Hello Supporters!
Welcome once again to my ‘Shed’ — the blog space which Unbound provides for creators of their wonderful books to talk directly to YOU: the people who have pledged to see us produce them.
As promised last week, today I’m going to complete my reveal of the 25 contributors who are going to be writing chapters for the book, based on their eyewitness and insider knowledge of events that have shaped the emergence of the British transgender community over the last 50 years. They range in age from their early twenties to their mid seventies. It’s an amazing group of writers, and it took me several months to choose and bring them on board.
First, a bit of housekeeping: A big welcome to the new supporters who’ve arrived in the last 7 days. There are now well over 200 of you and we are already almost half way to the funding target. Thank you EVERYONE for that support. Please keep encouraging everyone you know to join us. If everyone persuaded one extra person to pledge then we would complete the funding challenge.
You’re seeing this message because you’ve already pledged support for ‘Trans: A British History’. As promised, I’m using the facility to give that bit extra back to you all for doing so. Most of these Shed posts won’t be visible to casual visitors to the web page. They are ‘supporter-only’. So welcome to this exclusive club.
Last week I revealed the names of about half of the people who are going to be writing the chapters of the book. That list began with people who can remember life in the 1950s and 60s as though it were yesterday. If you experienced it then I don’t think you could forget. The previous blog’s roll call ended with the lawyer at the heart of the first successful trans rights case in the European Court of Justice. So, now to the rest of the writers.
I said to friends last week that I’d not seen so many MBEs and OBEs in one place since I visited Buckingham Palace to get one myself. The second half of the list doesn’t disappoint. And think of the rest as people who are, by now, in a Cabinet Office file awaiting another New Year or official birthday…
The Reverend Tina Beardsley — The Revd Dr Christina (Tina) Beardsley is a Church of England priest and hospital chaplain who has worked for over three decades in pastoral ministry. She is the author of The “Transsexual Person Is My Neighbour: Pastoral Guidelines for Christian Clergy, Pastors And Congregations”. From 2006 to 2014 Tina was a Changing Attitude, England Trustee for Transgender people. She co-leads the Sibyls workshop ‘gender, sexuality and spirituality’. Tina has a personal story to tell about transitioning with the support of her parishioners in the mid 1990s, but also an excellent insight into the various viewpoints advanced within Christianity in Britain — some of which were to have an impact on the campaign for trans people’s privacy and marriage rights.
Claire McNab MBE — Claire’s background is (or was) in lobbying, among many other interests. When she joined the inner group of 7 vice presidents running the trans rights campaign “Press for Change” in the mid 1990s, her expertise in both Westminster and how to create online communications made her indispensable. The full story of that campaign is told in my earlier two part history “Pressing Matters” so we won’t be rehashing that in this book. However, as our representative regularly prowling the corridors of Parliament during the debate and committee stages of the Gender Recognition Act, Claire has a previously untold insider tale to share about dealing with politicians across the House and our slightly unhinged religious opposition.
Dr Jay Hayes-Light — Jay is Director of UK Intersex Association (UKIA), an advocacy group for Intersex individuals which campaigns against non-consensual surgeries and hormonal treatments on intersex babies and young people, as well as working to promote intersex rights and awareness. During the 1990s, transgender and intersex people were working out how to campaign on their quite different agendas, whilst acknowledging the overlap in membership and interests. The relationship was quite testy in places. Even today, some intersex people want nothing to do with trans people and even accuse them of claiming intersex status themselves when perhaps they shouldn’t. Jay was an ally at the interface of that conversation and so he has a really interesting and informative perspective for people confused about the difference between trans and intersex, and about why relationships can still sometimes be tense.
Carola Towle — Carola is UNISON's national officer for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality. At the end of the 1990s and early 2000s she was a key figure in the fraught debate about expanding the union’s LGB group to be inclusive of trans people too. It was fraught because, 17 years ago, there were still a lot of gay and lesbian people who harboured discriminatory views about trans people and wanted them to have no part in their group. This wasn’t just UNISON but across other unions and the whole LGB landscape too. Carola’s advocacy prevailed in the end, and unions are an important part of the modern landscape for protecting the rights of trans workers. She is in the book to reflect on that tense struggle and the tensions that drove it.
James Morton — is the Transgender Alliance Manager for Scotland’s Equality Network. When we talk about “Trans: A BRITISH History” it is vital to ensure that this is not, by accident, just an English history. James joins the story in the early 2000s to explain the separate emergence of trans activism North of the border, in conjunction with wider LGBT lobbying and the Scottish Parliament. There are similar stories to tell about trans people building support and activist communities in the other countries and provinces making up the United Kingdom, and it is possible that by the time we deliver the manuscript to Unbound we will have managed to include them as well.
Dr Jay Stewart MBE — Jay is the co-founder of Gendered Intelligence, a non-profit organisation whose vision is of a world where people are no longer constrained by narrow perceptions and expectations of gender, and where diverse gender expressions are visible and valued. A lot of GI’s work has focussed upon developing and supporting young people who are questioning or actively changing their gender. Jay’s place in the book is to describe how that mission came about, within the wider context of growing support for young people. Jay’s contribution is one of several which focus on the world after the initial legal struggles were over, and when the trans community needed to renew and refocus on wider objectives.
Dr Meg-John Barker — is a writer, therapist and activist-academic at the Open University specialising in sex, gender and relationships, as well as mental health, mindfulness and therapy. They co-edit the major journal, Psychology & Sexuality (Taylor & Francis) and have become an internationally recognised expert on gender, sexual, and relationship diversity (GSRD), and therapy, with numerous academic books and papers on topics including bisexuality, non-monogamy, BDSM, non-binary gender, sex advice, sex and relationship therapy, and mindfulness. Meg-John will be describing the emergence of other ways to be trans besides the historical categories of cross-dressing and transsexualism / transgenderism. “Non-binary” is a term that may appear to have come from nowhere (rather like people might thing being trans is a new fad) so Meg-John will be collaborating with various people with non-binary or genderqueer identities to explain what they mean and how they emerged.
Sarah Brown — is a transgender activist and Liberal Democrat politician. She was the Cambridge City Councillor for Petersfield ward between 2010 and 2014, serving as Executive Councillor for Community Wellbeing since 2013 and currently also serves as a member of the LGBT+ Liberal Democrats executive. She is a trans woman and, for several years, was the only openly transsexual elected politician in the UK. Sarah is in the book because of her position of being able to describe the emergence of a new generation of transgender activists from around 2007/8. For people who might not have been watching, the emergence of this wave of new faces and ideas came as if from nowhere, although it is quite logical for movements to refresh in this way. So Sarah’s principal brief is to write about that emergence: the things that drove the passions and the desire to not simply follow but lead. Given space, I’m hoping that she’ll also be able to explain the phenomenon of the transgender politician, of which there were a record number in the 2015 General Election.
Annie Wallace — Annie is best known nowadays as a regular actress in the TV soap “Hollyoaks”. But Annie’s story — and her involvement with Soap and acting — goes back further than that. The way that trans people have been portrayed in TV and film drama had a significant effect in creating and sustaining public misconceptions about trans people for the whole of the last 50 years. The idea that trans people could play the part of trans people, or write scripts, is only a very recent phenomenon — and Annie is perfectly placed to discuss that.
Helen Belcher — Helen is a co-founder and co-director of Trans Media Watch, one of two media-focussed trans advocacy and outreach organisations to emerge in the current decade. Helen appeared as a witness at the Leveson enquiry into the standards and practices of the UK Press and provided so much evidence that she was invited back a second time. Trans Media Watch is one of the key modern trans organisations, occupying a position similar to Press for Change for the previous generation, and tackling what remains one of the biggest bugbears for trans people: press behaviour. Helen will tell the story of how TMW came about and illustrate the kind of examples which continue to impact on trans lives and require the continued existence of vigilant activism and lobbying. Helen is also the Liberal Democrat Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for a seat in Surrey, where she lives.
Fox Fisher — is a film maker, trans campaigner and artist who first came to prominence through his appearance in the Channel 4 fly-on-the-wall documentary “My Transsexual Summer”. Following that he founded “My Genderation” and Lucky Tooth Films, developing a distinctive look to educational outreach using YouTube. Fox’s contribution will be to examine how the new generation of trans activists have embraced new media to get their message across in the decade since they came to the fore.
Stephanie Hirst — is a national radio disc jockey who successfully transitioned in that high profile career, beginning in 2014. Since demonstrating that you could transition and survive in the public eye she has been followed by others such as India Willoughby. Having transitioned only three years ago, Stephanie is perhaps one of the newest entrants to an out and proud (and effective) generation of trans people who confront the problems that still exist in the world, two generations on from those back rooms in Salford and London. It is for that reason I’ve asked her to round off the book with a chapter that is essentially forward looking and optimistic, for this history is far from over.
And that (for now) completes a truly stellar line-up of contributors. I say “for-now” because there are a couple whom I’m still trying to squeeze into a packed book.
Careful planning means that I’ve hopefully represented all the decades and some of the geographic diversity. I’m also aware that I need to address the ethnic and cultural diversity too, so some development remains outstanding. But these really are the people to best describe the journey that trans people have been on over fifty years.
Next time I’ll take a diversion into talking about the tools I use for writing.
For now, please remember to keep encouraging people to pledge. Without those pledges there can be no book. And we’ve come too far to let that happen.