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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Earlier this week I interviewed veteran Human Rights campaigner Peter Tatchell about what makes him tick, his methods and some of his opinions. You can hear that interview in the preceding item.
Peter and I were both speaking at the Centre for Local Policy Studies Summer School at Crewe Hall in Cheshire. In his keynote speech he addressed the risk that in being blindly sensitive to "multiculturalism" we might undermine everyone's human rights - including sections of the cultures we are reticent to challenge. Is female genital mutilation an absolute violation or subject to cultural relativism, for instance.
Here is an excerpt from the opening section of Peter's overall 30 minute presentation. I may make further segments available if the demand appears to be there.
Peter Tatchell was once described as a “Homosexual Terrorist”. To some he has been “Public Enemy Number One”. His causes have spanned four decades and world affairs.
He’s campaigned on Capital Punishment, the Vietnam war, Apartheid, Environmental issues and LGBT rights – to name just a few.
He famously outed ten Church of England Bishops as Gay and accused them of hypocrisy. He performed a citizens arrest on (President of Zimbabwe) Robert Mugabe, on charges of torture.
He was nearly run over by Tony Blair’s motorcade once when campaigning against the Iraq war. He has often been arrested and beaten up by authorities. His direct activism methods are applauded by some but abhorred by others – and not just those on the receiving end.
In this interview, following a lecture to the Centre for Local Policy Research Summer School, I wanted to know what makes such a man tick? What fires him up? And does he ever envisage running out of steam?
You can learn more about Peter's career history and his extensive writing on his web site www.petertatchell.net
The question of whether gay or lesbian couples should conceive or adopt children has been with us for many years. Some people think it’s wrong.
There seems no justification for those reservations of course. We’re confronted all the time with examples of heterosexual men and women being bad parents and abusers. Yet the idea that less conventional couples pose some extra kind of threat is deeply ingrained.
And if there’s concern about gay and lesbian people adopting children, what must it be like for trans people?
In this interview I speak to a trans man who, with his wife, has successfully overcome the obstacles to adopt two young children. He also now advises other trans people on how to navigate the process too, and to deal with the general ignorance of social workers in this context.
We agreed we would keep his identity confidential for the sake of his children. In this interview he adopted the pseudonym "Nick". However if people would like to contact Nick for advice on adoption themselves then please ask for help by leaving a request via the comments facility below. If you supply an email address in the "mail" box on the comment form this won't be shown publicly; however we can use this to put you in touch.
Update:Since releasing this episode, 'Nick' has set up a special email address where people interested in adoption can contact him for advice:lgbtadoptionuk@gmail.com
The recent Ada Lovelace Day blogging event raised important points about the challenges of getting more young women and girls hooked on technology subjects – and dealing with the barriers which may cause some of them to fall by the wayside.
For this episode I travelled to the Electrical Engineering Department at Leeds University, for an event organised by the Women’s Special Interest Group of the British Computer Society, BCS Women.
The second annual Ada Lovelace Colloquium was organised by Hannah Dee with colleagues from the BCS Women committee. I spoke to Hannah, some of the speakers and many of the delegates as the day unfolded.
This Podcast is complemented by a series of You Tube videos showing excerpts from many of the actual presentations. One example is shown below. The others will be linked from here when they have all been published.
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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