EQUALITY NETWORK NEWS - SPRING 2009
A phoenix
Or a benu
Or a fenghuang
Or even a peacock or flamingo
Or transgender, transsexual, transvestite
Or androgyne, polygender, genderqueer
Or intersex, hermaphrodite
Or hijra, berdache, kathoey, fa'afafine
Struggling to categorise the multi-coloured fire
Which burns throughout the ages
From glowing embers to blazing flames
Sparking new connections and creation
The smoke of stereotypes merely masks
The image of our phoenix clan
To squinting ground-based observers
Not the imagination of our soaring dreams
from “The Phoenix Clan”, TRANSforming Arts
TRANSforming Arts was founded in October 2008, a transgender creative expression course, run by the Scottish Transgender Alliance with Jo Clifford, Professor of Theatre and Bill Findlay Fellow of Stage Translation at Queen Margaret University College, Edinburgh, and Associate Playwright of the Playwrights' Studio, Scotland. The TRANSforming Arts group has performed their work at events for the Transgender Day of Remembrance in November 2008, and LGBT History Month, February 2009. PDFs of the full TRANSforming Arts storytelling event scripts can be downloaded from the STA website, www.scottishtrans.org.
COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT
Building the LGBT community
Community groups and organisations have been at the core of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities from the beginning of the LGBT equal rights movement – organising demonstrations and lobbying Parliament for our legal rights, carrying out essential research, producing information resources.
Community groups were there fighting for an equal age of consent, building an alliance to topple Section 28, winning hearts and minds to achieve civil partnerships and gender recognition. As we move towards complete legal equality, the LGBT sector has been changing, not only for those groups who have worked for LGBT equality but for the many new social groups generating new levels of involvement, whether their interest is books or beer, singing or sport, bringing a new life to the sector.
The backbone of LGBT community groups are the people, staff and volunteers, who give their time to build, develop and grow the successful organisations on which we all, on occasion, depend. Scotland’s LGBT sector is only as strong as the people who work to develop it, and its knowledge is the skills and collective learning of all those people involved. That’s why it is important that we understand our strengths and each other to enable us all to make the most of what we can achieve.
Over the last few months the Equality Network has been surveying the LGBT community sector in Scotland to find out what the needs and priorities are for our groups and organisations and, with this information, and your help, build a stronger, better resourced LGBT sector.
It’s been five years since the last ‘mapping’ of the LGBT sector in Scotland and much has changed. The LGBT sector is historically underfunded and under-resourced, but this coupled with an economic downturn has created new strains on an already fragile sector.
We have seen the rise in acceptability of our sexual orientations and gender identities. We have seen unprecedented legal change pushing the boundaries of what we can achieve. For some this has led to apathy and a sense that the battles have been won; time to move on. For others, a renewed will to continue, towards full legal equality and full social acceptance.
The full report is available at: www.equality-network.org/community/audit
Forty Years Since Stonewall (page 3)
(Attached: the only known photograph of the Stonewall riots.)
On 27th June 1969 in New York's Greenwich Village, there was a police raid on a gay bar. There was a standard procedure to these raids, so people who remember that time say: the police would announce their presence, the bar staff would stop serving drinks, and then the customers would have their identities checked and the disreputable ones – black, queer, drag queens, butch dykes – would be arrested, while most of the white, “straight-acting” customers would be let go free.
Some of those arrested would face trial: others would have their names and addresses published from reporters using the police blotter for a story, which outing could cost them their career and their families.
What made this raid on a gay bar remembered: this time, the queers fought back. Craig Rodwell, a veteran gay activist from the 1960s, described it as a flash of mass anger: a butch dyke in “men’s clothes” resisting arrest, a mocking pose adopted by a flamboyant drag queen, customers expelled from the bar throwing coins at the police in mockery of the “gayola” system of payoffs – coins, then bottles, then rocks. Detective Inspector Pine, one of the officers who took part in the raid, later said: "I had been in combat situations, but there was never any time that I felt more scared than then." The prisoners in the police van were liberated, but the police savagely attacked the queer mob that had formed as hundreds of people converged on the Christopher Street area around the Stonewall bar. The police called in New York’s riot-control squad, specially trained to disperse people protesting against the Vietnam War, the Tactical Patrol Force (TPF).
Martin Dubermann described the incident in Stonewall (1993):
"But the protestors would not be cowed. The pattern repeated itself several times: The TPF would disperse the jeering mob only to have it re-form behind them, yelling taunts, tossing bottles and bricks, setting fires in trash cans. When the police whirled around to reverse direction at one point, they found themselves face-to-face with their worst nightmare: a chorus line of mocking queens, their arms clasped around each other, kicking their heels in the air Rockettes-style and singing at the tops of their sardonic voices … It was a deliciously witty, contemptuous counterpoint to the TPF's brute force."
The LGBT rights movement already existed before that night in June 1969, but Stonewall became an iconic moment for LGBTI people around the world. The riots in New York are still commemorated in Pride: the summer celebration that forms a rainbow of marches and festivals around the world.
Saturday 27th June 2009 is the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots and the day of Pride Scotia in Edinburgh.
Everyone In section (page 4)
Can you use (smaller of course) the image of the two hands touching from the front cover of the Winter 2008/2009 newsletter?
EVERYONE IN
How the Equality Network is making sure that no-one is left out
Everyone In is a groundbreaking research project focussing on our knowledge and understanding of minority ethnic people who may identify themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender. This project is being done in partnership with BEMIS (Black and Ethnic Minorities Infrastructure in Scotland).
As part of this work, the Equality Network and BEMIS hosted a roundtable discussion in Glasgow on 5th February 2009. The event attracted a wide variety of representatives from equality organisations, public bodies and individuals.
This first Everyone In event proved a great opportunity for people to get together and discuss the concerns and issues faced by ME/LGBT people in Scotland, and the need to celebrate the diversity of all our communities. The event focused on two main questions:
- What do we want to see changed in Scotland to better meet the needs of minority ethnic people who may identify themselves as LGBT?
- What can we do to facilitate these changes?
The discussions highlighted a wide variety of key points including:
- the need to ensure that Home Office and immigration policies and services take everyone’s needs into account
- Engagement with Minority ethnic people who may identify as LGBT around what their experiences and needs are
- More and better communication between Race and LGBT organisations to ensure that nobody is left out
- Training of staff members of public and charity organisations so that the diversity of all communities is acknowledged
- Both Race and LGBT focused research and events should acknowledge and include the diversity of all communities
Feedback from participants highlighted how important the event was to the ME/LGBT people who attended.
“I loved hearing other people's stories that were so similar to mine it was scary. It reaffirmed that I'm not alone and I'm not a freak. It was so great to meet other people.”
This roundtable event was also important for the organisations that attended, not only as a rare chance to network across both the race and LGBT sectors, but also to increase awareness and knowledge in an area that has often been ignored in the past.
The Equality Network and BEMIS were praised by both the Scottish Government and the Equality and Human Rights Commission for pioneering this work.
A more detailed report on the points raised at the event will be included in the project research report. Both a PDF and a printed version of this document will be available latter this year. To receive these or for more information on the project please contact Samantha Rankin or Tim Cowen (contact details on back page).
Information section (page 6)
Will send you this tomorrow.
Trans section (page 7)
Our experience of transformation
The Scottish Transgender Alliance’s TRANSforming Arts group is the first ever transgender-specific creative expression group established in Scotland. Many transgender people experience high levels of transphobic harassment and discrimination in their local communities and Scottish social attitudes are more negative towards transgender people than towards other minority groups.
Mainstream media representations of transgender people regularly mock their identities and perpetuate negative stereotypes and transphobic prejudice rather than challenge it. Therefore, transgender people in Scotland are often particularly nervous of attempts to publicly and creatively represent their lives and experiences to the Scottish public.
The STA’s TRANSforming Arts group was developed to be a safe and supportive way to empower transgender people in Scotland to create their own representations of their lives and experiences and increase their confidence sufficiently for them to be comfortable performing their work live in front of small audiences. The group is facilitated by Jo Clifford, a renouned playwright experienced in using creative expression to explore transgender experiences in an empowering manner.
“One of the real difficulties transgendered people face is that our self-expression is silenced. In our fear and our shame, we often leave behind the painful limitations of the gender into which we were born and then submerge ourselves in the gender which we know to be our true home.
But our experience of transformation is immensely valuable: and our voices deserve to be heard.
In October 2008, I began facilitating the Scottish Transgender Alliance TRANSforming Arts group in Glasgow and ran 14 sessions in the period October 2008 to March 2009.
The group consists of transgender people who all express their gender identity in different ways. What unites us is our determination to express and celebrate that difference through words; through publication and performance.
We have performed our writings in various public spaces, notably for Transgender Remembrance Day in November 2008, and for LGBT History Month in February 2009.
We have published the scripts of these events on the Scottish Transgender Alliance website www.scottishtrans.org so that we can retain ownership of them while also making them available to other organisations and individuals who might find them helpful.
Individual members of the group are now participating in the sh[OUT] social justice LGBT community art outreach programme at the Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow. One of us has had her writing published by Scottish Women’s Aid; another has been performing in an alternative cabaret show in Edinburgh, and is involved in making his/her work into a film. Yet another is working on a sequence of short stories. I will be performing my play JESUS, QUEEN OF HEAVEN at Glasgay in November 2009.
Participation in this group has had a profoundly positive effect on all our lives. We are looking for further opportunities to develop and share the work we have been doing together.”
- Jo Clifford, STA TRANSforming Arts Group Facilitator
Policy section (pages 8 / 9)
New laws on parenting
New laws on same-sex parenting have come into effect. As a result, women couples who conceive a child from 6th April 2009 onwards will in many cases both be recognised as the child’s legal parents.
If the couple are in a civil partnership when their child is conceived by donor insemination or other fertility treatment, they will automatically both be legal parents. That’s true whether the treatment is at a fertility clinic or is do-it-yourself (DIY) donor insemination. The sperm donor will have no legal relationship with the child.
If a women couple are not in a civil partnership, and they arrange treatment through a fertility clinic, they can sign papers which ensure that both of them will be legal parents of the child. The sperm donor will have no legal relationship with the child.
When the new laws don’t apply
The new law does not apply to women couples who are not civil partners, if they conceive by do-it-yourself donor insemination. In that case, the woman who was pregnant is the legal mother, and the sperm donor is the legal father. If the donor is named on the child’s birth certificate, he will also have full parental responsibilities and rights (PRRs). The mother’s partner is not recognised as legal parent, and has no PRRs.
The new rules also do not apply to children conceived before 6th April 2009. In such cases, the woman who was pregnant is the legal mother. If the fertility treatment was at a clinic, the sperm donor is not the legal father. But if the conception was through DIY insemination, the donor is the legal father. In either case, the mother’s partner is not recognised as legal parent and has no parental responsibilities and rights.
There are two ways that families in these situations may be able to improve their legal position. One possibility is to apply to the sheriff court for the mother’s partner to be granted parental responsibilities and rights. This will not make her a legal parent of the child, but will allow her to make decisions about the child on the same basis as her partner.
The second possibility will apply once the new adoption laws come into effect. We expect that to be on September 28th. After that, the mother’s partner could apply to the sheriff court to adopt her partner’s child. This is sometimes called ‘step-parent’ adoption, because it changes a step-parent into a full legal parent with parental responsibilities and rights. If the child has a legal father, his agreement will usually be needed. If the adoption is granted he will no longer be the legal father.
The court will only agree to an application, for parental responsibilities and rights or for adoption, if it is satisfied that it would be better for the child.
The first step in either of these is to consult a family lawyer. The Law Society of Scotland (www.lawscot.org.uk , 0131 226 7411) can advise on which lawyers have an interest in civil partnership and same-sex couples’ families.
Update on hate crime
Patrick Harvie’s hate crime bill will recognise transphobic, homophobic and disability-related hate crime for the first time. We’re happy to report that the bill had its first debate in the Scottish Parliament on March 18th. The general principles of the bill were unanimously approved by MSPs.
On April 28th, the bill completed stage 2, with no amendments made. There is one more stage left, expected in May, when MSPs will be asked to vote on passing the bill. If the bill passes, we expect it to come into effect early next year.
Trans section (10/11)
For this section, what I’d like to do is use the paragraph about the group with the quotes from the participants and selected elements of their work.
On transition and TRANSforming art
Although the STA TRANSforming Arts group was primarily set up simply as a way to increase accurate and positive public representations of transgender experiences in Scotland, it has become very clear that the group also achieved an additional outcome of significantly improving the general mental wellbeing and coping skills of the participants.
Quotes from participants:
“It was probably the one thing that not only kept me sane over the past few months, it is probably the one thing that has really challenged me to better my personal circumstances all round. I am now looking into every single way I possibly can to improve my current situation and circumstances, and currently, I am doing really quite a good job of that, this workshop, was what I feel was the thing that really set my new found determination in stone. So, can I sum-up Transforming Arts in a single word? Actually, yes I can – transforming!”
“I joined the TRANSforming Arts Group shortly after my transition commenced last year. At that time I was very isolated. In my day to day life, I never met any trans people, I had no one who I could share my worries and concerns with, at least no one who actually understood what I meant without having to explain everything from the basics. The group, despite representing a very diverse range of transgender people, has for the first time in my life given me a sense of community.
Through the group I have not only become more confident in my writing skills, but I have also found ways of articulating and coming to terms with various issues from my past, such as my alcoholism and attempted suicide. A concrete example of the direct benefit of the group is that, only a couple of months ago I was driven to consider self-harm when I became overwhelmed by circumstances at that time, but instead of self-harming, I chose to capture the feelings in writing, by which time the urge had passed.”
Selected elements:
From “A Brief History of Gender Deviance in Great Britain” by Kristiane Taylor
Thank God for historians and archaeologists, without them we wouldn't know that, prior to the industrial revolution, there were no transgender people at all, or even mildly gender variant people, except alas those poor unfortunates skewered with red-hot pokers. It is down to the skills and thoroughness of these academics that we know for certain that no positive contribution has ever been made to any historical event prior to the modern era by a trans man or woman, an effeminate man, a butch woman, or even someone with the most marginal gender ambiguity whatsoever. That is a historical FACT.
For example, it is a proven archaeological FACT that no gender variant people were involved in the construction of Stonehenge. Under the druids flowing robes, there were no women sporting facial hair of any description (all women had neatly removed this using a primitive concoction made from bird shit not unlike Imac). Nor were there any intersexed individuals with ambiguous genitalia. Nor any female-identified males praying to their pagan gods to be released from the prison of their body. This is an archaeological FACT (The rigour that archaeologists consistently display in establishing their FACTs means, regrettably, that this FACT is indisputable).
It is also widely known in academic circles that no gender deviance whatsoever was displayed by anyone in the building of Hadrian's wall. Not one single Roman centurion had slightly less facial hair than any other, or slightly larger nipples, or marginally softer skin. They were all very butch and manly, with very deep voices and mainly sporting moustaches (the hetero kind, of course) despite wearing skirts.
From “Those Places” by Amy Redford
A left turn at the chemist, a few hundred yards, across the road, then a right into the park. It was a beautiful evening. The sun was out of sight behind the hospital, but it lit the tops of the trees as the leaves shimmered in the breeze. She could see the moon though, in the other half of the sky, as the oncoming dusk overwhelmed the last of the day. It was a beautiful evening, and she'd have been able to enjoy it too, if it hadn't been for the sight of the gate at the far side of the park. To anyone else it was just the park gate. But to her it was one of those places. There was a whole list of those places. It was always that bit harder to go back to a place on that list. And now she'd have to add the curry house to the list too. She hated those places.
The hole in the wall at the end of the Trongate. Where from the moment one of them clocked her and shouted "Aw fuckin hell! That burdz a guy!” they'd chanted "She's a man! She's a man! She’s a man!" till they were three blocks away and got a bit bored with it all. That was at closing time on a Saturday night and even her heterosexual friends who were with her feared for their safety as a thousand drunken eyes sought their victim.
Then there was the Chinese takeaway just along the road from her house. She and a friend were sitting inside waiting on their order, when five of Glasgow's shell-suited finest walked in. Perhaps he couldn't read, but one of them chose to look around rather than peruse the menu. His gaze fell on them and at first he liked what he saw. Then there was that rabbit-in-the-headlights moment of realisation. Without a word, he walked outside, only to return with two more young gentlemen. When the girls stood up to collect their meal one of them very politely enquired, "Er excuse me, I hope you don't mind me asking, but do you know you're a big tranny bastard by the way?"