PRESS RELEASE: Transsexuals take protest to Downing Street

Issued : Monday 27th October, 1997

Embargo : Immediate

Wednesday 29th October - Rally begins 12.45pm

Petition delivery 1.15pm - Press conference 2.00pm

Press for Change, the organisation leading the campaign to equalise civil rights for transsexual people in the United Kingdom, plans to deliver a ten thousand signature petition to Number Ten Downing Street this Wednesday, October 29th. The petition, including hundreds of signatures collected at the recent Labour Party conference, calls upon the Prime Minister and government to end the distress and the legal minefield created by the present state of law in the UK, whereby a person who has been treated for Gender Dysphoria, and who lives and appears to be a member of their corrected sex, has to be treated as a member of the gender recorded on their birth certificate.

“People think this is just about rare and contentious issues like getting married, but in fact we face potential embarrassment and prejudice on a daily basis”, says 44 year-old computer consultant Christine Burns, one of the organisers of the rally accompanying the delivery of the petition. “This is about ordinary, everyday things which everyone else takes for granted, not once-in-a-lifetime issues”. “Why should I have to disclose the treatment, and the trauma I want to put behind me, to a complete stranger any time I want to take out an insurance policy?”. “Why should my pension be a nightmare?”. “The treatment I received cured a congenital medical condition but society has given me a legal condition in its’ place”.

Labour MP Dr Lynne Jones (Birmingham, Selly Oak) agrees:

“At the lobby, we will be calling on the Government to rise to a demand that it itself made whilst in Opposition. If it is serious about social justice, then action must be taken to allow the alteration of birth certificates following gender reassignment surgery. Labour’s front bench spokesman during the debate on Alex Carlisle’s Gender Identity Bill, Kevin Barron MP, quoted the European Court of Justice when he said “The law cannot cut itself off from society as it actually is”. I support Press for Change’s call for the Government to recognise society as it actually is, and to correct the harsh injustices that have been perpetrated by a misleadingly simple regulation.”

Law lecturer and campaign founder Stephen Whittle, knows the indignities and frustrations of post-treatment life too well. Stephen lost a case of his own against the government in the European Court of Human Rights earlier this year, when he sought to overturn a ruling that prevents him being recognised as the father of his partner’s four children, conceived by donor insemination. Prior to his twenty year relationship with the childrens’ mother Stephen was identified and raised as a girl. Two decades of discrimination and campaigning to be allowed to live a normal life like any other man have left him angry and frustrated, but determined all the more to succeed. He says:

“The tremendous outpouring of support, when we lost our case this year, showed how much ordinary people support us when they’re made aware of the facts. It’s time the government did the same.”

Press for Change expects an unprecedented gathering of transsexual people to join in the rally, and to move afterwards to Westminster, where the group plans a press conference for 2pm. The group wants the government to act now, rather than face two more Human Rights court cases, scheduled to be heard in February. An unprecedented number of additional court cases are in the pipeline, as more and more transsexual people seek redress for work or health discrimination or abuse of their social freedoms.

Press for Change estimates there to be approximately 5,000 people in the UK who have lost rights to privacy, job security, medical care and family life as consequences of the way in which their legal sex conflicts with the reality of their everyday lives. Sex re-assignment treatment is a globally recognised and regulated therapy for what is now believed to be an inherent birth condition. Experts class it as just another of many well-documented forms of “Intersex” conditions. Whatever the explanation, however, the problems faced by transsexual people all come about as a result of the failure by British law and government to recognise the authenticity of the transsexual person’s condition, and the damage caused by deliberately obstructing the success of an otherwise successful therapy.

ENDS

Organisational details

For more details about the Press for Change campaign, see our web site, archives and news service at: http://www.pfc.org.uk/

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