I wrote this for another website but I get lot’s of emails asking about my family so thought I’d share it on here too…

I was born into the Jehovah’s Witnesses in the UK, my dads mum brought him into it and he was a Ministerial Servant and is now an Elder. I have 3 brothers and sisters and we were a close family growing up, all of our friends were from the local congregation and I only had one or two friends from school who weren’t involved in the religion. I wasn’t allowed to participate in after school sports and was strongly discouraged from any further education despite being in the top 10% of my school. From as early as I can remember I had huge unanswered questions over my gender and sexuality but I knew that I couldn’t speak about any of it to anybody, I knew that if I did it would mean endless and pointless bible studies with the Elders, conversations with people who didn’t want to listen to my feelings, who would just try to change the way I thought and constant suspicion of being an apostate. I kept everything to myself, trusted nobody and this has messed me up ever since.

At 17 I was baptised, I thought that it was what was required of me, I always had doubts, I just wanted to be normal like all the other people I could see out in the world but I felt huge pressure from the elders and my family to conform, so I did. Less than a year later one of my friends who I had grown up with (who had left a couple of years earlier) was back in town for the weekend and I’d heard he would be going to a nightclub to catch up with some people. I wanted to go.

 
My mind was made up, the only way I was going to see my friend would be to leave the religion, I’d thought about it in the past often but did not want to miss out on another important (to me) opportunity to be normal. Saturday morning and I went out as normal on the ministry, I remember getting dressed in my suit and tie thinking that this would be the last time I would ever do this. I even managed to convince some poor soul to take a magazine that day but as I returned home I sat in my parents bathroom and wrote a letter to my dad explaining that I would be leaving and there was nothing he could do. I left it where he would find it, got in my car and drove away, I knew what the reaction would be.

Nobody saw this coming, not my family, not my Jehovah’s Witness friends, not the congregation members. I had hidden all of my doubts from everyone. I still believed everything that had been taught me since I was born, I still believed that Armageddon was coming very soon but I didn’t care. I was making the choice to live as a normal person and accepted that I was going to die, I just couldn’t live with the constant guilt trips one minute longer.

Overnight everyone in my life stopped being in my life. Childhood friends crossed the street to avoid eye contact, my family stopped talking to me, the mother of a family who were our closest friends called me to her house to tell me if I died she wouldn’t go to my funeral. My life spiraled out of control, I had lost everything that had ever been important to me and in the following few years drink and drug addiction took hold. I didn’t care, I was going to be killed when Armageddon came anyway so I was determined to escape the constant feelings of impending doom in any way possible. One night I stopped by the family home and my then 8 year old sister had just gone to bed, I put my head round her bedroom door to say goodnight and we got talking. She asked me if I was evil because Jehovah didn’t love me any more. I left the house and cried my heart out.  It took until I was about 25 before I even began to sort through my feelings and beliefs.

I’m now 31, I no longer believe the world as we know it is going to end any day now. I’m agnostic, pansexual and 2 years ago I came out as transgender.

The trans part has proven to be the final nail in the coffin with my family, my mum, to her eternal credit has always gone out of her way to continue a relationship with me is the only one who still speaks to me, she hides the contact we have from the rest of them. My dad has banned everyone in my family from speaking to me, I haven’t seen or heard from them in years, I have a niece I’ve never met and a nephew who wouldn’t recognise me. Even before I came out as trans my mum and my little sister were the only ones who spoke to me and now even my sister doesn’t. My mothers love has sometimes been my only saving grace.

I’m happy now though and despite everything I don’t regret a thing. I have friends who are closer than my family ever were and I don’t have that impending sense of doom and guilt trips that used to follow me about like a storm cloud.  I don’t hate my family, despite everything I will always love them. I don’t blame them for anything either as for me, unconditional love is real and will never change. My parents never set out to cause damage to their own offspring and in their own misguided way only ever tried to do the best for their children. I hate the Jehovah’s Witnesses though, and hate is genuinely not a word I use lightly. I hate the way this cult made me feel about myself, I hate the damage it does to people who are too young to do anything about it and most of all, I hate that I can’t do anything about it.

All the struggles and turbulence in my life have brought me to this point where I am at today and that is a very good place indeed. To use a phrase coined by an LGBT campaign, It DOES get better. Yesterday I found out that I’ve been nominated for The Positive Role Model Award for LGBT at The National Diversity Awards 2013 so that must be a good sign.

In only 8 weeks Brighton will host the UK’s first ever Pride event celebrating gender diversity. We are a not-for-profit, non party political community group, here to inspire and promote inclusivity of all trans, intersex, gender variant and queer people to help us make a real difference. By promoting equality and diversity through visibility, we will educate and eliminate discrimination we face, and also to celebrate our unique history and gender diversity.

As a proud member of the comittee for Trans* Pride Brighton 2013, I’m very excited that all preperations are going well and we are looking forward to what promises to be a truly wonderful and memorable event

Unfortunately however we’ve been let down by some local organisations who we had hoped would be more supportive of the event, and as a result we are having to re-evaluate our resources and redouble our fundraising efforts.

While we’re all working very hard to make this event happen for the community, we need your help and we need it now! Please consider donating whatever you can, no matter how small, sharing and encouraging others to do the same. Every little helps!

Also, any fundraising initiatives such as sponsored swims, cake sales or similar would be warmly welcomed. Please get in touch through transpridebrighton@gmail.com if you’d like us to provide you with headed sponsor forms or fundraising resources.

For one-off donations in the meantime, however, here is out Go FundMe page. Please share and distribute widely.

http://www.gofundme.com/TransPrideBrighton

Trans Pride Brighton, putting the T first.

Dear Mr. Summerskill,

I would like to congratulate you for the amazing amount of work that you and Stonewall have done for the LGB movement over the years. As a charity you have really pushed forward the acceptance of gay rights and when I was a teenage boy, having just slept with a man for the first time and questioning my identity, Stonewall was one of the first places I found that was supportive and informative and helped me a great deal. When I was at school I was a bit of an efeminate child and was often bullied by the more ‘cool’ people in the playground, learning to come to terms with my sexuality reminded me of the vulnerableness that I experienced at the hands of schoolyard bullies and Stonewall was to me a beacon of light, giving me hope that things can get better.

As I grew up and came to terms with my identity more I realised that I was not a gay or bisexual man but a trans woman and in the course of my research found out a wealth of internet resources about transsexual issues, lots of small organisations gave me confort, hope and support and naturally I assumed that Stonewall would be just as supportive. It was only when I started to meet and talk with other trans people that I learnt how Stonewall define themselves only as a lesbian, gay and bisexual charity, missing out the ‘T’ on the end of LGBT.

I did some research on the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York and found out how the gay community were standing up for their rights after years of opression and how these riots actually included a sizeable number of drag queens, representatives of a newly self-aware transgender community. I’ve spoken to representatives of your charity and have been told that Stonewall have spoken to some members of the trans community and have decided only to focus on the LGB aspect.

By you not including the ‘T’ feels very exclusionary, it kinda reminds me of being in the school playground again, different hierachies of ‘opressed’ people unwilling to help each other out and unite against a common goal. It feels like trans people are not worthy of support, and I shouldn’t have to remind you that there are a great number of gay, lesbian and bisexual people who also happen to be trans. By not including the’T’ it feels like there is an attempt to erase trans people from issues that are just as central to us as they are to people who are LGB.

I notice that the ‘big’ American gay charities such as GLAAD are inclusive of the trans community, recognising that we are a small number and could do with some support. Stonewall is the largest and most well known LGB organisation in the UK and although I’m not asking you to drastically change your focus and policies, I am just asking for a bit of support. We are all fighting for common goals, we are all human beings facing discrimination, demanding equality and gaining acceptance, I think it is time for some changes, I think it is time that Stonewall comes out in support of transgender people.

Yours in hope,

Sarah Savage.

Dear holders of gas supply and guardians of my warmth and cleanliness,

I write to you in a rather dirty and slightly cold, frustrated state so please excuse my unabashed sarcasm but the events of this afternoon have truly shattered my faith in commerce, capitalism and humanity itself. Little less than 24 hours ago I noticed that my warm and cosy apartment with all it’s lovely hot water and heating was getting a little bit nippy so as I turned the heating up a notch or two I decided to check how much credit I had on my meter. I noticed to my disappointment that I was running low so I dutifully rushed out into the cold night to my local approved top-up pay point. All was going as normal at this point and I expected soon to be relaxing in a nice warm bath, heating up a little bit and relaxing on my sofa for the rest of the evening. I was absolutely crestfallen when, to my utter shock I inserted my gas card into my gas meter and the display read “FAIL”. Just FAIL. No more hot bath for me that evening, no more turning the heating up any notches, just FAIL.

 
Not to worry, I thought to myself, I could just go without a bath that evening and I could always snuggle up underneath a duvet until I could get this situation fixed, it can’t be that hard, can it? I mean, I had been a customer of British Gas since I had moved into my current residence and had not had a problem with what I assumed was a British bastion of customer care, especially after seeing all those heartwarming cartoon adverts on the television. I had kind of hoped for one of those levitating vans to rush to my aid, a saluting man wearing his cap at a jaunty angle ready to jump out of the door, a whole team of people all working together behind the scenes to restore my hot water and heating.

 
Unfortunately none of this has happened, no jaunty caps, no levitating vans and only seemingly clueless people in call centres somewhere, who’s unwillingness to help is only surpassed by Maggie Thatcher’s stoic defense of the Falkland Islands more than three decades ago. I have spent more than four hours this afternoon battling with voices on the end of my telephone, every single one of them seemingly attempting to surpass the one before in their attempts to pass the buck and wash their hands of me and my problem. Not one person that I spoke to even got close to resolving my problem, instead tried to foist me onto another call centre operative.

 
I was informed (if your staff are to be believed, that is) that despite having signed up for British Gas’s rather reasonably priced Dual Fuel tariff months and months ago when I first moved into my seafront apartment, somehow, sometime in February and without my knowledge or consent it would seem that my gas account had been migrated to NPower. At this point my levels of frustration were rising almost as quickly as my hot water would have risen up the side of my bath, which is not that quickly if I’m honest but that’s another matter entirely. The person I spoke to at NPower listened to my list of tribulations and dutifully ignored everything I had said and checked their system, informing me that I have never been a customer of NPower. No surprise, Sherlock. A far as I knew, my energy supplier was British Gas.

 
So I called up British Gas once again, this time a little more insistent that I am in fact was a customer of theirs only to be hung up on. My frustration levels were now exceeding that of a thermometer plunged into boiling metal. Please forgive my heat analogies but I am rather cold right now. The third time I spoke to one of your call centre people they just insisted that I was not a gas customer and there was nothing that they could do and once again, I was transferred to NPower. Guess what? I went through exactly the same rigmarole with NPower that I was subjected to in the paragraph preceding this one. This time though, the helpful lady at the end of the phone put me onto a company who would definitively tell me who my gas supplier is, one can only imagine delight at the prospect of a final resolution to my troubles as I dialled the number into my phone with a slightly grubby fingernail. Unfortunately, these people shattered that hope of a light at the end of the tunnel like a great mound of warm horse dung being dumped on a flickering candle when they told me that, according to their records, my property doesn’t have a gas meter!

 
So here i sit, frustrated, dishevelled and shivering slightly, I have spent four hours this afternoon trying to get my gas meter fixed and all I have got is the run-around from numerous people and I am still left with a few questions running through my mind. Why did British Gas discontinue my gas account without my consent? Why do British Gas think that NPower are my suppliers? Why does this mythical ‘knower of gas meters’ think that I don’t even have a meter? I can assure you that I most definitely have had a gas meter since I moved in and have been paying to put credit on to it, so where has this money been going to? Why is nobody coming to fix my meter? And why am I still sitting here cold and dirty?

 
Please help,
Sarah.

Little over eighteen months ago I was still living as a male, I was broke, living in my car and at the bottom of a deep dark hole. In the years leading up to this point I had become extremely depressed, I had self harmed since I was a young teenager, struggled with alcohol and drug abuse, pulled away from my friends and have even attempted suicide in the past. I was addicted to escapism, anything to stop the incredible sense of dread I felt from having to live as someone who I was not. I knew I did not have the strength to begin transition on my home island of Jersey so when a stranger I’d met on an internet chat room asked me to come and live with her I grabbed the opportunity with both hands, I was desperate. When I arrived at her house it quickly became clear she had not been honest with me and she had her own problems with alcohol. My lowest point was having to return to Jersey, knowing I was effectively turning my back on transitioning but I knew more than anything that I could not go back to my old ways of escapism.

I honestly didn’t care if I lived or died, living a lie was slowly but surely killing me. If you had been able to see statistics for trans people’s mental health I wouldn’t have registered on them because the medical establishment didn’t see me as ‘trans’ anything, they saw me as a male. I had asked my local health authority for help with transitioning and was fobbed off, given a prescription for some happy pills and told that the reason I wanted to transition was because I was depressed and I just needed to keep my mind occupied on something else.

 
My experiences are not unique, a recent study undertaken by the Transgender Equality Network Ireland (www.teni.ie) showed that 44% of trans respondents had self harmed and 40% had attempted suicide in their life while almost 4/5ths had thought about ending their life. This compares with 4% of attempted suicides in heterosexual, cis-gendered people. (http://www.livescience.com/13755-homosexual-lgb-teen-suicide-rates-environments.html )

 
The pressure that comes with being transgendered is huge. I have lost friends and family because I decided that my only other option other than death was to transition, I gave up my home, my job and every day that I leave my flat I take the chance of being abused by some bigoted member of society who does not understand why I have to live like I do. With the sheer amount of social stigma surrounding us, it’s no wonder that so many trans folk suffer from mental health problems, the deck is stacked against us. Added to this is the fact that the medical community still doesn’t fully understand what causes Gender Identity issues. The World Health Organisation still describes being transgendered as a mental illness despite studies showing otherwise.

What the medical establishment failed to see was that my depression was a symptom of being transsexual, not the cause. This is of huge importance for the trans community, if we can get doctors to understand that a trans persons mental health if far more likely to improve during and after confronting and solving their gender identity issues then treatment for us can only get better.

 
The more I tried to live as a male, the worse my mental health became. Since I have started my transition, started being true to myself and gaining acceptance from my friends and society as female my mental heath has improved significantly, I feel happier, more complete and able to see myself as a valid member of society. Don’t get me wrong, I still have ‘down’ days and know enough about depression and mental health illnesses that my road to recovery will not happen overnight but for the first time in a very long time I have a positive view for the future.

 
Over the years I have learnt coping strategies to help deal with the mental health problems that I have faced. Keeping a good circle of friends around me has helped no end, they have been there for me through thick and thin, some of them I’ve never even met as we correspond via internet and phone but I feel support from them nonetheless. Keeping physically active has also helped, it’s such a clichéd thing to say to someone with depression but sometimes for me getting out of the house for a good walk with nature has lifted my spirits and put things in perspective, even when I’ve forced myself into it. The thing that has made the biggest difference is simply confronting and dealing with my gender identity issues, I’m not saying it’s a magical ‘fix all’ but by no longer ignoring the elephant in the room my mind is clearer and I am more able to cope with what life throws at me.

This post was originally published on Max Zachs site.

There is nothing more I can say about the tragic death of Lucy Meadows that hasn’t already been said and all I can do is offer my heartfelt condolences to all of her family, friends, colleagues and students. I hope they can take comfort from the sheer number of people who have expressed their sadness and have offered their sympathies.

This past week has been extremely tough on the trans communities mental health. Never before have I seen such a spontaneous outpouring of grief, shock and anger. As a community it is well documented how we are more likely to suffer mental health problems and this definitely seems to be the case with Lucy. This is a fact that very few people outside of the trans world seem to understand and simply don’t take into consideration. I know that the cause of her death has not been confirmed but it is known that she had written about just how much pressure the press monstering had caused her in the months since her forced outing.

I feel that one of the main reasons this has upset trans folk so much is that, as the rules stand at the moment, any one of us could be next. Lucy never asked for the press attention she received, in fact from the outset she asked for her privacy to be respected and the only reason an editor in an office somewhere decided that her transition was ‘newsworthy’ was because of her profession and it’s not like her job was in the public eye. Ignoring the fact that lots of other trans people already worked as school teachers these editors pursued, harassed and tore into a woman who was just trying to live her life as best as she could and be happy. There is no one person to blame though, virtually every single member of the press are equally at fault for fostering this attitude that trans people are soft targets to get easy publicity and make a quick buck from, there are few among them who would have acted differently.

And If they can do that to her, what’s to stop them doing it to you next?

The way things stand there is nothing you can do and nobody with the power to stop this from happening again.

It is up to us, trans people and our allies to stop this right now. It is our responsibility to protect the vulnerable and the innocent, we absolutely must make people take notice. This cannot happen again.

Jane Fae has suggested some ways forward and I rather agree with the put pressure on advertisers idea. If we can all let our feelings known to the advertisers then maybe they will see the hurt and upset they contribute to, maybe they can help us to stop this from repeating. It is up to all of us to come up with a solution and in my opinion the best approach is a multi pronged defence, challenging transphobia on every level, helping people to understand why it is so important that our problems are listened to and taken seriously. In spite of all our differences we all suffer from common predujice and share common goals, as a group of humans trans people and our allies are both incredibly diverse and talented so we must all pull together for the greater good. We can succeed.

There is a vigil outside the Daily Mail’s headquarters planned for tomorrow, Monday 25th March at 6:30 PM. Northcliffe House, 2 Derry Street, Kensington, London W8 5TT.

Also two petitions in support of Lucy Meadows, Change.org (19,000 signatures) andSumofus (Almost 100,000 signatures)

There has been a lot of debate these last 24 hours about the aims of the Vigil against Transphobia on Thursday. First off, it’s a vigil, not a braying mob demanding unachievable things.

I want a palpable change in the way trans people are represented in the press and media. I want an actual commitment from leading members of the media agreeing that they will never again publish transphobic views. I want the media to stop devaluing and undermining trans people. I want them to recognise that publishing negative and transphobic articles translates into how we are treated by members of the public and sometimes this leads to physical violence against people who do not fit within the gender binary. Things have to change and they have to change sooner rather than later.

I am tired. Tired of over and over again reading about a trans person being dragged through the national press, just because they face no other choice than to transition and try and live their life as best they can. Someone transitioning is not news, no matter what their job or role in life is, thousands of people do it and I just don’t see why the press sees fit to spread mis-information about them. They publish ‘before and after’ photos, birth names, imply that their chosen gender is not ‘true’. They complain about the cost to the taxpayer when the reality is that a lifetime of denying ones own identity and all the emotional and physical strain that comes with it is an even bigger cost to mental health services and society as a whole. The media ignores the discriminatory way the medical profession often treats trans folk, ask yourself why there has been no coverage of the #TransDocFail debate? Because the press couldn’t care less about trans people unless they can use us as a ‘look at this weirdo’ type story. I want the press to take us seriously.

20 years ago gay peoples identities were undermined by the press, their orientation was said to be a choice rather than just who they are, in almost the exact same way the media is treating trans folk today. Gay people fought for acceptance and better representation, these days exposés ‘outing’ a gay person is a thing of the past, you would never read an article in the mainstream press implying that a gay person is a pervert, a deviant or flat out denying their existence, and precisely this is what I want for trans people.

It’s not like I’m asking for much is it?

The reason I have had enough is not all to do with that horrible piece written by Julie Birchill, it’s the idea that the media seems to have, that trans people are there to be derided and ridiculed. You can’t publish an article about gay people and call them “faggots”. You can’t publish an article about black people and call them “niggers”. But apparently it’s ok to publish an article about trans people and call them “shemales” and “shims”. Apparently it’s ok to try and subvert a trans persons identity by referring to them with the wrong pronoun, use their birth name instead of the one written on their Deed Poll.

This has to stop. Now. As I was reading *that* article I remember thinking to myself in absolute shock at how the hell an editor could have ever allowed this to go onto his website. It should never have even happened.

Unfortunately, this is not the first time that the Guardian Media Group has published a transphobic article, and on each occasion the issue has been addressed with a rebuttal from a trans commentator, and then swiftly brushed beneath the carpet. What we are seeking to achieve in protesting outside their offices is to ensure that the editors take the issue of transphobia as seriously as they would any other form of prejudice, and to make a proper commitment to keeping transphobic articles out of their publications for good. An unreserved apology is the absolute minimum that we deserve.

I will be attending a protest on Thursday 17th January at the Guardians offices, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London, N1 9GU at 4:30PM. I want to peacefully and calmly make my voice heard and then go home and hope that I have helped to make a positive difference to the way trans people are represented in the media, and if you feel the same and want to help, please come along and show your support.

I have just read this statement from John Mulholland, editor of The Observer:

“We have decided to withdraw from publication the Julie Burchill comment piece ‘Transsexuals should cut it out’. The piece was an attempt to explore contentious issues within what had become a highly-charged debate. The Observer is a paper which prides itself on ventilating difficult debates and airing challenging views. On this occasion we got it wrong and in light of the hurt and offence caused I apologise and have made the decision to withdraw the piece. The Observer Readers’ Editor will report on these issues at greater length.”

My immediate reaction to this is that it still falls short. If the article was about black people, gay people or disabled people she would have been arrested. How could they ever imagine that writing such awful words was “exploring contentious issues”? This was a deliberate attack on a minority.

EDIT 21:45: I’m hurt by the article and as much as I want to pack a punch as it were, I think the respectful and dignified course of action would be by holding a vigil-type protest and read the list of names of trans people who have been murdered around the world from Transgender Day of Remembrance. We want to bring attention to how transphobic words in the press translate to transphobic abuse from society, aimed at people who just want to live their lives without discrimination.