Between The Covers / Issue THREE / The Trans Edition

Editorial

A time to speak and a time to be silent.

At school, teachers tried to tell us to “see the world through other people’s eyes”, in an attempt to widen our understanding of the world. However, one teacher tried a different tack, if slightly clumsily, to teach us about empathy. He suggested that, as members of society, we all wore different pairs of tinted glasses – the colour, of which, was unique to every individual. But if we sought to see the world through another person’s eyes (through their glasses) we couldn’t just take off our own and put on theirs, we had to, in fact, put their glasses on over our own. I told you it was clumsy. Anyway, the lesson, I believe, was that it is impossible to truly see the world from another person’s perspective – we can only alter our perception part of the way.

This allegory stuck with me as I progressed through school and began to discover that I was gay. I realised that part of being gay meant that I saw the world differently to most people around me. By the time I came out in the late 1980s, Section 28 was taking effect in schools and gay rights activists stormed the BBC News at Six to protest. HIV numbers were rising and victims succumbing to AIDS were stigmatised in the press. There were continuing arguments in the House of Commons over equalising the age of consent. Without many allies outside the gay community, the constant media attention became mentally isolating. The version of ‘homosexual’ portrayed in the media was never how I saw myself and there were few opportunities for gay people to speak and be seen for who we believed we were.

The events of the 1980s and 90s may have ground my lens but it was the LGBT+ community that I became part of that polished it.

Today, another letter in our LGBT+ alliance has been pushed into the spotlight. Trans people are more visible in our everyday lives than before. Trans people have always existed within our community, and society, but the fear of coming out, or exposure, kept many living lives society demanded. Thankfully, society is changing again and more trans people feel safer to live their true lives. However, this is despite trans people continuing to be killed throughout the world for who they are and their portrayal in the media as a spectacle, discussed as ‘others’ on radio and television, and rarely interviewed to hear their story; a life seen through their own lens.

The irony is not lost on me. Knowing inside you are not the person as others see you, the fear of telling friends and family in case of rejection or abandonment, the anger of being told “it’s just a phase”, the frustration of not being taken seriously by medical practitioners, enduring the gossip about you, tolerating the lost promotions or job opportunities because of prejudice, the minority stress from everyday engagement with people, the distress from turning on the television and again seeing our community misrepresented or biasedly reported. Anyone who has had to come to terms with their sexuality should be able to empathise with the struggles that trans people have to come to terms with their gender identity.

The LGBT+ community is in a better position than it was 30 year ago; protections under the law and in society have helped. However, there is no equality until we are all equal. I’m not trans, but I can see and identify with the struggles faced by trans people. But I realise that I’m wearing slightly different tinted glasses. My own experiences have a lot in common with trans people’s, but they are not identical. As allies, when trans voices speak we should make sure that they are heard. And whenever possible we should make sure that trans people can speak for themselves, and not speak for them – no matter how well-intentioned we may be.

At SX we are privileged to, in a small way, provide this platform for trans voices to speak. We ask that you listen.

For more information please see the dedicated pages on our website. You can also chat to us through our website using the live chat service, drop us a message on Grindr and Scruff, or email us: info@s-x.scot