Sickened, but certainly not sick Victimised, but no victim

When trouble comes knocking

Christine Burns Didn’t go looking for a problem …
the problem came looking for her !

May 25th, 1997

Contrary to what you might think, I don’t go out of my way to find trouble in this world. I’m too busy dealing with or reporting other people’s. Sometimes, however, trouble has a way of leaping out and biting you though.

This is one of those occasions.

To be honest, too, I’ve always been rather indifferent about the concept of private health care. Given a list of things to do with my hard earned wages, the idea of insuring for something I’ve already paid to receive through taxes has always taken a rather lower priority than other concerns. My house and my other possessions need insurance, because that is the only way of protecting them. I was born into Britain’s welfare state, however, and so my health care needs, should I fall ill, are at least covered .. even if not very well, these days.

Employers, however, sometimes take a different view .. And let’s be under no disillusion at all as to why many companies, especially those who employ specialist skills like mine, offer private health insurance to their staff. Like the computer I use for my work, if I break down then the company wants me repaired and back in service as quickly as possible. The National Health Service can’t deliver that, so private insurers offer companies the opportunity to offset the risk.

So, it’s not that I sought private health insurance through Britain’s largest and best known health insurer this year through choice. The insurance was sought for me as a consequence of taking up my new job. It’s one of the "benefits". And although I didn’t imagine that my medical history would go without comment or consideration (and I certainly didn’t intend to hide it), I did expect that when the insurers, British United Provident Association (BUPA) had considered the actual facts of my case there might be one or two reasonable exclusions from cover, but no more than that. After all, I’m a picture of health and very much intend to stay that way. I’ve hardly ever been off sick in my entire working life. Who would not want to insure me?

How wrong can you be.

I wasn’t surprised, of course, when my original application form came back, barely a week after it was sent, with a letter asking (ominously) if I’d "confirm the exact nature of the condition described as Gender Dysphoria".Alarm bells started to ring though when my detailed and factual reply to that request went completely unanswered for three and a half months, even after a reminder from me. The eventual reply has shocked my employers too, who have been known to question why I spend so much of my own time working for Press for Change. Now, of course, they know…

Prejudice .. and this is prejudice .. isn’t something that happens to some remote, unspecified "them". Prejudice is indiscriminate in its’ discrimination.

It’s early days yet in this saga of course .. but I’ve decided, as a very public campaigner for transsexual rights, to make this a very public fight. Already, BUPA have refused to even discuss their reasoning for an blank refusal to insure me with a broker working on my behalf. As he put it, "This is astonishing .. I’ve never known anything like it .. They won’t even consider insuring a transsexual .. they’re not interested in the details .. Their managers refuse to take my calls".

So that is why I have decided to put the whole of my correspondence so far into the public domain. You can read the complete saga, as it unfolds, simply by following the trail of facsimile pages, starting here.

I also began to ask around the worldwide network of transsexual rights campaigners, for other experiences in this country and elsewhere .. and got some astonishing replies.

It is a salutory reminder, however, that the need for organisations like Press for Change won’t stop when we have achieved our most public goal of legal recognition. If the new Labour government were to legislate tomorrow and address all the issues of legal status, marriage, and privacy there will still remain discrimination in circumstances where a transsexual person is obliged to reveal their medical history. Just as the Sex Discrimination, Equal Pay and Race Relations Acts have not entirely eradicated the prejudices they sought to outlaw, so too the fight will go on for transsexual people to be allowed to live their lives the same way as anybody else. The law just gives a name to the prejudice, and signifies society’s unwillingness to tolerate it.

And are you ?

Christine Burns
(Feature Copyright © 1997)