It was my honour to speak to over 500 senior pupils this morning at Brighton College in support of their stand on removing gender barriers in their uniform policy. They will no longer have male and female uniforms but instead have skirt or trouser uniforms and pupils can decide for themselves which they feel more comfortable with.
Here’s an article I was asked to write for The Telegraph on the subject:
As I was about to go on stage for my show in Bournemouth last week I received a message from an old school friend that I hadn’t seen in 30 years.
He expressed amazement at the revelations of my gender dysphoria and with the fact that I’d known I was transgender from the age of 7. He felt that a part of his childhood had vanished and asked ‘couldn’t I have told someone?’
Unfortunately, back in the late 70s, there was no internet and no knowledge of being transgender in society, there were no role models, no positive press coverage and certainly no understanding.
So, no, I replied, it wasn’t really possible for me to tell someone.
In the intervening years society has changed in so many ways, knowledge of every subject is freely available to all via the internet and society has grown, become more understanding and open to diversity.
There will always be bigots, and they will always feel justified in proclaiming their views as gospel wherever they can.
Like the bigots of the past, the anti-semites, the sexists, the racists and the homophobes, their days are numbered. The casual racism of the Saturday night TV comic of the 70s looks as out of place as a dinosaur striding up Brighton beach, and in time the transphobes will join them on history’s naughty step.
Critics will be outraged at the idea that a child can self identify their gender at an early age, but the reality is that all of us make a decision about our gender identity as we’re growing up. For most people that decision is congruent with the gender they were assigned at birth but for some it isn’t.
My lack of knowledge about what my gender identity meant at the age of 7 led me to attempt suicide for the first time at the age of 12, and children that age shouldn’t be condemned to the level of despair that drives them to that.
When I heard of the decision of Brighton College to revise and modernise their school uniform rules I was heartened. They are not scrapping the rules or bringing about the demise of civilisation as we know it, as some commentators might suggest, but rather making the rules fit for a new, educated, open and compassionate society.
Brighton College is reflecting the change in a society that is finally waking up to the fact that transgender people are valid, important members of society.
Gender dysphoria is not something that we choose, it is an intrinsic part of our very souls and to deny it led me to a lifetime battling self harm and suicidal feelings.
The teenage years are hard for everyone, even more so if you suffer from gender dysphoria, and with understanding and support from our educational system hopefully the days of young people being driven to suicide over these feelings are a thing of the past.