Sunday 6 July 2008

pride that comes before a fall

I had to write this.

I was busy at my drawing board yesterday, so I didn't get to go up to London for the LGBT Pride march. I rather wish I had now, as it seems there are still battles to be won, closer to home than one might have expected.

I was privileged to meet Roz Kaveney at a reading at Gay's The Word bookshop in Bloomsbury a few weeks ago. She is a feminist activist, and helped put the GRC together. She was refused access to the womens' toilets at Trafalgar Square, first by the Pride stewards, then by a Metropolitan Police LGBT officer.

Here's Roz' story.

For the first time in thirty-some years of going to Pride, I have come away seriously questioning whether I will ever go again. Official stewards who were running the toilets at Trafalgar Square announced that I, and any other transgender or transsexual woman, had to use the disabled toilets and was not allowed to use the regular women's toilets. I pointed out to the stewards that I transitioned and had surgery before they were born; I was more polite than a polite thing. No dice.

I went and fetched a posse of transwomen and transmen and we made a collective fuss. Their response - and remember these were official stewards AT PRIDE - was to radio in 'we're being attacked by a mob of trannies! send backup'. They were joined by a policeman, who was a LGBT liaison officer, who claimed that we had to be able to show our Gender Recognition Certificates if we wanted to use the women's loos and got quite upset when I explained to him that I had been involved in drafting the Act and that it did not take away rights that existed before it. At one point he threatened to arrest us for demonstrating on private property - those loos belong to Westminster Council, so you are not allowed to make a fuss there.

At one point it was claimed that they had instituted this policy a few minutes earlier because a man had attacked a woman; at another they said it was official Health and Safety policy. I don't think it was particularly to do with how much I do or don't pass - I think I got read in part because I am so tall and turned up in the queue among a particularly short group of lesbians.

It was one of the most wretched experiences I have had in thirty years, only made positive by the love and solidarity of my community - including various transmen who proposed that, since they had no GRCs, they should be made to use the women's loos. Beards and all.

What with the other trans-related mess I am currently dealing with, of which more anon, I feel that destiny is recalling me to the activist standard...

So, tomorrow, there will be letters and phonecalls. More generally, there will be serious kicking of Pride's butt. Pride screwed up in all sorts of ways this year and it will be requited.

Basically, no one gets to shit in my face and call it chocolate fudge. That young cop in particular is going to undergo an educative experience.

************

Here is an online petition which you are invited to sign


8 comments:

  1. I have bad dreams about loos... this is like one of my nightmares come to life...

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  2. I can't believe I read that. I forgot that toilets are so sacred in England.

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  3. It's not just the sanctity of loos, so much as that natural instinct to say "You can't do that kind of thing here" in people in bossy jobs. And ability to dehumanise. And... grrrr...

    ...anyway, some good is coming out of this; the Met are making sure that their LGBT liaison officers (who are, as I understand it, chiefly either L or G (though rarely both...))are properly informed about T stuff and the law.

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  4. Have to say Dru, this makes my blood absolutely f**king boil!!! I have a serious activist streak, and as I transition I am drawn to doing more, as I see just how screwed up some parts of society are about this. (And as Anji said, the British and toilets eh?! We as a country are just so frightened of all things genital)

    One thing...and it has to be said.

    We should not be part of the so called LGB (or GLB or whatever) movement.

    Movements which support people's right to SEXUAL identity are not the place to be for those who want the right to claim their GENDER identity. We have been bolted on to this movement, because some kind hearted souls in the Gay movement took pity on us 20 years ago, but it's not the place for us.

    I am not gay. I am a heterosexual woman.

    It's time we broke free of this, as is happening in the US, and finally established our own clear, vocal, identity.

    As you say...grrrrrr....

    BIG ggrrrrrr....

    PS On a more optimistic note, this months Diva magazine is an issue on 'gender' with a lot of thoughtful supportive stuff in from a lesbian perspective.

    PPS I was thinking of going to the march too. Unlike you, I'm kinda glad I didn't, because I WOULD have got arrested!

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  5. Jo, if you were arrested 'B' would certainly have something to chew on.

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  6. I'm so glad I got so old that my anger is tempered now, spent a lot of time listening to loudly proclaimed rubbish (you need a GRC to use the correct facility!?!) till th PC had said it enough times and stopped threatening to arrest us.. then said 'er no actually a GRC is not an identity document' lol. Christina and Tessa looked scary though didnt they? the Transfabulous T-shirts put the willies up me just watching the video ROFL http://tinyurl.com/649fc4

    XXXXX Michal

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  7. I share some of your ambivalence, Jo, though a T presence in the LGBT grouping may be a useful way of raising the consciousness of the Ls and Gs who might otherwise have either the same or different misapprehensions under which other cisgendered people may labour. Blimey, that was a sentence and a half...

    They did, Michael, didn't they? *waves*

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  8. The truth is nearly out.... see the latest pink news story and read the comments....

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