Breaking chairs and catching the vultues

With another high-profile snip-and-tell in the news, Claire McNab of Press For Change explains why transsexual people hit the headlines so frequently

	No choice: Claire McNab

When there are vultures circling overhead, it’s sometimes better to face them at a time of your own choosing than to wait for them to swoop.

As a schoolchild, I learnt early on the advantages of pre-emption.  When I broke the legs off a chair by using it as a defensive weapon against the class bullies, I didn’t wait for the headteacher to find out and call me in for a rebuke: I went to him, to report my concern at the design-flaw in these chairs.  Instead of detention, I got thanks and a mild rebuke for misuse of furniture.

In dealing with the news media, trans people often have to use a similar tactic of pre-empting trouble.  Anyone watching the recent coverage of people whose gender transition has hit the headlines might initially wonder whether these are attention-seekers, but in the overwhelming majority of cases I know of, it’s quite the opposite.

Trans people faced with the inevitability of media intrusion into their private lives try to limit the damage by taking control of the situation, and approaching the papers first so that they can negotiate terms.

The result is generally much more favourable coverage than would be generated by a journalist who has to burn up shoe leather following his editor’s orders to track someone down.  But that co-operation doesn’t mean that the person concerned wanted publicity, merely that that it was the least-worst option.

There was a time when any trans person whose status caught the attention of the papers could expect their name, photo and details to be splashed across the columns, generally accompanied by disparaging quotes from predictable sources.  These days, things are a bit easier for most of us, and in general press interest doesn’t arise just from being trans: an extra hook is needed.

The vicar who transitioned in the West Country and the RAF pilot whose story broke this week are two obvious examples, but we still find that trans people who work with children (such as teachers) are generally taken to be a matter of “public interest” and liable to find their lives exposed in print.

In one of the cruellest twists of all, those who go to employment tribunals to fight discrimination often find themselves subject to a double-whammy when press exposure is a consequence of seeking justice (though a recent test case will help more complainants benefit from Restricted Reporting Orders).

The overwhelming majority of those who go through a gender transition no longer face unwelcome publicity.  But that change has arisen partly because so many people have already told their stories publicly, and the very fact of someone being trans no longer carries the shock value it used to.

Some of those people have been outed under pressure, but there are also many of us who have deliberately set out to try to reduce the shock value, by waiving our own privacy.

Over the years, many people have written autobiographies or given interviews about their lives, but in the past that genre used to be dominated by a confessional style of personal revelation.

However, the last decade has seen an increasing number of trans people who went public not to explain their life-stories to an uncomprehending world, but to challenge the discrimination and lack of legal recognition which has made social exclusion the norm in our community.

That’s not an easy choice to make: publicity still carries the risk of hostility, though my own experiences have been overwhelmingly positive.

But there is a paradox at the heart of all this.  It’s only by going public that we can counter the fear of the unknown and prurience at the unusual which triggers press interest in the first place.

Only by some of this generation of trans people sacrificing their privacy can we get to the point where others need not fear for exposure, because the fact of being trans will no longer be newsworthy.

I was delighted that even The Sun refrained from hostility in its reporting this week of the RAF helicopter pilot who transitioned on the job.  But the next step will be when a story like that is rejected by the editors as too boring to be newsworthy.

Gay and lesbian people have made a lot of progress in that direction, but the 5,000 trans people in the UK still have a way to go before we can find that our medical history is of no more interest than that of our neighbours.

Until then, there will be all too many of us picking up the phone with a heavy heart, to call the papers before they call us.  But please don’t think that’s a free choice.

• For more information you can vist the Press For Change website at www.pfc.org.uk