Editorial: nobody wanted to disagree
21st February, 1997
…. "I’m sorry but we’ve had to drop the item … we need a dissenting opinion for programme balance, and we couldn’t find one …"
With these words the woman from BBC Television’s "Newsnight" current affairs programme summed up today a quite phenomenal sea change in the way that transsexual debate in the United Kingdom has shifted in a matter of months.
In a week when the media had not just one but two juicy "coming out" stories to feast on … and barely a month after a senior government minister had tried to make intolerant political capital out of an award to a transsexual support charity, the country seemed to be falling over itself to voice support for people now described as "undergoing treatment for Gender Identity Disorder". What a difference a word makes!
It has been quite a week though…
On Wednesday the first story to hit the news was that a GP had written to the 15,000 patients of their Oxfordshire practice to announce their intention to transition from John to Joanna … with the active support of colleagues and the British Medical Association.
By Thursday papers were reporting that dozens of patients had contacted the surgery to express support.
Hardly had we drawn breath on that story, however, when another hit the headlines on Friday …
I was at work on Friday afternoon when a call from a colleague in Press for Change allerted me to the story. My poor associate had been taking lengthy calls all day from journalists wanting more information and background. Other members of the team had, it seems, been similarly inundated. Why? A science teacher from a school in Exeter was also about to transition with ….. the full support of the headmaster, governors, education authority and a not inconsiderable number of parents.
(Someone pinch me please … am I dreaming?)
Anyway, my colleague said that the Newsnight programme were looking for people to discuss the subject that night, so I called them back to see if we could help.
It seems, however, that in the meantime the researchers … searching for someone to come on and disapprove of the principle of gender re-assignment treatment … had found nobody to oblige. Ever helpful, I even volunteered a suggestion …
"Er, have you tried Dr Adrian Rodgers?"
Adrian Rodgers is the prospective conservative parliamentary candidate for the constituency where the teacher works .. and has a place in every UK journalist’s contact book as a ready source of loony right wing intolerance. He’s become such a feature of transsexual-related documentaries in the last few years … as the voice of dissent … that a programme without Adrian is like a jam scone without the jam and cream. He describes transsexuals as living "fraudulent" lives .. and assumes rather touchingly that because he’s got a medical qualification his personal view must automatically be right. He’d already been on the news this week, mind you … solemly explaining that precious artifacts removed to UK museums by plundering Victorian explorers were the UK’s heritage and shouldn’t be returned to the countries they came from. As the "man on the doorstep", however, he seemed the obvious programme choice if a "balance" were needed for this programme …
The reply to my suggestion left me grinning from ear to ear for the rest of the night though …
"Oh no", said my contact on the ’phone … "we thought of Adrian straight away
but … well, … er … he doesn’t really know what he’s talking about does he?"
I’m relating this story with a serious purpose of course … as encouragement to our sisters and brothers fighting similar PR battles around the world … and perhaps as proof for tired and jaded campaigners that it’s all worthwhile.
No one act has brought about this change … and obviously we’re far from our ultimate goals still too. Yet by patiently teaching and cajoling … by making friends simultaneously in the media, among politicians and with lawyers … by ceaselessly collating and redistributing knowledge … by encouraging more and more people to stand up for their rights .. and by encouraging others to stand up and create a public image on their behalf … we are creating synergy.
This time it’s different. Next time we want it to be better still. That’s why so many dedicated people give their time, freely, to reach out and educate at every single opportunity and why everyone who writes or calls us and our sister organisations gets their questions answered to the best of our abilities.
How does the world change? One heart at a time.
How do you know it’s succeeding? When a moment like this comes along.
This week two people with professional careers have been treated differently to the way they would have been treated less than twelve months ago. In part that’s because colleagues of ours have put themselves in the firing line to create new law. New law doesn’t change hearts. It doesn’t force acceptance. What it does do is to make people stop long enough to think and evaluate the reality, rather than making a rash and ignorant choice.
Let’s not be naïve for one moment. You can rely on it that both sets of employers this week will have weighed up the options carefully. The science teacher’s headmaster said in an interview on BBC Radio that he and the governors had taken extensive legal and medical advice and, on the basis of that advice, decided as a result on the supportive course of action they were now defending. That advice must have included the European Court of Justice decision against neighbouring Cornwall County Council last year which established the employment protection for those who work for emanations of the state. Without the potential for similar legal proceedings, maybe that little extra bit of work to think of another approach would not have been contemplated.
And that’s all it took … the removal of the old, easy, way out.
That’s why we seek legislative change in the UK. The sex discrimination, equal pay and race relations acts of the 1970’s didn’t end the systemic discrimination which they rendered illegal … they just put down a marker in society for how it is reasonable to behave. Similarly, people need a guiding hand to be assured that those with the time and qualification to understand transgender lives have examined the evidence and have called for society’s respect … in a way that says that hereafter that respect is not just requested but expected as a matter of course.
What a way to start a new year though? … And if you’re intersted in how we’ve progressed as a community towards this point over the last twelve months or so then can I remind you that the review of the year 1996 and much much more is covered here on the Press for Change web site.
The site is here to educate and to raise awareness. It’s here, also, to record the progress of what is quite a remarkable piece of unfolding social transition … the gradual opening of society’s doors to a group of people once totally misunderstood, feared and rejected. Maybe there’s something to be learned from the way this happens. Maybe only history will supply the full, intricate, picture … bound up with political expediency and shifting alliances.
Whatever the factors though, the change cannot be soon enough.