1 00:00:10,390 --> 00:00:19,870 Hello, everybody. And hope you are doing OK, so I called back on the chair of the LGBT Plus Advisory Group, 2 00:00:19,870 --> 00:00:25,180 thank you so much for joining us tonight and we're going to keep it very brief, 3 00:00:25,180 --> 00:00:36,850 but the basic housekeeping bill, so and we do ask that, you know, any conversations be kept respectful here tonight we will be open. 4 00:00:36,850 --> 00:00:46,030 We will have a question and answer session and later on in the in the talk so you can type your questions into the Q&A function. 5 00:00:46,030 --> 00:00:49,570 And there they will be passed on to Stephen. 6 00:00:49,570 --> 00:00:57,640 Time permitted and in terms of how many we can get through and and other than that, that's that's about it. 7 00:00:57,640 --> 00:01:02,710 And I will say that we do have someone who is doing a live transcription. 8 00:01:02,710 --> 00:01:11,950 So if you need that, then you can enable that transcription. And with that, I'd like to pass over to Louise Richardson. 9 00:01:11,950 --> 00:01:16,450 Hello, my name is Louise Richardson. I'm the vice chancellor of the University of Oxford, 10 00:01:16,450 --> 00:01:23,680 and I'm absolutely delighted to have this chance to introduce the 13th annual LGBT History Month 11 00:01:23,680 --> 00:01:31,660 lecture organised by the university's LGBT Plus Advisory Group and the Equality and Diversity Union. 12 00:01:31,660 --> 00:01:42,660 This lecture has been going on for 13 years, and I'm delighted to say that I've had the privilege of introducing everyone during my tenure as wishing. 13 00:01:42,660 --> 00:01:52,550 And I think the success of these lectures are testament to the vibrant and committed LGBT Plus community and their allies that we have here in Oxford, 14 00:01:52,550 --> 00:01:58,480 and I would like to take this opportunity to thank each and every one of you for all you do 15 00:01:58,480 --> 00:02:04,030 throughout the year and for the work that you've done in bringing this lecture together. 16 00:02:04,030 --> 00:02:12,700 As we all know, a great deal of work is done throughout the year to advance equality and diversity here at the university, 17 00:02:12,700 --> 00:02:20,410 but in an institution as large and as dispersed as this one, very often we don't hear about see the work, 18 00:02:20,410 --> 00:02:24,520 the important work that has quietly happening in the background. 19 00:02:24,520 --> 00:02:32,140 So if you know of an initiative or a person who has been working hard and unrecognised 20 00:02:32,140 --> 00:02:36,550 in enhancing equality and inclusion and diversity here at the university, 21 00:02:36,550 --> 00:02:42,790 I'd like to ask you to nominate them for one of the Vice Chancellors Diversity Awards. 22 00:02:42,790 --> 00:02:46,780 The call for nominations closes on March 18th. 23 00:02:46,780 --> 00:02:52,330 So please do get your nominations and again before introducing our speaker. 24 00:02:52,330 --> 00:03:01,450 I have one other very happy note to mention, and that is in keeping with the lectures, theme history, law and activism. 25 00:03:01,450 --> 00:03:06,820 I want to draw your attention to a brand new professorship that has just been created. 26 00:03:06,820 --> 00:03:16,060 It is a professorship in the history of sexualities established in the history faculty and with an association with Mansfield College, 27 00:03:16,060 --> 00:03:20,530 which is called the Jonathan Cooper chair in the history of Sexualities. 28 00:03:20,530 --> 00:03:29,120 And it will lead and expand the study and teaching of LGBT Plus history here at Oxford and indeed nationally. 29 00:03:29,120 --> 00:03:33,280 And I hope globally too, it is, as far as we know, 30 00:03:33,280 --> 00:03:39,670 the first fully and professorship in of this type in the UK and it has been made 31 00:03:39,670 --> 00:03:45,370 possible thanks to the generosity of Dr. Elizabeth Razzing and Professor Peter Baldwin, 32 00:03:45,370 --> 00:03:50,020 both historians and co-founders of the Arcadia Fund. 33 00:03:50,020 --> 00:03:57,280 The chair has been named in honour of Jonathan Cooper OBE. I'm sure he will be known to some of you in the audience. 34 00:03:57,280 --> 00:04:02,110 He was a barrister with an expertise in international human rights. 35 00:04:02,110 --> 00:04:13,090 He has anybody who ever met him, who was an inspiring and tireless advocate, an activist for LGBTQ plus rights across the globe. 36 00:04:13,090 --> 00:04:21,130 He was a commentator on issues such as trans rights, conversion therapy and the rights of people living with HIV. 37 00:04:21,130 --> 00:04:26,140 He died tragically prematurely and in and in his honour. 38 00:04:26,140 --> 00:04:30,850 Elizabeth and Peter created this chair, which will ensure that he's never forgotten, 39 00:04:30,850 --> 00:04:37,420 and the issues that he cared about will be studied by generations of students at Oxford. 40 00:04:37,420 --> 00:04:43,840 And so now I'd like to introduce our distinguished speaker today, Professor Stephen Whittle, 41 00:04:43,840 --> 00:04:50,050 who started his academic career teaching family lives and social policy with the Open University. 42 00:04:50,050 --> 00:04:58,810 He then joined Manchester Metropolitan University as a lecturer and was made a professor of equalities law in 2006. 43 00:04:58,810 --> 00:05:04,120 Professor Wood transition from female to male male in 1975. 44 00:05:04,120 --> 00:05:10,000 He already had a degree in geography in African and Asian studies from Sussex University. 45 00:05:10,000 --> 00:05:16,060 But he, after having the experience of losing many jobs because he was transgender, 46 00:05:16,060 --> 00:05:23,830 he decided to obtain legal training on the part time LLB evening course at Manchester Metropolitan. 47 00:05:23,830 --> 00:05:34,000 He wanted to challenge the discrimination he and other trans people have experienced, so he went on to obtain a Masters, then a PhD in. 48 00:05:34,000 --> 00:05:41,590 Professor Ritter was a co-founder of Press for Change, the UK's trans rights slogan Press for Changes. 49 00:05:41,590 --> 00:05:49,510 Campaigns have resulted in several major case law successes at the European Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights, 50 00:05:49,510 --> 00:06:00,220 which has led to significant legal changes, including the Gender Recognition Act of 2004 and full protection under the Equality Act of 2010. 51 00:06:00,220 --> 00:06:06,700 Professor Whittle has advised on transgender rights and not the UK, Scottish, Irish, Italian, Japanese, 52 00:06:06,700 --> 00:06:14,320 Hong Kong and South African governments, as well as the European Union, European Commission and the Council of Europe. 53 00:06:14,320 --> 00:06:19,960 He regularly advises lawyers and writes briefs or as an expert witness for courts worldwide, 54 00:06:19,960 --> 00:06:26,500 and has authored many academic papers, non-academic articles and several books. 55 00:06:26,500 --> 00:06:32,340 Professor Whitlam's work has been recognised with an OBE for work on gender rights. 56 00:06:32,340 --> 00:06:37,140 In addition, he also advised the University of the Arts in London when creating an exhibition on 57 00:06:37,140 --> 00:06:42,960 what it means to be trans and Liverpool Museum's exhibition Portrait of a Lady. 58 00:06:42,960 --> 00:06:48,750 The history of transsexual people in the UK seems like a good opportunity to remind you that 59 00:06:48,750 --> 00:06:55,110 there's still time to visit the Pitt Rivers Museum and the Beyond the binary exhibition there. 60 00:06:55,110 --> 00:07:02,280 We share stories on LGBT IQ plus identities and highlights some of the ways people have reclaimed 61 00:07:02,280 --> 00:07:09,270 power over their bodies and sexual and gender identities and have forged thriving communities. 62 00:07:09,270 --> 00:07:16,470 So we're in for a treat with a lecture from Professor Stephen wasn't, so I hope you will join me in welcoming him this evening. 63 00:07:16,470 --> 00:07:19,660 Thank you. My name is Stephen Whitfield. 64 00:07:19,660 --> 00:07:30,130 I will be very pleased to be coming and welcoming attending via Zoom to do this presentation today because it gives us a real opportunity 65 00:07:30,130 --> 00:07:39,130 to talk about something that's still very live issues that really actually at the cutting edge of thinking about what our well, 66 00:07:39,130 --> 00:07:44,440 sorry priorities were. Treybig people's lives, 67 00:07:44,440 --> 00:07:51,280 the challenges and the contradictions of the people who just pushed their like to rule the 68 00:07:51,280 --> 00:07:59,650 rocks constantly is a really difficult set of issues for us to discuss about as lawyers, 69 00:07:59,650 --> 00:08:09,580 as sociologists, as historians framing it all together to understand the entire story is very important. 70 00:08:09,580 --> 00:08:16,450 I've lived this life, so it's really important at this point. 71 00:08:16,450 --> 00:08:27,070 Back in 2005, it seemed that the situation's been resolved the world to change for what I was transitioning in 1975. 72 00:08:27,070 --> 00:08:31,600 People in Britain were far more accepting. I would do trading sessions. 73 00:08:31,600 --> 00:08:35,140 I've asked people, You know, how many of you know, a trans person? 74 00:08:35,140 --> 00:08:42,850 We did that in 1993 while had go, maybe by 2005, the whole world was putting its hands. 75 00:08:42,850 --> 00:08:47,320 Or maybe a co-worker, maybe a family, maybe a neighbour. 76 00:08:47,320 --> 00:08:53,370 People knew us as human beings and. 77 00:08:53,370 --> 00:08:59,390 What we have seen happen more recently is a sort of move back to dehumanise sugar. 78 00:08:59,390 --> 00:09:12,300 So what this presentation is really about is to try to look at what happened between 1970 and 2020 and to frame the context of that. 79 00:09:12,300 --> 00:09:22,920 So I'm going to share BuzzFeed, which is a presentation. Most of the time you will see images, but I will carry on talking through it. 80 00:09:22,920 --> 00:09:33,690 Now, just let me get to that point to that right and talk about what is 50 years of trans activism. 81 00:09:33,690 --> 00:09:39,420 1971. I contacted the first gender. 82 00:09:39,420 --> 00:09:43,200 I knew I wanted a sex change, and I've known that for several years. 83 00:09:43,200 --> 00:09:46,050 In fact, I discovered it when I was 10, 84 00:09:46,050 --> 00:09:56,820 when I read a newspaper story in the Sunday newspapers and a sort of realisation that some people could actually change their sex. 85 00:09:56,820 --> 00:10:03,300 But all the stories about people who went for being men to be with it. 86 00:10:03,300 --> 00:10:09,390 One of them was about somebody who went from being a woman to being a man. 87 00:10:09,390 --> 00:10:21,390 So though I knew what I wanted, the idea that it would ever happen in 1971 was still far away. 88 00:10:21,390 --> 00:10:36,570 In 1971, what we oops, he said, just go back in 1971, we saw a flashlight feature very heavily in the newspapers. 89 00:10:36,570 --> 00:10:41,250 She had married a minor aristocrat. 90 00:10:41,250 --> 00:10:46,680 They bought property together in Spain. They had a restaurant in Kensington in London. 91 00:10:46,680 --> 00:10:50,280 He turned out not to be great for her as she sought a divorce, 92 00:10:50,280 --> 00:10:58,880 and he countersued on the basis that it was never a marriage because she was always about. 93 00:10:58,880 --> 00:11:05,780 If he would that case, it meant that all the property in that relationship, which was in his day, 94 00:11:05,780 --> 00:11:13,460 those days remember this in 1970 1971, women did get their names on property deeds. 95 00:11:13,460 --> 00:11:21,650 All the property would have gone ahead. None of it would be buried with her, even though she had been the person working most of the time. 96 00:11:21,650 --> 00:11:27,230 She worked as a model, she worked as a nightclub hostess. She worked as a dancer. 97 00:11:27,230 --> 00:11:35,580 She left school at 14 to become a cabin boy on a seagoing ship in order to survive. 98 00:11:35,580 --> 00:11:47,990 She gave incredible poverty in Liverpool. She became, by the mid 60s, one of the u.k.'s best-known, most favourite models. 99 00:11:47,990 --> 00:11:56,870 It was well known that she was transgender, but it never occurred to anybody that that was somehow something awful. 100 00:11:56,870 --> 00:12:05,690 At that point, there were always stories in magazines or outlets in two newspapers, the news of the World and this of the people, 101 00:12:05,690 --> 00:12:14,540 which was the elephant scurrilous and implied that somehow people who had sex changes were sexual perverts. 102 00:12:14,540 --> 00:12:17,390 But there was no substance to any of those stories ever. 103 00:12:17,390 --> 00:12:24,170 They have featured a story about somebody who was working as a schoolteacher or somebody who was working at a shop. 104 00:12:24,170 --> 00:12:33,590 Where was the school aspect to it? So it was all a bit, you know, rather low key and these innuendos that went on. 105 00:12:33,590 --> 00:12:45,680 When April lost the divorce case and the judge declared that she was a man for the purposes of marriage. 106 00:12:45,680 --> 00:12:53,300 That suddenly saw bikes that we had been very people had sort of casually applied 107 00:12:53,300 --> 00:12:57,380 through systems whereby they could get their birth certificates changed. 108 00:12:57,380 --> 00:13:04,250 If that parent was willing to say that when they were born, they didn't think they would necessarily fall boy or girl. 109 00:13:04,250 --> 00:13:14,600 And if they had a doctor who would cooperate with that, lots of people actually managed to change birth certificates at that point. 110 00:13:14,600 --> 00:13:21,530 But it certainly all went people who were in legal marriages. 111 00:13:21,530 --> 00:13:27,980 And one of the cases somebody I knew very well had married a woman from Estonia had 112 00:13:27,980 --> 00:13:34,760 asked the immigration officer to ask the tax officer whether that was acceptable. 113 00:13:34,760 --> 00:13:42,110 But after the plastic case, he said they have no idea what marriage was really all about. 114 00:13:42,110 --> 00:13:50,060 It actually collapsed the whole sort of system against it when he retired and in 2005 sort 115 00:13:50,060 --> 00:13:56,510 gender recognition of the Gender Recognition Act and was told that their marriage was clouded. 116 00:13:56,510 --> 00:14:07,940 She owed hundreds thousands of twenty eight thousand pounds back National Insurance and she wasn't legally bound to marry. 117 00:14:07,940 --> 00:14:15,590 It was a long story. Let's face it, let's get. We got to the point where the tax office withdrew and we got it settled, 118 00:14:15,590 --> 00:14:23,560 but it was very hard work at the time, and the implications for that couple were dreadful. 119 00:14:23,560 --> 00:14:32,500 We also see picture here of Chad Myers being interviewed in 1974. Chambliss was very famous as a reporter for the Times newspaper, 120 00:14:32,500 --> 00:14:40,900 had kind of the best of a large part of Everest with Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing in 1953, 121 00:14:40,900 --> 00:14:53,020 when they could Everest and had to the first report back to Britain of the climb and had done an amazing amount of work on travel reports. 122 00:14:53,020 --> 00:15:00,940 It was very, very well known, and she took the same route as April, which was the only thing available at that time. 123 00:15:00,940 --> 00:15:10,630 But that was to make your way to Casablanca and have your sex change surgery that we should or should go on her return. 124 00:15:10,630 --> 00:15:15,100 She was hounded, so she decided to speak publicly. 125 00:15:15,100 --> 00:15:24,250 And if you ever watch the interviews top 1974, you will wince as you still think this has set against these. 126 00:15:24,250 --> 00:15:30,000 Two women survived, but they survived really well. 127 00:15:30,000 --> 00:15:38,110 April went on to ultimately get an MBA. John got a CBE in the ad for her. 128 00:15:38,110 --> 00:15:50,830 I think they both very recently died. But though neither of them were activists, natives, actually people actively engaged in the campaign, 129 00:15:50,830 --> 00:15:56,350 the fact that they stuck around and said We're here and we're not going away. 130 00:15:56,350 --> 00:16:02,660 It was a huge boost to the rest of the community. 131 00:16:02,660 --> 00:16:08,900 So that was it between 1974 and 1992. 132 00:16:08,900 --> 00:16:16,670 Not very much happened. Most of us lost jobs repeatedly. Most of us couldn't get jobs in the first place. 133 00:16:16,670 --> 00:16:26,420 In many cases, I remember being at university by Dean, saying to me in 1978, Can I have a word? 134 00:16:26,420 --> 00:16:32,210 Sorry, go ahead. But just because it was this school you say you went to. 135 00:16:32,210 --> 00:16:35,730 So I said, Well, I went to that school and said, That's a girl school. 136 00:16:35,730 --> 00:16:42,050 And I said I was a girl and. I asked him very nicely not to tell anybody. 137 00:16:42,050 --> 00:16:52,820 Two hours later, I was harassed and pushed to the corridor by students and by two lecturers making jokes about Middlesex and you know, 138 00:16:52,820 --> 00:16:57,330 oh god, I just I can't even think about that. So awful, I remember. 139 00:16:57,330 --> 00:17:04,060 But just the key is this forever. It seemed that way. 140 00:17:04,060 --> 00:17:13,170 Nothing much happened. Then in nineteen ninety two, they actually achieved that one. 141 00:17:13,170 --> 00:17:19,200 My partner south of that point thirty years said she wanted to have a baby. 142 00:17:19,200 --> 00:17:29,160 And that meant we had to try and get fertility treatment to adopt, see the doctor who suggested he had to have an affair with my wife. 143 00:17:29,160 --> 00:17:36,720 So we lost him very quickly. We could not finally referred to a clinic with Liverpool. 144 00:17:36,720 --> 00:17:44,520 We were about starchy vegetables, pregnancy advice service The Sun newspaper featured a story all about Virgin Birth, 145 00:17:44,520 --> 00:17:54,930 a woman who apparently had had a daughter who said they should give birth but never had a sexual relationship with BPA. 146 00:17:54,930 --> 00:18:01,530 Back to office, they referred us to somebody else who was a man who talked about my babies and 147 00:18:01,530 --> 00:18:07,200 my ladies all the time when we talked about fertility told somebody should. 148 00:18:07,200 --> 00:18:11,340 He said, Well, you don't need to be factored in the father's Did it come? And we went. 149 00:18:11,340 --> 00:18:17,580 I wonder what he talks about my babies, how many babies are his babies? 150 00:18:17,580 --> 00:18:23,110 So we opted out and it was awful. It was absolutely good. 151 00:18:23,110 --> 00:18:30,240 You know, did I resort? Did we resort to what to do, which was, you know, that heartless and had a one night stand to get pregnant? 152 00:18:30,240 --> 00:18:35,540 All of this was not the way to start a family, ever. 153 00:18:35,540 --> 00:18:43,730 I always felt that way. And it wasn't just me, my wife was well, but it did nothing except try to be good citizens. 154 00:18:43,730 --> 00:18:51,020 I've been a scout leader by that point for 10 years. You know, I was doing nothing except trying to do my best. 155 00:18:51,020 --> 00:19:01,130 But it was constantly the barrage of not you're not actually wonder what we found the clinic actually about. 156 00:19:01,130 --> 00:19:08,030 You said Great doctor here. But everything he could about trans people, he said it was more than happy to go ahead. 157 00:19:08,030 --> 00:19:13,970 He wanted his ethics committee at the hospital to review the case. 158 00:19:13,970 --> 00:19:16,620 Have no wish to pick to my colleagues. 159 00:19:16,620 --> 00:19:25,730 Bob, you were on the ethics committee and then we got the letter I'm paraphrasing because he didn't quite say what they said to Sarah. 160 00:19:25,730 --> 00:19:37,910 You will never be a good enough woman for us to ever consider you as a potential lover whilst you live with somebody like that. 161 00:19:37,910 --> 00:19:45,950 And that was the day I realised that all my legal training could make me into a lawyer and we were going to fight back. 162 00:19:45,950 --> 00:19:53,360 We found the right to appeal and they separated tablets and we went to the doors of the court and finally they said yes, 163 00:19:53,360 --> 00:19:57,020 and she got pregnant two weeks later. 164 00:19:57,020 --> 00:20:10,530 Booked in that process, my anger at what was taking place not to me, but to her, was such that I just had two friends within the community. 165 00:20:10,530 --> 00:20:21,980 We have to do something. I did a law degree to try and discover why I was being dismissed from work all the time. 166 00:20:21,980 --> 00:20:32,900 But I've now got it. I don't know an awful lot about what happens to us, and I think we need to pursue this. 167 00:20:32,900 --> 00:20:40,340 In 1992, along with Marquis, who was the first person from the UK first Trans Mountain in the UK to take a 168 00:20:40,340 --> 00:20:47,090 course to take a case to the European Court of Human Rights and suddenly move. 169 00:20:47,090 --> 00:20:52,550 We arranged a meeting with Alex Carlisle. Now we did all the things that are listed on this presentation, 170 00:20:52,550 --> 00:21:01,370 but I could tell you the most significant thing about this was it was the first time trans people travelled together. 171 00:21:01,370 --> 00:21:05,390 It occurred. We got on the tube together. We got the tube together. 172 00:21:05,390 --> 00:21:12,320 We walked through Parliament Square together and we got to say Stephen's entrance to the House of Commons and we 173 00:21:12,320 --> 00:21:18,630 walked through the police check together and across the main lobby down to Alex Carlisle's office and every. 174 00:21:18,630 --> 00:21:24,410 I was honest, and that was why we had never, ever before walked together in a third. 175 00:21:24,410 --> 00:21:29,610 But we did it on that occasion. We have had high. We spoke to Alex. 176 00:21:29,610 --> 00:21:34,010 He said If you want to change things, you have to organise yourself as a professional. 177 00:21:34,010 --> 00:21:37,990 You have to know what it is you're seeking. 178 00:21:37,990 --> 00:21:43,600 He said these things do not use transsexual in the title because you want if you want your message to be read, he said. 179 00:21:43,600 --> 00:21:47,530 Put it halfway down the second page, but not before then. 180 00:21:47,530 --> 00:21:56,140 It shouldn't be a struggle, although he said you need to make yourself very visible as good citizens that tell this story over and over again, 181 00:21:56,140 --> 00:22:04,030 over and over and over again. So I went off to have a cup of coffee at the cafe over the road and we said, What are we going to call ourselves? 182 00:22:04,030 --> 00:22:14,170 We scrambled together a better body between us, and we sort of started very loud, which we said we want to create change. 183 00:22:14,170 --> 00:22:23,590 But actually, we realised the things that we regret. I just think that we have to change most was the presentation of us. 184 00:22:23,590 --> 00:22:30,550 I still probably in that situation, but we ended up with the name pressed for change and it worked. 185 00:22:30,550 --> 00:22:38,470 So the campaign itself, you know, was not an easy one to stop. 186 00:22:38,470 --> 00:22:42,100 What were our problems? We had no funding. Well, we never had funding. 187 00:22:42,100 --> 00:22:49,390 I think the most successful change ever had in the bank in 25 years was about 2000 pounds, and that was a good year. 188 00:22:49,390 --> 00:22:56,050 We had a terrible public image. You know, we were the worst of the worst somehow. 189 00:22:56,050 --> 00:23:07,300 And there was a massive amount of social stigma that made trans people not want to talk about the issue, not want to put their head a box of Typekit. 190 00:23:07,300 --> 00:23:13,600 The whole thing of our presentation of physical image was terrifying. 191 00:23:13,600 --> 00:23:20,210 And most of us were very ashamed of who we were. 192 00:23:20,210 --> 00:23:33,450 We also had a massive range of diversity in the community in those days, we were not just transvestites, transsexuals and drag queens. 193 00:23:33,450 --> 00:23:41,160 But actually, we all knew amongst the community people that we lived in, probably by this Typekit, you know, 194 00:23:41,160 --> 00:23:53,130 where 2000 trans people in this country alone, that actually that diversity that we had was all part of a process travelling along the road. 195 00:23:53,130 --> 00:24:01,440 Many of us started in one place. I moved to another place. Some of us thought we were somewhere, but actually went back to somewhere before that. 196 00:24:01,440 --> 00:24:07,710 It was not the easiest thing in the world to obtain gender reassignment treatment. 197 00:24:07,710 --> 00:24:15,540 It was much more difficult if you had a decent job and a family to support you and wanted to support them. 198 00:24:15,540 --> 00:24:24,330 I had a house. You were pay the mortgage. For most people who transitioned throughout the eighties and into the early 90s will lose their families. 199 00:24:24,330 --> 00:24:28,920 They would lose their homes, they would lose their jobs. 200 00:24:28,920 --> 00:24:37,920 That community diversity that we were dealing with meant we had to really think hard about what it was we were asking for, 201 00:24:37,920 --> 00:24:39,570 which was how we came up with. 202 00:24:39,570 --> 00:24:51,540 We wanted respect, the quality, the intact, be the sick, all trans people, whatever shape or form we took, this was like having blue cloud eyes. 203 00:24:51,540 --> 00:24:55,650 It was a simple fact. We just who we were. 204 00:24:55,650 --> 00:25:05,520 Most of us would say we had, you know, minimal control and we'd known for very you gauges what was we really needed to do. 205 00:25:05,520 --> 00:25:10,800 And most of us were very aware that if we didn't do something at the end, 206 00:25:10,800 --> 00:25:20,540 we'd probably do the thing that would end it because that's what many community did. 207 00:25:20,540 --> 00:25:25,910 I think what's really important about realising that when you are doing something like a lobbying campaign, 208 00:25:25,910 --> 00:25:33,050 you have to really think about how are you going to do it and where you can succeed? 209 00:25:33,050 --> 00:25:38,180 And a lot of books are lobbying the public pressure group politics. 210 00:25:38,180 --> 00:25:42,010 And then we sat down. This was just a core group of about 12. 211 00:25:42,010 --> 00:25:48,050 We said, these are the key things we have to do. We have to listen to our community, that diverse community. 212 00:25:48,050 --> 00:25:57,530 We have to obtain a universal mandate because it has to be a mandate that all of us could speak to better value the rights of all of our communities. 213 00:25:57,530 --> 00:26:02,300 If we have to reconcile all the different philosophies that were people who said, Oh, well, 214 00:26:02,300 --> 00:26:09,890 if somebody doesn't have gender reassignment, they're not really a transsexual or a transgender person. 215 00:26:09,890 --> 00:26:16,760 Let's roll that back. Let's think about what you're saying about the implications of saying that everybody 216 00:26:16,760 --> 00:26:23,350 must have this intense amount of surgery if that old or disabled or whatever. 217 00:26:23,350 --> 00:26:28,660 And what is the relationship and they've got a cop who also has to say the whole thing? 218 00:26:28,660 --> 00:26:36,430 Stop. Let us try to think about how we can get our thinking together on this, how we can compromise. 219 00:26:36,430 --> 00:26:41,470 And one of the things we realised, I think Catholic community, which was Baghdad. 220 00:26:41,470 --> 00:26:52,390 I think the first workshop meeting we have a day when we all sat down, really tried to think about pulling out about a hundred of us in the room, 221 00:26:52,390 --> 00:26:58,630 which we realised we have to be selfless because we had to have a real commitment to doing this. 222 00:26:58,630 --> 00:27:02,680 We have to do things that none of us ever thought we were going to do. 223 00:27:02,680 --> 00:27:11,110 So to speak in public. Talk to politicians, etc. We had to have some discipline about doing it because if we weren't disciplined, 224 00:27:11,110 --> 00:27:18,530 you know, we would kind of fall apart along the way. And we had to retain our integrity about what it was we were doing. 225 00:27:18,530 --> 00:27:27,400 But one of the things that came up, of course, was this was 1990 to 1993, my first job and that view was as a lecturer, 226 00:27:27,400 --> 00:27:32,770 but also as being the person who introduced computers into the law school. 227 00:27:32,770 --> 00:27:38,860 I've always been a computer nerd, loads of trans people or computer nerds. 228 00:27:38,860 --> 00:27:45,810 We were right at the founding of the two that you'd actually do your history or discover that we are trans people. 229 00:27:45,810 --> 00:27:52,360 If we knew about computers and we knew about it, that we knew about online talking to each other, 230 00:27:52,360 --> 00:28:00,550 and we knew how to make newsletters and magazines and stuff things that other people were only just learning. 231 00:28:00,550 --> 00:28:06,230 So we brought those skills into this class, which was really flat. 232 00:28:06,230 --> 00:28:14,380 It was a loose cell structure almost and enables individual participation from the tiny to the very big. 233 00:28:14,380 --> 00:28:20,680 You could literally like an email to somebody about some of the issues, 234 00:28:20,680 --> 00:28:29,750 or you could go and talk to committee in the Parliament and the parliamentary committee on behalf of the issues. 235 00:28:29,750 --> 00:28:35,420 And people would try to be connected to a marriage vehicle like cheating that we developed. 236 00:28:35,420 --> 00:28:46,280 They work together, but they were separate. They have skills, but they also linked to learn from each other and we develop this professional approach. 237 00:28:46,280 --> 00:28:50,720 People often said, well, you know what, what what is this structure? Is it what? 238 00:28:50,720 --> 00:28:58,850 It's just a group of people or volunteers. No body that. You know, we're just trans people who want to create change. 239 00:28:58,850 --> 00:29:05,930 And the best example are often thought of. Africans still think it was Frank who was a trans bob. 240 00:29:05,930 --> 00:29:16,430 I thought to like, be more violent with me, who decided to lead about Europe and the courts in Europe and how directives were made. 241 00:29:16,430 --> 00:29:20,540 He adapted David Law after A-levels. You've never done anything like this. 242 00:29:20,540 --> 00:29:34,250 He left school at 15, but he became vice president for European affairs and it was about 1998 when he was talking to had the European Commission, 243 00:29:34,250 --> 00:29:42,140 who said to him, Sir, how long have you worked in the field? In fact, it was four years, but I'm just a volunteer. 244 00:29:42,140 --> 00:29:46,070 You know, all of us are just volunteers. Alright, so what's your profession? 245 00:29:46,070 --> 00:29:56,900 And he says, I'm a postman. I deliver letters and this chaps face just was a picture because he had been talking 246 00:29:56,900 --> 00:30:05,570 to some newscasters so well and it had boarded exactly precisely what we were about. 247 00:30:05,570 --> 00:30:14,960 We did, you know, the various party conferences we did events where we had somebody actually paid 248 00:30:14,960 --> 00:30:20,360 for us to have a stall at the Labour Party conference in nineteen ninety eight, 249 00:30:20,360 --> 00:30:24,650 which was, you know, they cost a lot of money with an average possibly paid for it. 250 00:30:24,650 --> 00:30:32,300 And you know, we had Tony Blair and Cherie Blair come up and shake hands of both Butler, but various other people. 251 00:30:32,300 --> 00:30:41,150 And it was like this we are getting our voices heard and getting some form of recognition wasn't easy. 252 00:30:41,150 --> 00:30:47,950 One of its suburbs hat was that people thought the issues were about birth certificates. 253 00:30:47,950 --> 00:30:58,090 Because if you read it, in 1991, I when I started my Ph.D., I read 201 legal papers, 254 00:30:58,090 --> 00:31:02,800 existing ones in English, every single one of them that existed in English. 255 00:31:02,800 --> 00:31:11,380 I read it. All of them said that trans people are they know about trans women wanted to have their birth certificates 256 00:31:11,380 --> 00:31:19,510 changed so that they could get married in order to disappear into global heteronormative sort of life. 257 00:31:19,510 --> 00:31:30,300 That was it. And in fact, if you went to the doctors at any time between 1975 when I went in 1995. 258 00:31:30,300 --> 00:31:40,650 That was what was expected of you. You were meant to say, you know, I only fancy people of the same sex as I was labelled at birth, 259 00:31:40,650 --> 00:31:45,090 but actually that makes me heterosexual by you, gender well. 260 00:31:45,090 --> 00:31:53,570 And if you said anything else, you would be no trouble. And I was one of those people who said simply, girls can be bisexual. 261 00:31:53,570 --> 00:32:03,530 A disaster. But. This was who we were meant to be, just people wanted to disappear somehow. 262 00:32:03,530 --> 00:32:08,030 And I don't want to disappear. None of us wanted to disappear. 263 00:32:08,030 --> 00:32:19,490 We wanted to be part of the communities in which we lived and worked and be full people in that that but package as well. 264 00:32:19,490 --> 00:32:29,720 So not the Walsh was very little research existed at that time, but I was doing a PhD, so it seemed obvious thing to do was to ask this question. 265 00:32:29,720 --> 00:32:39,050 So I asked had 800 people from the community filling survey forms and interviewed quite a lot of what were the results? 266 00:32:39,050 --> 00:32:46,250 But what people wanted and needed was equal access to employment to be able to get a job, 267 00:32:46,250 --> 00:32:51,380 to be able to retain a job where they did it well, to not be the first person out. 268 00:32:51,380 --> 00:33:02,790 Any time anything went wrong with the business. That meant that was so much because without equal access to employment, you know, 269 00:33:02,790 --> 00:33:06,870 for many who have families who said they were still paying out for those families, 270 00:33:06,870 --> 00:33:14,470 but they were also having to rent and buy a new wardrobe because that's what the doctor required of them. 271 00:33:14,470 --> 00:33:24,270 And without money, you could buy the secondary treatment, such as bed removal binders for your chest, 272 00:33:24,270 --> 00:33:31,110 all the other things that actually needed to do that you did not get on the NHS. 273 00:33:31,110 --> 00:33:35,400 You have to pay for if you didn't keep your job, you had deep trouble. 274 00:33:35,400 --> 00:33:42,600 So job was number one. Number two was personal safety in public and private. 275 00:33:42,600 --> 00:33:49,290 Everybody had been beaten up by somebody, whether it was their dad, possibly in the street or both, 276 00:33:49,290 --> 00:33:56,610 or raped by somebody they thought was going to their boyfriend or the guy who lived downstairs or the landlord. 277 00:33:56,610 --> 00:34:02,160 It was just that constant, constant, constant. 278 00:34:02,160 --> 00:34:09,600 I heard these stories repeatedly of the violence the community faced. 279 00:34:09,600 --> 00:34:21,140 And what people wanted was just to be safe. Big hit all the time, they wanted equal access to medical provision, not just for gender reassignment. 280 00:34:21,140 --> 00:34:29,790 So everything else. The minute you were somebody was having the sex change, everything became psychosomatic. 281 00:34:29,790 --> 00:34:34,130 Have a bad back or it's just psychosomatic, you broke you like, oh, it's just psychosomatic. 282 00:34:34,130 --> 00:34:38,690 I've got a brain tumour. He's probably psychosomatic and it felt like that constantly. 283 00:34:38,690 --> 00:34:45,500 I know it did because it took them twenty two years to diagnose me as having multiple sclerosis. 284 00:34:45,500 --> 00:34:49,640 But I knew for 22 years that's how they put a doctor told me. 285 00:34:49,640 --> 00:34:56,330 But nobody else was going to diagnose it because I was not somebody worth treating. 286 00:34:56,330 --> 00:35:05,120 So, you know, those three things were first, secondary issues where we needed to change public attitudes. 287 00:35:05,120 --> 00:35:11,070 People really, really wanted people to respect, be some way. 288 00:35:11,070 --> 00:35:22,310 People began to realise there was a need for relationship recognition, and that became absolutely clear to me because. 289 00:35:22,310 --> 00:35:28,400 So my wife, we've had all these problems getting separation treatment. 290 00:35:28,400 --> 00:35:32,330 The government we had actually go right to the highest ranks of government and 291 00:35:32,330 --> 00:35:35,900 asked if I could be recognised as the father of the children's best Typekit. 292 00:35:35,900 --> 00:35:38,960 And we were told, no, I couldn't be registered. 293 00:35:38,960 --> 00:35:51,350 But that actually meant the worst thing happened, which is if my wife died, my children would become homeless orphans. 294 00:35:51,350 --> 00:35:58,140 Sort of to laugh at it, but it would have meant at the time which social workers would have step to remove 295 00:35:58,140 --> 00:36:02,190 the children from the home placed into foster care because there were four of 296 00:36:02,190 --> 00:36:06,540 them almost certainly split them up whilst they spent two years assessing whether 297 00:36:06,540 --> 00:36:12,750 I was going to be a critical person to buy them and there'd be no guarantee. 298 00:36:12,750 --> 00:36:18,610 So that notion of relationship recognition was becoming increasingly important. 299 00:36:18,610 --> 00:36:24,090 You again, somebody once said to me that they talk about birth certificates, look at me, she said. 300 00:36:24,090 --> 00:36:29,670 She said, we should even look at me. I'm six foot six. I am a trucker in the flock. 301 00:36:29,670 --> 00:36:36,390 Do you think a new birth certificate? Let's make a blind bit of difference to the quality of my life. 302 00:36:36,390 --> 00:36:45,210 What would make a difference? They keep my job. What would make a difference is if people actually gave a little bit of respect 303 00:36:45,210 --> 00:36:50,140 to the fact that Barry had been lived together quite happily as a couple. 304 00:36:50,140 --> 00:37:01,730 And what would make a real big difference? You know, I did have to fight the doctor every time I went for anything. 305 00:37:01,730 --> 00:37:10,190 Mark, down on the list was privacy, and the reason it was right down to the left were because most tomfoolery and years of their 306 00:37:10,190 --> 00:37:17,000 life at that point as a woman would be very visibly travel hormones were not that effective. 307 00:37:17,000 --> 00:37:25,790 We have, you know, they got low dose treatments. They weren't as efficacious as they could be. 308 00:37:25,790 --> 00:37:36,890 So there is no sense of privacy just for your daily life and trans man who called on one hand, become very masculine, very quickly. 309 00:37:36,890 --> 00:37:41,750 Because of the lack of surgeons in this country, the minute we took off our clothes, 310 00:37:41,750 --> 00:37:47,690 everybody in a hospital setting would know exactly precisely what we were. 311 00:37:47,690 --> 00:37:56,680 Privacy was way down the list. A cluster change because I talked about developing expertise in lobby group efforts. 312 00:37:56,680 --> 00:38:02,530 It was a really key part of moving that agenda forward. We had to change public attitudes. 313 00:38:02,530 --> 00:38:08,740 We have to change that agenda from birth to marriage to the over things that the community wanted. 314 00:38:08,740 --> 00:38:19,270 And in order to do that, we took a whole series of court cases from 1995, wherein '93 onwards we started with court cases. 315 00:38:19,270 --> 00:38:24,640 The court cases were all whipped up to the punch. We worked out, we have nobody, so we did it. 316 00:38:24,640 --> 00:38:31,750 People who had lost their jobs probably or were, you know, students or the equivalent, very low. 317 00:38:31,750 --> 00:38:40,540 We needed people who had a clear case that could challenge the current framing of the law and preferably which 318 00:38:40,540 --> 00:38:50,180 could be taken up the court ultimately ensure because we did not expect any positive outcome here in the UK. 319 00:38:50,180 --> 00:38:59,960 We were right not to expect it because right up until winning Goodwill II in 2002, two months earlier. 320 00:38:59,960 --> 00:39:08,270 The Supreme Court, you know, the House of Lords that say in those days would say the UK had contravened all rights, 321 00:39:08,270 --> 00:39:14,840 but it was up to parliament to do something about it. We knew we had to get into Europe, 322 00:39:14,840 --> 00:39:21,950 so we actually planned cases in advance with that went out to the community and said we take anybody who lost their job. 323 00:39:21,950 --> 00:39:26,000 Does anybody got children who have not been very blessed as part of a family, 324 00:39:26,000 --> 00:39:38,210 as anybody got a partner who's got a long term chronic sickness illness and they can't get Social Security support for it and so on and so forth? 325 00:39:38,210 --> 00:39:47,090 And finally, the final part of the Academy's legislative change, which ultimately came with that discrimination regulations, 326 00:39:47,090 --> 00:39:52,130 which followed a case earlier and then the Gender Recognition Act, 327 00:39:52,130 --> 00:40:01,880 the changing public attitudes was one of the most difficult things, but at the same time, one of the easiest way that a lot of changing to do. 328 00:40:01,880 --> 00:40:11,910 But I remember so well, a colleague at work said to me, Well, if you want to change the law and when court cases. 329 00:40:11,910 --> 00:40:16,150 That's good news, that means you've got to change judges, wives first. 330 00:40:16,150 --> 00:40:23,760 And I remember looking at it as well, the judge might be a little bit sad to see the courts don't be so stupid. 331 00:40:23,760 --> 00:40:30,810 There were some books they actually said, you need to change the conversations that take place at breakfast in those houses, 332 00:40:30,810 --> 00:40:36,510 which means you have to get in the morning newspapers into the pages that women read. 333 00:40:36,510 --> 00:40:42,850 Trans people were, you know, we have we've had a way for the newspapers. We don't smoke who been caught, you know? 334 00:40:42,850 --> 00:40:48,960 I mean, when we had our first baby, we were hounded and then caught in the public street and photographed to the 335 00:40:48,960 --> 00:40:53,220 extent that my open university student rang me a pulse of the morning and said, 336 00:40:53,220 --> 00:40:57,690 OK, you know, you're on the phone to the people. I went to know how that happened. 337 00:40:57,690 --> 00:41:00,720 So when you got the paper said, How did you know it was me? 338 00:41:00,720 --> 00:41:11,520 So we can tell you a box of anywhere that says a lot about that legacy of a female bomber male, obviously. 339 00:41:11,520 --> 00:41:20,510 But. They knew and they were great about it, but there are lots of people who work there, the dog [INAUDIBLE] came through the door, 340 00:41:20,510 --> 00:41:28,310 the bricks banged on the window with, you know, we want you perverts, Afterpay, hair etc, etc., etc. All happened. 341 00:41:28,310 --> 00:41:34,130 But we actually did was we ran the newspapers and we literally said, This is 93.0. 342 00:41:34,130 --> 00:41:39,770 Do you want a story about a child sexual? So they would say yes, how much? 343 00:41:39,770 --> 00:41:46,850 And we say it's for free for their child. The person will have talk to you on one condition. 344 00:41:46,850 --> 00:41:55,340 They said, Well, we said no editorial control. We know that, sure. But they want to be able to say that the quotes that they give you put in the 345 00:41:55,340 --> 00:42:02,340 real context that they're not manipulated to say something that wasn't set. 346 00:42:02,340 --> 00:42:12,440 And we got tons of press, you know, particularly in the Times, the Telegraph, those the daily ballots after they wanted these stories back later. 347 00:42:12,440 --> 00:42:21,230 So we learnt to be professional people, you know, to be truly respectable in every way. 348 00:42:21,230 --> 00:42:26,900 All of us used to laugh at none of us could have ever had an affair with anybody because we'd have been, you know, 349 00:42:26,900 --> 00:42:35,570 added up all over these papers to say we were presenting ourselves as the best sort of citizens goody goody two shoes in the world. 350 00:42:35,570 --> 00:42:42,560 But we got that it worked class for change itself became massive, and it became mostly massive through the website. 351 00:42:42,560 --> 00:42:56,510 The team who created the website started 1994 to the point that by 1996 was a thousand pages of it had 100000 hits a month from over 80 countries, 352 00:42:56,510 --> 00:43:01,700 one million plus visitors every year and completely free. 353 00:43:01,700 --> 00:43:09,950 It was the resource that people went to for transgender law, completely only resource that existed above anything of the sort. 354 00:43:09,950 --> 00:43:15,890 In fact, it was the biggest political website in the world until 1999, 355 00:43:15,890 --> 00:43:23,060 which actually really says something from the team that created it produced something quite amazing with it, 356 00:43:23,060 --> 00:43:31,460 not just in terms of providing a resource for the entire world, but actually educational source for our community. 357 00:43:31,460 --> 00:43:36,430 You needed to do anything. You went to the Press for Change website. 358 00:43:36,430 --> 00:43:45,010 So we have pressed for change the this political lobbying by 1998 as a national community. 359 00:43:45,010 --> 00:43:51,630 And it's really important to think that back in 1975, a new one transfer said. 360 00:43:51,630 --> 00:44:07,590 By 1989, when I set up what was then the FGM network for trans men and U14 trans men, I'm probably three times that many trans women, but that was it. 361 00:44:07,590 --> 00:44:14,010 But I 1998, we had these major organisations all voluntary, 362 00:44:14,010 --> 00:44:24,410 all working to support the community to provide educational information, medical information. 363 00:44:24,410 --> 00:44:30,530 I think if that was you back just to get people confidence in themselves, to learn, 364 00:44:30,530 --> 00:44:40,940 to laugh at ourselves and to realise we didn't need to be ashamed of ourselves in terms of that whole process of collective working, 365 00:44:40,940 --> 00:44:50,270 the news media, etc. It was very effective, but was the biggest and most effective campaigns we ever had. 366 00:44:50,270 --> 00:44:56,420 Was started about 1995, when in one of the weekend workshops, 367 00:44:56,420 --> 00:45:04,880 it was agreed that we would find the major soaps that on every channel where they were filmed, 368 00:45:04,880 --> 00:45:09,410 whether scriptwriters, that days the script practise baton. 369 00:45:09,410 --> 00:45:16,070 And we would have teams from the community going into that bar with a script by a suspect. 370 00:45:16,070 --> 00:45:21,530 So it was a Thursday night we went for a drink. We were there having the drink. 371 00:45:21,530 --> 00:45:27,200 And later that night, we could. We count sometimes two events a week, to be fair. 372 00:45:27,200 --> 00:45:35,000 You got started to be talking to until finally in 1998. 373 00:45:35,000 --> 00:45:42,340 ITV Good after tape picked up the idea of recruiting somebody who was trying. 374 00:45:42,340 --> 00:45:50,800 The first. Presentation of Hayley Cropper was particularly aptly doable. 375 00:45:50,800 --> 00:45:52,990 So we sort of immediately wrote it aside, 376 00:45:52,990 --> 00:46:00,680 what is the point it is having done the work if we don't listen to us and listen to the reality of our story? 377 00:46:00,680 --> 00:46:08,140 You just had Hayley Cropper pulled up on a passport that apparently has the wrong sex and et cetera, et cetera. 378 00:46:08,140 --> 00:46:17,340 That is not the happens. The first thing we will change is our passport because it's the thing we can change so that we've changed our date. 379 00:46:17,340 --> 00:46:18,570 You need to get this right. 380 00:46:18,570 --> 00:46:29,850 If you're going to do it and they agreed to have one of the community, I want to change activist being a consultant on the programme. 381 00:46:29,850 --> 00:46:39,120 That was Ali Wallace, who all these years later was the first trans person to play a trans person on British television, 382 00:46:39,120 --> 00:46:47,010 the first trans actress to play a trans person on British television soap in Hollyoaks. 383 00:46:47,010 --> 00:46:50,110 She was the advisor because she did local amateur dramatics. 384 00:46:50,110 --> 00:46:55,650 Everybody just we pushed and pushed and pushed the conspiracy to act and said, Why don't you go to college? 385 00:46:55,650 --> 00:47:05,610 Why don't you come to this? Cape's you? She passed and you know, she tried for a long time to get professional work, not being trans. 386 00:47:05,610 --> 00:47:09,910 And then when this job came to Hollyoaks, she thought, Well, here I am. 387 00:47:09,910 --> 00:47:18,660 I'm well, bloody well, be the person. And so she became the first person to get what she did to work on Coronation Street. 388 00:47:18,660 --> 00:47:28,110 Now what that meant was the scene on the 21st of April 1999, we were really struggling to get the Labour government to move on this. 389 00:47:28,110 --> 00:47:32,700 Lots of sympathy. But Jack Straw, the Home Office was very negative. 390 00:47:32,700 --> 00:47:38,520 That meant that we were sort of a bit knocking our heads against brick walls. 391 00:47:38,520 --> 00:47:48,000 So we proposed the marriage story in which Royston Haley fell in love and tried to get married, and it was unsuccessful. 392 00:47:48,000 --> 00:47:54,330 On the 21st of April 1999, that marriage was unsuccessful. 393 00:47:54,330 --> 00:48:01,020 Could it be done? Had to end up being a sham marriage at the local cafe where they both worked. 394 00:48:01,020 --> 00:48:06,080 But interestingly, the work on the soap. 395 00:48:06,080 --> 00:48:11,510 It reached the parts that we couldn't reach any other way. 396 00:48:11,510 --> 00:48:24,440 And in fact, they received the government received 300000 letters in advance of that wedding, saying we gather that they will be able to marry. 397 00:48:24,440 --> 00:48:28,340 That's wrong. These were people who didn't necessarily know trans people. 398 00:48:28,340 --> 00:48:34,370 Many of them probably did, but haven't really thought about it before, whether they looked at what was going on. 399 00:48:34,370 --> 00:48:41,480 They certainly got their pens and papers out, and they they wrote. And on the day of the marriage didn't happen. 400 00:48:41,480 --> 00:48:47,540 Jack Straw, still in parliament, has said, We're going to have a legitimate medical working group of this matter. 401 00:48:47,540 --> 00:48:51,950 We're going to see what the issues are, etc. And finally, we had cracked it. 402 00:48:51,950 --> 00:48:57,950 We have got into a place where government was going to listen. 403 00:48:57,950 --> 00:49:03,510 The first meeting we had with the department's working group was that it was quite interesting. 404 00:49:03,510 --> 00:49:12,110 They gave us 20 minutes, 10 minutes to do a presentation, 10 minutes question that I just they all lead one side of the table. 405 00:49:12,110 --> 00:49:20,570 We had seven lawyers on our side of the table and a couple of people working on, you know, things like statesmen, 406 00:49:20,570 --> 00:49:27,710 New Statesman, things, those sorts of max eight seven lawyers of various different shapes and sizes. 407 00:49:27,710 --> 00:49:33,530 As many as 12 people come in for 20 session. 408 00:49:33,530 --> 00:49:35,000 We left four hours later. 409 00:49:35,000 --> 00:49:46,100 We went down the pub with the tape because what really was the problem at that point was everybody thought we have horns and tails. 410 00:49:46,100 --> 00:49:53,810 They didn't lay eyes. We would just like them. But by getting into a space with actually talking, getting to those people who you know, 411 00:49:53,810 --> 00:49:58,910 they started, Oh, well, that's wrong, because I know that person. 412 00:49:58,910 --> 00:50:02,880 I can't see by, surely. And. 413 00:50:02,880 --> 00:50:13,920 We started to move the agenda, which meant that by the time we started to win cases in the European court, we were beginning to get her properly. 414 00:50:13,920 --> 00:50:19,080 So the very first major case that we would fight back in 1996, 415 00:50:19,080 --> 00:50:28,050 which was first that Google had to cancel and that gave employment protection to trans people throughout Europe, 416 00:50:28,050 --> 00:50:31,290 not just employment but also notification of trading. 417 00:50:31,290 --> 00:50:41,190 So if you were doing medicine at university, for example, or this trading or just trying to be a welder, you were protected from discrimination. 418 00:50:41,190 --> 00:50:46,770 Which meant that was sort of like the stepping stone. Now everybody had to give us a joke. 419 00:50:46,770 --> 00:50:56,010 In 1999, we suddenly got notified with three weeks notice that the government was putting out a white paper for consultation. 420 00:50:56,010 --> 00:51:05,550 The paper basically said this has been a decision that people have found very difficult and closed out like, so this is what we are proposing. 421 00:51:05,550 --> 00:51:16,380 And if I just highlight probably the worst proposal and that was that we would be allowed to use the toilet of a 422 00:51:16,380 --> 00:51:30,150 new gender identity when senior managers had decided we look reasonable enough that they should you try to work. 423 00:51:30,150 --> 00:51:35,370 They also have got to ensure that no doctor could work and no trans doctor was going to have to keep that job. 424 00:51:35,370 --> 00:51:39,300 No trans death, no drugs teacher, no tracks disabilities. 425 00:51:39,300 --> 00:51:49,260 Anybody who was in an educational role or might see somebody in a semi or dressed role, even though they were fully dressed themselves, you know? 426 00:51:49,260 --> 00:51:55,890 You got to lose your job. We fought back on every single one of those things and we won every single one 427 00:51:55,890 --> 00:51:59,910 of those people came forward with the cases where they were challenged at work, 428 00:51:59,910 --> 00:52:09,420 and by the end of 2000, we'd regained every single one of the blacks that they had tried to fit the 1998 regulations. 429 00:52:09,420 --> 00:52:15,960 Those cases to the European Court of Human Rights, X, Y and Z was actually the case concerning. 430 00:52:15,960 --> 00:52:20,580 I was ex my wife, so it was why was she my client then? 431 00:52:20,580 --> 00:52:28,290 And that was her first child, who the time we actually got the court was at that to. 432 00:52:28,290 --> 00:52:31,890 At the time was very difficult to listen to, it came through at eight o'clock in the morning, 433 00:52:31,890 --> 00:52:37,500 it was being fed in one ear and then the other here I was doing what I did. 434 00:52:37,500 --> 00:52:46,060 Twenty seven interviews that morning, BBC opened their studios up to literally all of the services as well. 435 00:52:46,060 --> 00:52:56,280 Covered do interviews with basically out of the news and we quickly spread and we said, OK, you know, we lost the case but were proudly Typekit. 436 00:52:56,280 --> 00:53:01,050 We think our children should have the protections of everybody else's. 437 00:53:01,050 --> 00:53:10,050 Children have every other child. And furthermore, the court itself said, We were a family. 438 00:53:10,050 --> 00:53:15,450 We weren't a disparate group of individuals. We were a family family. 439 00:53:15,450 --> 00:53:19,240 Family means something a little. 440 00:53:19,240 --> 00:53:27,190 Eventually, you know, after several of the cases, we got good way to die, which the court said we had a right to personal autonomy. 441 00:53:27,190 --> 00:53:35,560 The NHS provided that, you know, gender reassignment. So why the [INAUDIBLE] did we do a follow up on what is it providing for you? 442 00:53:35,560 --> 00:53:40,450 Provide the extra little legal battle with my mom. So I could say that ever since you did this? 443 00:53:40,450 --> 00:53:57,850 Yes. And. Yeah, we there was that whole question of personal privacy on the late night and Article 12 blocks allowed to marry so that. 444 00:53:57,850 --> 00:54:03,460 To the legislation, we also during that time to had cases through the national courts, employment cases, 445 00:54:03,460 --> 00:54:11,260 medical access cases, relationship cases, one of the things we were very clear of in the Press for Change campaign, 446 00:54:11,260 --> 00:54:19,960 which is sort of ironic now when I think about what's been going on in the last five years is that we said we would never, 447 00:54:19,960 --> 00:54:25,630 ever do anything that removes the rights from any other group of people. 448 00:54:25,630 --> 00:54:34,210 So we thought processes under the Gender Recognition Act, for example, that would allow us to marry. 449 00:54:34,210 --> 00:54:41,920 We were busy pointing out same conversations that actually you began writing people with two penises get married. 450 00:54:41,920 --> 00:54:47,860 You'll be letting people with two vaginas get married. So why we don't do a gay or lesbian marriage at the same time. 451 00:54:47,860 --> 00:54:55,390 We worked with so well, and we brought Civil Partnership Act forward by at least two years at that point, 452 00:54:55,390 --> 00:55:04,070 because it became crucial also that we had the couples that were currently married couples. 453 00:55:04,070 --> 00:55:10,990 I used to call the bi blue rinse group off to the library of the trans women had been, 454 00:55:10,990 --> 00:55:15,940 you know, senior public servants had been in the forces or in the police services. 455 00:55:15,940 --> 00:55:19,540 They took their time, they got their pensions, 456 00:55:19,540 --> 00:55:28,540 which protected their spouse before they got divorced because they were in those days, public sector forces pensions. 457 00:55:28,540 --> 00:55:33,430 Their spouse would lose their right to the survivor pension benefits. 458 00:55:33,430 --> 00:55:41,440 So they had a choice that did they go for the right that they had under European law to become women? 459 00:55:41,440 --> 00:55:49,030 Or did they stay married in order to protect the right of the spouse who stood by them through thick and fell, 460 00:55:49,030 --> 00:55:53,200 including a gentle process of gender reassignment? 461 00:55:53,200 --> 00:56:00,730 Did they, you know, stay stay in that situation of being legally allowed to ensure their spouse had to survive a pension benefit? 462 00:56:00,730 --> 00:56:08,280 The deal that we did with government? What's the Civil Partnership Act coming forward? 463 00:56:08,280 --> 00:56:15,860 And there were cases about pension rights, et cetera, that told you that beautifully documented and that you see this process, 464 00:56:15,860 --> 00:56:20,130 this arc that led ultimately to the Gender Recognition Act. 465 00:56:20,130 --> 00:56:23,970 You have to get a gender recognition certificate, which gave you a new birth certificate, 466 00:56:23,970 --> 00:56:29,850 which gave you the right to marry or enter a civil partnership and the right to privacy. 467 00:56:29,850 --> 00:56:37,970 The rights of the acquired gender for all legal purposes had its limits happen to, 468 00:56:37,970 --> 00:56:42,990 you know, not be married for the sex, etc. Those things we knew would. 469 00:56:42,990 --> 00:56:53,940 But I remember way back at the beginning, just as the act was you the final thought where we had to agree that we were happy with it. 470 00:56:53,940 --> 00:56:59,870 I remember being sat in the meeting say we're I'm happy with it, looks happy at all with this and this, 471 00:56:59,870 --> 00:57:06,690 this and the fact that you still want us to have a diagnosis that we are psychiatrically disturbed in some way, 472 00:57:06,690 --> 00:57:16,410 shape or form because that's what you're requiring of us for doctors to, you know, have the faintest idea of what it's really like to be this. 473 00:57:16,410 --> 00:57:20,610 And we're going to have to go through that process and we disagree with that. We disagree with this. 474 00:57:20,610 --> 00:57:31,470 But we are going to go with the act because it will give 95 percent of what 95 percent of the community needs. 475 00:57:31,470 --> 00:57:39,600 The other five percent in both cases is not forgotten, and we will continue to fight for those things. 476 00:57:39,600 --> 00:57:42,210 We also ultimately ended up with the Equality Act, 477 00:57:42,210 --> 00:57:48,720 which meant that anybody intending to delay wanted to go to having undergone gender reassignment was protected. 478 00:57:48,720 --> 00:57:57,420 And most importantly, gender reassignment under the Act is a social process, not a medical one. 479 00:57:57,420 --> 00:58:03,840 Anybody who is, you know, anybody who's been in the process of trying to obtain gender reassignment treatment, 480 00:58:03,840 --> 00:58:09,450 you will now know how long the waiting lists are, how. 481 00:58:09,450 --> 00:58:10,320 And so I mean, 482 00:58:10,320 --> 00:58:23,280 I spoke to somebody the other day who paid on the waiting list for a first consultation down in Exeter for eight years because the GP's had broken up. 483 00:58:23,280 --> 00:58:31,650 And so the first three years was wasted. And then the second three years when she should have had a report before the pandemic came along. 484 00:58:31,650 --> 00:58:39,180 And. Certainly, she's just been left in limbo living as a woman. 485 00:58:39,180 --> 00:58:47,640 By hormones over the odds that from India for eight years, with no sense of her life moving forward, 486 00:58:47,640 --> 00:58:55,350 she can't even get the diagnosis in order to get recognised in that new gender in which she's been living for eight years. 487 00:58:55,350 --> 00:59:00,360 So there are huge problems with the court system. 488 00:59:00,360 --> 00:59:13,170 2017 So a challenge that none of us expected and I will admit to have a big court completely on top by this one. 489 00:59:13,170 --> 00:59:20,570 I was very used. In the stuff that we have done with the Equality Act and with the Gender Recognition Act, 490 00:59:20,570 --> 00:59:28,460 it was very used to the fact that Christian evangelicals particularly had challenged us over every 491 00:59:28,460 --> 00:59:34,760 single thing that put a lot of money into challenging the processes that we were going through. 492 00:59:34,760 --> 00:59:47,660 The gaining of legal rights amongst the legal base that people within the LGBT beat LGBT community were saying, hold on a minute. 493 00:59:47,660 --> 00:59:57,440 The women who in the women's movement, who we had been absolute allies to all the way through were saying, hold on a minute. 494 00:59:57,440 --> 01:00:02,570 These people are not. What they were actually focussing on was trans women. 495 01:00:02,570 --> 01:00:15,270 But as. You know, all of us say, and in fact, as my now wife says, it's also a challenge to me as a woman who is married to you, 496 01:00:15,270 --> 01:00:21,570 because what does that say about who you are and about who I am? 497 01:00:21,570 --> 01:00:36,630 We know we are not out who we are, but it's a constant like niggle at the back of you constantly undermining the whole process in the last five years. 498 01:00:36,630 --> 01:00:42,630 Somebody has written to the university or somebody from the university at least three times every year, 499 01:00:42,630 --> 01:00:48,280 sometimes more suggesting they'd asked that I should be removed from my job because I'm not up to it. 500 01:00:48,280 --> 01:00:53,390 But it has been incredibly difficult for some people within the university. 501 01:00:53,390 --> 01:00:59,250 You feel it's been very challenging and they not sure if they have a university. 502 01:00:59,250 --> 01:01:04,270 That's a post-1982 university. I really want to take on those challenges. 503 01:01:04,270 --> 01:01:11,400 And what if it becomes a legal action and what if because that's what these people are now doing? 504 01:01:11,400 --> 01:01:23,010 We are seeing increasingly people who are just doing their jobs are doing them well and not discriminating against any lesbian, gay by trans person, 505 01:01:23,010 --> 01:01:29,820 actually finding themselves being challenged through the courts for something they've said that's meant to be libellous, 506 01:01:29,820 --> 01:01:34,920 not even to the person themselves, but even about the person who's making the complaint. 507 01:01:34,920 --> 01:01:42,930 But the very nature put in that challenging the court, having got the funding from God knows where for it. 508 01:01:42,930 --> 01:01:48,270 It's having devastating effects. I'm waiting constantly for my club, you know, 509 01:01:48,270 --> 01:01:54,750 but maybe they've got more than offset enough sense not to try and challenge me personally over these issues. 510 01:01:54,750 --> 01:02:02,670 Writing advising at this moment in time on three cases, two of which have been bought by the same person, 511 01:02:02,670 --> 01:02:11,900 one by a person who I suspect might be the same person but very involved in the LGB Alliance and. 512 01:02:11,900 --> 01:02:21,800 What what what is going to be the result, both the results of those are people whose individual professionals are devastated by the attack upon them. 513 01:02:21,800 --> 01:02:31,760 But this new challenge has become really difficult. You know this fact life living in this women's place? 514 01:02:31,760 --> 01:02:37,740 We've had people attacking the Girl Guide Association for saying that they accept trans kids, 515 01:02:37,740 --> 01:02:41,150 you know, saying that boys are going to be raping girls in tents. 516 01:02:41,150 --> 01:02:48,290 I just, you know, it's almost like beyond my imagination, some of the things that they make. 517 01:02:48,290 --> 01:02:51,890 They're sort of what's called the gender critical walls. 518 01:02:51,890 --> 01:02:59,540 They came about after Theresa May, in one of her gentler, more nice moves and having met trans people, 519 01:02:59,540 --> 01:03:05,270 agreed to put forward proposals to amend the Gender Recognition Act in 2022. 520 01:03:05,270 --> 01:03:17,240 17 other states have already told this. They removed the Berkeley Colaiste requirement in line with the new W.H.O. ICD 11 diagnostic statement, 521 01:03:17,240 --> 01:03:23,600 which says that we don't have a mental health condition, we have gender code goods that it can be treated. 522 01:03:23,600 --> 01:03:28,550 They want to remove the excessive two-year waiting time. 523 01:03:28,550 --> 01:03:36,950 They want to make it quicker, cheaper, less intrusive. The medical requirements we tried hard to get rid of from the original Gender Recognition Act. 524 01:03:36,950 --> 01:03:44,700 The two year waiting time came about because the government asked the passport office back in 2003. 525 01:03:44,700 --> 01:03:52,790 This is how many people ask for their passport be changed and how many people asked for it to be changed back. 526 01:03:52,790 --> 01:03:58,400 What do they get changed the landscape that very few always within the first two years? 527 01:03:58,400 --> 01:04:01,670 So that was the two year waiting tab was put on to make sure. 528 01:04:01,670 --> 01:04:08,060 And also that was put there because there was a real fear that certain newspapers would have 529 01:04:08,060 --> 01:04:16,670 their reporters try and obtain gender recognition Typekit in order to sort of show the system. 530 01:04:16,670 --> 01:04:21,860 So we wanted to believe that it's about time and make it quicker, cheaper and less true. 531 01:04:21,860 --> 01:04:25,130 Save all the discussions that went about this. 532 01:04:25,130 --> 01:04:30,980 I have to say I was incredibly cautious. I was incredibly cautious about what it would be. 533 01:04:30,980 --> 01:04:39,260 I was very concerned that we didn't, you know, open up spaces in which people stopped being protected, 534 01:04:39,260 --> 01:04:45,630 in which gender recognition did it mean very much. But, you know. 535 01:04:45,630 --> 01:04:49,680 I have reviewed the other countries and other states that have told this. 536 01:04:49,680 --> 01:04:55,140 I have seen and this was the particular thing to me was to see this in Ireland. 537 01:04:55,140 --> 01:05:05,970 Young people could go to school until the 18 get last eight years, so I assumed they would arrive in university as the person they wanted to be. 538 01:05:05,970 --> 01:05:14,460 Obviously, like all of us in those early stages, you'll think trust I look really androgynous that, oh, this is really difficult, but you do it. 539 01:05:14,460 --> 01:05:26,930 But it gave people confidence. It gave those young people confidence that somebody like me could not have imagined in those days when I was that age. 540 01:05:26,930 --> 01:05:34,490 The proposals for the Gender Recognition Act amendment are the ones in Scotland have no impact at all on the Equality Act 2010 title, 541 01:05:34,490 --> 01:05:42,260 it's not changed. The prison rules have not changed. Women's own spaces have not changed. 542 01:05:42,260 --> 01:05:51,260 I married sir in 2005, shortly after getting my gender recognition certificate, and I want to show you almost the joy of the occasion. 543 01:05:51,260 --> 01:05:59,630 But it still brings me sort of a lot less work because I have never seen her happier than on that day. 544 01:05:59,630 --> 01:06:04,040 The kids just had an amazing time where I wanted to do a little quiet. 545 01:06:04,040 --> 01:06:08,510 It's a registry office, but you know what? Within about two weeks or so, we were married. 546 01:06:08,510 --> 01:06:14,660 We had a hundred and twenty people had already invited themselves to the event, never mind us. 547 01:06:14,660 --> 01:06:24,560 So we had, in the end, 108 people crammed into a chapel for 80 people on the hottest day of the year. 548 01:06:24,560 --> 01:06:32,710 And it was amazing. And. I lay in my bed much later that night, it was hot, too, 549 01:06:32,710 --> 01:06:42,120 that it was and I lay my bed thinking about the day and realised something that really was quite profound to me. 550 01:06:42,120 --> 01:06:50,310 I always worried myself sick that the work that I had done in this area was somehow very selfish. 551 01:06:50,310 --> 01:07:06,790 It was all about me. And on that day, I realised that the people who had been left out of the system completely as well as me, the people who look me. 552 01:07:06,790 --> 01:07:11,530 My mom was overjoyed letting me be able to get married. 553 01:07:11,530 --> 01:07:19,960 After all this time, it's 26 years. We've been together, lots of friends that we came to come and celebrate the relationship that we knew would last. 554 01:07:19,960 --> 01:07:26,440 We're not thinking, will it last a year as many marriages are? 555 01:07:26,440 --> 01:07:28,450 And. 556 01:07:28,450 --> 01:07:38,020 Thinking, you know, like I think he realised that the people who had really benefited from the gender wasn't me, I lost my privacy a long time ago. 557 01:07:38,020 --> 01:07:44,920 Everybody knew what I was. I was what was born. Female body to now sort of pretended I was around. 558 01:07:44,920 --> 01:07:51,480 You know it all big done. You know, the whole world knew that the people who really benefited. 559 01:07:51,480 --> 01:08:01,620 Well, my wife, the four children we have and that I was able to become their legal father so that if anything ever happened to Zahra, 560 01:08:01,620 --> 01:08:10,770 they would be whipped by social workers. I just see my mom's face and says, God, no, this crisis has brought us face. 561 01:08:10,770 --> 01:08:16,170 But seeing this event take place, we don't often. 562 01:08:16,170 --> 01:08:22,890 Very few people in the trans community get a gender recognition certificate and legal gender recognition for themselves. 563 01:08:22,890 --> 01:08:28,470 This often means very little. They may be getting attention as a day for a date. 564 01:08:28,470 --> 01:08:32,520 We all get it later, the transmettre we did four years and the troubles when we got it earlier. 565 01:08:32,520 --> 01:08:36,240 But now it's no different. So equalised. 566 01:08:36,240 --> 01:08:46,290 What really meant for all of us was to give security back to the people who had supported us through thick and thin. 567 01:08:46,290 --> 01:08:51,150 My family have never let me down. They've never not known who I am. 568 01:08:51,150 --> 01:08:56,480 Never questioned. My children have always had a bob who gave a gift to spare. 569 01:08:56,480 --> 01:09:02,770 Why? But they also they do have that full stop. 570 01:09:02,770 --> 01:09:12,220 My wife rang me up to take you literally two days having having met me at having been told she rang up and said to a to don't make for any longer, 571 01:09:12,220 --> 01:09:17,170 do they? You know? Within six weeks, we're partners. 572 01:09:17,170 --> 01:09:18,880 She knew who I was. 573 01:09:18,880 --> 01:09:32,380 These are the people who also get left out by not having the system that we now have in place and which could be so much better than it is now. 574 01:09:32,380 --> 01:09:38,890 There's a lot of work still to be done. It's not going to be easy, but I'm hoping we can achieve something. 575 01:09:38,890 --> 01:09:42,910 OK, I'm going to stop sharing my screen. That's really the end. 576 01:09:42,910 --> 01:09:48,830 I always finish off the fact that, you know, this is about real human beings. 577 01:09:48,830 --> 01:09:53,000 Thank you. OK. Hello. I'm Catherine Walter. 578 01:09:53,000 --> 01:09:59,540 I'm the chair of the Sister Advisory Group, which is the Disability Advisory Group. 579 01:09:59,540 --> 01:10:12,170 I was supposed to manage the questions and answers, but the only questions that we really have are about the problems with the audio dropouts. 580 01:10:12,170 --> 01:10:18,800 I promise you personally, we will get a transcript out there one way or the other. 581 01:10:18,800 --> 01:10:26,120 And if I have to go and twist Stephen's arm a bit, so I'll do it again. 582 01:10:26,120 --> 01:10:31,250 Well, we can help you fill in the bit that dropped out. We will do it for you. 583 01:10:31,250 --> 01:10:35,060 This has been fantastic. I will turn over to set to Sarah now. 584 01:10:35,060 --> 01:10:42,150 And will we've got your back? Thank you. OK, thank you. 585 01:10:42,150 --> 01:10:45,840 Sarah, I mean, Flora. Hey, everyone. 586 01:10:45,840 --> 01:10:49,240 Yeah, those are fantastic talk. Thank you so much. 587 01:10:49,240 --> 01:10:51,180 So many interesting things. 588 01:10:51,180 --> 01:10:59,690 It's really interesting to know the battles that are being fought and have been fought and as personally made an awful lot of impact on me. 589 01:10:59,690 --> 01:11:08,400 And I will say that there's a question there for a sandy who says that as a trans man, that brought me to tears. 590 01:11:08,400 --> 01:11:15,000 Your story has resonated with so many of us, and I can I can only say thank you so much. 591 01:11:15,000 --> 01:11:18,660 And I'd also like to thank everyone in the audience for listening. 592 01:11:18,660 --> 01:11:26,100 It's been really fantastic talk and thank you for everyone that has stuck around and listened to us. 593 01:11:26,100 --> 01:11:33,720 I'd like to thank Kathryn for hosting and doing the wrap up just then, and I'd like to thank the team. 594 01:11:33,720 --> 01:11:42,360 Kathryn. Caroline Walters and and Alan Warragul and and Karen from it. 595 01:11:42,360 --> 01:11:48,870 And I think with that, I'd like to thank everyone. We will have the podcast available and we will try and get the. 596 01:11:48,870 --> 01:11:53,430 And we will get the transcripts filled out. And with that, thank you. 597 01:11:53,430 --> 01:12:00,960 Once again, Stephen. That was absolutely amazing. And with that, I have a lovely evening, everyone. 598 01:12:00,960 --> 01:12:05,970 Can I just say this to the audience? I'm sorry about the drop out. 599 01:12:05,970 --> 01:12:13,680 You know, as I say, we've had problems. It's been storms that have ended up huge problems with the internet throughout the country. 600 01:12:13,680 --> 01:12:21,810 If you have questions that you would like to ask eBay, you could find me on the Imam You Law School website. 601 01:12:21,810 --> 01:12:28,200 My email address is there. Just email me. You know, I'm I'm not very fattening. 602 01:12:28,200 --> 01:12:39,260 I don't blame somebody else. I'd rather people actually ask questions that I doubt so they can actually hear the real answers. 603 01:12:39,260 --> 01:12:41,340 I will say this is my first year students. 604 01:12:41,340 --> 01:12:46,650 I getting the first lecture with me, you know, at the end of it, actually, by the way, I'm the one who's had the sex change. 605 01:12:46,650 --> 01:12:53,790 And, you know, the past they step about used to drive up and down with tend to clap, which is very reassuring. 606 01:12:53,790 --> 01:13:02,430 But I also say to the ask, We don't talk amongst yourselves because you won't know the answer, you know? 607 01:13:02,430 --> 01:13:07,950 So if you have questions about anything you want to come back, please aspect. 608 01:13:07,950 --> 01:13:12,330 Thank you so much for that. That's really generous of you. Thank you so much. 609 01:13:12,330 --> 01:13:21,180 And and yes, so please people either go through me or go to Stephen Direct, as he says, is not scary. 610 01:13:21,180 --> 01:13:31,049 And once again, thank you so much and have a lovely evening, everyone.