“What I’m most afraid of when I go back, isn’t being killed. What really petrifies me is being attacked and tortured.”

The following is my translation of an article which apeared in the Danish newspaper Politiken on the 14 August 2012

A link to the original Danish Article is here

Transgender woman Fernanda raped in a Danish centre for asylum seekers.

In Denmark you are a man if it says so on your papers.

By Gry Pauline Koefoed

Large brown eyes framed with eyeliner and mascara, “Paola” she says with a cautious, gentle voice and holds out a hand with lightly polished nails. Her shirt is slightly open at her breasts. “Fernanda” says the other whose blouse shows one shoulder. Her make-up is flawless and her long shiny hair falls down to her back.

The two women both fled to Denmark from Guatemala and both of them, if one looks at their papers, are men, in Danish law. So when Fernanda came to Denmark and sought asylum she was placed in the male wing of Sandholm refugee camp.

“I was really scared. I was new to this country. I came from a foreign country and from a terrifying background, and I faced daunting prospects here in Denmark, so I said nothing.”

She can’t remember how many months she was in Sandholm, she has suppressed it in the hope of forgetting the assault, rapes and other humiliations she suffered while she lived there.

“I wasn’t raped by just one man but by many.”

Only for women

In Sandholm she had her own room, which she should have shared with another transgender woman, who never came because she refused to live with the men.

“I didn’t want special treatment but I do have special needs because of who I am.”

One night several men broke into her room, where they raped her. She fled the camp the same night.

“I didn’t go to the Red Cross and report it. It was them who put me there. Why should I trust people who hadn’t even bothered to listen and who had put me in that situation?”

Danish Red Cross which runs the Sandholm Centre has not commented on the case, but according to the head of asylum Anne La Coeur, there is no automatic placement in a particular type of accommodation when in comes to transgender people, but they do have specific guidelines which apply when dealing with sexual minorities.

“Basically a transgender woman is likely to be placed in a male dormitory but in a single room. But we would not place her in a women’s dormitory because that is definitely for women, where cannot permit ourselves to place a man.” Says Anne La Coeur.

Consequence of her choice.

Alone in a new country and without anywhere to go, Fernanda ended up being trafficked to a brothel in Jutland. It was only after a police raid on the brothel where she was working that she came into contact with the organization Reden International, where she has lived since February 2011. Linked to the possibility that her asylum case might be reopened she was subsequently humiliated at the police station in charge of its reopening. Here she was told that rape was a consequence of her choice.

“Being a transgender woman is not a choice. You feel you were born this way. It is not my fault, but it was as if he blamed me for being who I am.”

Her stay at Sandholm also had other, physical consequences.

The hormone treatment she had been taken since she was 14 was suspended, and it was more than a year before she again received this, necessary treatment, so that she can maintain her feminine appearance. Acording to Fernanda missing the hormone treatment  was one of the worst things that has happened to her since she has been in Denmark. Her body began to change in a way she didn’t want.

To obtain female hormones requires an interview and a course at the Sexology Clinic at the national Hospital. By the time Fernanda came to being seen by the clinic they assessed her as not transgender.

“They cannot decide for me who and what I am” she says.

Repatriation equals a death sentence.

Paola has lived together with Fernanda at the International Women’s  Centre since March 2011, she is also transgender. She first sought asylum last year, when she went to the Women’s Centre. For that she is relieved, as she has little doubt that her story would have been identical to Fernanda’s if she had applied before she got to the women’s centre. Paola is undergoing a course at the Sexology Clinic but has still not commenced hormone therapy.

Both women are terrified of being sent home. Fernanda has had a response to her asylum application. On the 17^th September she will be on board a plane to Guatemala. Paola is still waiting for the response to hers.

“Life for transgender people in Guatemala is terrible. You suffer discrimination and you have no rights” Says Paola.

The two women, who have both fought for transgender rights in Guatemala, say that transgender people have no possibilities other than prostitution. Yet these two both tried another way. Paola enrolled on an educational course and paid a lot of money to be accepted, but on the first day when she showed up and they found that her gender did not match that on her ID, she was thrown out.

“Education was only for men and women and not for people like me.” Says Paola.

"In Guatemala if you are different you are cut off from your family, from society and by the government. You cannot get an education. You cannot get medical treatment because if you arrive at the hospital as a woman and your papers say that you are not, they refuse to treat you even if you are bleeding to death. They would rather let you die than treat you.” Says Fernanda.

The reason, according to Fernanda, is that Guatemala is a Catholic country, where the church has a great deal of power, and its fear spreads out through society and makes people resort to vigilantism. “I know no transgender people in Guatemala over 35,” she says.

“What I’m most afraid of when I go back, isn’t being killed. What really petrifies me is being attacked and tortured.” Says Fernanda.

Transphobia and misogyny at the BBC - Pathetic responses from the terminally uncool.

Being snowed under with a pile of work has kept me from blogging of late, but there have been a few happenings that I feel require comment.

 The first of these is as a result of Paris Lees' excellent article in the Independent about the transphobic abuse by "Snog, marry, avoid" on BBC 3, a typical example of the current fashion for cheap and nasty TV as the BBC competes with dodgy commercial channels in a race to the bottom. Paris is of course right to call the producers of this programme on their transphobia and, like her, I believe this issue goes way further. 

One of the problems with describing the girl with slightly untidy hair and a slightly les well-plucked eyebrows as a transsexual is that it is not merely transphobic in that it stereotypes trans people, but it is also highly misogynist, because it uses the threat of looking like some imaginary stereotypical transsexual as a stick to beat women with. "Conform to the ideal of beauty as set out in women's/gossip magazines/adverts/the fashion industry, or you will look like someone who is not a 'real' woman." So now "transsexual" has become an insult with which to beat women, but it is effectively two insults in one; it is designed to take the piss out of trans women as well.

Double bigotry from an organisation that takes its funding from all of us through the licence fee, including trans people and cis women. Nice one BBC for using our own money to oppress us. The Daily Mail could take a leaf out of your book.

So far, so nasty. One of the rules of life in general has always been, "when you are in a hole, stop digging". Advice the BBC has ignored in this case. Describing this incident as intended to be light-hearted and humorous, the BBC has added insult to injury. Humiliating, stereotyping, discrimination-inducing language, which causes trans people severe problems;

at school,

at work (or most likely out of it),

in the street,

on the bus,

 at religious gatherings,

with their own families,

down the pub,

on the tube...

 Yes this is humour at the expense of a group of people already experiencing severe disadvantage. "Humour" of the Bernard Manning type? Humour that helps keep trans people in the position of severe disadvantage. As we all know, that place is not a nice place for many of us. Trans people are turned into objects of ridicule, not real people.

Go on lads, you can take the piss/beat up/harass/torment/rape these people, because that is what's what they are there for! They're not really people... Lovely.

But what has angered me most about this incident, is that the BBC have been using this excuse for bigoted, transphobic TV for a very long time. For as long as I have been complaining about the transphobic nature of the BBC's, and every other TV station's, output, they have used the same tired old excuse. TMW have, of course done a sterling job over the last couple of years, and it is a measure of how far we have come that Paris was able quickly to get an article in a mainstream newspaper criticising the programme makers for their failings. But it really is time we stopped allowing these media types to get away with the same old pathetic excuses;

"light-hearted",

"no offence intended",

"just a bit of fun."

It is time we demanded better. It is time we called them on their responses to criticism, it is time they started responding with "Yes we got it wrong, we apologise and we won't do it again..." It is time they started to feel the humiliation that they inflict on us.

It is time they were faced with the reality that their transphobia is terminally uncool, they are not the hyper-hip metrosexuals in designer jeans they want us all to think they are. Transphobia is uncool, in fact it has been for some time, that is why it is most often seen in places like the Daily Mail, the Sun, Whatsisface's Good News, and tired cheap (in every sense of the word) garbage TV like SMA.

In terms of coolness, transphobia piled on top of misogyny puts the makers of this programme in the baking heat of the Sahara desert, and about as far from cool as a Daily Mail journalist, it is about time they were made to feel the heat of their own making.

A cry of help from Spain...

"Increasing transphobia in the Spanish government.

Today, the Spanish state secretary for social Wellbeing (?) and Equality (?) has made a public statement putting the  Autonomous regions in competition to see who offeres more, who cheaper, who went further, both in the health field, where the health portfolio has soared and we have from sex-change operations covered by the public funds to any type of implant and plastic surgery, as in social policy

This statement is the last call to transphobia after four days of a media campaign to show the gender reassignment surgery as one of the main causes of the unsustainability of the public health system in Spain, making us appear as a group of capricious people who take advantage of the public treasury to receive aesthetic surgeries that are not really essential to us, while the rest of the population suffers a lack of health services.

This campaign began on april 8th, when some radical media announced that “sex change surgery” will be retired from the public health system. This first statement was not very worrying as it was an isolated statement from a medic who is known to be Christian (Intereconomía TV and La Gaceta). On April 11th the conservative newspaper ABC, also announce the retirement of “sex change surgery” in first place, followed by other health services, emphasizing on the capricious nature of the “sex change” surgery.

In Spain, a state secretary is a member of the Government, almost the same category as a minister, and now we feel that we are object of a campaign to demonize us and make transgender people a scapegoat for the anger of the rest of the society. We are frightened, thinking that we can lose in few weeks not only the health rights acquired after years fighting, but also our dignity as human beings.

We think that we shall report these statements as incitement to discrimination and hatred based on gender identity, but we have no idea how could we do this, and we don’t have any funding to hire a lawyer or something like that. The main LGTB associations remain quiet and calm, as if they were quite comfortable whit this situation, but we know that the threat is real. Any suggestion or help is needed and welcomed."

Pablo Vergara Pérez

Copyright

All posts on this blog are the copyright of Natacha Kennedy. Any reproduction of this material is expressly forbidden without prior written consent. Breaches of copyright will be followed up to the maximum extent of the law.

I would advise any other trans bloggers to do the same.

"A Rogue Hack..."

The journalists of the Sun have started to fight back against police action against corruption in their media organisation, News International. The discovery of more illegally-obtained material connected to Sun journalists is putting pressure on the Murdoch media as never before.

When it all hit the fan a few months ago and phone hacking was exposed at the News of the World, Newscorp was insistent that this was the work of one "rogue journalist". Of course they were wrong; it turned out that these kind of illegal and imoral practices were endemic, if not systemic in the practices of Newscorp/News International media in the UK. Now the police, by quiet but systematic and meticulous detective work, are starting to uncover the real extent of these practices. If Murdoch had hoped that, by sacrificing the News of the World he would somehow protect the rest of his media empire, he was wrong. 

The wolf cries of those journalists remaining at the Sun as they worry about their colleagues will kiss and tell to the police, are just that; crying wolf. The claim that the UK has fallen down the freedom of speech league table behind some ex-Soviet bloc countries because of the police investigation into the Sun are deliberately disingenuous...

They are disingenuous firstly because they are clearly intended to put pressure on the police not to continue their investigation into News International newspapers, methinks there are likely to be more arrests on the way, this article is therefore a desperate attempt to forestall the inevitable. Judging by recent performance, the current police investigation will plod on regardless. I suspect they were expecting this sort of thing from the Murdoch media as they start to get closer to the real culprits. If I were working on this investigation I would be very much heartened by the Sun's front page. Indeed I would have been expecting it, as a sign that the investigation is proceeding on the right lines.

They are disingenous secondly because the reason the UK has been slipping down the freedom of speech league table is because of organisations such as the Murdoch media. They have such power to set the agenda, to influence politicians, to influence some groups of voters, that their power and domination of the media almopst certainly represents the biggest single threat to freedom of speech in this country.

The bullying tactics used by the media, and in particular the Murdoch media were exposed brilliantly last week by the courageous work of Trans Media Watch at the Leveson Inquiry. The harrassment, intimidation, publication of personal medical information and yes, what can only be described as outright transphobic hate-crime on the part of journalists in the tabloid press was laid bare for all to see.

The wolf-cries of journalists, complaints of witch-hunts are all just pathetic squeals of bullies who are being brought bang to rights. They didn't think about the witch-hunts they were pursuing against trans people, they didn't think about the families with trans children who were forced from their homes and into a kind of lock-down hiding as a result of Murdoch (and others, like the Daily Mail) Journalists bullying tactics.

The Longest Witch-Hunt

However yesterday, there was another reminder that it isn't just groups like trans people who are regularly witch-hunted by the press. Will Hutton's apalling article in the Guardian banging on about "bad teachers" and telling teachers to be "less defensive" was, depressingly, typical of the majority of press output about teachers for the last quarter of a century. Journalists are squealing "Witch-hunt" after their dodgy practices are put under the spotlight for just a few months. They have been putting teachers through that sort of witch hunt since the mid 1980s. The Will Hutton article was notable not in terms of its content, it could have been published in almost any right-wing newspaper since 1985, it even followed a pretty much set pattern of similar articles one might find in the Sun, Mail, Telegraph etc. The Hutton article was notable because it was written by a journmalist who normally uses his talent to write expose about subjects in the spotlight but from a different point of view, revealing the complexities and nuances and hidden facets not normally revealed by the press. Instead of doing this Hutton decided to simply follow the pack.

Clearly witch-hunt journalism is not going away any time soon. It is depressing that a journalist I once respected has sold out to the pack and produced this politically-motivated drivel, the like of which one would have expected from a much lower-rated hack. If he had chosen to look behind the routine cries of "bad teachers" coming from the usual suspects (cries which tend to intensify when the government wants to do something really crappy to schools) Hutton would have found a real story there to expose, a story of systemic problems associated with the mechanisms of controlling schools including Ofsted, the system of academies and "free" schools, hidden centralisation and Stalinism at the DfE, and a school system which is becoming increasingly dysfnctional and harming the interests of pupils.

Pity Hutton chose the easy option, he is now descended to being little more than a has-been gutter press hack like the others now. I hear there are vacancies coming up at the Sun Will, you will need a course in computer/phone hacking first though...

Women of the Year

Looks like it is women who have been the ones taking the lead doing the most courageous, the most daring and the most difficult things for humanity this year

 - Mona Seif,  for her strident resistance to the Mubarak regime in Egypt


 -  Pauline Pearce, for telling rioters to go an do something useful and stop rioting

have been two which some journalists have decided to give special mentions to. However I would like to mention some others who I believe deserve as much, if not greater, recognition for their struggles and  courage this year.

 - Aun Sung Suu Kyi for her continuing struggle and sacrifice,

 - Dorli Rainey, the brave octogenarian who was pepper-sprayed by police during an #occupy demo in America, and still came up saying more coherent things than any politician,

 - Vandana Shiva for her tireless campaign against economic imperialism by billion-dollar mutinationals in India,

 - Professor Diane Ravitch, for her well-supported and reasoned campaign against schools privatisation and "reform" in the US, which has helped inspire resistance to Gove's delierate wrecking of the education system here,

 - "Livvy" the brave transgirl who had the courage to face down adults who verbally assaulted her for having the temerity to be herself,

 - Hege Dalen and Toril Hansen, the lesbian couple in Norway who risked their lives to save the young people targetted by fascist Breivik

and

 - all women protesters this year, who have braved deliberately targetted police brutality in a systematic attempt to intimidating them and others not to protest.

STOP PRESS: I forgot to include Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkol Karman who both won the Nobel Peace Prize this year for their work in promoting women's rights in extremely difficult circumstances.


Brave and inspirational women. The nominations for the men of the year, which have hit rock bottom with the inclusion of David Cameron, seem utterly pathetic in contrast.

Cameron’s Europe: Collective Fantasy vs. Reality

David Cameron’s Idiotic and badly-informed decision to leave Europe will be bad for the UK in the long run. All of Alex Salmond’s birthdays and Christmasses have come at once, as Cameron’s actions in Europe have greatly increased the likelihood of a “yes” vote to Scottish independence. Britain’s influence in Europe has been effectively marginalized and reduced to that of bystander status.

However Eoin Clarke argues that none of this will harm Cameron, and this is important. There are still many things which Britain does not lose from being the Third-Class European, such as free trade and free movement of UK citizens around the EU, yet this is not the full story. Although it is becoming clear that what is left of British business is quite fearful of what Cameron has done.

But nothing will have any short-term effect; that will come later. It will come through Japanese, Korean and American companies not investing in the UK. The UK will no longer be regarded as a springboard to Europe, and, of course European countries, from Peugeot to VW, are now also much less likely to invest in the UK. It also means that the UK has lost influence in resisting legislation which it considers to be contrary to its interests. The veto has been shown to be worthless, it is influence, alliances and diplomatic engagement which count in the EU. It is here where Cameron has been shown up to be a political lightweight by president Sarkozy. One could not imagine Gordon Brown, Tony Blair, John Major or Margaret Thatcher allowing that to happen.

Yet his misadventure may well play to Cameron’s advantage. The right-wing feral media, his own lunatic right and a number of “think tanks” will hit overdrive in an effort to present this loss as a victory. The City money pouring into Tory Party coffers at the rate of a million pounds a month will be used ruthlessly by the Tories to present Labour and the Lib Dems as people who would sell out Britain’s interests. The whole Europhobic culture of the Little Englanders will be ratcheted up in the coming months. Indeed Cameron may well use any short-term blip in Tory opinion polls as an excuse to call a general election which the other parties will not have the resources to fight, and before the economic consequences of his misjudgments start to come home to roost. The delusion of British independence will have obscured the harsh realities of an interdependent, globalised world. Exchanging some mythical  dictatorship by Brussels for a more real but less visible colonisation by Bejing is the reality. Cameron has truly sold out the national interest for the sake of short-term personal political gain. He will go down in history as one of the worst British prime ministers.

What to watch out for:

Cameron deliberately precipitating a general election by forcing the Lib Dems into a position where even they can no longer compromise. A manufactured election, catching the other parties on the hop and with a huge ratcheting-up in propaganda and right-wing media support, is what we can look forward to. Ed Miliband needs to start becoming more visible and more vocal. People will still be scared, frightened of the economic consequences of Cameron’s stupidity, he needs to be seen touring factories and businesses which do a lot of business with Europe, to drive that point home or he will be the first victim of a political ambush.