What YOU can do to help
Mission Achievable
What you can do if you want to help us achieve our goals
June 1996
This Month All the time Mugging Up
People often ask what it is that they can do to help or be involved with the Press for Change campaign. This page is designed to make suggestions, every month or so, for new things to do.
The first thing to stress is that whilst it is the "big" things that get everyone’s attention … taking the government or bad employers to court, or being in documentaries … the real work of Press for Change lies in very traditional political activity…
.. Talking to people, writing letters, being the squeaky wheel that won’t be quiet until it gets the grease it needs.
So … the more the merrier. Campaigning doesn’t mean you have to be "out". It doesn’t mean you have to be transsexual either! You don’t need to be an expert to get started … although our aim with this web site is to provide you with the background you need so as to be confident that you know what you’re doing. In any case, help and advice are only an email away.
This month’s focus
The Birth Certificate Campaign
Following the judicial review in March, our solicitors would like as many transsexual people as possible to apply to the registrar for their birth certificate to be altered. You can read how to do this and why it’s important on the how to apply page.
Educate your MP for Summer
With the long, three month, summer recess coming up this is a good time to get your MP educated … so make a personal campaign of it. We’re already committed to sending a professionally printed copy of Transsexualism : The medical viewpoint to every MP by post, so why not follow this up by printing and sending them Stephen Whittle’s "how to" guide for legislators … Legislating for Transsexual Rights : A Prescriptive form. Make sure they’ve read the Hansard debate too … and get them involved with one or more of the birth certificate applications in your area. Refer to Questions in Parliament as well, so you can point out what all the legal obstruction is costing.
Don’t be afraid to be persistent. That’s what your MP is there for. Get them to write to the treasury (the ministry now responsible for the registrar’s office) and the health department too if your local NHS has an unfavourable policy towards treatment of transsexual people. Use the Suffolk Health Authority report as a model, if you want, of a sceptical authority coming to its senses. The first letters your MP gets back will be standard replies, but that’s normal. The follow-ups are the ones that cause all the work and discussion. Who knows? They might get tired of saying no.
Be a resource for others too
Life would be much easier if everyone had a web browser and email address, but they don’t. You can help us a great deal therefore, simply by helping other willing volunteers in your area to use these resources. Print out pages they can use. Have a strategy for approaching the MPs in your area. Form a cell. That is when we really start to become a movement.
Continuous programmes
There are some things that we need people to be doing all the time.
Collect petition signatures
Get a Press for Change petition form … and get your friends and colleagues to sign it. Each sheet holds twenty signatures, and we’d like to achieve our goal this year of collecting 10,000. An online copy of our petition form amd standard campaign pack can be found in our online stationery cupboard.
Write to or visit your MP
You can write to or visit your MP. Visiting them is invariably more effective. Tell them that you disapprove of the way in which transsexuals are treated, and ask them to support moves such as Alex Carlile’s bill. Ask for ministerial confirmation of how many transsexuals there are (they don’t know!). Ask how much of YOUR money has been spent opposing cases brought against the government by aggrieved transsexuals. Ask why birth certificates aren’t changed .. why transsexuals cannot marry … are on the wrong end of the law at every turn. Print out the major medical and legal documents in this database and ask them to read these. Go back and ask more questions to make sure that they do.
Remember, there are now have a lists of MPs online and a list of those MPs already approached online too. Don’t let the fact that your MP has been approached stop you from doing the same though.
Challenge misinformation
If you read or hear something in the media that presents the transsexual case unfairly then complain. Write to the newspaper or broadcaster concerned and make a fuss. State the correct postion (see below). If you think there has been a serious and deliberate intention to mislead the public then complain to the Press Complaints Commission or Broadcasting Standards Council. You may not get a satisfactory response, but every complaint adds up … and has to be examined.
Communicate
The corollory of challenging misinformation is to take every possible opportunity to convey the real story. Send out printed copies of the online documents we’ve listed below to local doctors’ surgeries, advice bureaux and community organisations. Most people don’t know the background to transsexuality and the implications of the bureaucratic mess that transsexuals face. They think they know … and that’s worse, because the idea that it’s just about getting married or changing birth certificates obscures the realisation that transsexuals are victimised over simple everyday things that everyone else takes for granted.
Contact your local political parties and offer the information available. Tell them about this web site. Offer to give a talk or a workshop. Raise sensitive questions. Can people get proper and complete treatment on the NHS in your part of the country, and if not, why not? What would happen to a transsexual woman who is raped in your area for instance?
Raise money
Last, but certainly not least, we need people to get out and raise funds for the campaign. Press for Change activists give their time and resources for free. Unfortunately the same arrangement doesn’t apply to getting things printed and buying stamps. The lawyers and barristers are very generous with their time too, but there is so much more we could do if we could only meet the unavoidable legal expenses. Money is something that many transsexual people themselves are short of. That underlines the point, therefore, that we need money to come from friends and community groups who are perhaps a little better off.
Details of exactly what we’ve done with the money we’ve received so far .. and how to make a donation … are on the donations page.
Mugging up
If you feel you’re not sure about the issues, what we’re campaigning for and where we stand then here’s a quick reading list …
Basics
For a basic introduction, start with our up-to-date summary of the issues. After that, it’s perhaps a good idea to check on what we’ve achieved so far (and the implications of those successes) by reading about our successes. Our approach and aims are also explained in the Mission Statement.
Knowledge is everything
Next, if you’re lost for words for how to describe it all, why not borrow some ideas from the ready-made script Explaining it to others? And don’t just take our word for it. To become a confident advocate, why not read the parliamentary debate from Hansard and the excellent speech delivered by Professor Louis Gooren. Then there’s Transsexualism : The medicalviewpoint or (if you feel that a more sceptically written review carries more weight) you could, instead, refer to the report we obtained from Suffolk Health Authority.
The cutting edge of the debate
But, if the medical case is so strong, then what are the problems in creating legislation … and what has happened in the countries that already have? To answer that, look no further than Stephen Whittle’s authoritative paper on precisely that subject : Legislating for Transsexual Rights : A Prescriptive form. The version of the parliamentary bill which we drafted is also here to read … along with a link to the rather less satisfactory version which actually got debated. When you’ve read Stephen Whittle’s paper, you’ll understand the difference quite clearly too.
But this is just a sample reading list. A guide to get you started. After that, of course, the Press for Change Library is there to round out that knowledge with fact and political opinion. Where does Press for Change fit in with feminist thinking and the les-bi-gay movement? Which direction is the identity and culture of transgendered people as a whole moving? Where is the debate on the medical, legal and social issues? Who supports us? The answers to all of those questions is here. And we aim to keep it that way.
This is a part of the campaign armoury. Our weapons are knowledge and conviction. Please use this resource to the full.