Telling our stories - A reflection by Yve Taylor for our Open Table Liverpool community
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Imagine if you will a stormy August Bank Holiday Monday in 1961, a portent of what lay ahead for this curly blonde haired boy born of a Lancastrian ex-R.A.F. disciplinarian father and Yorkshire mother, a brilliant cook and homemaker, who grew up in picturesque Broadsands near Paignton in Torbay, surrounded by lovely, mostly elderly neighbours.
The beach and coastal scenery with open farmland to the other side, five minutes from home, steam trains puffing by daily to Kingswear and back, open top buses, ice cream vans, bread delivery van drivers who I used to hitch a no risk ride with, just some company for a few minutes and a free jam tart, should all have provided an idyllic childhood. If only! Just think what would happen if delivery drivers did that today!
I’m grateful for those things, but I knew something was different about me when playing with other children at infant school and boys especially, didn't engage with me. I soon felt alienated, lonely and struggled to fit in. Once I started interacting with the classroom dressing up corner, I immediately identified with female characters and roles and knew this had everything to do with how I was feeling even though I didn’t have the words to explain it. I hid this truth from family, Methodist church and other friends, leading a duplicitous life, pretending to like football, boys comics and cars, while secretly yearning girls’ clothes and lifestyle, borrowing whatever female clothing, accessories and make-up I could on the rare occasions I was ever home alone, while trying to fulfil everyone-else's hopes and expectations for their son, brother, boyfriend, husband and father. Stood in front of a mirror dressed in mum’s clothes, proclaiming “I’m a woman”, yearning motherhood, I knew my feelings were real and couldn’t be ignored. I also knew that if I told a distant dad, my mum or GP, I could be sent to a mental institution for ECT to shock my gender confusion out of me which I knew happened to people. I was scared so didn't tell anyone. Music, especially glam, prog and art rock and slapstick comedy just about helped me cope.
So my childhood was full of emotional and psychological trauma, in which my needs and feelings seemed unimportant. My parents wouldn’t allow my 14 year old self, to attend the funeral of the only grandparent I ever knew, who I adored and loved playing card games and dominoes with. On the bus to my first day at secondary school, one boy from my primary school berated me as ”scum”, which cut me like a knife and began five years of incessant bullying which destroyed all my confidence and self-esteem. His cruel words still haunt me. My sister’s incessant bullying of me was never censured and the nurture we all need to thrive and feel confident wasn’t there for me. Academic achievement, my singing, nor pastoral roles with The Fishermen’s Mission, as a Funeral Director or when I gained my theology degree and PGCE was never affirmed and in my youth I spent hours alone in my room listening to the radio or with the families of the few friends I did have, including that of the young girl I married, which brought its own conflicts.
As I got older, I became increasingly unable to live with the intolerable, internalised stress of living this double life and treated people I love very badly using alcohol as a crutch. A good wife and mother, our boys and the family I dare not tell for fear of total rejection. The loss of our third son aged eight days to viral septicaemia and meningitis hit us all hard but I felt left to grieve alone, like I was responsible and didn’t care. Feeling desperate and alone, I attempted suicide. When I consulted my Catholic GP, he simply gave me a sick note for 12 months telling me to go sort myself out. The failure of my marriage in 2006 was inevitable after 25 dysfunctional years. All family and friends disowned me as I knew they would. Apart from my brilliant gender clinic and new GP, who oversaw my transition and surgery, I had little other support especially on career and vocational matters. Contact with family, including my children has been rare. I’ve not seen anyone since mum’s funeral in 2013. Dual callings to teach as I trained to do or serve in the Christian church seem crassly blocked by transphobia despite ongoing shortages of teachers and parish priests.
Employment during and post transition in social care and even bus driving briefly was littered with unresolved discrimination and bullying. Renewed direction and purpose came in 2017 with support into roles on Deanery Synod, lay chaplaincy, as server, Eucharist Assistant, Reader and Intercessor, which was savagely taken from me without explanation by new, unsupportive clergy in the community I served. It was the care of my hospital consultant and a secular community trust who keep in touch, do shopping and collect prescriptions for me, who helped me during recent ill-health, while the Church here continue to ignore my repeated requests for dialogue and help. The Equality Act 2010 has been no friend to me and I’ve regularly asked myself why I’m still here.
If a child really is transgender, they will know this from a very young age, like I did. We all do. Gender dysphoria is not a mental illness. Surgery aged 50 resolved this as I and my healthcare team knew it would. I was ecstatic on arrival at the Nuffield in Brighton and amazed nursing staff by watching comedy clips and cartoons on You Tube on the eve of my surgery. Yet, for all my euphoria at the brilliant surgical outcomes, not dealing with this earlier in my life has meant preventable physical and mental health issues because of family, church and societal ignorance and intolerance, although I wasn’t prepared for the vitriolic hate and discrimination that’s followed.
About five years ago, a true story emerged here in the UK about two boys aged 7-8, who one day announced to their parents that they needed to live and be treated like girls because they didn’t feel like boys inside. Naturally their mother was perplexed by this and their father threatened to disown both sons, if they went through with it. Their mother, who only wanted her children’s happiness, consulted with the school principal and leadership team, educational welfare officers, social workers and local healthcare professionals to put in place all the support these ‘boys’ needed to transition and attend school as the girls with which they identified. Sadly this put a strain on their parents' marriage and they divorced. The father at this stage refused to allow either of his children to stay with him as girls or take anything female with them on visits. Yet both children were completely accepted and embraced as girls at their school by everyone. Nobody would have known they weren’t genetic girls and they had no regrets as they got older. They knew it was right and were able to convince others of this too. So, it makes no sense whatsoever to undo this wonderful support by denying them in law as of last November, puberty suppressing medication which risks inflicting preventable complications that can’t easily be reversed in later years as I know only too well. Where’s the love and compassion in this?
Sceptics and opponents advocate these treatments shouldn’t be available to young children deemed not to know their own minds, citing it as a form of abuse. To the contrary, to deny any child who feels as these two children or as I did, the safe treatment pathways which are otherwise legal and managed by medical professionals based on evidence based research, is some of the worst abuse I can think of. It’s about a person’s core human identity and absolutely not a lifestyle choice. If people knew how rigorous the process from transitioning to surgery is, for me this was 5½ years, their opinions wouldn’t stack up. Last November, A 12 year old boy was deemed criminally competent to stand trial for murder, yet apparently would be deemed incompetent to make decisions about their medical treatment. Mixed messages and blatant discrimination against trans-people I think. I’m sure my life experiences would have been infinitely more positive with such wonderful childhood support. I may even have enjoyed the career I trained for, or ordination to which I still feel called today, as a confident young woman, rather than one bearing the wounds of multiple rejection which continues to deny me so much. Eventually, the father of those two children realised how happy they were and fully supported them. For him, his ex-wife, just like his children, me and my trans-siblings, this is a life-long journey just as our faith is for all of us.
A few of us get lucky but as with me, many are vilified as paedophiles, an abomination to God and barely tolerated in church, community and society. I’ve been spat at, verbally and physically abused in the workplace and socially, by men and women simply for being me, like it’s acceptable. Yet apparently it’s not acceptable for me to use female facilities because I might sexually assault someone, which disgusts and angers me because it completely misrepresents trans and non binary people. Church and society seem to have protections otherwise withheld from us, which is apparently OK too. The CofE has repeatedly ignored its own safeguarding policy and refuses to discuss anything at all with me. I became bitter and resentful, like Naomi in the Old Testament as if I deserved it all somehow, surrounded by Job’s judgmental friends. I feel ignored and betrayed by those I trusted, including some LGBTIAQ+ groups too. By comparison, love born of mutual respect, saw me treated like a film star by hotel and security staff on two holidays to devoutly Muslim Egypt in 2009 and 2015, despite Egypt’s poor record on human rights and religious freedoms.
Underfunded, overstretched mental healthcare services haven’t been available to me either. Yet none of us would need this if opponents of trans-people would listen to and engage with us instead of buying into grossly misrepresentative media hype in making and expressing ill-informed, judgmental opinions and decisions about us. Better law enforcement for abuse victims would also help greatly. Happy people are productive people. Society has nothing to lose but everything to gain. We are all made in the male AND female image of God who named the rich vibrancy, colour and diversity of all creation "Good". Let’s celebrate this and love one another, for love is of God. Hate and the denial of justice, care and opportunity is not love. It's that simple.
‘Gatekeeper’ Christian churches only reveal to me, God the judgmental angry bastard surrounded by a killer surveillance system, as my favourite Lutheran Pastor, Nadia Bolz-Weber describes in her brilliant books, ‘Cranky Beautiful Faith’ and ‘Accidental Saints’; which makes it difficult to feel God’s love and forgiveness or good about and love myself. The unbearable pain of rejection, betrayal, absence of love, affirmation and vocational fulfillment; the root of my depression, poor self-esteem and confidence, threatens to overwhelm me at times. I still find trust difficult and became resigned to a solitary life which promised so much but was never allowed to flourish.
Apart from health issues, lockdown has been little different to the last 14 years for me. I enjoy cooking, reading, writing, listening to most genres of music, watching Strictly, comedy, a good film or TV drama. Yet I wouldn’t have otherwise found the wonderful on-line spiritual nurture and friendship through worship, study groups and quizzes of St Luke In the City team ministry, Open Table Liverpool and Facebook group ‘Churspacious’; clearly God’s provision and blessing. Talking with Warren last week, we agreed on our dislike of the type of Christianity which denies the reality of suffering and its impact on our lives. Christian mystics Teresa of Avila and St John of The Cross teach us well on this. Last month, I was invited to lead on-line morning prayer for St Luke’s in the unavoidable absence of clergy, which I’ve also done again over Christmas. LLF and the CofE continues to cause me and my gender non-binary Christian siblings great pain over their refusal to love and accept us as God’s beautiful, beloved creation. I share my negative life experiences with you as testimony that nothing is impossible to our faithful God, who in Christ never let go of me. We can trust Him. We have no-one and nothing to fear. During Advent, uplifted by the beautiful prose of Zachary and Enfleshed, I reconnected with Christ, who experienced the most brutal betrayal of all and comes to us over and over, on this lifelong journey. With new supportive friends, I wait for the fulfillment of God’s promises, held in the unconditional love which came down that first Christmas.