Just Plain Sense

A few weeks ago, on 18th June 2010, a brand new radio station took to the air.

Gaydio, based in Manchester, is an FM station aimed at and run by Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans People.

It’s not the world’s first such station. There are established FM stations in Australia and Toronto, for instance plus a host of internet stations

Unlike many, Gaydio is not simply a music station though; it’s aimed at a wider than usual audience, and has a community development dimension too.

To find out more I spoke to one of the founding directors, Toby Whitehouse, at the studios in central Manchester.

You can listen to the station online at http://www.gaydio.co.uk

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Part Two of this personal narration of an account written in 1995, about coming out as a campaigner to organise ‘fringe’ meetings at the Labour and Conservative party conferences.

For more details and background please see part one.

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It was in December 1997 that the story originally known as “the John / Joan case” first came to world wide attention through a feature in Rolling Stone magazine. (The text of that feature is reproduced here)

The story was significant at that time for transsexual people, as it dealt a heavy blow to the dominant medical narrative that gender identity was malleable and a product of nurture rather than nature. For people seeking recognition that gender change was not a ‘choice’ but a necessity, this was more than an academic question.

Post-mortem brain research in the Netherlands that same year had suggested a biological connection for gender identity; however the story of how an accidentally castrated baby boy had been successfully reared as a girl appeared compelling because it had always been presented as an unqualified success.

The story of the child (real name David Reimer) had been part of the medical literature for a quarter of a century, and many people had an investment in the case, both as a model for treatment of physically intersex babies and to underpin sociological theories dating from the same period.

I well remember the morning when the link to the Rolling Stone story arrived in an email from an American contemporary and the haste with which we put it online for our own readers. The importance of promulgating the facts was immediately obvious.

The feature article by journalist John Colapinto blew the lid off previous accounts of what happened. It was apparent that the outcome was very different from what everyone believed.

The BBC Radio Four series ‘Case Study’ revisited the story this week and tells the story in hindsight through interviews and audio clips which include the account of David Reimer’s mother, when she was told of the hospital accident involving one of her two sons.

You can hear presenter Claudia Hammond’s programme here on the BBC iPlayer and the background on the programme is available on the Case study web page here.

It’s nearly Party Conference season again. And it’s the first time with Conservatives in Government since the mid 1990’s.

It may surprise some listeners to know that back in those days I was a Conservative Party activist. I was the secretary of an active branch of the party in Cheshire. And a regular attendee at party conferences.

I wasn’t “out” in those days. As a transsexual woman I had completed my social “transition” between genders many years before, and had settled into a quiet and discreet life among the well-to-do women who formed the backbone of a certain class of society in one of the Tory heartlands.

I didn’t advertise my transsexual history and, if anyone harboured any suspicions, it had never ever been mentioned.

All of that was about to change though. I had been a member of the campaign organisation “Press for Change” since shortly after it was formed in 1992. And now, because the campaign required visible representatives to put themselves forward on the public stage, I had taken the difficult personal decision to “come out”.

I had volunteered to organise and speak at two key events at the Labour and Conservative conferences in the first two weeks of October 1995.

This was momentous, life-changing stuff .. at least for me .. and so I wrote about it at the time. Fifteen years on, it’s therefore a good time to revisit those two weeks covered by The Diary of a Conference Campaigner…

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International Human Rights campaigner Peter Tatchell delivered the keynote speech at Salford University’s 2010 Human Rights conference. This video has been produced by the University.

This is the second part of an in-depth interview with veteran Parliamentarian, Sir Gerald Kaufman MP.

In this episode Gerald talks about how he came to write for the groundbreaking satirical show, “That Was The Week That Was”; about scandals such as the Profumo affair; and his thoughts on where the last Labour Government went wrong.

For more details see the previous episode.

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It was the BBC interviewer Robin Day who once famously infuriated Tory Defence Minister John Nott by referring to him as a ‘Here today, gone tomorrow politician’.

The epithet stung perhaps because Day was reflecting a truism that seems even more relevant today than in 1982.

In truth, many politicians do have a short career in Parliament and are soon forgotten.

This is why those politicians with true staying power are so interesting to examine.

Sir Gerald Kaufman is one of the latter category.

Sir Gerald recently celebrated his 80th birthday in his Manchester Gorton constituency, flanked by crowds of loyal party activists and supporters who turned out for the occasion.

Though regularly offered a chair to sit down by well-wishers, the incredibly sprightly octogenarian politely declined — remaining on his feet throughout.

The occasion also marked 40 years since Gerald had first won a seat as an MP. Only the Conservative Sir Peter Tapsell has served for a longer continuous period.

As an MP, Gerald served as a Junior Minister in Harold Wilson’s 1974 government and, was shadow Home Secretary, among other roles, during Labour’s opposition in the 1980‘s.

He also famously wrote for the ground breaking 1960’s satirical show “That was the week that was”, has written several books, and, as a Jew himself, is one of the leading critics of Israeli policies and the treatment of Arabs in Gaza.

In this first of a two part interview Sir Gerald talks about growing up in a working class family, his early career choices and close to Prime Minister Harold Wilson in the late 60’s and early 1970’s.

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Regardless of the communities we may belong to, it’s clear that identity plays a very big part in our lives — whether that’s the identity given to us by our place among family, or the identity we have in official records, or the one which comes from within and which we broadcast to others in the way we present ourselves.

The Wellcome Collection in London is running a nine month season of activity on these themes entitled “The Identity Project”, examining the subject through the lens of scientists, artists, actors and other individuals who have, in some way, defined or challenged the boundaries.

I’ve agreed to lead a tour of the exhibition in February 2010 during LGBT History Month. Prior to that this episode takes a private tour of some of the exhibits with Jane Holmes, one of the Project Managers.

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When Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) came into being in 1948 there was a desperate shortage of people at all levels to staff it. As a result the Government of the day turned to the Commonwealth countries to recruit. This film, which was made to help mark the NHS’s Sixtieth Anniversary celebrations, looks at the contributions which Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) people have made to the service.

A lot of people fall into the trap of assuming that disabled people are defined and limited by their impairments.

The social model of disability teaches us to think differently … about the way that we limit such people by the obstacles we create. So, for instance, someone who uses a wheelchair isn’t primarily prevented from getting to a meeting by the condition of their legs, so much as by the steps we built in front of the entrance, or the inadequacies of public transport provision.

With one in five of the population having some kind of disability, it’s therefore important to get our thinking straight and realise all the ways people can work quite successfully, if only we don’t perpetuate barriers and assumptions.

Tom Doughty has always been a musician. He only acquired his disability as a young man and, at first, he assumed that was the end of his guitar playing. But then he got determined to make sure his impairments shouldn’t get in the way. The result is an incredible talent and a great sound.

In this interview I talk to Tom about his life, his music, and those barriers he’s demolished.

If you’re smitten like me with his music then you can visit his web site http://www.tomdoughty.com. From there you can buy his CDs and also reach his MySpace and YouTube pages.

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Tom Doughty has a very evocative and soulful style of lap slide guitar playing. I’ll be interviewing him next on Just Plain Sense. In the meantime, here’s a taster and you can visit Tom’s web site at http://www.tomdoughty.com

According to the British Crime Survey there were 3.29 million reported violent assaults on women in the past 12 months. One in four women have been assaulted at some time.

Much strategic attention is focussed on dealing with the outcomes of all this violence: Catching and punishing offenders; Counselling and supporting those on the receiving end; Teaching self defence … even designing the built environment to make it safer.

But what about reducing the violence itself? Chris Green, UK Director of the White Ribbon Campaign, aims to do just that.

He says that wearing the campaign’s white emblem involves a pledge never to commit, never to condone, and never to remain silent about violence against women. His organisation runs various campaigns targetted at men and boys in particular through areas such as sport, and in schools.

In this interview Chris talks to me about the statistics, the causes, and his campaign’s work.

For more information visit http://www.whiteribboncampaign.co.uk

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Meet Chris Green, UK Director of the White Ribbon Campaign. An in-depth interview with Chris will be following shortly…

A new Trans Resource and Empowerment Centre launched in Manchester on 7th November. I spoke to two of the five organisers who are setting up this innovative project, creating (as it grows) a regular base where trans people can drop in for help and advice.

The City of Liverpool has one of the oldest established Chinese communities in Europe. Trade between the port and China dates back 175 years – and the first Chinese immigrants settled there about thirty years later in 1866.

Nowadays it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that economic migration into Britain is a relatively new thing. It’s easy to forget the many waves of immigration over centuries – creating the diverse society we are today.

Each community was new once, so I wondered if there are therefore some lessons to learn from such a long-established community about how such to settle and become part of the scenery.

Alan Seatwo came to Britain to study and settled here. He’s now vice chair of the Liverpool Chinese Business association, so I thought he was the ideal person to discuss this.

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