Sparkle
As most of you will hopefully know, I spend a lot of time raising awareness of Trans people and have done for quite some time. I think yesterday has to be the most bizarre place I've ever done that though, and that's because it was at a so-called 'National Transgender Festival', otherwise known as Sparkle which has got to be one of the worst names ever for such an event. On the other hand, it does rather give you a bit of an idea as to which part of the Trans community it caters to. It was set up 5 years ago by an MTF who decided that the UK needed a Trans festival. However, Sparkle is now a bit of a contentious issue, mainly because it's primary focus is those Trans people who are in the female spectrum, e.g. MTFs, TVs and CDs. There is nothing really for anyone who identifies as anything outside of that which has not pleased the FTM contigent as I'm sure you can imagine. On top of that, there's their Tranny of the Year event. Basically, this is a beauty contest where the contestants are rated on their costumes, their style, deportment and femininity. So not only are they utilitising an extremely outdated definition of what female/woman is, they're also perpetrating the stereotype of what a Transperson is, all under a term which is a huge bone of contention in itself.
A couple of weeks ago, one of my colleagues at work e-mailed to ask if we were getting involved in Sparkle and I explained the issues about it but, bearing all that in mind, I did think it would be a good idea to have a presence there. We'd be able to not only fight their outdated ideas, but also raise awareness of the rest of the Trans community. My boss agreed which is why I ended up doing Trans awareness at a Trans event.
I tried my hardest to do it anyway, but I'm not sure we were overly successful. We had a stall with lots of information and resources for Trans people on it, and a quiz that I had made up myself. It had multiple choice questions on Trans history and also pictures of well-known Trans people to identify. I was quite disappointed by the amount of people who wanted to take part but then I don't know if TVs/CDs see themselves as being part of that Trans history and whether they have any knowledge of it or of the notable Trans people there are. Certainly the majority of people that I mentioned it to said that they had no idea of who any of the people were and I'd purposely picked very well-known people. The one that most people seemed to know was Eddie Izzard which could be quite telling really.
At one point, I had a look round the other stalls to see if there was anything interesting but most of it was either female clothing or hair/beauty stuff. There were two Trans magazines represented but again, both of them were aimed at the MTF/TV/CD side of things. Although I did stop at each stall to see if they had any information that might be of use, none of them took a blind bit of notice of me which I presume was due to the fact that my gender presentation was masculine and therefore I wasn't seen as being Trans or part of their designated audience. Amusingly the only stall who did actually speak to me was the one for Northern Concord, a Trans support group in Manchester. One of the people staffing it gave me one of their leaflets, told me when their meetings were, said something about being welcoming of everyone and that ze hoped to see me there. I kind of got the impressing that ze thought I was in 'male mode' or something like that.
Apart from all of that, it was a nice day because the weather was good - which for Manchester means that it didn't rain - and it was nice to be involved in something, even if it was so blatantly disregarding part of the community it was supposed to be for. It was really busy; I was surprised by the amount of people that turned up and by the complete mix of people too. Lots of people were dressed up which made me feel extremely underdressed in my cargo pants and work T-shirt. Although I spent about 7 hours on my feet, I did get to help some people which is always a good thing. I did manage to give resources and information to three people who came to the stall; one was a student who was writing a paper on 'this sort of thing', another was a counsellor who was a crossdresser hirself but who also did Trans101 type stuff and the last was a primary school teacher who wanted to bring more LGBT things into her classroom but had no information on what was available. And I also got to hang out with Ryan for a bit because he turned up just as I was going to go and get something to eat so we went to Eden in Canal Street. All in all, not a bad day and hopefully, over time, we can change the focus of Sparkle to something a bit more representative of the whole Trans community.
A couple of weeks ago, one of my colleagues at work e-mailed to ask if we were getting involved in Sparkle and I explained the issues about it but, bearing all that in mind, I did think it would be a good idea to have a presence there. We'd be able to not only fight their outdated ideas, but also raise awareness of the rest of the Trans community. My boss agreed which is why I ended up doing Trans awareness at a Trans event.
I tried my hardest to do it anyway, but I'm not sure we were overly successful. We had a stall with lots of information and resources for Trans people on it, and a quiz that I had made up myself. It had multiple choice questions on Trans history and also pictures of well-known Trans people to identify. I was quite disappointed by the amount of people who wanted to take part but then I don't know if TVs/CDs see themselves as being part of that Trans history and whether they have any knowledge of it or of the notable Trans people there are. Certainly the majority of people that I mentioned it to said that they had no idea of who any of the people were and I'd purposely picked very well-known people. The one that most people seemed to know was Eddie Izzard which could be quite telling really.
At one point, I had a look round the other stalls to see if there was anything interesting but most of it was either female clothing or hair/beauty stuff. There were two Trans magazines represented but again, both of them were aimed at the MTF/TV/CD side of things. Although I did stop at each stall to see if they had any information that might be of use, none of them took a blind bit of notice of me which I presume was due to the fact that my gender presentation was masculine and therefore I wasn't seen as being Trans or part of their designated audience. Amusingly the only stall who did actually speak to me was the one for Northern Concord, a Trans support group in Manchester. One of the people staffing it gave me one of their leaflets, told me when their meetings were, said something about being welcoming of everyone and that ze hoped to see me there. I kind of got the impressing that ze thought I was in 'male mode' or something like that.
Apart from all of that, it was a nice day because the weather was good - which for Manchester means that it didn't rain - and it was nice to be involved in something, even if it was so blatantly disregarding part of the community it was supposed to be for. It was really busy; I was surprised by the amount of people that turned up and by the complete mix of people too. Lots of people were dressed up which made me feel extremely underdressed in my cargo pants and work T-shirt. Although I spent about 7 hours on my feet, I did get to help some people which is always a good thing. I did manage to give resources and information to three people who came to the stall; one was a student who was writing a paper on 'this sort of thing', another was a counsellor who was a crossdresser hirself but who also did Trans101 type stuff and the last was a primary school teacher who wanted to bring more LGBT things into her classroom but had no information on what was available. And I also got to hang out with Ryan for a bit because he turned up just as I was going to go and get something to eat so we went to Eden in Canal Street. All in all, not a bad day and hopefully, over time, we can change the focus of Sparkle to something a bit more representative of the whole Trans community.