Blood Pressure

Apparently my blood pressure is slightly elevated, so that when I saw the GP to see if there was anything she could do to shift this virus that's been bugging me for 4 weeks, losing weight was the most important thing - stuff the virus. Given that I'd been pretty inactive for about a month, to find my weight had actually decreased over Christmas...!

But then I think about my life now. If you had told me this time last year that in the space of 12 months I would be a regular visitor to Parliament, I would have been invited to Number 10, I would be talking to the GMC about regulation of doctors and I would have been asked to give evidence to the Leveson Inquiry - I would have looked at you as if you were stark, raving bonkers. Yet all of those have happened.

Number 10 is earlier in the blog - still a great experience! Leveson is the call of the moment. It looks as though there will be little advantage in attending anonymously, so I will be in the full glare of publicity, meaning the full hostile glare of the tabloids. Excited, yes - but absolutely terrified at the same time. That fluttery feeling throughout your torso just keeps happening.

In many ways the last twelve months has seemed more and more like a dream. I talk to people about things I'm involved with realising that it must sound as though I'm just making it up. I can't quite believe it myself. I keep waiting to wake up and find it was just an extremely vivid dream - or the psychiatrists come through the door in their white coats and tell me the experiment is over and they're taking me back now. Yet in other ways it's as real as real can be.

People say all sorts of nice things, like how inspirational I am, or how fantastic it is that I'm taking a stand. Let me say it's not me on my own - far from it, I'll be the one with the temporary focus in a couple of weeks time (for the first time), before it reverts to the stalwarts in GIRES, Press for Change and the many other activists in the trans arena. The chance of me making mainstream media is remote - although tangible.

So the fear is not being involved in these things - it's around mucking up a fantastic opportunity to push the acceptance message, when I'll be sitting alone and solely responsible for the words I say (and don't say) and getting it horrendously wrong. It's also about being aware that I need to lose weight!

Brushes with History

I wonder whether days like yesterday will ever become "normal". I do hope not!

Tuesday 19 July 2011 will go down in history as the day Parliament tried to hold the Murdoch press and the Metropolitan Police to account. It also happened to be the day when I was meeting MPs and Baronesses.

I walked into Portcullis House past the long queues for both the Home Affairs Select Committee and the Culture and Media Select Committee, to be greeted by a security man at the desk who obviously expected to send me back out to join the queues. His manner changed abruptly when I said I was there to see Simon Hughes. I asked to go to the loo first, and he directed me up some stairs and down a corridor. There were police all over the place. As I came out from the loo, Sir Paul Stephenson brushed past on his way down the corridor to the Home Affairs Select Committee - where he subsequently got a mauling. The look on his face as he strode past was one of glorious defiance! "Are you here to protect me?" he joked to the policeman on my right.

Coming out of Portcullis House (directly behind Ken Livingstone), the arrangements had changed, so now there was little choice but to walk down the 10 yard "corridor" of press photographers. You could tell this short delay as they wondered who I was then decided to take photographs anyway in case I proved to be important.

In the afternoon I had my first taste of Parliamentary Forum business in another outcrop of the Parliamentary Estate. Walking past St Stephens Green and seeing the television outlets with their tents and scaffolds, so they can get a good picture of the Houses of Parliament in the background but be far enough above the bustle of Millbank so it doesn't intrude. Seeing Alistair Stewart and Carol Barnes (I think) lit up as we walked past at 6:15 was, in itself, interesting. Back at home, watching Huw Edwards on the BBC News at 10, obviously in the same place, was also slightly dislocating.

Who knows, maybe yesterday will be a start of other changes as well. Simon Hughes was very receptive on my idea for removing gender markers altogether - he'll do some research over the summer and get back to me. His assistant was terribly complimentary to me - saying I was the only one of his engagements this week who had appreciated how busy Simon had been and, moreover, accurately anticipating when he was most likely to be busy on that day. I suspect it was because of that understanding and flexibility that my appointment stuck. And raising questions about press regulation, the recent statement from the Equalities and Human Rights Commission that seems to indicate that religion may be a valid reason for people not to comply with the Equality Act (drawing gasps of disbelief from the group at large and a statement about how unclear the recent decision actually was from the EHRC member) and how trans is treated in schools at the Parliamentary Forum - maybe that will also initiate change.

Days like yesterday will never become normal. However, I suspect I should more accurately change my initial line to wonder whether mingling with senior parliamentarians, civil servants and broadcasters will ever become normal. Again, I do hope not - although I love every minute of it!

Awareness and Influences

Well, it was quite a wonderful day. I arrived half an hour before the event (as I was told it could take up to half an hour to get through security) and was waved through in 2 minutes. So I ended up standing outside Number 10 for about 20 minutes.

Walking through the world-famous black door was quite a moment, especially as it opened just before I got there - someone was wanting to come out, so it didn't open just because I was walking up to it! Then it shuts behind you, and you become one of the rare-ish people who see the inside of the Prime Minister's offices - the security guards, the computer by the famous hinges, the rack where you leave your mobile phone. Through to another slightly larger room where you leave your jackets and big bags, then down another corridor, up the famous staircase with all the pictures of previous Prime Ministers (so Gordon Brown was the last one pictured, strangely jauntily given what turned out) and into the reception rooms.

I was pleased, I didn't freeze or gape like a fish. Instead I found an inner confidence and introduced myself to folk, and was introduced to others. Lynne Featherstone recognised me from the MoU launch a few months earlier - she looked tired, and pretty much fled the scene as four trans activists started to off-load - possibly not the best plan of action. Simon Hughes was interested - and it looks like I've now managed set up a meeting with him about gender markers. Evan Davies was charming - especially when combined with Rev Richard Coles - my mornings' listening in one place, a doorway inside Number 10 - how surreal is that! Jane Hill was also supportive. It was over too soon.

I'm still pinching myself 5 days later. I know it happened. I hope it will happen again - as I'll be so much less nervous, and know more of what to expect.

Meanwhile I find myself at the centre of another political storm - inside the choral society. Suffice to say that I hope that the action the committee has taken will be undone - albeit that it means we may have to look for an alternative committee at short notice on Thursday.

And then I find that Stuart Cosgrove of Channel 4 found me "very impressive" - someone he felt he could do business with.

J said this afternoon that she wondered why I ever doubted my abilities - but it feels wrong somehow to assume that I am talented - it just feels like rubbing something in or denigrating others. But I'm obviously capable of making a mark. It makes the future seem more exciting. I only hope I haven't peaked!

Atmospheric Rises

So, let's get this into some kind of perspective:

In June 2001 I would have been so nervous about being seen wearing a dress by anyone at all. I was just coming to terms with the fact that I was trans-something. It didn't mean that I didn't want to be seen - it's just that I feared the reaction.

In June 2003 I had plucked up courage to wear a dress in a "safe house" - J having seen me only a couple of months earlier.

In June 2004 I'd just lost my job and was considering going full-time.

In 2 days time it looks as though I'll be walking through the security gates to Downing Street and joining in a reception at one of the most exclusive addresses in Whitehall, in full view of various media types.

Excited, scared, trying to maintain a sense of cool, wondering how on earth I'm going to fit everything else I need to do this week in - the gamut of emotions is huge. I thought meeting Ofcom in May 2010 was a huge step, then meeting folk at the BBC, then meeting one of the senior guys at Channel 4 in August, then having a series of meetings at Channel 4, then meeting/hosting a serving government minister at Trans Media Watch's launch in March, then being appointed to the Parliamentary Forum on Gender Identity last month... Since August life has been a whirl of ever escalating steps.

On Saturday afternoon, as the situation had just unfolded, I was standing in the churchyard of All Saints Church in Wokingham - half-an-hour before the rehearsal was due to start for a choral concert I was singing in that evening. In 2003 and especially the first part of 2004 that same churchyard was a bolt hole - my place near my office to walk and try to think. Seven years from taking her first tentative steps out into the world at large, Helen will be going into the heart of government.

Absolutely amazing. I still can't quite believe it. What on earth am I going to wear?!?

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.

Let it snow

It's interesting, this sudden onslaught of winter.  In the south of England I think we must somehow have become immune to the possibility that, as the nights lengthen and the cooler winds blow, it sometimes snows!

Yesterday it took me around 2 hours to drive from Sindlesham to home - a journey of between 3 and 4 miles.  It started snowing on my way back from Winchester at 12:30, and by 4:30 there was absolute chaos.  There was so much traffic that any grit that had been laid down was rendered next to useless (not that I saw any evidence of grit at all), and the traffic was so slow that every time you moved off, ice had formed under the car and you were moving through the snow that had settled on the road since the last time.  Nothing for it but to know that I could easily walk home if absolutely required, and no-one else was going anywhere either!

But the "something must be done" brigade is out in force again.  The snow was heavy.  Nowhere copes with prolonged heavy snow.  Continental Europe is knee-deep in the stuff, and they have all the airport closures, road problems and hassles that we do - even down in the south of France and around Barcelona.  But somehow we seem, in this country, to have got it into our heads that we simply cannot be inconvenienced by mere nature - we're too important to have our lives disrupted by anything as trivial as snow - and then, when we're left impotent, our pomposity is punctured.

Sure, there was a hell of a lot of inconvenience - I was OK because I was the only one of my family out and about, and even then I was really close to home with no demands on my time - but surely a prepared society is one that has fallbacks.  Rather than forcing everyone to drive round shopping and racing to pick kids up at the end of the working day, wouldn't a more localised and less traffic-intensive world be better?  I write this more as an aide-memoire, as my business gets busier and busier and I start recruiting people all over the country - rather than huff and puff about the inconvenience that this planet sometimes throws my way, take the time to look out of the window and admire the beauty of this amazing ball of rock.

Messiah

Last night I sang Messiah with our town's Choral Society - a sell out concert at Reading University - and shed-loads of applause after.  The soloists were superb, the tenor especially so (but then I'm biased!)

The whole thing was emotionally interesting.  OK, I didn't get all the notes right, but that didn't cause me much shame - you can hide in a choir of 100, well, unless you're something odd like a lady tenor :o).  But there were a few folk from the Baptist Church that I tried attending for a while there.  It brought to mind how I would have been thinking even three years ago whilst singing this "magnum opus" - and, indeed, it was very long - we didn't finish until about 10:15!  In a strange way I felt it would have been easier to sing had I not lost my faith.  It was like I had to draw on emotional memories rather than actually feeling the moment.  And there is still a little part of me that wanted to simply scream out "the whole thing is just a story, a fable, something to inspire or, at worst, create fear".

But it's done, and the choir moves on to the next religious festival with lots of songs about how unworthy all humanity is.  I do wonder whether I ought to try to find a more secular music group.

Remembrance

Todd (see earlier posts) has asked for reflections of how the church treats homosexual people.  On Remembrance Sunday, I've spent a bit of time composing the following:

When you’re young and confused and being told that what you are is what you are not, any group that proclaims it has real answers is very attractive. Except, being "born again" at the age of 13, very quickly I realised that I had to conform even more – because I was a “young Christian”, I couldn’t possibly know enough, so I was content to learn. And stayed that way for 25 years until the internal struggle got too much, but by then I was in church leadership (in a small way), had married, a successful job and young children. Saying “actually, I think I’ve always been female” caused shock amongst many, but only real fear amongst the church. Counselling was arranged, but the drive was to “fix” me, not to listen or learn. Because I was “unrepentant”, taking the advice of qualified medics rather than unqualified pastors, I was “cast out”. After 18 months, my wife joined another church. I tried to follow, but was told that I was welcome but not fully accepted, or was that acceptable? Branded “not a person but an issue” was very hard to take – again.

I have lost lots of my Christian friends. They simply cannot consider the option that they might be wrong, so I am rejected, placed on the shelf to consider later. As a friend once said, some people have very long shelves. I wondered why Christians, when they say that what’s inside is important, paid so much attention to the outside that they ignored what was inside. Slowly I came to the conclusion that I just didn’t believe it any more. My wife and children have largely followed me down that path. While it’s important not to generalise, I’m going to do so, knowing that there are exceptions. There are differences between Christians and the “secular world”, but they aren’t what Christians want to believe they are. Instead Christians seem to be driven by fear, not love; by arrogance, not humility. I was saddened by the hypocrisy I saw amongst those who I had followed – some of them wrestling with the very same issue as me, and those usually reacting the strongest. Stepping away from the church, and ultimately from Christianity, has led me to the peace and fulfilment I had been seeking since I was 5. I’m slowly getting over the anger that has made me want to pull the whole Christian edifice down, but I don’t know whether I will ever get over the pain of rejection by those who told me repeatedly that they loved me.

The pain of loss is always hard, and harder when it seems so meaningless.  This morning I think of the general futility of war, the immense sacrifice that we place on those who we charge to fight on our behalf, the games politicians play.  I want to say "enough" - actually I want to shout it out as loud as I possibly can.  November 1918 was supposed to see the end of the war to end all wars - yet in 2009 we're still fighting, sending young British men and women thousands of miles away to an inhospitable land to try to wrest control in the futile attempt to prevent people placing bombs on our streets, little thinking that those who place those bombs are trying to do the same to us.  Madness - to snuff out all of that young energy and potential for what is an unachievable aim.

Pie in the Sky

Occasionally, when I get time to think, I start pondering deep and meaningful questions.

I read Victoria Cohen's rant on the Times website today.  She made reference to being greeted by name in her bank, and then refused permission to take out money she'd arranged to take out because she didn't have suitable proof of identity.  "Oh yes", we chortle along, "how absurd."

It was this that got me thinking.  We appear to have bred a society where trust is now wrong.  It's underpinned by the rationale that any risk must be eliminated.  The bank's thought processes would probably have gone something like - we get people impersonating others and illegally extracting money, so we must insist on ID for large withdrawals, and this must become policy with no exceptions so that we, the bank, cannot be blamed for fraudulent withdrawals as, at some point in the past, people have complained that we, the bank, should have recognised the withdrawer as fraudulent.  And that thought process appears sound - until we mock it for the absurdity that is created as outlined by Victoria Cohen.

I subscribe to a financial computer systems news feed, and there's a guy who posts on there quite regularly about the dangers of identity theft.  Each successive posting seems to scream out that no-one is doing enough yet, there are still loopholes.  The subtext is "we cannot trust anybody".

I see the same when dealing with children.  Yes, I am put off being a school governor by the thought that I have to fill in some kind of police check when all I have to my name are a couple of minor driving convictions going back, gosh, 20 years or more.  If I wasn't trans then I suspect I would have less of an issue, but the feeling that this outs me once again is powerful - and the person handling the CRB checks insists on having the forms for her to submit herself - we cannot do it for her.  We've had the outrage that people who look after others kids on an informal but regular basis now also need to be "vetted" by the government.  We must prove ourselves to be right and proper citizens.  And all the while the official stats indicate that 90% of sexual abuse on children is done within the family and 85% done before the child even starts school.  The logical conclusion - we must vet potential parents and families before the child is even born.  That would be political suicide for any party that proposes it - but somehow I get the feeling that we're not too far away.  After all, it does appear, as a parent, that I'm merely caring for two children at the state's convenience, and already have to abide by strict rules about when I can take family holidays and so on, with the concommitant cost implications.

The issue is the same - this underlying message that individuals cannot be trusted - misplaced trust is a risk that has to be eliminated.  And I find it sad.  Of course, I also think that a large part of this drive to eliminate risk has come from the media over the last 20 or 30 years.  Whenever a tragedy hits, there the media are outlining the calls that "something must be done".  Risk assessment is not a simple business, but the media, in their own relentless way, continue to frame the debate in black and white - and if you say "well, nothing could be done", suddenly you're painted black, evil and dangerous to know.  The answer, "well, shit sometimes happens", doesn't seem to cut the mustard, and is actually not a pleasant one for people who have been directly affected by the tragedy to hear.

Let me come back to the trans thing.  Why is disclosure of my past such a big thing?  After all, I know that all but one of the 8 or so folk who work with me know my past, and I don't know whether the eighth knows or not.  The trans lobbies have worked tirelessly over the last decade or so to ensure that the past shouldn't be something that is public knowledge - yet whenever something happens to a trans person, the previous gender and name is usually reported, as if that was in any way relevant.  No, I must steer away from the media.

But isn't a lot of that fear over disclosure to do with trust again?  Why do trans people feel we cannot trust anyone with that knowledge?  Certainly my own recent dealings with HMRC indicate that they cannot be trusted to hold correct information - somewhat worrying when they are responsible for collecting taxation and have swingeing powers to enforce things that they determine are right.  I certainly grew up in a culture whereby anything different, like homosexuality or trans-ness, was derided and needed to be hidden.  The fear of disclosure was real, tangible and terrible.  It was only when the suffocation threatened to kill me that I felt empowered to do anything about it.

I would love to live in a society which can accept difference and doesn't prejudice anyone by virtue of their background.  I would love to live in a society where we can go about our lawful business without having to prove our essential essence of being or goodwill.  It seems to me that those two liberties are actually what we should be fighting for.  It's just that I don't know how to do it.

Every so often I just am absolutely astounded at what has been accomplished in the last few years.  For example, at the moment work-wise, today I talked to our reseller company in South Africa about a big opportunity in Ghana, and my sales guy had a conversation with a chap in New York who's really interested in "buying" our software, all the time thinking that I must get round to reviewing the draft contract with potential resellers in Australia.  This is software that I have written - other folk have had input into the design, but every last line of code is mine - and people across the world are interested in it.  Wow!

And then I think back to a year ago, getting ready to go to Thailand.  I know my past, and I know it will never ever disappear, but I increasingly feel disconnected from the trans world in many ways.  It's like I've forgotten what it felt like, having this body that I really didn't want.  It leaves me in a strange place sometimes - revisiting the question "was it all really necessary", but without the constant feeling of pain that there had been for 35+ years.  And it makes it very difficult to answer in one way.  Of course, in many other ways, it's so obvious that transitioning and surgery was the right thing to do.

Then there's my daughter, already making a name for herself in her new drama school - she's the one who sings with a "good voice".  I'm dwarfed by the potential that seems to be opening up before her - and proud that I can afford to pay for the privilege.  Not forgetting my son, who seems to be deciding on a future career in the police, and is visibly starting to grow up.  I just love children of this age - they have so much new knowledge, yet so much to learn, but are still keen and eager and ready to have fun.

There's the choir, which I now seem fairly bedded into, and the possibility of being a school governor, and a campaigner on trans issues, ...   Life is full - sometimes I think too full.  But it's great!

Evangelicals - gah...

I must confess myself more than a little stunned at what I have found out this evening.

In my days in Leeds, I always felt uncomfortable with standard forms of Christian evangelism, such as "door-knocking" or "street-preaching".  It seemed too intrusive, too invasive, too impolite and not giving people the respect they deserved.  I was part of a church drama group, and we were asked to do some pieces on the streets in York as part of an evangelistic exercise.  Also invited was a young American guy named Todd Farley.  He did mime to music, contemporary Christian music.  I stood there almost open-mouthed as he was able to draw a crowd in.  Ok, the music was loud and "different", but even so people just stood and watched.  He then did a workshop, which I went to in order to see if I could add some depth to characters I portrayed.  I came out a trainee mime, and joined with four others in Leeds to create a troupe.  The last 3 years of my time in Leeds were dominated by mime ministry, and we were invited as a group by Todd to tour with him in Norway.

Even after I left Leeds, I was still involved in Todd's organisation for a while - until I moved to Scotland and it all got too difficult.  I grew to know this guy a little - his love of Star Trek, his sense of comedy, his flaws too - such as the occasional "pig-out" on things which really weren't too good for him!  And then - silence.  Occasionally I would have a look on Mimeistry's website to see what was going on, but marriage and work meant that I was no longer fit enough to do what I had done before.  It was more occasional interest than a strong desire.

I found Todd on Facebook last month, and decided I would see if he would become a friend to this strange woman.  He did.  And this evening I was thinking of him, so decided to look up his history on his "new" website.  And came away feeling stunned.

He and his wife, Marilyn (who I also really enjoyed being with) are now divorced.  He was disowned by Mimeistry for announcing that he believed practising gay people could be ministers in the church.  He has had divorce, death (of his mother and brother) and a loss of career to deal with in the last 2 years.  I was amazed - partly because I never thought that he would be someone who would make that stand for gay people in the church, although I don't really know why I thought that.  I was shocked that divorce had happened - although I realise that I only really knew them in their very early years of marriage.  And I'm left with some questions too.  Is he gay himself?  After all, Ray Boltz, who's music Todd used very powerfully, came out as gay a couple of years back, and was shunned by the evangelical Christian community as a result.  Todd talks about being an advocate for a gay friend - was that Ray?

Part of me thinks "good riddance - these evo fundie types cut off their noses to spite their own faces again - I hope the whole edifice fails".  But part of me is also sad, to see yet another person damaged by all of this, and this time someone who I did actually care for and respect, and who was in very, very deeply.  I'm surprised at how deeply I'm moved by it.  I guess it's because in 1990 I almost gave up my job to work with Todd for three months - unusually Todd gave me the choice - and also I guess because I look at what I could so easily have become or remained - a vindictive, small-minded, legalistic Christian.