Staff from the Brighton & Hove Councils’ Community Safety Team took to the streets of the city yesterday to show their support for International Transgender Day of Visibility.
To help promote Trans inclusion in the city they painted the colours of the transgender flag on the hands and faces of people in the city who were out and about doing their afternoon shopping.
Annabel Carrington from the Community Safety Team, said:“We had overwhelming support from the public and it was so encouraging and empowering to get so much warm understanding support from such a cross section of the city’s residents, happy to celebrate and acknowledge the contribution to the city from our Trans communities. People gladly had the trans flag painted on their bodies or faces to visibly show their support of the day.”
Bar Revenge, Charles Street, Legends, Queens Arms and Revenge join forces for Brighton Unity Weekend, Thursday, March 30 – Sunday April 2, 2017.
Over the short space of two weeks in mid December last year, two bright lights from the Brighton Commercial Gay Scene were lost forever.
Michael ‘Mouse’ Burton aged just 37 and Gary ‘Gloria’ Swan 58 were two very different people who had one thing very much in common, they were richly, deservedly and universally loved by all who knew them here in Brighton. Their influence covered much of the community and certainly most of the venues – where they both worked and socialised over the years.
Their passing has affected so many of us, so very deeply and I personally felt such an incredible sense of injustice and helplessness – such a strong urge to do something when maybe there was nothing left for us to do.
But it would seem I wasn’t alone in feeling this and I certainly wasn’t the only venue manager. Andrew Roberts from Revenge got in touch in late December and expressed his need to do something! Something in their name, with us all working together to honour our lost family members. From that late night conversation the ball started rolling.
Gary ‘Gloria’ Swan
We thought it would help people to have somewhere to go and remember them both, so we decided to raise the money for two memorial benches facing each other in the New Steine by the Brighton Aids Memorial, Tay, in the heart of the Gay Village.
We wanted venues to come together in unity for this – and we wanted to do it in one weekend!
With the help of Barry Nelson from the Queens Arms, Tony Chapman from Legends, Toby Lawrence and Alex Baker the idea of the Brighton Unity Weekend was formed.
Over the space of one weekend, Charles Street, Legends, Revenge, Revenge Bar and Queens Arms aim to raise the £2,500 needed for both benches and a years maintenance, with any and all excess monies being donated to The Rainbow Fund for distribution to local LGBT+ causes.
Join us over the Brighton Unity Weekend and help us raise our target. I’m hopeful this can become an annual event and more gay venues, unrelated to Mouse and Gloria, will join us in Unity to raise money for the Rainbow Fund – now that really would be a fitting tribute and legacy to them both!
Latvia, a country neighbouring Russia, regained independence from the Soviet Union in 1992 and decriminalised homosexuality soon after, however, general social opinion has not moved on much since then.
Ms Sugar Swan
In 2005, Riga, the capital city, held its first Pride but unfortunately counter protesters greatly outnumbered Pride attendees and in 2006 Riga Pride was banned by the authorities. Regardless, Pride took place again in 2007 and the 500 Pride-goers outnumbered the 100 counter protesters. However, simultaneous anti-Pride events elsewhere in the city attracted thousands of protesters.
Same-sex marriage is banned as is same-sex adoption with only 12% and 8% of Latvians supporting these equalities. As an LGBT+ person in Latvia you are at a much greater risk of attack than you are here in the UK and local meeting points for the small LGBT+ community are often targeted. As an LGBT+ person you’re not able to make criminal charges against your attacker other than that of ‘hooliganism’.
So what was I, a trans woman who doesn’t pass through the world looked upon as cisgender by the majority of people, going to Latvia for in the first place?
A hair transplant. I had searched the world for a surgeon willing to take me on as a patient and I just could not find one. I’m so bald from going through male menopause at 19 years old that most surgeons wouldn’t touch me stating that I was simply not a candidate for this surgery and my only option was wigs, or they would try to take my money upfront knowing that they would only be able to give me a partial head of hair and not tell me this until I had made the journey to their country and was half way through surgery.
I’d just about given up hope after receiving so many knockbacks when my now standard email explaining who I am accompanied with photos of myself didn’t get a refusal email, but a request to Skype.
I wasn’t too hopeful as I’d been through this process many times and been refused, but this time was different. I had my first Skype consultation with a female surgeon who explained what I’d heard many times about the limited amount of donor hair, but I appealed to her, reminding her why she went into this line of business in the first place and made it very clear I was prepared to take a risk if she would.
This would be new to her as even the most advanced clients are done in one day of surgery lasting 8-10 hours, and perhaps the next morning. She warned me that this wouldn’t be easy, it would be pioneering. There would be no guarantees and that I’d have to sit through up to 16 hours of surgery a day over multiple days. She recruited extra nurses to work alongside her and we were all set to try something new – so, I was off to Riga. Scary on all accounts.
I’d never used my female passport before and going through the London airport I found it all very exciting. Having breasts and testicles show up on the 3D scanner, which then assumes that one of them is concealing drugs, resulted in me being referred for extra security.
My gender and pronouns were respected and I felt I was treated with dignity. This continued as I passed through the airport which, by their very nature, are a crossroads for all types of people of all diversity. It was only when I approached the gate of a Latvia-borne flight by a Hungarian carrier that the attitudes towards me changed.
I’m a strong woman who’s not easily flustered anymore and although I could tell the man sitting shoulder to shoulder with me on the flight wanted to punch me in the face, he knew he couldn’t and I felt safe knowing that.
Passport control was much easier than anticipated and before I knew it I was in a car on the way to a five-star hotel. The hotel and the staff were amazing and couldn’t do enough for me, even running out for cigarettes for me because I didn’t feel safe.
The next morning I was picked up in a car at 8am and taken to surgery. I met my team of five who were to be working on me and we wasted no time. The actual procedure was worse than I’d ever imagined but I always knew it wasn’t going to be a walk in the park. We worked solidly, stopping twice for meals and I was driven back as the nurses cleaned up the theatre at 11.30pm. I was picked up at 8am the next day and we finished at 11pm, agreeing that the potential risks of working a third day far outweighed any benefits, so we stopped and booked another two full days of surgery in 10 weeks time when I have, fingers crossed, healed without infection.
The physical and emotional pain I was in over those two days was matched by the physical and emotional exhaustion from the team working on me. I consider myself very lucky to have found them and to have convinced them into taking on this level of work.
As I prepared to fly home my face was swollen beyond recognition. I tried my best to apply some make-up to at least try to look a little like my passport. I had a letter in Latvian and English from my surgeon explaining what I’d been through and that I wouldn’t look like my passport photo. Nor could I wear a wig, and so bandaged up, with my best foot forward I headed home, grateful of those letters, as I really did need them.
I’m now seven days post-op and the nerve-endings are starting to come back which is increasing my pain levels despite the cocktail of painkillers. There’s no sign of infection, which is great, and I’m looking forward to nine weeks time, five by the time this is published, when I fly back to be reunited with my surgical team for another few days of work.
What a lucky, lucky woman I am.
As I prepared to fly home my face was swollen beyond recognition. I tried my best to apply some make-up to at least try to look a little like my passport. I had a letter in Latvian and English from my surgeon explaining what I’d been through and that I wouldn’t look like my passport photo. Nor could I wear a wig, and so bandaged up, with my best foot forward I headed home, grateful of those letters, as I really did need them.
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