Welcome to the club 

Somebody told me a story recently about a man from Dublin who went away to America for a few months, presumably on a business trip. As it turned out, he actually made the trip to undergo gender reassignment surgery, and returned home as a woman.

Upon returning, she went to continue her life as the woman she had always felt she was. Part of this continuation included enjoying her membership in a well-known yacht club. Acceptance in the club did not come easily. Women complained about her using the ladies changing room, and she was told that she would have to cancel her original membership and apply for a new one as a woman. This application was then denied.

Apart from this vague and source-less gossiping, there is no other information about this woman that can be easily sourced. It might not even be true. What this story invokes is an idea that I imagine we have rarely, if ever, considered; how does the transgender community fit into affluent, male-dominated clubs and societies?

I met with a transgender woman called Louise Hannon to talk about it. Louise had been a member of a golf club in the past, but isn’t any longer. The trans community is not interested in battling discrimination in affluent, male-dominated clubs and societies. They’re after a much more important membership – equal social inclusion. There is often impressive support for the LGBT community in Ireland. Vibrant Pride marches fill the streets of towns and cities all over the country every summer; gay politicians are elected; popular Irish sports figures are coming out of the closet; and the Civil Partnership Bill is as good as approved.

However, it seems that it has been easy for Irish society to overlook the specific needs of transgender people living in this country. The challenge of overcoming discrimination is one that many, if not all, minorities in Ireland face. Most of her negative experiences have been with men, she says, but it’s not always men who have difficulty being comfortable when presented with a trans person.

“There are quite a lot of women who cannot handle it.” Louise worked in the transport business when she transitioned. “They were fine when I told them. But three months later when I walked in as Louise it was like ‘God, what do we do now?’ ”

Within the office environment, practicalities related to gender became the problem. “I was told I couldn’t use the ladies toilet.”

Difficulties like this eventually made it impossible for Louise to continue working there. She doesn’t seem to regret it, unsurprisingly, considering the important work she does these days – Louise works toward the elimination of discrimination against transgender people in Ireland, and works within the Labour party to achieve this goal. Her work is paying off, with the party recently approving the inclusion of a policy to work toward the passing of a Gender Recognition Act (GRA).

Louise wrote a report outlining the need for legislative change in order to bring transgender people closer to equality in this country, which was positively received by the party at the 2010 conference. The focus of the report is the writing up of a GRA that would allow transgender people to legally change their gender identity in all official records in Ireland. It closely resembles the system in place in the UK, but also addresses problems within that system.

Transgender people in the UK have experienced problems with the set-up relating to marriage and divorce, the status of inter-sexed people and the controversial and troubling issue of ‘outing’

The report states; “A Gender Recognition Certificate as issued in the UK is not identical to a birth certificate.

This will ‘out’ anyone straight away as transgender on presenting it to any authority that requires it.” ‘Outing’ is often a major source of distress and upset for transgender people, as this report acknowledges, and while a GRA encourages the type of social change that will reduce discrimination against this community, it must also put in place safeguards for transgender people during what Louise refers to as this “normalization period.”

She says that in many ways the trans community is “twenty years behind the gay community,” and she dedicates her time to close this gap. Working within the ‘boys club’ of politics is something that Louise welcomes as a necessary challenge. “I believe in pushing boundaries,” she says. Although insisting she’s never sufferer any discrimination within the Labour Party, Louise is conscious of the fact that her identity falls ‘outside of the norm’ in the day to day running of the political world.

“My antennae can be very sensitive to whether people are comfortable with me or not. You can see them tensing up,” she says. 

The tried and tested way to overcome this is to get involved. It’s important, she says, “that they see me as regularly as possible.

See me doing regular things. Using my head and, hopefully, making intelligent comments on what’s happening.” It can be assumed that a similar approach to blending in is what most people take when they enter a new social sphere. But unlike the golf club, the yacht club, or even the feminist book club, inclusion in society is not a choice. It is a need.

And although the transgender community are pushing forward, they have much ground to cover.

hazelhcullen@gmail.com