Sadness

So undergraduates will now be paying up to £9,000 per year just for tuition. Add on top of that living costs, which will struggle to be under £6,000 a year, and you suddenly have a bill for £45,000 after a 3-year course, or £60,000 for a 4-year course. Apparently the charges will apply the moment they are incurred, but will attract commercial rates of interest from the moment of graduation, and the loan cannot be repaid early - leading to an effective tax rate of 9%. The progressive part? Apparently if you are classed in an economically dependent group, then you won't have to pay one year.

I find a number of things sad about this. Firstly, the commoditisation of education. Rather than society valuing education as something that is generally useful, we now find that a price has been put on individuals. This level of debt is a powerful disincentive to take your studies post-18 - the raw stats from the school of which I'm a governor shows a significant drop in those 16/17 year-olds contemplating a university education. The 17/18 year-olds were too far through the process for yesterday's decision to be affected.

It has been difficult for a few years now to be able to distinguish effectively between attainment at degrees. I have felt for many years that a first-class degree holder in computing appears to know far less than I did when I graduated with a II(ii). It feels as though my degree is now equivalent to a Masters. The increasing number of people with degrees must surely mean that the "value-add" of having one reduces, making it still harder to pay off any debt. When you see graduates taking jobs as bicycle couriers??? So the academically able who need to distinguish themselves will incur even more debt for the privilege, irrespective of background.

However, of equal sadness is the stance of the Liberal Democrats. I don't know whether they have been "suckered" into the position of having to vote for something they all individually pledged against - but it was obvious that only having the option to abstain if fees were increased would drive a wedge throughout the party. Nowhere did I see any Lib Dem sign the pledge conditionally. The pledge was taken as a sign of values, vision and commitment. And this was thrown to one side, and excuses have been made - none very convincing. Yesterday I saw more alienation creep into politics.

The LibDems appeared to be the fresh voice in the last election. Now they have been tarred with the same brush as both Labour and Conservatives - both of whom were architects of the unnecessary explosion in university studies over the last 20 years. Now there is nothing to single the LibDems out as people who hold principles. It also means that any pre-election pledge becomes meaningless. People can say what they want - electors won't have a clue what individuals stand for any more. The principle has finally disappeared from mainstream British politics.

And so yet another trans group teeters on the brink...

I got involved with Trans Media Watch more by association than actual judgement - I was available to come to a meeting with Ofcom and was felt to be "presentable". Following that, I went along to a meeting with the BBC, then to Channel 4, then was one of the two presenters to the Press Complaints Commission, then found myself drawing up a constitution and looking at registering it as a charity.

Then all hell broke loose last week. The combination of the outrageous reporting in the tabloids around Sonia Burgess's unfortunate death, combined with anger at the marginalisation of trans people yet again by the gay rights campaigners Stonewall meant that TMW suddenly found itself on the front-line of trans-activism, without either the people or the time required to direct the focus of any protests. And people got angry - angry at Stonewall, livid at the tabloids, and outraged at TMW's deafening silence - completely unaware of what the core were trying to do behind the scenes, and also completely unaware that all of us have jobs to hold down as well. It seemed to become personal.

And it got too much for two of the core five, and I also realised that I could not continue to give it the attention it was demanding, because making a living was actually important for my family and my employees. So, in the space of a week, TMW is on the brink of collapse, having made so much progress in the preceeding 12 months. Its collapse will make it so much harder for any subsequent trans group to get in through the doors to the limited extent we did.

However, the scenario once again demonstrates two things. Firstly that trans people on the whole are incredibly vulnerable and secondly they often carry around a huge slate of anger. Sometimes that anger is directed at the wrong people who are also vulnerable, and the plate fractures again. Other times that anger is directed in a way that is easily parodied and/or ignored, pandering to the "weird" and "other" nature that is so often attributed to trans people.

Things so desperately need to change. There is so much institutional ignorance around, wanting to categorise and then limit people - people who cannot generally be categorised, who are wanting to express individuality. That ignorance leads to horrendous abuses of human rights, vicious attacks (both physical and verbal), fear, guilt, suicide. We see it in the way the medical profession often treats us, the bafflement often expressed by civil servants, the sensationalism often employed by the media, the abuse directed at us by extremists driven by fear.

The way forward is engagement, education, media-savvy presentation, being able to shine a light on causes rather than symptoms. Protest, screaming from the rooftops, revolution - none of these will work - no matter how appealing such routes sound. But until trans people can learn to trust, to show respect, to bury differences between each other, the cause will forever be harmed by groups being ripped apart.

Sadness and Fears

A story has been building in the media since this time last week. A trans woman who was also an influential human rights lawyer was killed under a tube train at Kings Cross station last Monday evening. It seems likely to have been a tragic mistake, with some tomfoolery going on as the train came in. The predictable outcome started to come through with tabloid exposes appearing on Friday, which fed on the prurience because she was trans and probably was working on the side as an escort. The real sadness hit this morning when the tabloids had another frenzy because the person accused of killing her is also a trans woman.

I could see this building and building over the past few days, being privy to some of the information well before it broke into the public eye. And the media exposure has been predictable, prurient, salacious, feeding into the consistent "othering" of trans people that goes on in the British printed media.

This wasn't particularly helped by the coverage of another trans woman who, yesterday, won the UK Scrabble championship - dressed in bright pink, probably for breast cancer awareness, but who had an unfortunate amount of beard shadow. Again the media curiosity tried hard but generally failed to focus on things other than her trans status.

I met a Nina who was probably Tamil many years ago, in my early forays to the Reading trans nightscene. It may not have been the same one, but it's uncomfortably close to home. I was also at Kings Cross (but not the Piccadilly line) yesterday afternoon, having spent a fun few hours with my daughter at the Wicked Day, following her two days at a Wicked workshop run by her school. The celebration and work-lessness of a long weekend had this constant press pressure as a backdrop.

I've written before about fear being the primary driver behind trans people not wanting to be visible, to hide their past away. The media coverage today feeds off that fear, while also building it up. Why can our media (and they would claim it is our society) simply not let people be different? Why are we all forced down this route of social conformity which panders to the bigots? And today's coverage will have screwed down the lid on some trans people who will now be facing a harder journey to discover themselves, and reinforced the view of those who hold it that trans people are only ever weird and motivated by sex. I fear that the result will be that some trans people will ultimately take the choice of suicide as a result of what has happened today.

Sadly because of this, some trans people seem to have moved past the outrage and building into very real anger, which further distorts how people view what has happened. There is talk about a protest on Thursday evening - against who and about what, I don't know. The media are turning around and asking what have they done wrong, using the PCC's "tactic" of focusing on the words they have written rather than the emotion or the layered picture they have built up. They know what they have done wrong, and the mock innocence is grating. As an example, why is it remotely relevant to refer to Nina as unshaven when she appeared in court? Was Ann Widdecombe well shaven before her Strictly Come Dancing appearance on Saturday? I think we ought to be told.

But there are also people in the trans world who also think that a great way to make a quick buck is to pass information onto the ever-hungry media that completely destroys the affected people and makes life harder for many more. I feel nothing but disgust for that self-serving attitude.

Filming

I've spent today being filmed by my cousin for an eLearning project run by GIRES. As one of the folks involved in defining the course, I volunteered to be filmed, and two of my colleagues also agreed.

All in all, I was surprised at how emotional I felt afterwards. Driving home I had a shadow of the former torment. It was quite an effort thinking back 6, 7 and 8 years to how I felt when certain things happened. And it was obvious that my colleagues were also affected in a similar way. There were a few tears at a couple of points.

It was also interesting hearing them give their views, and how they felt about the challenges I had faced - when talking about trans issues, one used the term "dwarfing" anything he had faced - and this guy's wife had died very suddenly at around the same time. I was deeply moved by that analysis.

I hope that a number of really powerful messages, like the importance of respect and how trans people are, fundamentally, just people will come across loud and clear - and that labels should be seen for what they are, attempts to categorise and discriminate. I'm interested in what my cousin will do with the material - and he says he's been inspired to do more. I would be interested in helping him, but it really cannot be more than a day every so often. I don't think I would cope emotionally with much more than that.

I remember studying the word "cathartic" when I was 13. I don't know whether that's the exact word for how I felt about today's experience - stirring up historic emotions. It feels very much like a rod has been pushed around in a deep pond for a while, and it will take time for the sludge to re-settle.

There is more, to do with feeling on the edge of greatness - dealings with high-up media bods, a sudden influx of sales enquiries, increasing responsibilities as a school governor. Life is getting more and more hectic, and more and more interesting. It's a struggle to work out where best to place effort.

Crusaders

It's not often you find yourself on the fringe of the main news story of the day. Saturday's news was full of the shooting of 10 medics in Afghanistan. Led by Tom Little, the team were returning from Naziristan having spent time giving medical treatment to people in that remote area. Tom was an optometrist and had been doing that kind of thing for around 33 years, since before the Russians invaded Afghanistan in 1979.

The issue for us was that Tom was actually a good friend of Jo's parents. I don't know how they met this doctor from up-state New York, but meet him they did, as well as Libby his wife and all three of his daughters. I met one of the daughters (Molly) once a few years ago. To receive news that Tom had been killed was a massive shock to Jo's parents - he had escaped death so many times, and his mission was to make people's lives better by helping them to see. It was news they always feared, and the impact of it was big, especially when it becomes the number 1 news story all day.

Tom was a Christian, although he seemingly knew it was too risky to evangelise in Afghanistan. He would have had a bible, and could well have had one in Dari (the local language which he was fluent in). However, above all he was a life-saver, showing tremendous commitment to the poor and needy in an already impoverished nation. He is one who could be proud of what he had accomplished - in contrast to those who shot him for no gain whatsoever other than perhaps personal or short-term political.

In my own crusade, I'm joining my friends Jo and Sarah at a presentation to the BBC's Diversity Unit tomorrow, about the relentless way that trans people are portrayed as sexualised freaks and "not quite human". Admittedly the BBC has done some good programs too - such as the Horizon on the David Reimer case. But it's the ongoing snide comments - like Ken Bruce, Chris Moyles and Chris Evans on the radio - where "men dressing as women" is a source of much childish fun, on the way pandering to the most base of bigotry. We tried this presentation at Ofcom, only for them to hide behind policies and a ridiculously small amount of research to justify their position. Let's hope that the BBC is more open.

In Other News

Mr Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, has asked for ideas for laws to repeal.  Well, I've stuck my oar duly in, with a slightly pie-in-the-sky view about gender laws.  You can read it here.

Dad is out of hospital - it appears to be an oesophagal ulcer, which means that he'll be on medication to control it for the rest of his life.  It appears that there may be more chances soon to resume contact - brother is hopeful.

I've apparently been recognised on the governors board as someone with some sort of talent.  The board contains around 5 committees, and I sit on two.  Apparently the head and the chair of governors both thought I would be a good candidate to chair one of them - this is only 6 months after starting, which is somewhat quick for a new governor - so now I am, and feeling "oh, help..."  If this continues, I can see myself chairing the whole board in a couple of years time.  Press exposure, here we come...

Dad

This morning my Dad was rushed into hospital.  The initial fear was that he'd had a heart attack - but then it appeared that he had heatstroke and dehydration, and then things became more serious with a suspected burst stomach ulcer.  It has been a weird day.

Because Dad broke off contact with me as I went full-time, I've not been able to follow my natural inclination and turn up at hospital.  This has led to a feeling of detachment.  There's this assumption that he'll simply get better.  Hopefully he'll realise that I do care - but without me there, I don't know how that's going to come across.  It's meant that today has been substantially less focussed than it needed to be.  So while there was a "moment" early on in the process (while the heart prognosis was current), I feel as though it was some celebrity who is ill and I'm watching it from afar.  People have been very nice - although lots of people outside my immediate contacts must assume that I'm closer to him than I actually am.

Will it be a wake-up call?  Sadly, I think it's probably not serious enough for that - although a burst and bleeding stomach ulcer is fairly serious!

Bits and Pieces

Another wet beginning to a bank holiday weekend - although hopefully that sun that was splitting the streets last weekend will reappear by Monday.

The election?  I found it fascinating, although also slightly demoralising as well.  I still cannot understand the lunacy of a system which penalises a party that has its percentage of vote go up have the number of seats go down.  I also found it difficult to believe that the Lib Dems that seemed to go into polling day with 29% of the vote ended up with only 23% - what on earth happened.  But I profess myself satisfied with the coalition that has ended up - although I do wonder whether it will last, especially with the ferocity of our press that seems to hate any kind of success and struggle with anything that cannot be neatly put into boxes.

Let me state an example.  The media has pounced on every distinction between the Lib Dems and the Tories - Europe, nuclear energy, cuts - you name the difference, there has been media coverage of it.  But each political party is, itself, made up of component people, all of which have different views.  You get Lib Dems who are pro-nuclear energy and anti-Europe, and Tories who are anti-nuclear energy and pro-Europe.  Yet, where is the media saying "actually there are substantive differences within the parties on all of these issues".  Paradoxically I suspect that it might be the Tories who start ripping themselves to shreds, as the right-wing element loses the stomach for the more liberal policies.

I also suspect we'll get a complete firestorm in the media against electoral reform.  People conflate all sorts of issues.  I got a post on Facebook saying that if voting reform meant that parliament required a 55% vote to dissolve it then...  The dissolution of Parliament has nothing whatsoever to do with electoral reform.  In my view the argument is simple.  Single Transferable Vote allows people to distinguish between candidates of the same parties while being able to express a difference, and each multi-member constituency (and we are talking about 3, 4 or 5 MPs per constituency here, not 80) will return MPs that broadly reflect the diversity of opinions expressed in the election.  How can that be a bad thing?  The arguments about leading to weak governments and repeated elections is actually an argument against our regimented party system that doesn't allow people within a party to actually vote according to their conscience on issues, not our electoral system.

The downside of the election is that work has taken a bit of a battering.  The last two months have been the quietest consecutive two months that the company has had since 2006, as people defer orders until the dust has settled.  There is a shedload of decisions stacking up, and the deadlines for all of these people loom closer and closer, to the point where there's a risk that we won't actually be able to deliver all of the installations.  I'm beginning to wonder whether declaring minimal profit for this financial year and starting July with a storm of income might be useful - except that it would be a dip in our growth graph which might not look too good.

Z did her first bit of proper drama filming earlier this week.  She was one of 6 child extras for a series of fair scenes in the main ITV costume drama due to be shown this autumn.  She loved it - and I suspect the seeds sown by sending her to Redroofs have taken good root now.

18 years ago today, my Mum died very suddenly.  I've found that I miss her far more after transition than I did before - although it is a pain I can live with.  She would have been in her late 70s by now.  MS did suck most of the life out of the vibrant woman I remember from when I was very young, leaving her by 1980 a shadow of herself, and struggling on for another 12 years.  It's actually that earlier version of Mum I miss - although it would have been good to know her understanding and acceptance - although I'm sure she would have been shocked and concerned as well.

Painful Goodbyes

Having just deposited a friend and her companion at Terminal 3 for her to fly off for some surgery, walking back through the terminal to the car park I found myself close to tears, and wondered why that was?

Sure, friend was nervous - and I remember very clearly the feelings as I flew off to Thailand.  The lack of estrogen doesn't help.  You're placing immense trust in a surgeon who you've never met (although she, at least, has talked to her surgeon).  There is a large amount of money involved.  And you know it will change your life - but you don't actually know that it will be for the better.  You're actually using "faith" - in that you hope things will be better and you have to trust that those around you will make it so.  So I'm sure part of the teary feeling was the recollection of all those strange emotions.

Then there are other memories - saying goodbye to other family and friends as they either set up home abroad or go back home.  Remembering the good times you've had and not knowing with any certainty that there will be any more together.

Thirdly you see other people also saying goodbye - not that there were that many at 9 o'clock on a Sunday morning.  There is an emotion by association.

But I came to the conclusion that airports in general and Heathrow in particular is dehumanising.  The whole building is around control - you can go here or you can't go there; you have to walk down this particular corridor or wait in this particular room; you have to let other people root through your stuff; you have to do things to other people's timetables.  Even when you leave, the route you take in your car is heavily restricted.  Your very freedom to make decisions is removed except for decisions the authorities allow you to take, which are typically about what you can buy.  But Heathrow Terminal 3 is just drab - the colour is provided by the huge variety of people from all sorts of cultures who use it.  Walking through corridors hundreds of yards long where the ceiling is only a few inches above my head - signs everywhere telling you do not do this and do not do that - a perpetual whiteness smeared by the grubbiness of work, work and more work.  Surely the architects could do more to alleviate the gloom?

Questions

I came across an interesting quote the other day:

"... Christians ... live in the strangest and most alien of worlds – a world where everything makes sense. Oddly, the lure is not that they have all the answers. Instead it is that they have dispensed with the need for questions. Their moral universe is stable. For them, it all works."

 

Deborah Orr, Independent, 13 December 2008

The more I thought about it, the more it resonated.  In the early days of questioning my faith, my older cousin asked why I'd never asked those questions before.  He found it particularly puzzling given my academic strengths.  But the questions I started asking in my early 40s had never seriously surfaced in my mind before then.  I don't know why.  Maybe I was simply afraid of losing something precious, so I just shoved the questions away.

But then when I compare it with my trans-ness, I seem to have come to a contrary point - in that I just know I am trans even though there is no proof beyond that of my own recollections and experiences.  There is no observable proof, no test that I can have, no physical indicator that I am what I say I am.  Yet I fully accept it.  Have I just switched one set of "don't asks" for another?

I must see if I can get an introductory philosophy text book some day.