New member Pam at #Women4Corbyn:- When I was invited to this group, I was asked that I write a bit about trans. I'm not very good at this, better with Q&As as I'm less likely to go off at a tangent so I'm going to keep this mainly about myself, partly to protect others identities, and partly because it's a personal perspective. Trans people are boringly "normal". You may have met trans people without ever knowing so as contrary to popular belief, we don't walk down the road with Trans tattooed on our heads. In fact, we don't use the Trans prefix in everyday life. A Trans Woman is just a woman, a transman, a man. Now, I wont go in to the full mechanics of how we come about. There are others with knowledge of the scientific happenings, and I only know the very basics. But safe to say, the brain is wired a certain way and trans people are born not made. You can't be persuaded to become trans just as you can't be persuaded to put your hand in a fire. The belief that you can is used as the excuse by so-called conversion therapists. Most trans people just wish to get on with their lives, and most actually do when they get into the system (support, medical interventions, other contacts, etc). A few of us campaign for trans equality. We are not fighting to take away anybody else's rights, but just to share in them and not be treated differently. I was a campaigner from the mid 1990s until 2008 and then I retired to get on with my life. I did my own website and took it down when it reached a million hits to the homepage (don't forget, in those days, when the WWW was relatively young, there were only a few million with access rather than the 4-5 billion now). I also set up and ran the http://mermaidsuk.org.uk/ website for the first ten years. Mermaids is an organisations for children and young people with gender Issues, and for their families. I also campaigned along with many others for the First Gender Recognition Act and was one of the first to receive a gender Recognition Certificate and new birth certificate. In 2008, when I retired from campaigning to get on with my life, I was 7 years post-op' and feeling a little tired, so handed over the Mermaids website, and stopped campaigning. But then in 2017, I heard the story in the local press of a young trans girl who had been shot in the face with a BB Gun whilst at school just for being trans. It led to me leaving retirement and coming back to campaigning, albeit mainly online. And one thing I noticed that had changed in the time I was away, was the fact that transphobia had got so much worse and a lot wasn't even based on fact. It was based on faux science and prejudice, and trying to debate with many individuals was like banging ones head against a brick wall. But I was really concerned that many attacks were on children and their families including the outing of children who were stealth at school. This upsets me every time it happens and I will always defend trans children with my last breath. So that's basically where I am now. If you've any questions I'll be happy to try my best to answer, or maybe one of the other people in the group who were born trans will. Rebirth archive Trans Britain |
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