By Christine Burns
This presentation is originally based upon an open letter which I wrote to colleagues in my local constituency party, following my decision to come out publicly and campaign for transsexual rights in September 1995. You may wish to adapt the style to suit your own, or use it as is.
It is deliberately incomplete too ... covering the medical and historical background behind the UK transsexual rights campaign, but leaving the description of recent events to the presenter. In this way, the script is unlikely to go out of date, and can be used to introduce a wide variety of talks.
Gender Identity Disorder (the medical term for people whose core gender identity and outward physical appearance don't match up) has been studied for decades. The first references in western medical literature date back to the second half of the last century, and the first attempts to resolve an irreconcilable conflict by surgical means go back to the 1930's in Denmark. However, whilst an entire catalogue of physical ambiguities of sex range in frequency from 1 in 200 to 1 in 1,000 live births, and present an obvious and incontestable issue for medicine to deal with, this rather less tangible syndrome was for a long time harder for people to come to terms with.
For decades, psychiatry claimed the initiative and tried to solve the problem by mind alteration. The results were always tragic, without fail. Far from helping their clients (which is surely the goal of all medicine), attempts at mind alteration destroyed many poor souls. You might as well have tried to cure somebody of being a musician. Our sense of gender identity, the half of humanity we belong to, is the bedrock on which everything else is built. It is one of the first things that children attribute to themselves as individuals, and the last thing we forget in senility. It's not really surprising, either .. for the separation into two genders, and the role differences which that separation then leads to, is an essential of sexual reproduction. Indeed, in the search for some sort of physical characteristics to confirm a crossed gender identity, it is hardly surprising therefore that the evidence is emerging in the oldest and deepest parts of the brain ... far below consciousness.
The events giving rise to the syndrome, prior to birth, can also be traced. Human development, like that of other species, occurs with sex differentiation taking place at different times, and according to different influences, in each area of the foetus. It happens domino-fashion. The work of the sex chromosomes is, for instance, finished forever by the end of the ninth week of pregnancy. Genes on the 23rd chromosome pair (XY or XX) cause one group of cells to develop and the other to atrophy ... creating the nucleus of what will eventually be ovaries or testes. These then start to produce the hormone soup in which first the external uro-genital features are developed ... and then, in a second burst very much later, differences in the organisation of the brain. External and genetic influences can diminish, inhibit, or reverse both processes separately as they occur months apart ... and indeed the brain's own development is not complete until up to four or five years after birth. The potential for various unusual permutations is therefore a consequence of nature's design, not an aberration or defect. This is borne out by the fact that each of the possible syndromes which our understanding predicts can happen, has a constant statistical incidence in fact, across all cultures.
Gender Identity Disorder manifests in approximately 1 in 12,000 people born apparently male, and 1 in 33,000 born apparently female. Worldwide. The difference between the two numbers has several explanations too. But let's stop the physiology lesson there.
The point is that Gender Identity Disorder is a medical fact. It's rare, and you can't see it at birth ... but that makes it no less real. What defines you the most? Your self-identity or your body?
Much of this knowledge is over thirty years old now too ... although identification and treatment of the unhappy few has been stymied and distorted until the last two decades because of fearful and ignorant public reaction, led by a sensationalising press. Transsexuals were bracketed with transvestites and drag queens, homosexuals, child molesters and washing line thieves. You name it, the mud has been slung.
In the face of this, many people committed suicide. Studies indicate up to 30% at one point. Others braved being socially ostracised, disowned by family, punished every inch of the way by society ... for being truthful about their feelings. ... And asking for help.
Even so, many transsexuals did make it through the dual grilling by society and the medical profession to be themselves ... and settled down to get on with their lives, happy at last to be themselves. Again, studies show a success rate of up to 95% for the treatment ... and if proof were needed, then this is the pudding.
Then, in 1970 something totally unexpected happened. A transsexual named April Ashley had married the heir to Lord Rowallen's estate, but the marriage had broken down ... and a divorce was being sought.
Transsexuals, up to that time, had not vexed the law. Most simply applied for their birth certificates to be annotated, and then were able to live as normal members of their proper gender. The law had no basis for defining sex, so there was no reason why it should not be changed in a simple and straightforward manner. Nobody was hurt. No fraud was perpetrated. Everybody was happy.
The Rowallen family's lawyers saw in this a loophole, however. April had omitted to have her documents altered (and had been quite candid with her husband-to-be before the marriage) so if it could be shown that she was a male, then the marriage could simply be annulled. No settlement. No inheritance. No mess.
To cut a long story short, the lawyers succeeded, even though the medical evidence was strong even at that time. (Now, in fact, the evidence would be incontestable). The evidence was, too, given a less-than-objective weighting by the judge, Lord Justice Ormerod ... whose comments (if you read the transcript) beggar belief.
The outcome of the case was, however, hardly anticipated at all until the last moment, by which time attempts to limit the scope and application of the case law it created were too little and too late. The decision plunged Britain's transsexual population ... about 4,000 people ... into a legal limbo, whose depths have to be experienced to be properly understood.
And attempts to undo this mess, by repeated and well-argued representations to government, have failed for 26 years since. The claims of people like Mark Rees and Caroline Cossey are the ones which have hit the headlines over the years ... as their fights have gone all the way (at public expense) to the European Court ... and every inch of the way the United Kingdom's government has resisted change in order to protect society from people like them.
This, then, is the background against which Press for Change was formed.
Press for Change is a political lobbying and educational organisation, which campaigns to achieve equal civil rights and liberties for all transsexual people in the United Kingdom, through legislation and social change.
It's not exactly as if the issue is without international precedent either. Austria, Germany, Italy, France, Finland, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, New Zealand, South Australia, Turkey (!), and forty-eight of the United States are just examples of legislatures which have resolved the issues satisfactorily in one way or another. The legislation in those countries is a matter of public record! Britain, for reasons that confound all sensible explanation, holds out doggedly ... putting a stain on the character of transsexual people by implication. A stain which no reasonable person would meekly accept for life.
Yet the message is simple ...
Gender Identity Disorder is a tragically misunderstood medical condition ... it's treatment is highly successful and cost-effective when properly managed ... but ignorance and the false stereotypes of decades have led to a legal and social framework which is unjust to the point of pure spitefulness