C.N. Lester's Blog

If you’re a trans person in the UK – love one, or even like one – then you will have already seen the transphobic guidance released by Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC): a cowardly release, late on a Friday night, following the significant rollback of trans legal recognition and protection in the UK by the Supreme Court last week. If you need an excellent primer on what the guidance does and doesn’t mean – and all its legal complications – here are two by TransActual and Good Law Project.

The UK is at a dangerous juncture, and the clock has been turned back on trans right. I thought, then, that as researcher and writer of trans history I should take the space to reflect on the history and beliefs driving both judgement and guidance – and what that means for us as trans people at this point of crisis.

The EHRC guidance – by saying that trans women are entitled to use neither women’s nor men’s facilities and spaces, and vice versa for trans men – are clearly stating their position that trans people should be barred from public life. They also – in the implied instruction that trans people, no matter how much they pass1 and/or whether they have a GRC2, must not be allowed to access the spaces/provisions of their lived genders – clearly state that trans people have no right to a private life: the privacy of our own medical data and the privacy of our own bodies, a right legally protected under the Human Rights Act of 1998.

What I find fascinating about this guidance is that, in this dual attack against both public access and personal privacy, the EHRC is also attacking the rights of trans people to be public about being trans. And I believe that this by design – taking us right back to another pivotal moment in UK trans history.

Before April Ashley’s disastrous and highly publicised divorce case in the late 1960s, trans legal rights in the UK existed in a deeply grey area. Whether a trans person could have their documents updated, and could live without interference as their true selves, depended on the usual factors – wealth, privilege, luck – but that was changed, the denial codified into law, by the judgement made by Judge Ormrod. He was tasked with deciding whether or not it was possible for Ashley to have been legally married to Arthur Corbett when she had been assigned male at birth. Ormrod ruled that it was not possible: that Ashley’s vagina was not a ‘real’ vagina3, and that therefore ‘real’ penis-in-vagina sex – the necessary consummation of marriage – was absent, and the marriage was void. With his ruling, Ormrod stripped trans people of the patchy recognition they had previously enjoyed, and declared that they would forever be the sexes they were assigned at birth.

HOWEVER. In Ormrod’s own judgement, he created a gap – a gender fail state. He decided that it was impossible for Ashley to have consummated her marriage as a woman – but, in that judgement, it was also ruled that Ashley could not have consummated her marriage as a man. For a trans person who had undergone medical treatments which changed or reshaped their genitals, neither ‘woman’ nor ‘man’ were available legal options. And, for all trans people, the social categories of ‘men’ and ‘women’ – what men and women were allowed to do – were closed to them.

I wanted to draw attention to this part of our history not only because of its direct parallel with EHRC’s guidance that trans people be barred from both the category of ‘woman’ and ‘man’ – and not only because I’m currently writing this history as part of my next book and my mind is very full with it – but because there is a reason for the creation of fail state, in both court case and guidance: punishment. EHRC’s guidance, the Supreme Court’s verdict, and Ormrod’s judgement are all punitive: how dare trans people think they have a right to all the normal parts of a normal life? How dare the freaks think that they’re equal to real people?

And – just as it did in the 1950s, 60s, 70s and 80s – this legal and social punishment comes with an additional sting, and an additional benefit, for those who believe trans people are sick fantasists, and that our movement is a social plague. If you’re a trans man or a trans woman – not gender-nonconforming (at least not in public) – who can pass, who just wants to get on with your life, who cannot detransition – what are you meant to do? Out yourself, and have no access, and no recourse? Or keep being trans a shameful secret, and hope to god that you’re never outed.

Don’t tell people
Don’t go on a pride march
Don’t wear a trans flag pinned to your jacket
Don’t talk about your life story on social media
Don’t advocate for yourself
Don’t advocate for others
Don’t show other people like you that they have the chance of an honest and fulfilling life

This punishment – from the EHRC, from the Supreme Courts – is designed to take us back to precisely what the medical and legal systems of the mid- to late-twentieth century pushed on their patients: a truly limited hope of transition, and then – for the lucky few – transition as a form of death: the necessity to leave everything behind and assume a new identity and a new life, and hope to god you can stay safe.

But, of course, those trans people were never safe, because the threat of outing was always there to keep them in line: the stick to beat them with should they ever dream of wanting more than the barest margin of acceptance conditioned upon secrecy.

Outing was used against celebrities – look at what happened to Caroline Cossey.

Outing was used against ordinary people – in everyday life, across the press as entertainment. It was the standard trans media narrative of my childhood in the 1990s – in newspapers, on TV – the titillation of finding the freak hiding in the midst of the normal people, and the excitement of punishing them with humiliation, ostracism, and the threats and realisation of violence.

That was the status quo, and a lot of people – a lot of people still with us, in establishment roles, deciding the laws and norms of our country – liked it. They wanted it to continue, and have done their best to return us to the conditions where that could become the status quo again.

Deny trans people access to public life, and we disappear. Deny trans people access to a private life, and we can do no longer afford to be public. Deny the contagion a chance to spread, and you can stop the trans plague altogether.

We have a choice now – us, as trans people, and all the people who love us (or even just like us) – do we allow this strategy to succeed? How much are we willing to put on the line – not only our words, but our actions – not once, but over and over again, over time – to make sure that we are not dragged back either into the closet or the stocks, but are free and safe to build our own lives – private and public both – with agency and autonomy?

I feel the justified panic in the air all around us right now. I’m trying hard to step back and think deeper and harder about what strategies this moment requires. I don’t have answers yet – but I’m working on getting some. A great many brilliant people are doing the same.

I hope, when we do, that we’ll have the forces to make it count.

The clock only ever moves forward.

Passing is a justifiable critiqued term/concept – but, also, necessary to discuss in this framework ︎The Gender Recognition Certificate is designed to give precisely the kind of medical, social, and legal privacy that both ruling and guidance claim to have overturned. We’ll see what happens in the courts and in practice… ︎Other vaginas crafted through vaginoplasty – even in the case of another woman assigned male at birth – were deemed to be acceptable. Ashley’s chromosomes were found to be XY – and, thus, her vagina to be ‘fake.’ More on this in forthcoming works. ︎

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Playing Nerone for HGO’s L’incoronazione di Poppea – photo by Laurent Compagnon

 

The National Opera Studio asked me what it was like, to be a trans opera singer – and how we could all make our industry better.

So I wrote them this – I hope you enjoy it.

What we find is not just the erasure of trans history through denial, shame, and lack of inclusion: it is an historical record of erasure, a pan-global register of undoing and enforced forgetting.

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My new essay, A Future Without a Past –  trans history, erasure, and possibilities – is now live at FreeWord as part of their groundbreaking series, All the Ways We Could Grow.

I really hope you enjoy it.

 

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Writing from the trashfire that is the UK’s current media landscape, it is such an unbelievable joy to be able to share some good news.

And this is really good news.

Writer/filmmaker/performer Amrou Al-Kadhi and presenter/producer Caitlin Benedict have gathered together some of the most exciting trans and/or non-binary creatives and campaigners in the UK, and made a SEVEN EPISODE LONG series for the BBC.

NB – BBC Sounds

Made by trans people, featuring trans people, covering the topics trans people want to discuss, without compromise – all on one of the biggest media platforms in the world.

This is the trans media I’ve been desperate for. And it’s so, so good.

We’re such experts at sharing the worst transphobia the media has to throw at us (see epic twitter thread here).

I’d love to see us put in even half that much energy into sharing a triumph like this.

Happy listening.

Trans Like Me, my first book, was published nearly two years ago, at the end of May 2017. 2018 brought the international tour, audiobook recording, and North American/Canadian release. Today marks the publication of the mass market paperback edition from Virago Press – cheaper, brighter, and easier to stuff in a pocket.

I’ve been thinking a lot about all the things that have changed during this time. When TLM was first released I made a post about what I’d learned during the process of levelling up from a blogger to a published author, as advice to anyone hoping to make the same leap, and as a way of clarifying my own experiences. Looking back now, it feels like I’ve learned just as much during these two years of ongoing book work – speaking, lecturing, recording, marketing – as I did in that initial upgrade process.

It helped me to take the time to figure it out and wrestle it in words. Here’s hoping it helps you too.

 

Lesson One: Your career is your career, and your demons are your demons…

…and the former cannot fix the latter.

For a great many of us, myself included, writing (and art in general) can function as a form of therapy. It’s where we go to explore the hardest, most challenging parts of life. But more than that – it can also be a place where we go to pin our hopes of being validated, of proving ourselves worthy, of finally feeling ‘enough’. And I’m sorry to say this, but that just doesn’t work.

 

That feeling ‘am I good enough?’?  You will never be enough, because nothing can ever be enough to placate that feeling. That’s simply not how that feeling works – it isn’t logical, and it can’t be solved by logical means.

The more reasonable, compassionate part of me is deeply soothed by the way my career has grown over the last two years. More than that: delighted, humbled, scared, and excited. It has made a signifiant material difference to be recognised for my work, to be paid for my work, to be given additional chances to work, and for those chances to be challenging and provide ongoing development.

But I still have those ravenous demons: feed me, feed me, feed me. The ones who can’t acknowledge a good review, or a great audience, or an amazing opportunity, because for some reason it ‘doesn’t count’, ‘it’s not enough’, ‘it doesn’t matter’. They are never satisfied. It isn’t a question of trying harder, because they will undermine every last exhausting effort. They are always chasing after some unknowable, unachievable, imaginary success that will make everything right. You cannot win the game on their terms.

I’m sorry (not sorry) to say that the only thing I’ve found that genuinely helps with those demons is therapy. And writing, while frequently therapeutic, is no substitute for the real thing.

 

Lesson Two: Your life will change, but only by degrees

Obviously, discard this point if you’re JK Rowling. Also, if you’re JK Rowling…no, I don’t have the energy to go there.

Anyway – for the majority of published authors what you’re doing pre-publication is going to be very similar to what you’re doing post-publication. For me that was public speaking, broadcast and print media, lectures, and arts events. I’m still doing all of those things – what’s changed is not the kind of work I’m doing, but the scale of it, and the fact that I’m no longer (always) going it alone. Those changes have built on the foundation I had in place before I even had an agent. And, even with the help of my publishers, I wouldn’t be doing half of what I do now if I’d allowed myself to become complacent.

It is not an easy world out there for most writers. There’s a myth that once you have a publisher you can just sit back and wait for the money to roll in. But the truth is that you have to make the most of every opportunity: make your own events, tap every network, apply for jobs/residencies/placements, sell tickets to shows, promote the hell out of your book. It may not seem fair – it may not match the image of ‘the writer’ that many of us carry around in our heads – but it’s the reality of the industry.

Being published isn’t a Cinderella story – it’s more like slowly building a house from the foundations up.

 

Lesson Three: A great many people who review your book will not, in fact, be reviewing your book

They will, however, be using it as a hook to write about whatever else it is they want to say. Sadly, this applies to professional journalists just as much as to GoodReads reviewers.

It is immediately, and painfully, apparent which reviewers have read the book, and which ones have just read the press release and then skimmed the first and last chapter. These reviewers are happy to ascribe their own views to you, and then go off in whatever direction they please. There’s absolutely nothing you can do about this – and the best advice I can give is to learn how to shrug it off, because it will happen more frequently than it should.

When it comes to reviews, I know that some authors recommend avoiding them altogether. I prefer to take the opposite viewpoint, and look for trends. When it’s clear that the reviewer hasn’t actually read it, then feel free to discard. Of the rest, look for the common denominators, the points that come up again and again, and see how those insights can improve your rights. But don’t let someone take up space in your head when they haven’t even done you the decency of letting you into theirs.

 

Lesson Four: It is impossible to please everyone

Here are some of the things people have said about my Trans Like Me: that it is far too complicated and academic, and that it’s too simple and straightforward. That it placates cis people, and that it’s too angry for cis people to want to read. That only trans people will want to read it, and that trans people have nothing to gain by reading it. That I’m both too didactic and too vague, too extreme and too conservative.

More than any other experience, writing a book has taught me the truth of the fact that the reader is the co-creator of the work. And, in a few select cases, the sole creator.

It’s difficult when the most negative people (and the ones most likely to make up their own version of events) are the loudest, whether that’s through negative articles in the press or bullying on social media. But what really helps me is to remember my original aims with my work, and who it was I actually wrote the book for.

At the end of the day, why would I want to be praised by people I don’t respect? A trans positive book, from a trans feminist perspective, was never going to be popular with the right wing press or online trolls – whether of the TERF or the MRA variety. If it had been popular with them, then something would have gone horribly wrong. Thank god they hated it – it proved I was on the right track.

We – myself, my agent, my editors, my publishers – set out to create an accurate, compassionate book which would break out of the two most popular genres of trans literature to date – the memoir and the academic tome. I wanted to write something which was impeccably researched, and still easy enough to read on the bus or the train. I wanted to write it for the teenager I was – someone desperate to find their place in the world – and for the adults I know now, who want a genuine, open-minded and open-ended discussion about who we are and where we’re going. On every measure we set for ourselves, we have succeeded. What bigots want to say about that is irrelevant.

 

Lesson Five: The work goes on

You will never say all that you want to say in one book. Even that one book will never quite be over – there’s always more to add, always another edit it could have had and, sadly, always another typo to find.

But beyond that book – the work goes on to other books. Other projects. Other ways of engaging. And it’s okay for that to take a while to come into focus. It’s okay for one project – particularly a debut – to be all consuming while it’s happening. It’s normal not to be able to see beyond it, particularly when it hits the stage of writing where it feels like your brain has forgotten that it ever knew any language at all, and your fingers refuse to type.

But that stage does come to a close, and while that is a process of loss and ending as well as celebration and success, it also propels you to the next step.

I don’t know all of what that is for me. I have another book I’m aiming to finish this year. I can’t say yet whether it will be good enough to show anyone, although I’m hoping it will be. What I will say is that publishing a book has allowed me to live its full life cycle in a way that writing books without publication (as I have done before) has not – and that is a tremendous gift.

I hope it’s one you get to experience for yourself.

 

Recommended by The New York Times, Times Literary Supplement, and Publishers Weekly, Trans Like Me is available worldwide in all good bookshops and online, in paperback, audiobook, and e-book.

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Optics, not content. Writing for The Huffington Post on the exploitation of trans people and out of date controversy. Read it here:

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/genderquake-channel-4-propped-up-old-prejudices-and-dressed-it-up-as-controversy_uk_5af40b2ee4b09bb419e527c8?cf5

There’s a reason why there was no blogging for the rest of 2017…or for the beginning of 2018, and I think it’s a good one: I’ve been on book tour, on album tour – and writing and speaking everywhere else but here. Only so many hours in the day – and a lot to try to remember – but I’m finally remembering to fill everyone in on the blog.

2017 was UK based: book festivals, community events, training days, university conferences, scratch nights and book shops. The kind of things I’ve been talking about – trans lives, gender, change and hope – are all featured in the BBC Radio 4 show below  – and in the accompanying article.

Word of Mouth

CN Lester on language and gender identity

For the Photographer’s Gallery, I wrote about the challenge of the cis gaze – in the street, and backwards and forwards in time:

Being seen

And for the Barbican: the struggle to understand other trans people without collapsing their realities into our own.

Trans lives: whose words?

 

The highlight of 2018 so far has to be the trip to Sydney to speak to the All About Women feminist festival as part of a trans panel featuring Sally Goldner, Jordan Raskopoulos, and Eddie Ayres. I’m still processing how transformative the whole experience was – but the panel is on YouTube for all who want it:

Feminism Beyond Gender Binaries

And I had the best interview experience ever with SBS…

SBS CN Lester

 

The rest of 2018 is shaping up to be just as full: shooting an art project with Daniel Barter, recording the audiobook for Trans Like Me in May, getting ready for American publication in June , preparing for the most ambitious Transpose ever in December, and gigging/speaking around the country. And trying to finish my PhD.

Twitter and Facebook are best for more regular news – but I’ll try to update here more often. Enormous thanks to everyone who’s read this far – and in particular the people who’ve been reading for years, and the book besides. Onwards and upwards. And, finally, in white tie and tails…

 

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credit to AbsolutQueer photography

What the media gets wrong about trans people, how misinformation is perpetuated, and what we can do about it. The first chapter of Trans Like Me: A Journey for All of Us – in all good bookstores now.

 

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Daily Express, January 2011: ‘“Half Man” gets new breasts (and guess who’s paying £78k).’

Courier Mail, October 2014: ‘Monster Chef and the She Male.’

The Times, February 2016: ‘I’m just a bloke, says sex-change soldier.’

Daily Mail, October 2015: ‘Children as young as FOUR being given transgender lessons.’

 

We’re often the butt of the joke: The Sun’s 2011 game ‘Tran or woman?’. There’s an air of the freak show about us, an invitation to peer into the bizarre realities of our lives: ‘Transsexual, 44, elects to die by euthanasia after botched sex-change operation turned him into a “monster”.’ Even when the intent is celebratory, we are marked out as different and strange: CNN’s list of the most influential people of 2014 described actress and advocate Laverne Cox as ‘The Gender Bender’.

Here are a few of the things the media shows, and has shown, trans people to be: confused, deceitful, delusional, damaged, predatory, brave (sometimes), pitiable, pathetic. A punchline, a warning, a mistake.

Here are a few of the things I am: a singer, a teacher of music, a good (if forgetful) friend, a loving child and grand- child, a loved and loving partner. I am a doctoral student, a decent cook, too ambitious, too anxious, a composer of all kinds, and someone who tries, at least, to be better than my worries would have me be. And I’m also transgender.

Rarely has that disconnect between trans reality and its interpretation been so clearly shown as with the publication of British journalist Richard Littlejohn’s 2012 ‘character assassination’ of primary school teacher Lucy Meadows. Meadows was not a public figure. She hadn’t contacted the press to sell her story, hadn’t issued a release, hadn’t promoted herself via social media. It didn’t matter. ‘He’s not only in the wrong body . . . he’s in the wrong job’ the headline announced, accompanied by a photo of Meadows on her wedding day, back before she had transitioned. Referring to her as ‘he’, Littlejohn warned that Meadows’ mere presence would have a ‘devastating effect’ on her young pupils. ‘[Meadow’s previous name] is entitled to his gender reassignment surgery, but he isn’t entitled to project his personal problems on to impressionable young children.’

As a teacher of students ranging in age from five years old to fifty, this was the first I had heard about projecting my personal issues onto my pupils. My lesson plans focus mostly on technique, creativity and personal growth, with a side order of self-confidence boosting and chatting about musical history. My private life doesn’t come into it. I don’t hide who I am with my students and their families, and neither do I dwell on it; the fact that I am trans is as fundamental as any other part of me, but far less important in this context than my knowledge of vocal production and how best to play staccato. I teach for many reasons, but most of all because my own music teachers gave me so much, and I have a debt to repay through sharing the joy of making music. It makes no sense to me that my support of my young students would somehow rob them of their innocence, nor can I interpret the work I put into others’ learning as ‘selfish’.

In the end, Littlejohn need not have worried. Lucy Meadows did not remain in her job for long. Three months after transitioning, in March 2013, she killed herself.

Ascribing a single cause to any suicide is both dangerous and disingenuous. Lucy Meadows, like many of us, struggled under multiple burdens. But it is also true that the coroner who investigated her death, Michael Singleton, believed that the press had played a role. Speaking at the inquest, he said: ‘Lucy Meadows was not somebody who had thrust herself into the public limelight. She was not a celebrity. She had done nothing wrong. Her only crime was to be different. Not by choice but by some trick of nature. And yet the press saw fit to treat her in the way that they did.’ Finishing his state- ment, he turned to the gathered reporters and said: ‘And to you the press, I say shame, shame on all of you.’

How can it be that both trans people and the journalists who write about us believe ourselves to be talking about the same subject, and yet have such wildly different beliefs, words and ways of speaking? Differences so vast that the same life can be deemed both worthy of respect and worthy of public ridicule, an inspiration and also a disgusting threat? Differences that play out not just in the media, but in how wider society treats trans people?

These writers are recording the trans ‘debate’ in one language, and trans people like me are speaking the realities of our lives in a totally different tongue.

How are we meant to reach the people who are not trans, when they are primed to believe the opposite of how trans people live our actual lives? How much longer must we mis- understand each other, trapped in the falsehoods created by the production of ignorance?

 

 

I was first introduced to the concept of ‘the production of ignorance’ at an early music conference in 2015. The focus of the day was on women composers and music-makers in Western history, and of particular interest to me was the question why, after celebration and acceptance in their own eras, after decades of careful research, re-evaluation and performance, so many people, even musicians, believe that there were no women composers before the twentieth century. In one of the question and answer sessions musicologist Melanie Marshall put forward an answer that clarified not only this problem, but which also explained to me so much about popular knowledge and general confusion over gender issues. Referencing the work of Nancy Tuana, Marshall described the concept and process of the production of ignorance: it is not just the absence of knowledge that keeps a truth from being widely known and accepted, it is also the active production of ignorance that suppresses that truth. It is not only that we are unaware of the many women composers throughout history: we are actively taught that there were none, or certainly none worth bothering about.

Similarly, it is not that trans people are ignored entirely, but that what we are taught as fact can often obscure and distort the truth in a way that even silence could not.

Not that silence is the solution, even if it were still possible. Much has been made of the ‘trans tipping point’, from the front cover of Time magazine to the daily, twice daily, articles in English-language media throughout the world. It is unde- niable that the media is having a trans moment. Interviews with trans adults, features on trans children, possible changes in legislation that would help trans people, definite changes in legislation that will hurt us, another trans death in prison, another trans person in custody, a gender fluid celebrity, a charity campaign. Some of this content is incredibly good, and some is just incredible. In an age of declining sales of offline media, the end of physical newsprint and the importance of clickbait ad revenue, there’s a particular winning formula when it comes to trans issues: anti-trans opinion piece (as shocking as possible), report on the hurt caused by said piece (search Twitter), pro-trans rebuttal (in the same paper). Rinse and repeat on a regular basis. It doesn’t matter why people are reading – agreement, rage or the hope of titillation – so long as it sells. And, right now, trans sells.

When we apply the concept of the production of ignorance to this cycle we can see why and how it plays out.

To learn how to learn about trans people, about the ways in which what we know about gender is shifting and growing, we first must unlearn.

 

 

The question I am most often asked about being trans – on the internet, in the pub, on the bus, at work – is the one I most dread answering. Sometimes it’s delivered through euphemism, sometimes crudely, and worst of all by a groping, uninvited hand. ‘Have you . . . you know?’ or ‘so you’re . . . post- or pre-op?’. It’s colleagues I barely know asking me what kind of genitals I have and whether I’m going to change them – and, if so, how – and strangers recoiling in horror, because ‘I don’t know what you have down there’. This, for them, is the defining point of being trans: the ‘sex change’, the ‘op’. Never mind that there are many different kinds of medical treatments that trans people may undergo, if it’s right for us, if we have the money, if our medical systems allow it. In the popular imagination there’s a singular operation, and a violent, last-option one at that. Various forms of detailed, sensitive reconstruction work become ‘lop your tits off’ and ‘cut your cock off’. It’s the supposed proof of being trans and, more than that, it’s everybody else’s business.

What we experience on a day-to-day basis we see mod- elled by the media: documentaries, interviews, movies, TV shows. It’s the triumphant finale of 2005 film TransAmerica: Felicity Huffman sliding her hands between her legs in relief at the absence of her (much publicised prosthetic) penis. In 2015 documentary Girls to Men, the film-makers framed the stories of their young trans masculine protagonists in terms of their journey towards genital surgery. Gory surgical footage and close-up cock shots; that the audience should become a voyeur is a given, because they, somehow, have not only the right to know but the right to gawp. Even when a trans person has not volunteered the information, the topic is considered fair game – more than that, essential. Watch the 2014 interview of Carmen Carerra and Laverne Cox by Katie Couric: the ease with which Couric asks about her interviewees’ genitals, and her confusion at being denied an answer.

For many of the people who ask, the fact that a ready answer might not be forthcoming is baffling. After all, isn’t that how being trans is meant to work? Someone realises that they’re ‘trapped in the wrong body’, then gets that body overhauled and emerges a new person. It’s everything we’ve been taught from the earliest ages: women have vaginas and men have penises. If we, trans people, want public acknowledgement of who we are then, the argument goes, we should accept the public judgement of our genitals.

If we were to take another example, and apply the same rules, it becomes obvious just how inappropriate and harm- ful this trope is. For some (not all) trans people, one element of being trans is the physical process of transition. It can be joyful, it can be painful, it can be messy and it can involve surgery. The same could be said of parenthood. Conception, pregnancy and childbirth are necessary parts of making a family for the majority of people. Like medical transition, it is vital that we’re educated about these processes if there’s a chance we’ll find ourselves personally affected. And luckily, in both of these cases, the medical information is freely and easily available online, through public health initiatives, in libraries, and from the relevant medical authorities.

But it would never be appropriate to approach a new mother in a café and say: ‘so did you rip your vagina giving birth to that one?’ When greeting a colleague returning to the office after maternity leave we don’t ask if we can examine the stretch marks and possible scars, or ask about haemorrhaging and post-natal incontinence. If we’re close friends or family, we might well talk about the most personal physical aspects of creating and delivering a baby – the same is true of transition. But the need to be honest and close with our loved ones doesn’t make the intrusion of strangers okay.

The second problem is that of language. Obvious trans- phobic language in the media – and in the wider world – is hard to ignore. Even those people who are themselves trans- phobic could hardly pretend that Julie Burchill’s infamous 2013 column was inoffensive, with her descriptions of trans women as ‘bedwetters in bad wigs’ and ‘dicks in chicks cloth- ing’. You don’t need to know anything about trans people to know that referring to us with insults is cruel.

What worries me more is the trend to describe all trans- related language as somehow ‘made up’, difficult and too PC to be allowed.

When I’m asked to give a talk, write an article or deliver training on trans issues, I’m well aware of the fact that the words I use won’t be familiar to everyone, and am happy to explain. ‘Trans’ is the word I favour, as it has the broadest and most flexible definition: any person who, in some way or combinations of ways, has found that how they experi- ence their gendered self does not fit with the gender and sex they were assigned at birth. ‘Cis’ is the antonym of trans; just as we cannot describe being gay without having a word for straight, we need a word to describe experiences which are not trans, as well as experiences which are. These words are blunt instruments, designed to give a rough understand- ing of the ever-changing world we find ourselves in; tools to help us to understand and challenge the ignorance and prejudice between us. They will change with time, and new words will take their place: humans are quite remarkable in their capacity to learn new words. For example, we now use the word ‘you’ in both the singular and the plural: not so in Early Modern English. In the past twenty years the word ‘internet’ and all its related terms and add-ons (including the term ‘add-on’) have entered into daily, unremarked usage. As a teacher, I’m constantly introducing words that are new to my students: rubato, cantabile, légèrement. When new words can bring us closer to something we want to say then we are all too happy to learn them. And this is why I’m suspicious of the claim that trans-related words are too much, too hard and of no use.

Even when a word has been in usage for a long time, those who are suspicious of what that means in terms of gender are quick to claim that the change is too fast. ‘They’ has been used as a singular pronoun in English for hundreds of years; we find examples of the singular they in the works of Shakespeare, Austen and Swift. But trans people like me, who use the pronoun ‘they’ as a gender-neutral alternative to ‘he’ or ‘she’, are often mislabelled in the media by editors who struggle with its usage. By implying that trans people are faddish and difficult about words, writers can cast asper- sions on the validity of our language – and of our selves.   By claiming that our words are too hard to understand, the media perpetuates the idea that we are too hard to under- stand, and suggests that there’s no point in trying.

Learning how to talk about trans people is not difficult, and doesn’t require any specialist knowledge. Just as you would in any other situation, you just have to reflect back the words a person uses about themselves. Wanting to be referred to in an accurate and respectful way isn’t a trans- specific thing, but a cornerstone of polite society. I don’t call my Jewish friends Buddhist. It’s the same with trans people. Use the right names, use the right pronouns, and don’t fall for the line that we’re too difficult for our own good. I know many cis people who are so nervous about getting it wrong that they’re scared to try to get it right, but it’s okay to ask. I would far rather someone asked me what pronoun I use than tried, out of embarrassment, to guess, and got it wrong. The final problem of the framing of trans lives so often recycled by the media is perhaps the hardest one to see. So often it is the only way in which trans people are included in the media at all. Less obviously pernicious, but still dangerous, is the way in which trans people are only featured when being trans is the story.

The most obvious, and most egregious, example in recent years must surely be in the press treatment of scientist Kate Stone. Dr Stone was gored by a stag in a freak accident in late 2013; as someone who had not sold her story, who was not in the public eye, she had no reason to suspect that her accident would hit the news. And yet she, and her family and friends, were confronted with headlines such as ‘Sex swap scientist in fight for life’ and ‘Deer spears sex-swap Kate’. Speaking to the Guardian, Stone explained: ‘I have no regrets about the accident. I have never for one moment thought, “Why me?” But some of the reporting was horrendous. The media door- stepped my family, my friends and colleagues. On radio, one ‘expert’ was asked, ‘Was Kate gored by a stag because she was transgender?’‘

This is an extreme example, for sure. Most of us will never experience this kind of treatment, although more trans people have experienced door-stepping than you might expect. Stone sought help from the Press Complaints Commission and, eventually, the intrusive stories were withdrawn. But the broader point – that being trans is, in its own right newsworthy – impacts on the way all trans rights are framed.

When I was first starting out as a performer, I was shocked by the number of people in the media who were more than happy to write about me, but not as a musician: only as a trans sob story. I refused to provide ‘before’ and ‘after’ pictures, to give away the personal details of my life: most of the press interest disappeared. We’re forced into a double bind; if we’re to speak honestly about who we are then we must have the freedom to talk about being trans, but we cannot be reported honestly if being trans is the only aspect of our lives discussed.

I know many trans people who have spoken to the media about what it is that they do – their professional expertise, their artistic ventures, their latest projects – and are later con- fronted with a final copy that cuts out all of that detail for a clichéd trans narrative that has nothing to do with the actual life of person featured. Through this framing we are made to look like attention seekers and oddities. If we don’t mention being trans, we risk one of two options. If, like me, we are visibly different, then we are usually pressed to talk about it. If we are not seen as trans, we run the risk of accusations of deception, of a scandalous ‘reveal’, if we don’t announce that we are trans from the get-go.

As in the media, as in everyday life. Without being able to talk about being trans, I can’t speak about how I have been made to suffer for it, and also what I have learnt through those experiences. I can’t make things better by being silent. But neither can I speak about every other part of my life – live every other part of my life – if other people focus only on my transness as something shocking and different.

It has to be our choice to talk or not talk about being trans, and – whether we talk about it or not – we still need to be recognised as whole, complex people. Our lives are truncated when we are seen only through the stereotypes of others, and we waste so much time struggling against those constraints. Whether it’s on the front pages or in the workplace, ‘being trans’ is never the most interesting thing about us. Accept it as one crucial part and then, please, keep listening.

 

 

If these aren’t the part of trans life trans people themselves would like you to know, then how have these stories become so prevalent?

Because we, as trans people, are not the ones in control of the trans news story.

In 2014, American scholar Jamie Collette Capuzza pub- lished a study analysing sourcing patterns of trans stories in the US media. Looking at data from the preceding four years, Capuzza found evidence to support what has long been noted within our trans communities: trans people are far more likely to be written about as an ‘issue’ than we are to be recording our experiences and insights as equal participants. Just as often as not, the cis journalists writing an article or putting together a news segment would fail to include even a single quote from a trans person. Of the trans people who were quoted, the vast majority were white, the vast majority were trans women, and trans people who don’t fit into the gender binary were hardly present at all.

Beyond that, Capuzza found a distinct skewering of focus: trans people were far more likely to be written and talked about in the entertainment, beauty and lifestyle sections of the media than in the ‘hard news’ categories of political, legal, economic and medical reporting.

Trans people are not always – not even often – approached by the press for comment or explanation when trans topics come up. When we are allowed to speak for ourselves, our answers are usually trimmed to fit a script written by others. And when that script is offered up as the truth of what trans people are, used as the foundation for future script writers, then we end up with a trans ‘reality’ created and maintained by those who aren’t: a perfect trans chimera than mutates into the snake swallowing its own tail.

This isn’t just a trans thing, of course; all kinds of people and subjects are distorted by reporting. The ‘news’ is a funny combination of playing to a known audience, keeping ad revenue on side, trying to attract attention in a crowded mar- ketplace and appealing to the political sensibilities of editors and stakeholders. Sometimes there’s some great journalism thrown in as well, if we’re lucky. But when not all that many cis people know a trans person in real life – or don’t think that they do – that understanding of the margin of difference between the media spin and the everyday reality can slip down to nothing at all.

 

We can be misinterpreted through lack of representation – but also through the particular prejudices of popular writers. The denial of reality, the cutting of a story to fit a particular narrative, and presenting uninformed opinion as fact: on a weekly basis, these are the ways in which trans people are represented to the wider world by those who know nothing about our lives.

What would someone who has never met a trans person – never worked alongside a trans colleague, had a beer with a trans friend, watched a movie with a trans sibling – think of Jeremy Clarkson’s recent op-ed in The Times, ‘Transgender Issues are Driving Me Nuts’? If you know Clarkson, you’ll know that this is the kind of piece he made his fortune with: reactionary, cutting, the kind of thing described as ‘not politically correct’. He writes: ‘[Children] dream impossible dreams. You don’t actually take them seriously. You don’t take them to a hospital when they’re 10 and say, “He wants to be a girl, so can you lop his todger off?”’ Anyone who knows anything about medical transition and the treatment of trans youth knows that genital reconstruction surgery is only avail- able for adults. But those people are not who this article is written for – and the people for whom it is written now have another piece of proof that trans people are deranged, delusional and not to be trusted with children.

On a much subtler note is New York magazine’s article on the removal of Kenneth Zucker from the Child Youth and Family Gender Identity Clinic in Toronto. A long-form read on the debate around the treatment of gender non-conforming children and teenagers, the reporting appears unbiased, nuanced – that suspect word, ‘objective’ – the kind of piece that requires time and attention from a reader, and rewards you for your efforts with the sense that you have learnt something concrete. But the article suffers from a number of omissions that would have given a more balanced picture of the current debate around treatment options for young people. Only a fraction of the research that contradicts Zucker’s approach is mentioned: notable absences include an American Psychological Association award-winning paper from Y. Gavriel Ansara and Peter Hegarty. The World Professional Association for Transgender Health, the global leader in standards of trans-related healthcare, has condemned reparative therapy – the kind of therapy Zucker is alleged to have practiced – as unethical. This vital detail is missing from New York magazine’s article. The leading trans researcher consulted by the author on the historical, psychological and academic context for Zucker’s work was not quoted, and more time is given to the trans activists who have protested Zucker’s work than to the trans psychologists and researchers who have criticized his methods from within the field. The risk with articles such as this is that readers may be left with the impression that trans people are hypersensitive fanatics unable to function in the ‘real world’, most particularly that most logical of real worlds, that of scientific research and development. Researching the full detail of all the issues would take a full day and access to an academic library. It’s heartbreaking.

And the most popular error of framing is, as ever, asking a non-expert to weigh in on a sensitive issue requiring expert knowledge. Before the publication of the results of the first-ever UK Trans Inquiry, a cross-party parliamentary investigation into the current state of trans rights and experiences in the UK, the Evening Standard published a piece entitled ‘Changing Sex is Not to Be Done Just on a Whim’. Written with the kind of hyperbolic humour frequently found in newsprint editorials, the arguments contained within went beyond opinion and into the realm of misinformation. Following decades worth of campaigning from trans activists and extensive consultation from experts and laypeople from across the country, the inquiry recommended reforming the current confusing, time-consuming process of legal gender recognition, instead allowing UK trans people to update their documents with a simple online form. That update has already enjoyed great success in Ireland, with no sign of com- plications or dire societal fallout. But instead of focusing on these facts, and the genuine debate around them, the author instead weighed in against ‘gender as a choice issue’ and misrepresented the concerns of trans campaigners and our supporters as displaying ‘a worrying indifference to a basic question of what makes us ourselves’. It is not a furious or hateful piece, but it mattered. The Evening Standard, given away free every evening throughout London, is impossible to escape. Its message carries. And that line – that trans people ‘change sex on a whim’ – was one that I had heard again and again in political discussions leading up the publication of said inquiry. Despite its lack of foundation, it is used as an excuse by lawmakers, civil servants and politicians to reject calls for a simplified change of legal gender. Even when the person spouting it claims that they don’t personally believe it, they put that phrase in the mouth of ‘the public’, ‘the electorate’, and use it as a reason why trans people cannot be allowed to have equal rights. And while I might have read four or five excellent takedowns of this piece, of that idea, online, I’d be willing to bet that the people who were already primed to believe that trans people are fickle and confused read only that piece – and agreed with it.

This is the reason why it’s insufficient to respond with accusations of being ‘offended’, to say that anyone who dis- agrees with these pieces is not obliged to read them and can take their support elsewhere. Trans people may choose not to consume transphobic media; we have no choice about living in a world shaped by this misinformation.

A study from the University of Saskatchewan, in Canada, published in 2014, showed the real-world impact of such media. Looking at personally and culturally endorsed stereotypes of trans people and behaviours, the researchers found that, in the absence of real-life experience, cis people fell back on what they had learnt through the media. Overwhelmingly, what they had ‘learnt’ was that trans people are ‘confused’. Respondents, relying on images of trans people in films, in the news, on TV, described trans women as wig-wearing caricatures of femininity, who most likely had no ambitions beyond looking pretty and finding stereotypical feminine employment and male approval. Trans men, on the other hand, probably wanted to pursue typically masculine careers and hobbies – working on an oil rig, playing team sports – but were let down by their smaller, weaker bodies and inability to be accepted by ‘real’ men. Some choice words used to describe trans people were ‘odd’, ‘gross’ and ‘freaks’.

 

 

For all of these reasons, large numbers of trans people refuse to have anything to do with the mainstream media. We do have alternatives, after all. I’m a member of the first generation to have had internet access at home. Being able to research trans people, trans history, surgical options, was a lifeline for me, although it took some getting used to. Compared with how trans youth use the internet now, my experiences are already archaic. I still had to learn the language from the mainstream media, before I had enough information, and the courage, to enter those words into a Yahoo! search. What I found was limited to a handful of forums, a small list of books and an overwhelming amount of vitriol and anti-trans hate. For many teenagers now, main- stream media is no longer the first place they hear the words ‘transgender’; they already have the entire trans world, or an approximation of it, at their fingertips. They can follow the real-time transitions of popular vloggers, swap advice and support on Tumblr, learn the theory and practice of social justice through reading blog posts and online articles and catalogue their own transitions on Instagram. For trans adults, too, all that we can’t find in a newspaper, on TV, in a cinema, is available for us in the comfort of our own homes. I recently binge-watched Her Story, an Emmy-nominated web series created by trans and queer women, starring trans and queer women. I was in heaven just watching trans people – actual trans people like me and my friends, but with better outfits – navigating questions of friendship, love, societal pressures and internal doubts. I put my money in for the crowd fund- ing of Happy Birthday Marsha – a movie about the history of the Stonewall riots that is everything Roland Emmerich’s spectacular flop Stonewall was not. There are trans speakers on TED, funny but serious lists on Cracked and BuzzFeed, and a host of well-informed, well-researched bloggers and academics to follow. Complexity, nuance, a basic level of humanity: trans people speaking for ourselves.

The only problem is, is that the people we need to reach are not always – not even often – there with us. As much as we can assume that private internet access is universal, it is not. When we rely entirely on alternative media, we cut our- selves off from those who cannot afford to join us. Even with that access, there are hurdles to overcome. You need a magic word to get in – a search word, a recommendation, a click through – something that will open up your media options from the traditional to the new. You also need the will to seek out something different, the need to find something better. What I have found, in outreach and consultation and most specifically in political work, is that the people who have the greatest power to impact on trans people’s lives through legislation, employment, housing and environment are also the people most likely to accept traditional media portrayals of what trans people are, and not understand the need to look elsewhere for representation

So, as much as I would like to say ‘enough’ – to withdraw from the mainstream media altogether, as consumer, as spectacle and as participant – some of us stay. We stay in the hopes that, if at least one of our quotes makes it into a finished piece, then that quote will change one mind. We offer an interview, knowing that it will be cut and edited in ways we would not like, because we think of a young person without internet access, who might just pick up a paper copy because it’s there. We go on television, then try to protect ourselves from the inevitable abuse that follows, because we hope to be heard by the people who would never dream of watching an online news show produced by trans people. And we become complicit in the machine, knowing that if other people had not done the same for us, we would not be here today to keep the fight going.

But we can still expect more, work for more and ask for better.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’ve been touring with Trans Like Me for about a month and a half now, and we always run over time in the Q&A sessions. So, it made sense to do an online Q&A – a video for people who like vlogging, and a transcript for those who don’t.

Any questions about trans activism, history, feminisms, futures? About taking a book from inspiration to publication? Leave a comment, and I’ll do my best.

On December 18th, 2015, I posted a blog entry: the option for my first book, Trans Like Me, had been picked up by Virago, for UK and Commonwealth publication. It’s a year and a half later – and I’ve been in bookstores for nearly a month, with American publication scheduled for next year with Seal Press.

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When I first began this blog, back in 2010, I never imagined that what I wrote and explored here would form the foundation of a book. I did want to write a book about gender – about being transgender in particular – but always figured it would be an academic text with a long and referential name. I’d seen people blogging with the express intention of getting a book deal, and wasn’t impressed – the results too often veered between transparent and inauthentic, and flat-out desperate.

But plans pan out in odd ways, and (amazingly), here we are. A piece of advice which has always helped me is to write what you’ve needed to read. It’s certainly what I tried to do with Trans Like Me – and I thought it might be useful to do the same thing about what I wished I’d known about the process of writing for publication. Not the nuts and bolts of finding an agent and selling a book (good advice found here) – but some steps which helped me move from writing from a smaller to a larger audience, and to find exactly what it was I needed to write.

 

1. Define your core values

I began blogging for a number of reasons: because I’d been writing for online publications since my teens and had missed it, because I wanted to be part of a broader conversation, and because I wanted to reach out and find more people at least a little like me. Two other reasons: I thought it would help my career in general, and because I believed I had something useful to say. I got the confidence to put those reasons in practice through a workshop I attended at the MIDEM conference in January 2011. Amidst the corporate horror and music-as-commodity, there was some amazing advice on how to build a career as an independent musician. First and foremost: ‘define your values’.

You could be cynical, and call it ‘building a brand’ – but it’s more than that, and deeper. The rest of the seminars talked about creating a persona to sell copy with – but this one workshop explained how to find the best in yourself, learn how to get comfortable with it, and to communicate those values to others. To become secure enough in who you know yourself to be that it becomes your calling card, and protection against the kinds of quick and easy temptations that can scupper a career.

I figured that the best I could bring to my work was my sincerity, my love of knowledge, and my willingness to turn that knowledge on its side and see what changes. Those values gave me a lens to work through, and – when my career picked up and a range of offers started coming in – an easy way to filter out those that didn’t mesh with my deepest instincts. Trust me: if you’re any kind of marginalized writer, the majority of interest you’re shown at the beginning will be on the condition that you fit yourself into a predetermined niche. Knowing what I was best at, what I was proud of, and what lines I wouldn’t cross made it easier to turn down work from tabloids that spread hatred, not to sell a sob story and ‘before’ and ‘after’ photos. Most of us have to make compromises as we go – but I’m really glad I decided on what I would and wouldn’t do before I was put to the test.

 

2. Define your intent

Who are you writing for? Yourself, your friends, your community, the wider world? What is it that they want to read? And how are you prepared to challenge both them and yourself?

I think it’s okay not to know those answers starting out, and to be totally prepared for those answers to change – maybe over time, maybe piece by piece. But I don’t think I would have grown as a writer if I hadn’t paid close attention to which pieces resonated with which readers, and learned how to balance my need for expression with others’ need for information and understanding.

After a few years of writing I noticed that it was my more educational posts that were getting the most hits and shares, and the best feedback. It gave (it gives) me pleasure, and purpose, to be able to help people to learn, and my educational posts were the ones that led to my most high profile and profitable commissions. Snarky, personal posts? Not so much. And, to be honest, I didn’t enjoy them so much, although they felt cathartic to write – I didn’t feel like I was expressing myself so well, and I wasn’t sure how much I was adding to anyone else’s day. So I stopped worrying about writing those feelings and thoughts up as posts: I can send my friends long, snarky rants without anything held back, and can focus the small amount of writing time I have on playing to my strengths.

 

3. Forge connections

This was the hardest step. I’m a performer, so most people assume that I’m super confident at all times. But I’ve had plenty of experience of being judged, hated and excluded – I don’t often find networking as easy as it might look on the outside.

Nevertheless, there’s no way I would have landed a book deal without the kindness of others. And I think that, for most people who want to move from blogging to mainstream/paid publication, forging connections is an essential part of the job.

There’s a lot that’s been written about how to play people and tilt the field in your favour – I’m not so sure about that. But what I have found to help:

* See possibilities everywhere. I was introduced to my agent, Laura Macdougall, by the writer Kaite Welsh. I’d met Kaite through the website the F word – I’d sent a press release for a classical concert, Kaite reviewed it, and I reached out to say thank you. She got in contact for an interview, we bonded, she fell off a stage, the interview was pulled…but we stayed in contact. Which leads to my second point…

* Don’t be afraid to ask for an informational interview.  Shortly after the stage incident, I asked Kaite if she’d be willing to answer some questions about the literary field in exchange for coffee and muffins – and she said yes. You might be surprised by how often people are prepared to say yes. That interview gave me the information and confidence I needed to push for the next stage in my career – and, to be honest, meeting with people you admire, working at the stage above you, helps to get your name into the ring.

* Do your research. Research into the people and the fields you’re trying to connect with, and into the work you need to do. Creating a Life Worth Living by Carol Lloyd, and Beyond Talent by Angela Beeching were invaluable tools.

* Follow up! There’s no point in having those conversations, exchanging those emails, pencilling in dates, if you never make good on them. Set a reminder. And then set several more.

* Identify what it is you have to trade. Writing (and music) are notoriously shitty for paying in ‘exposure’. Nearly all of us have day jobs, and learning the balance between taking unpaid gigs while also learning how to negotiate yourself a living wage is a tough one. But there are times where I think it’s worth it to take unpaid work, and that’s where you’re able to trade something other than money. A singing lesson for an editing session, for example. A charity gig that will genuinely expand your base, while helping a good cause. Know your worth, know what you can give, and make sure you’re getting in return.

 

4. Allow for more time than you think you need…

…and know that none of it is wasted if you choose to make use of what you learn.

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Writing the first draft in one week, 2016

Despite not seeing myself writing a work of popular non-fiction, I was fully convinced (in 2010) that I would be a published author by, say, 2014. I had been writing fiction for years, and had had interest from agents since my teens. I had a novel ready to sell, and was sure that my academic gender tome would be ready before long.

If I’d have known that it would take another seven years, I would have been utterly overwhelmed by that odious mixture of blocked ambition and total sense of failure familiar to so many of us.  It would have crushed me. And yet, of course – obviously – I couldn’t have written this book that I’m so proud of without all of those seven years – sense of failure and all.

Everything I’ve done in that time has helped me to become a better writer – everything. The additional personal hardships I’ve experienced have led me to a greater sense of compassion, an ability to sit with what is painful without the need to be flippant or caustic. All the additional years of teaching and training taught me better ways of expressing myself and communicating concepts unfamiliar to the listener or reader. Broadening the scope of my reading (my early blog posts are heavily influenced by the postgrad music psychology/psychotherapy research I was doing at the time) made my writing more legible. And, as much as it shouldn’t happen: experiencing incremental degrees of crap from strangers on the internet did help me learn how to protect myself – as much as anyone is able to.

For the first time, I’m able to contemplate temporal ‘setbacks’ with a sense of equanimity, rather than panic and shame. You have to get there on your own but, if you’re struggling with a sense of ‘wasting time’ or not being good enough fast enough, please know that you’re not the only one, and that you’re not condemned to feel that way forever.

 

5. Connect the dots

There will always be a glut of writers on the subject closest to your heart. No theme is original, and every field is crowded. But, if you’re going to try, I think the best way forward is to embrace everything particular to your own experience – especially the parts that don’t feel special – and connect the dots to find your place.

Obviously, that’s not how everyone does it. Plenty of people are prepared to lie about themselves, craft a fake persona, for the chance of a book deal: look at the success of Thug Kitchen. I’m sure they’ve made a hell of a lot more money than me.

But I know that what makes me go back to a particular blog, share it with my friends, pre-order a hardback I can’t really afford, is honesty. It’s the combination of experiences and insights that combine to make a truly unique guide to a subject you thought you knew, that allows you, once again, to find the extraordinary in the everyday. It’s watching someone use every talent they possess – whether that’s as a carer, a parent, a teacher, a patient, whatever – as another tool with which to reach their readers.

There are plenty of trans writers out there. There are plenty of non-trans people writing about trans lives. When I started blogging about trans issues, and my own trans life, I didn’t always see how every other part of me could factor in. But the more I did it, the more I allowed my barriers to drop, the more I could do – and the more useful it became.

I would always pick a writer that brings their total self to the page over one who thinks that a ‘writer’ is somehow not a total person. I think that a great many readers – and agents and editors – would agree.

Happy writing.