADNESS is blasting on the radio - 'Baggy Trousers' - my favourite. It's my lucky day!!!

EELS! EELS! EEELS! EEELS!

When she came up to visit, my mum watched 'The Mighty Boosh' (British comedy show) for the first time. She particularly enjoyed watching the green hiker - a crooked cockney character of a bygone era - sing about eels:

"Eels up inside ya
findin an entrance where they can
eels up inside ya
finding an entrance where they can
Boring through your mind, through your tummy, through your anus, eels!"

Mum was so impressed that she went out and bought herself an 'eels' badge (yes, it's a badge that says 'eels') and now wears it proudly around her neighbourhood, taking impish delight in thrusting her chest into the faces of the WI women and shouting 'eels!' in their faces in her loud, brash cockney best.

As a little girl, mum would love nothing more than to play with eels in the bath. "We was poor, we had no toys, we took 'em from the cook pot when mum weren't looking". This, and the fact that mum was born and bred on Walworth Road in South London, was recently revealed to me after years of questions. Mum's guarded about her childhood. When I asked if she'd ever go back to where she was born - Elephant-and-Castle (now famous for the garish pink elephant-topped shopping centre) she replied "What's to go back to? I'd rather leave it all behind" Too many memories, better to forget.

Her chipper cockney accent could not be erased so easily. Looking for work at 14 she soon learnt that if she wanted a job in the City then she must speak proper - lose the sing-song slang of her youth and flatten the vowels. She learnt to be ashamed of being cockney. Years later and she's baffled: "All the REAL cockneys don't sound it and all posh kids want it". When speaking with strangers, mum puts on her best telephone voice. But she can't always control it - it slips out when she least expects it - effin and blindin when she's barmin (mad) or London callin when she's bawlin. In other words, it eels it when she feels it.

"I'm not an intellectual - I'm not posh!"

So my dad says to me on the phone last night. Apparently, he was called 'an intellectual' by some new 'friends' (my dad, "the hermit", doesn't have any friends...so he says...).

"But", I say, "you're a thinker".
"Maybe so, but I'm not one of THEM".
"Eh?"
"I mean, they're in a different league aren't they - I used to work for people who fitted the description of 'intellectual' when I was a lap-dog at the library. I was always aware of the difference between me and THEM. I just didn't fit into THAT atmosphere - didn't have the same opportunities, background, status, wealth etc. I always felt like a fraud, like I was gonna get found out."

When I was a kid, my dad would excitedly tell me every time he passed as 'Dr' at work - how his initials 'D.R' were misread by the 'elite', as he called them, and that, as a result, he was temporarily accorded membership to 'the old boys club' at an office meeting - offered a cigar rather than told to make tea.

My dad - quiet, gentle, polite, thoughtful, curious, inquisitive, bright etc - fits the bill. In a parallel universe - one in which he stayed on at school rather than leave at 14, got some qualifications rather than work a string of dead-end jobs, went to university rather than support his single mum....maybe in THAT life, he might have become an intellectual.

Being a proud man, my dad doesn't talk much about growing up poor - about his mum working all hours at the factory to single-handedly raise 5 kids, getting teased for having no clothes and being forced to wear his sister's hand-me-downs, having frequent colds from leaky shoes and threadbare jumper and no coat, going hungry. He still has the only Christmas present he received as a boy - a shrivelled-up orange which he keeps tucked away in his bedside drawer.

However, unlike my mum (more on her later!), my dad would never say he was working class. but neither would he say that he was aspiring middle class (whatever that means). He just notices differences.

I wanted to ask my dad whether he thought I was an intellectual. I was too embarrassed. Me - the Dr of the family, the second to go to university (my sister was the first) and the first to do a PhD. Sometimes, I feel a class gulf between me and my parents. I've had all the opportunities they never had. And yet, I also feel set apart from most academics I know - I feel ambivalent about being a Dr (how ridiculous a notion), 'mummy' and 'daddy' didn't pay for me to go to uni (I was lucky enough to get a string of means-tested scholarships) and I don't have the right connections.

On paper, I should fit and yet I don't. Like father like son, I feel like a fraud.

The Adventures Have Begun

You saw the boy inside,
wide-eyed,
cowering beneath
self-protective folds
and duty sheers.

You reached for the boy inside,
held his hand,
showed him fragments of the outdoors -
transformed twigs, stones and shells
into cherished keepsakes.

You trusted the boy inside,
gave him an atlas
filled with your secret mappings -
let his curious fingers trace
the contours of your dreams.

You touched the boy inside,
accpeted his acorn-token of love
and traded it for a thimble.
Beginning in the branch of a silver-birch,
the adventures have begun.