trans britain our journey from the shadows

Trans Britain: Our Journey from the Shadows

Christine burns , aaron devor  ( foreword ) , adrienne nash  ( contributor ) ...more.

372 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2018

About the author

Christine Burns

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Trans Britain: Our Long Journey from the Shadows

• About The Book
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Over the last five years, transgender people have seemed to burst into the public eye: Time declared 2014 a ‘trans tipping point’, while American Vogue named 2015 ‘the year of trans visibility’. From our television screens to the ballot box, transgender people have suddenly become part of the zeitgeist.

This apparently overnight emergence, though, is just the latest stage in a long and varied history. The renown of Paris Lees and Hari Nef has its roots in the efforts of those who struggled for equality before them, but were met with indifference – and often outright hostility – from mainstream society.

Trans Britain chronicles this journey in the words of those who were there to witness a marginalised community grow into the visible phenomenon we recognise today: activists, film-makers, broadcasters, parents, an actress, a rock musician and a priest, among many others.

Here is everything you always wanted to know about the background of the trans community, but never knew how to ask.

'A vital record of how we got to where we are. Inspirational!'   Paris Lees

'Bloody good. Meticulously researched history of the collective transgender "journey" in the UK over the last century. Read it'   Juno Dawson

'Warm, compassionate, inspiring. A much-needed antidote to media scaremongering, and a vital lesson in how to effect change'   CN Lester

'Profound, quiet, agitated and deeply moving ... a powerful reminder that when we enjoy rights and equalities we do so because of the sacrifices of the generation before us'   Lord Michael Cashman, co-founder of Stonewall

One of the most interesting books I read this year

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Trans Britain: Our Journey from the Shadows

Over the last five years, transgender people have seemed to burst into the public eye: Time declared 2014 a ‘trans tipping point’, while American Vogue named 2015 ‘the year of trans visibility’. From our television screens to the ballot box, transgender people have suddenly become part of the zeitgeist. This apparently overnight emergence, though, is just the latest stage in a long and varied history. The renown of Paris Lees and Hari Nef has its roots in the efforts of those who struggled for equality before them, but were met with indifference – and often outright hostility – from mainstream society. Trans Britain chronicles this journey in the words of those who were there to witness a marginalised community grow into the visible phenomenon we recognise today: activists, film-makers, broadcasters, parents, an actress, a rock musician and a priest, among many others. Here is everything you always wanted to know about the background of the trans community, but never knew how to ask.

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Trans Britain : Our Journey from the Shadows

• Social Justice
• Trans Authors

Over the last five years, transgender people have seemed to burst into the public eye: Time declared 2014 a ‘trans tipping point’, while American Vogue named 2015 ‘the year of trans visibility’. From our television screens to the ballot box, transgender people have suddenly become part of the zeitgeist.

This apparently overnight emergence, though, is just the latest stage in a long and varied history. The renown of Paris Lees and Hari Nef has its roots in the efforts of those who struggled for equality before them, but were met with indifference – and often outright hostility – from mainstream society.

Trans Britain chronicles this journey in the words of those who were there to witness a marginalised community grow into the visible phenomenon we recognise today: activists, film-makers, broadcasters, parents, an actress, a rock musician and a priest, among many others.

Here is everything you always wanted to know about the background of the trans community, but never knew how to ask.

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Trans Britain: Our Journey from the Shadows Kindle Edition

• Print length 371 pages
• Language English
• Sticky notes On Kindle Scribe
• Publisher Unbound
• Publication date 25 Jan. 2018
• File size 16413 KB
• Page Flip Enabled
• Word Wise Enabled
• Enhanced typesetting Enabled
• See all details

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"A vital record of how we got to where we are. Inspirational!" -- Paris Lees

"Bloody good. Meticulously researched history of the collective transgender "journey" in the UK over the last century. Read it." -- Juno Dawson

"Warm, compassionate, inspiring. A much-needed antidote to media scaremongering, and a vital lesson in how to effect change." -- CN Lester

"Profound, quiet, agitated and deeply moving ... a powerful reminder that when we enjoy rights and equalities we do so because of the sacrifices of the generation before us." -- Lord Michael Cashman , co-founder of Stonewall

About the Author

Product details.

• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B071NZH98H
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Unbound (25 Jan. 2018)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• File size ‏ : ‎ 16413 KB
• Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
• Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
• Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 371 pages
• Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 1783528443
• 87 in LGBTQ+ Nonfiction
• 131 in Social Activist Biographies & Memoirs
• 207 in Gender Studies (Kindle Store)

About the authors

Christine burns.

Christine Burns MBE has campaigned for a quarter of a century for the civil rights of transgender people, and has been involved with the trans community for more than forty years. She has worked as an equalities consultant, helped to put together new employment legislation and the Gender Recognition Act, and wrote the first ever official guidance about trans people for the Department of Health. She lives in Manchester.

Fox Fisher (he/they) is a brown, queer, trans masculine creative, born in London and currently living in Brighton with their partner Ugla (which means Owl in Icelandic) and their 3 cats and a pointy dog.

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Trans Britain: Our Journey from the Shadows Hardcover – Sept. 25 2018

There is a newer edition of this item:.

This apparently overnight emergence, though, is just the latest stage in a long and varied history. The renown of Paris Lees and Hari Nef has its roots in the efforts of those who struggled for equality before them, but were met with indifference – and often outright hostility – from mainstream society.

Trans Britain chronicles this journey in the words of those who were there to witness a marginalised community grow into the visible phenomenon we recognise today: activists, film-makers, broadcasters, parents, an actress, a rock musician and a priest, among many others.

Here is everything you always wanted to know about the background of the trans community, but never knew how to ask.

• Print length 400 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Unbound
• Publication date Sept. 25 2018
• Dimensions 14.4 x 3.7 x 22.2 cm
• ISBN-10 1783524715
• ISBN-13 978-1783524716
• See all details

Product description

About the author, product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Unbound (Sept. 25 2018)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 400 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1783524715
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1783524716
• Item weight ‏ : ‎ 514 g
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 14.4 x 3.7 x 22.2 cm

About the authors

Fox Fisher (he/they) is a brown, queer, trans masculine creative, born in London and currently living in Brighton with their partner Ugla (which means Owl in Icelandic) and their 3 cats and a pointy dog.

Christine Burns

Christine Burns MBE has campaigned for a quarter of a century for the civil rights of transgender people, and has been involved with the trans community for more than forty years. She has worked as an equalities consultant, helped to put together new employment legislation and the Gender Recognition Act, and wrote the first ever official guidance about trans people for the Department of Health. She lives in Manchester.

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• Sort reviews by Top reviews Most recent Top reviews

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Manufacturer/Publisher: Unbound Binding: Paperback Author: Christine Burns Date Published: 2019

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Trans Britain: Our Journey from the Shadows Hardcover – 25 January 2018

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• Print length 400 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Unbound
• Publication date 25 January 2018
• Dimensions 14.4 x 3.7 x 22.2 cm
• ISBN-10 1783524715
• ISBN-13 978-1783524716
• See all details

Product description

About the author, product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Unbound (25 January 2018)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 400 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1783524715
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1783524716
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 514 g
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 14.4 x 3.7 x 22.2 cm

About the authors

Christine burns.

Christine Burns MBE has campaigned for a quarter of a century for the civil rights of transgender people, and has been involved with the trans community for more than forty years. She has worked as an equalities consultant, helped to put together new employment legislation and the Gender Recognition Act, and wrote the first ever official guidance about trans people for the Department of Health. She lives in Manchester.

Fox Fisher (he/they) is a brown, queer, trans masculine creative, born in London and currently living in Brighton with their partner Ugla (which means Owl in Icelandic) and their 3 cats and a pointy dog.

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Learning to Love My Trans Self After Conversion Therapy

Myles markham’s journey from evangelical christianity to queer community..

Henry Carnell May 15, 2024

Myles Markham Chloe Aftel

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Growing up, Myles Markham always felt like an outsider. Markham was multiracial in small, mostly white Florida towns. And they were queer. “I was swimming in water that told me that who I was, what I was, needed to change if I wanted to be safe,” they say. “I really believed, ‘I am a problem. I need to be fixed.’” 

As a teen, a friend got them interested in evangelical Christianity, which seemed to offer the promise of ­transformation. They joined a church youth group and began studying the Bible. Soon after, Markham found an online forum for a ministry that supports “those affected by unwanted homosexuality.” Markham didn’t identify as transgender at the time, but to their mentors in the conversion therapy program, Markham says, sexuality was inextricable from gender identity. “A woman being attracted to women—she was confused about her gender identity, confused about what it means to be a godly woman,” they explain. “And so what they end up doing, therapeutically, is attempting to police and reform your gender presentation.”

Markham’s experience is far from unique. As professional and legal objections to conversion therapy grew in the 2000s, such “change efforts” were migrated from the clinical realm into religious settings. The vast majority of people who have gone through conversion therapy received it from a religious leader, according to the UCLA School of Law’s Williams Institute . The practice remains shrouded in secrecy, says Simon Kent Fung , a conversion therapy survivor and creator of an award-winning podcast on the subject, Dear Alana . “In religious settings, homosexuality is not just a pathology, but a spiritual brokenness,” he explains. “Conversion therapy today is psychologically manipulative.”

Markham’s time in the ministry’s forums made their emotional state even more fragile. They started experiencing panic attacks almost every day. They would be reading or riding the bus and then be overcome by waves of nausea, a racing heartbeat, and the sense of paralysis. “Something was happening to me internally, where I was [feeling] I was about to die,” they remember. At night, they had terrors of demons suffocating or drowning them.

First They Tried to “Cure” Gayness. Now They’re Fixated on “Healing” Trans People.

The worse Markham’s anxiety got, the more they became convinced that only God could save them. They enrolled at a small Christian college and found an outside church that offered group therapy. Other members of the group were there to overcome a variety of issues: eating disorders, alcoholism, or depression. “I was there talking about ‘gay,’” Markham recalls bitterly. The counselor, in training to become a licensed practitioner, told Markham to “write out every single same-sex ­attraction or ­gender confusion–related thought, dream, action, behavior that had ever materialized in my life per my memory, and describe the way that it hurt me, it hurt God, and hurt other people.” When they sought help from college administrators, they required Markham to attend biweekly sessions with a women’s chaplain who counseled them on “biblical womanhood” and made them read a book called God’s Little Princess .

At the end of their senior year, Markham received a class assignment to create a plan to convert an “unreached group” to Christianity. They chose LGBTQ people. Conducting interviews with queer students and community members, Markham says, was the first time in their life they developed relationships with out, self-­affirming queer and trans people. 

Myles Markham in Los Angeles Chloe Aftel

When Markham tried to share their feelings, their classmates immediately ostracized them. Markham was banned from participating in school groups, forbidden from leading church services, and pressured to find new housing.

The hostility only deepened their resolve to live an openly queer life. After graduating, Markham took a job living and working at the Equality House , the rainbow-painted protest house across the street from the notoriously anti-LGBTQ Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas. They started organizing to pass discrimination protections and prevent youth suicides and met with countless LGBTQ community members. Everything immediately changed. “The night terrors were the first thing that ended,” they say. The panic attacks faded too, eventually. “I was finally in an environment that just allowed me to be who I was.”

They also found a supportive therapist. “It wasn’t just the tools I developed in therapy that [resulted in] this constitutional shift,” they say. “It was once I was comfortable being who I am and being able to share that with other people, and not having to hide, ignore it, or try to diminish it.”

Now, some 10 years later, Markham feels as though the torments of the past are finally put to rest. “I went from a place of constant, albeit quiet, torment into one of vitality,” Markham remembers. “I was able to wake up grateful for my life. I wanted to be alive, and that was something that took me most of my life at that point to be able to say with sincerity.”

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Scotland’s police chief emerges from shadows - but leaves questions unanswered over SNP inquiry

Jo Farrell would only say that a final report from Operation Branchform team would soon be on the way

It’s very much a welcome development that the “new” chief constable of Police Scotland has finally engaged with the country’s media, in the shape of several interviews.

I use the word new advisedly, which might strike some as strange, since Jo Farrell has been in the job since last October.

But has her eventual emergence given us what most have been waiting for – the final outcome of Operation Branchform, the investigation into the “missing” £660,000 from the SNP’s coffers?

Well, no, not exactly. All Scotland’s eager newshounds got out of her was that a final report from her officers would soon be on the way.

The huge police operation led to Nicola Sturgeon, the former first minister, and Colin Beattie, the former party treasurer, arrested and then freed pending further inquiries nearly a year ago. Peter Murrell, Ms Sturgeon’s husband and the former chief executive of the SNP, has been charged in connection with the alleged embezzlement of SNP funds.

Inquiry nearly three years old

But while Ms Farrell has not exactly made herself known to the people she serves since taking over the job eight months ago, nor has she much else to say about this inquiry which will “celebrate” its third birthday in six weeks time.

When compared to her predecessor, Sir Iain Livingstone , Ms Farrell has been practically invisible.

That’s not to say that he hogged the limelight, but he wasn’t afraid of TV cameras or reporters’ notebooks and was always available when we needed to know what our guardians believed would be the impact of government legislation on their responsibilities.

However, in what could only be termed as a  “blur” of media encounters, when compared with her previous behaviour, the new chief constable did at last have something to say on this subject – telling journalists that her force’s investigation would probably see a report going to Scotland’s prosecuting authority  “in a matter of weeks”.

“It’s a live investigation, a complex investigation and the matter has been progressed, and we expect the report to go to the Crown Office in a matter of weeks.,” she said.

It wasn’t a lot, really, but it is as much as she feels ready to divulge and, so, after three years, and hundreds of detectives, we’re still some way off of finding out what happened to all that Nationalist money.

And Scotland is still awash with rumours about who’s responsible for its disappearance.

Hate crime law still makes headlines

It remains to be seen whether we’ll hear any more from Ms Farrell  as Operation Branchform comes to its end. In the meantime, her force continues to make headlines over its reaction to the SNP’s hate crime law.

In particular, it has been accused of giving in to trans activists in helping educating children to deal with hate crimes.

And Tory MP Murdo Fraser threatened legal action against Police Scotland after the force logged a social media comment he made as a “hate incident”.

Fraser had likened identifying as non-binary to identifying “as a cat” –  comments that led to him being accused by Police Scotland of being guilty of a ‘non crime hate incident’. He’s been told that this a stupid rule is being abandoned but, thus far, it still in operation.

In perhaps the most trenchant views the new chief voiced in recent days, Ms Farrell described Scotland’s judicial system, including the courts and the Crown Office, as being ‘very inefficient’ when compared to the Crown Prosecution Service in England and Wales.

And she accused courts of wasting her officers’ time by insisting they attend hearings when they’re not really needed.

Such views from a senior police officer, newly promoted from running Britain’s smallest police force – Durham – to become chief constable of its second biggest – Police Scotland – are bound to raise more than a few eyebrows amongst “m’learned friends” at the top of Edinburgh’s Royal Mile.

On the basis of those remarks, it is to be hoped that we hear much more from Chief Constable Jo Farrell.

• Police Scotland,
• Nicola Sturgeon,
• Peter Murrell,
• Scottish National Party (SNP)
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