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‘I’m still the same person inside’
It is Sunday morning – and I open up the Sydney Morning Herald to find the lead article is titled:
‘I’m still the same person inside’: Olivia’s journey coming out as a transgender teen
The article by Caitlin Fitzsimmons shows just how far Transgender awareness has come in the media. In the article, Caitlin blends the story of a transgender teenager (Olivia) with some new (to me) statistics from a national survey of more than 1000 people commissioned by Equality Australia and conducted by YouGov. Unfortunately I have not been able to locate the survey as there is no link in the article.
I recommend you read the full article but here are some highlights:
From the survey:
Quote:Only 3 per cent of Australians identify as transgender and fewer than one in 10 people say they know a transgender person well, the survey found. Yet 78 per cent of Australians – including 75 per cent of religious people – agreed that transgender people deserved the same rights and protections as other Australians.Among those who know someone who is transgender, support rises to 93 per cent. Equality Australia chief executive Anna Brown (no relation to Lyndsay) says this does not surprise her.
“Another lesson from the marriage equality campaign was that you don’t vote or support a cause because of a ‘what’ – usually, it’s because of a ‘who’,” Anna Brown says. “It’s very much about your emotional connection with people you know and people you at least can relate to.
On Feminism
Quote:Some feminists – who call themselves “gender critical” ….. argue gender itself is not real but merely a “social construct” and criticise the trans movement for reinforcing gender conformity by supposedly promoting the idea that a boy who likes feminine things is really a girl, and vice versa.Lyndsay Brown, Olivia’s mother, rejects these arguments as discriminatory and also overblown, given transgender people represent just 1-3 per cent of the population.
“I used to believe gender was a social construct but as I’ve grown older and especially with a trans daughter, I’ve come to see that it’s just really not that simple,” she says.Quote:Olivia’s view is that gender stereotypes come from wider society rather than transgender people and points out gender identity is not the same thing as gender expression. For example, her interests in carpentry and video games are stereo-typically masculine and most of her friends are male.“Ultimately, that doesn’t matter because that’s not what gender really is,” Olivia says. “I don’t have to do stereotypical feminine things to be a woman and the same goes for cis women as well.”
Quote:Lyndsay Brown says parents are sometimes worried that offering support or affirmation for a trans or gender-questioning child could reinforce a false belief. She believes the opposite is true – that giving a child a safe space to explore their gender identity will help them figure out the truth, as well as boost the child’s mental health and wellbeing. -
3 Replies
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Yes !! A front page article on a Transgender topic and also an article about Hannah Mouncy’s battle for acceptance by the AFL to participate in women’s football.
I smiled when I read the article about Olivia that they moved from Manly to Balmain in order to be closer to appropriate medical services. As a Transwoman I don’t think I’d like to live in a suburb called “Manly” either !!!! ⁹
It was also interesting to see the graph showing Allies for Transgender ppl
As you might expect the younger generation are more accepting and no surprises the very religious have low acceptance -
What is also refreshing is that the comments made on the article are 99% positive. There was a time when such articles would attract postings from all the trans-phobic readers. Not any more it seems.
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The statistics seemingly bare out the increasing acceptance of us trans folk; whoopee.
I’m not too sure whether the increasing acceptance by the general populace flows down to me and other kindred spirits making us seemingly much happier, or is it me no longer giving a sh** what others think. I wish Olivia and her family all the very best.
