The Diary of a Conference Campaigner

Introduction

Among the shouting and jostling, the soundbites and the posturing at the 1995 Labour and Conservative party conferences a small group of citizens politely asked to be heard. In some respects they failed.

With barely the resources to photocopy a few hundred leaflets and hire a hotel room, the tiny organisation, Press for Change, had a very simple goal : to try to tell people that Gender Identity Disorder (transsexuality to you) is a tragically misunderstood medical condition … that it’s treatment is highly successful and cost-effective when properly managed … but that ignorance and the false stereotypes of decades have led to a legal and social framework which is unjust to the point of pure spitefulness.

For the author, the campaign move involved a difficult personal decision. The decision to come out as a transsexual woman and give the message another face, and the authority of personal insight.

All transsexuals have to come out once in their lives of course … to explain to family, friends and colleagues that, despite all the efforts to conform to expectations and a deep sadness at the hurt it may bring, the lie cannot be continued … that your spirit and soul, your values and aspirations, will only ever be realised in this world as a member of the opposite physical sex … and that you’ve felt that way almost from the day you were first conscious of yourself as a person.

Many of life’s choices can be fudged. Kept quiet. You have something embarassing? Go away and get it dealt with, then forget about it. You’re Gay? Well, keep quiet and we’ll not say any more if you’re discreet. You’re transSEXual? …

My own transit through that particular hell is a distant and unwelcome memory now. I’m cured. The original anguish is gone, and I’ve got on with my life … ably supporting myself as a professional businesswoman, and slowly building a place in the community that I moved to. I have a place on committees of good, upstanding and committed citizens … nice people, like me. And if they’ve ever discussed me then it’s merely to wonder why I’m not married … and to keep an eye on their husbands. In short, I’ve fitted-in, and my medical history is as likely to be shared with others as a childhood illness.

To come out again, therefore, is not a decision taken lightly. Even the most sympathetic of receptions involves a loss of something that everybody else takes for granted. Yet, we are the victims of our own invisibility … defined by others, rather than ourselves, in such a way that our non-status in law and society seems like a wholly justifiable punishment for wantonness. I’m judged unfit to marry, to adopt or foster children … some are even prohibited from seeing their own. I’m told to live with a birth certificate that humiliates me and can prevent me from getting a job … and those in employment have no protection against unfair dismissal. Laws meant to protect other women from the world’s brutality are denied me, yet if a transsexual falls foul of the law themselves then the prospects are less than humane. Good or bad, however, we all serve a life sentence. And, in the words of Michael Howard in Blackpool, "Life means life".

So we had a message to sell, and I had a reason to sacrifice my privacy in its’ name. But did anyone listen? Did anyone notice? Our failure was certainly not for the want of trying, anyway.

This is the diary of a (reluctant) conference campaigner. A woman who threw herself to the media, only to be ignored. A woman who tugged at the coat tails of the great and good, only to be patronised. A woman who asked her contemporaries to listen and was shunned.

It is a human account which may make you feel uncomfortable.

But can you afford not to read it?

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