I’m standing at front arch, waiting, and I’m nervous. Fear of the unknown may be apt. I’ve never conducted an interview before, I’ve never met the person I’m interviewing, and the person I’m meeting identifies as transgender. I’m afraid of offending because I don’t know the right gender pronoun to use and I’m afraid of stepping over some kind of line I never knew existed. Listening back to the start of the interview, I hear myself do my own little nervous quirk of stumbling over my words every seven seconds. It occurs to me that nothing anyone else is doing is making me nervous, just me.
I’m interviewing Shane, a student from a Dublin university who identifies as a transgender woman named Shannon, and today we’re discussing the newly proposed laws regarding legal recognition of persons as their “acquired“ sex. In its most condensed form the proposed bill allows for non-retrospective legal change in a person’s sex as long as they are at least eighteen years old and single. This means that it will change all future documentation, but existing documentation will remain the same. It also allows for discrimination in sport. However, one of the possible requirements is a diagnosis of Gender Identity Disorder. It is the first such move by an Irish government towards recognition since Dr. Lydia Foy began her struggle for transgender rights twenty years ago. The bill was made by a working group of civil servants. Transgender people were not included nor were transgender campaign groups consulted. In fact, most if not all members of the transgender community found out about the launch of the new bill and its contents through media outlets.
Whoever I was nervous to meet did not manifest himself in Shane. The only thing actually differentiating him from every other lad I meet is my perception. He’s different like anyone else I’ve ever met, but in the same mundane human way. The first thing that strikes me is that he’s smiley and that puts me at ease. He offers to tell me anything and he really seems to mean it. He tells me to refer to Shane as he and Shannon as she and to go from there.
I ask if it’s hard to be Shannon in Dublin and he tells me “It kind of feels right and it kind of feels like me. But like if I wake up in the morning and I look like this, it just doesn’t feel right, it’s like I’m pretending to be someone.” His voice waxes with pride as he tells me about walking down the street as Shannon: “At first I think people perceived me as different but that had a lot to do with a lack of confidence. Now I can walk down the road and people won’t take a second look, they won’t even notice.” That pretty much sets the tone for the interview. He doesn’t want to be an event or a spectacle, he just wants to be and he can’t do that as Shane. The thing that keeps cropping up is people not knowing how to react. He tells me that most people react well eventually, but it’s something that stuns them. Shane says that attitude of shock is a general experience. He draws a line between generations. The younger people are the more capable they seem of getting past the shock and awe. He describes the general perception as well-meaning but highly uninformed at its best, and negative and highly uninformed at its worst. This allows us to meander onto the law itself.
“It’ll definitely make it easier to be trans in Ireland,” says Shane . He talks about the little things, because it’s the little things that make up your day. It’s not being able to go on a night out you haven’t planned eight days in advance because you have to email the club and explain before you go. That’s if they read it and they’re cool with it, and if they remember to tell the bouncer and he’s cool with it. It’s a choice every day: be Shane or have that same confrontational encounter over and over again. The law would allow the trans* community to live without constant reference to their previous identity.
We then dissect the more controversial elements of the bill. The age requirement is up first. I must admit that walking into the room I did not see a problem with eighteen. That’s exactly what I told Shane and that’s exactly what I told my second interviewee of the day. Muireann Montague, current Liaison Officer of QSoc kindly gave me a few minutes of her time to discuss the bill from the perspective of a campaigner. Muireann is passionate without anger and she’s convincing because she means every word she’s saying. She’s different to Shane because she’s not telling you her own personal story. To her at least, her words are just truth. Needless to say they both had thought it through a bit more than I had. A younger age isn’t what they’re arguing for; it’s some sort of flexibility. A rigid age of eighteen does allow a potential safeguard from the inability of children to make effective long-term choices, but it leaves other people behind. The teenager who truly knows that they were born in the wrong sex is forced through the intense chemical changes that only solidify their sex and their torment. “We need to protect the rights of those who are sure,” argues Muireann.
Divorce is our next port of call. Under the proposed bill, somebody in a marriage or civil partnership cannot apply to have their new gender identity recognised. There is already a problem here, at least on a technical legal level. Muireann gets to the heart of it. Divorce in Irish law is about marriages that are broken beyond repair. If a transgender person is happily married with a partner who accepts their new identity, they are forced to choose between their marriage or official recognition of who they are. However, it is likely that in the eyes of the law a desire for this recognition is not grounds for divorce. Therefore, a couple will have to lie and break down their marriage. They have to separate for years. The state takes people in a vulnerable emotional situation and tell them they have to leave their partner to have their identity recognised. The reasoning in marriage is at least logically clear, we do not have legal same sex marriage and Shane is confident this is a temporary problem. If you’re interested in getting an additional legal perspective on same-sex marriage and civil partnership check out websites similar to http://petersmay.com/. I’ve heard they understand these legal issues well and it might illuminate legal discourse for those in similar situations but I digress. The reasoning with civil partnership, which is already open to same sex couples, is less evident, or at least Shane couldn’t see it. In terms of the other aspects of the bill, both Shane and Muireann agree easily on sport. Respecting someone’s identity as a man or a woman is probably more important than an advantage in a game of tennis. And finally, the fact that the bill is not retrospective is generally deemed acceptable for medical reasons and accurate government data.
When we turned to “gender identity disorder” things became more animated. The word “disorder” has certain connotations, and those connotations are negative. The idea of needing to be diagnosed with a mental issue by a medical professional in Ireland has serious negative perceptions attached to it. We are not a country at one with the idea of mental health. What Muireann takes real issue with is that mental health problems are just that: problems. She explains that being trans* isn’t a problem with your state of being, it is your state of being. We get into governmental attitudes on transgender issues. Shane explains what this recognition would mean to him. It’s more than just ID. “It’s everyone recognizing this is you.” There’s a goal at the end of this. Shane keeps repeating the word “normal.” He looks forward to the day where “it’s not such a big thing”. At the moment he has to split himself in two every day: “It’s like being schizophrenic but I’m not schizophrenic, I’m being two different people”. The idea that somebody is walking around in an identity which is an effort for them to maintain can be hard to understand for people not familiar with trans* issues.
Shane mentioned something completely novel to me and I asked Muireann about it. Do people go back in the closet as trans* after college? Shane seems to think they often do until their forties or fifties. Muireann agrees. She says it’s because of jobs: “There’s a real fear of not getting hired.” Despite all of the equality laws that we have, many people who work on campaigns for LGBT rights won’t even put that on their CV. Transgender people would almost always be too afraid to inform potential employers for fear of discrimination. This then begs the question is it more than a lack of knowledge, is it hate? Muireann smiles resolvedly as she answers. No, she has “too much faith in people to believe that”, she feels that people just don’t react well to things they don’t understand. So then how do we make people understand? Her answer is simple: schools. For Muireann, the structured delivery of information at a young age is the only solution. This would inform younger generations directly, and older generations through subsequent media attention. But can we change the perceptions of thousands of people who’ve spent their adult entire lives thinking a certain way? Shane’s voice ebbs lower at this. His answer is no, and he’s accepted it. He can’t see the Ireland we have now changing but he can see us growing a better one.
This leads us onto Shane’s doubts. He has doubts every day. He tells me that the instant I ask. That’s why he’s going to go to counselling before he goes forward. I ask if his fears come from the outside or from within and he tells me they come from him: “A lot of it is fear of being accepted”. He talks slowly, he tells me he doesn’t want to lose his family over this, that he doesn’t want to ruin his life. However, the one thing he never says is that he’s afraid he’s wrong; he never mentions doubts about Shannon. That really strikes me. And it’s really very sad. His voice is heavy, and even though it lightens up and he’s smiley again a question or two later, it’s clear that he knows it’s going to be rough.
Flash forward to me working my glamorous part time retail job. One of my co-workers starts to tell me about a customer: the “not very convincing tranny” she just served. She could easily have been talking about a circus performer. It’s all still quite fresh in my mind – talking to Shane about his desire for normality and talking to Shannon about how horrible that word is. So I stop her and I ask her if she served me would she walk over and tell someone she just served a faggot. She’s doesn’t understand why I’m getting annoyed. She’s a great girl, she’s a kind person but she doesn’t know anything about transgender people. In fact, both her and our supervisor didn’t realize “tranny” was a pejorative or that transgender was an actual word. My supervisor informed me transgender was too long a word to use in everyday conversations and that tranny is much shorter. They apologized and they meant it. “I would have said it to his face and I wouldn’t have meant it to offend him”.
The interviews ended on the same note. Hope. People might read this, maybe they might try and get a little more informed, maybe one less person would look at Shannon funny after that law is passed, maybe she could just go on a night out like anyone else. I’ve no idea if she’ll feel any better or if she’ll need to act like Shane less. All I know is that spending an hour with Shane really makes me hope so.
If you’re transgender, questioning or would just like to know more log onto www.teni.ie (Transgender Equality Network Ireland) or within Trinity visit QSoc. If you need to talk to someone the Counseling Service has people trained and waiting. Thanks to Muireann Montague, Aifric Ni Chriodain, QSoc, DCU LGBT, UCD LGBT, Senator Katherine Zappone & most of all to Shane.
