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.
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.
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.
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.
On Monday 26th October this year a large gang of youths surrounded and attacked a 22 year old gay man, James Parkes, as he left a bar in Liverpool City Centre. He was left with serious head injuries.
The attack is being treated by Police as a homophobic hate crime and some arrests have already been made.
This was not the first attack of its’ kind. Recently another gay man was beaten to death in Trafalgar Square London. Going back further there have been many other such atrocities, including the murder in Liverpool of Michael Causer last year.
Liverpool’s Lesbian and Gay community is holding a vigil in the city on Sunday November 1st as the nation increasingly wakes up to the reality of homophobic violence.
In my official capacity as Chair of the North West Region’s Equality and Diversity Group I agreed with my associates that I would make this statement of support to the organisers of the vigil.
There are several ways you can listen to Just Plain Sense Podcasts. You can play them in-situ just by clicking on the control at the bottom of each item; you can download the MP3 file by clicking on the link for that; or you can subscribe via iTunes or an RSS reader.
Last week I included a new kind of content - a so-called Audio Boo from a man you wouldn’t have heard of before. This is all well and good for those of you who come to the web site. However, as Audio Boos get included in the show’s feed, it might have come as an unannounced surprise to those of you who subscribe to hear a strange voice and a different format. I’ve explained more in this Audio Boo of my own.
I’m featuring this short Audio Boo blog piece by @Documentally because of the salutory tale it contains.
Suppose you’re blind and take the guide dog you rely on to Paris for the day? What if someone told you that you couldn’t bring it back because of quarantine regulations?
Twelve months ago this week I reported in detail from a special conference at Imperial College in London. Clinicians from Britain, Holland and the United States came together to discuss their different views about the best way to treat adolescents with persistent gender identity issues, and a strong desire to permanently change sex.
The central issue is about how to deal with Puberty. If clinicians don’t do something to prevent normal puberty occurring then a trans child will undergo changes that are impossible – or at least painful and expensive to reverse in adulthood.Some children say they would rather commit suicide and their parents are understandably frantic.
Puberty can be blocked in a way that’s completely reversible. So this is what doctors in several parts of the world are now doing. If the child should change their mind, you stop the drugs and puberty kicks in as though nothing had happened. It buys enough time till the child is older and their course in life is certain.
British clinicians have been ultra cautious and conservative though. They fear factors which might be as yet unknown if you meddle with puberty’s course. Paradoxically they weight this more highly than the certain negative outcomes of an unwanted puberty and the results of foreign studies.
That was twelve months ago. And on the face of it nothing seems to have changed much today. Clinicians at the UK’s only specialist centre for child and adolescent gender identity patients say they will still only prescribe blocking therapy once puberty has largely completed at the age of 16 – by which time irreversible changes have occurred.
What has altered, however, is that the advocates for change – mostly parents of trans children – are getting more of a hearing for their case.
In this show we feature a recent interview from BBC Radio Four’s flagship “Today” programme and afterwards I reflect on what mature media coverage does for the debate.
You can also listen to my full original interview with Nicky’s mother, “Gender Dysphoria, A Mother’s Tale“, first released in April 2008
This year people have been celebrating the 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris on 10th December 1948.
As discussed in an earlier show, lots of people have no idea what the declaration’s thirty articles actually say. And when people don’t know, then they often assume that the whole thing is irrelevant to their own lives.
Artist Monica Ross has taken a rather novel approach to educating people. To counter the tendency to forget, she has memorised the entire work. When she recites the preamble and articles to live audiences, it is literally therefore a memorial act.
Monica first came to prominence in the 1970’s as a performance artist, before she turned instead to video work. The shooting of John Charles De Menezes renewed her desire to perform before a live audience. And she’s aiming to make 60 public recitals of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a way of marking its’ 60th anniversary.
This particular performance took place in August at the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester. She was joined and assisted by various people from the local community who performed individual articles and the event was recorded by University Staff. This presentation is with their permission.
The final weekend in August saw Manchester, one of Britain’s most LGBT-friendly cities, hosting its annual three day Pride celebration. In this reply to a similar French video, the revellers deliver a one-fingered salute to homophobia based on Lily Allen’s “F**k You!”. Shame the homophobes never seem to have so much fun in their lives.
Just Plain Sense provides a mix of talks and interviews about Equality and Diversity in Britain today. There is a particular emphasis on the 'developing' areas such as LGBT but overall I set out to capture a truly diverse range of voices to talk first hand about what it means to work towards and live in a tolerant, diverse society -- and what we still need to do to get there.
Christine Burns
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