On the shoulders of giants
As I stood on a slight mound in the middle of a park in Brighton, I could see it all laid out before me. I started to feel a little emotional as there before me was the biggest assemblage of trans people that I have ever seen, considering that I transitioned over 20 years ago this may seem a shock to some. I was of course for the first time at Trans Pride Brighton, and I had marched alongside all these people the length of the seafront.
Seeing this sight in front of me with this vast, diverse range of trans, non-binary, gender non conforming and their allies and friends filled me with a joy that I cannot describe. It also reminded me of times in 1997 just after I had privately come out as trans to a small email group, we had arranged a meet up for a meal in Manchester, we mustered two dozen people into a relatively safe space in the LBGT village, and now 22 years later there were close to eight thousand people that had marched.
What astonished me was the age of the group in front of me, so many young people, and I realised that many of these people had possibly not even been born when I transitioned, while I was fighting to retain my job, and using that to highlight the injustice at a union conference.
When I came out it was just 20 days before my 27th birthday, and in my group of trans friends I was amongst the younger of the range, yet here were this group where the average would have been close to that or younger.
Then it struck me, these were the people that I had been fighting for so many years for, to see all these happy smiling faces without a care in the world, just being free and open and happy. Even if just for one afternoon before walking outside the park and into the world where they are still misunderstood and ridiculed.
Suddenly it made all the sacrifices and hardships that I had endured worth it. It also filled me with a renewed fire to do more, there are people out there that still need our help, that are lonely isolated, have unaccepting parents like mine. We must reach out and help those in the community who need us. Just as others like Christine Burns, Helen Dale, Pamela Sexton, Kymmy Leigh-Thompson, Rosalind Mitchell, Anne Wallace and others did for me as I first came out.
Each generation reaches out to the next and offers out the hand to guide and support, I would not be here today without that support that was given to me and now I offer it myself to those who need…
“If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants”
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