LGBT is Spelled With a T
During the month of July – Pride month, many cities in the UK celebrated the diversity of its people.
Shops decorated with the colors of the rainbow, rainbow flags floating at the windows, parade in the streets, the LGBT+ community was at the center of the attention.
However it seems that the focus was mainly drawn on the 'G' of 'LGBT' pushing aside the other other categories like the trans community , an isolated event or a reality?
LJ Ferris is a non-binary transgender, activist and blogger who prefer to be called ‘they/them’ as they say: “I am not gay, or straight. Not male, or female. I fall between the cracks. But it is in between the cracks that magic is formed”.
As they explain it, LJ had to go online to find the answers they were looking for to and finally put words to what they were: non-binary.
Non-binary is an umbrella term used to describe people who do not feel male or female. They may feel that they embody elements of both, that they are somewhere in between or that they are something different.
LJ started blogging about their experience as a non-binary person during their transition, it felt important to them to share their story for other people to be more informed and maybe help the ones experiencing the same situation.
Sharing on the relief that it was to put words to their gender, but also on the unfortunate experiences that they face in their everyday lives.
Discrimination, insensitivity or lack of education? It seems that many are not familiarized with issues around transgender people.
Media representation of transgender people contributes to the lack of knowledge and understanding toward the trans community.
A media analysis led by GLAAD has revealed that when transgender characters were part of the storyline of TV series they were often playing the roles of victims or villains.
And indeed according to the Trans Mental Health Study, out of their 525 respondents, 51% have said that recent negative media portrayals of trans people had affected their emotional well-being.
While often being stereotypical, media do not seize the full spectrum that is gender identity, media usually stop at the traditional stories where a man transition to woman or vice versa.
Not only emotionally challenging, this misrepresentations of the trans community can be negative to the education of the wider public regarding gender identity.
For LJ, media representation reinforces stereotypes:
The reality is that many people often don't know much about the transgender community, which terms to use, the pronouns, what it implies and mostly about the diversity of the community; people's knowledge is for the most part limited to what they have heard in media.
Gay pride, gay marriage, gay rights, here are some of the terms which you may often have come across in media and as part of the public debate, but could the same be said about transgender rights or transgender marriage?
Ignorance and curiosity can sometimes lead people to ask questions to transgender people that they would not usually ask, like the ones LJ Ferris has to deal with regularly:
A way to avoid these questions that can leave someone hurt is simply to start doing more stories on the diversity of the transgender community ranging from transsexual, to gender queer, non-binary, androgynous, bigender, pangender, or agender and many more.
Associations around the UK like Trans Media Watch, On Road, All About Trans are providing training to media and journalists as well as online guidelines to improve the coverage of trans and intersex issues.
For more information, support or advices, contact one of the numbers on this link.
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