Sunday 8 April 2007

Some Thing Like Me

Further to a previous post , from an E-mail by Christine Burns :
One story I CAN tell was the first to arrive, within a few minutes of publishing yesterday's article... A trans man wrote,

"... I found myself in a not dissimilar situation [to Claire] in January last year. I finally plucked up the courage to ask my GP for a smear test, and was told I would have to go to Charing Cross [GIC] and go through their checks before she'd do the test. I refused to go the Charing Cross for the unnecessary checks when all I required was a routine test and was then struck off. I've still not had that test!"

He adds,

"[This isn't the first problem I've had] ... The first GP I went to about my trans issues in 1998 was my family GP in Henley who I'd known for the best part of ten years. When I asked him if he'd help, he said, 'I can't possibly treat something like you. I'm a good Catholic!' "
Some thing like me. And he's a Good Catholic, hence by definition, a Good Christian.

Some people don't get it, do they? You know, 'Christ's Message'? Heck, they don't even get the "Hippocratic Oath".

I lived not far from Henley when I was young. It's not impossible that I went to school with this so-called doctor, that he could have been a member of one of the gangs that stoned me with broken bricks when I was 8. Unlikely, but not impossible.

When I read this, I was angry. Then I was depressed. Then I was scared, as such a thing could easily happen to me too. My GP warned me in a joking fashion who in the Clinic I could turn to (he's away for a week) if things turned nasty. Who could handle it - and who couldn't.

I still feel all of those things, but now I'm just overwhelmingly Determined. Enough is Enough, I have seen far too much of this now. As soon as my health is a little better, time to take up the fight again, for a passport, for human rights. I was content before to agitate for a transition from fourth class citizen to third. No longer. Enough people don't regard me as human at all, time to disabuse them of that notion. And third class is no longer enough.

Who's the guy in the picture? A film star. The star of the documentary film Southern Comfort :
SOUTHERN COMFORT is a 90-minute feature-length documentary about the life of Robert Eads, a 52-year-old female to male transsexual who lives in the back hills of Georgia. "A hillbilly and proud of it," he cuts a striking figure: sharp-tongued, bearded, tobacco pipe in hand. Robert passes so well as a male that the local Klu Klux Klan tried to recruit him to become a member.

Though his home is nestled among tranquil hills dotted with hay bales, Robert confronts a world as hostile to him as if he were an African American in the ante-bellum South. He was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, then turned away by more than two dozen doctors who feared that taking on a transgendered patient might harm their practice.

SOUTHERN COMFORT follows the final year of Robert Eads' life....
The film was made 6 years ago. It still happens today. And people like Robert die. People - Things - like me. Well I am not going to go gently into that Good Night, I am going to do a bit of Raging against the dying of the Light before it even starts to dim for me. I've had it easy. Time I did my duty and stood up for others.

3 comments:

Transitionradio said...

This is a poem I wrote for those self rightous, claming to hear the voices of God, which condem us.

YOU:

You, who claim to be so perfect, instead you are running from your own demons, while challenging everyone’s actions and condemning their every move. You persist on knowing the rights answers, arrogantly claiming the lord’s glory, behaving like a guardian for those you think are less than perfect. Does it make you feel better, to point out all of our faults and persist on having things your way, in spite of what we feel.
What are you so afraid of, what are you running from? Live you life and let others live theirs. I know it is a foreign concept, but one you need to learn and learn well. You are not the appointed keeper of the morals or the laws. Were you a tattle tale as a young child, did it give you pleasure to squeal on your friends? I think you have a sickness and are in need of much anticipated help. Religion is but a cope out, a way to justify your actions, you blame it on our father, as if you knew him well. You need to learn compassion, and tame your inner anger, and learn about true love, instead of guilt and condemnation.
Do you not realize that what you are doing is pushing people further from the truth and salvation? By making the relationship between our Holy Father a distant path and journey, you have made it impossible for many to come home. For once put down that bloody bible, and listen to your heart for there is where our father speaks to us and not through papers and ink blots No, don’t start your verse spewing I have heard them all before, do you not see the addiction and unhealthy behavior you have taken on? Forget what those so called prophets said back then and learn the true message of God.
Be well and love with all your heart, preserve the earth you live on. Cherish your life with others and stop living full of guilt. Wake up, see what you are doing, it is not God who guides your soul, but the mere voices of the past who were angry, bitter souls.

Mark Angelo Cummings

Zoe Brain said...

Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.

It's up to us to open their eyes, to show them the consequences, then let their own consciences be their guide.

Some will prefer the comfortable road of hatred and remain holier-than-thou. Many though will, well, they will know what they do, and cease.

Transitionradio said...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mogYqQlchyE

A song I wrote and placed on a music video called Little Glass Princess

Mark Angelo