If you are trans, life may not have been easy for you and your relationships with parents, friends, and neighbours may have been fraught.
The media will have lampooned you, and you may have had to live some or all of your life in stealth in order to live at all. Or your secret may have been discovered after a lifetime and the repercussions may have cost you, your partner, or your children, or your health, or your job, or your home, or all of them.
You will know all about low self-esteem, feelings of isolation. Feeling of not being the same as others. You may have suffered loneliness, hate crime or violence. You may have self harmed or considered suicide. You may even have been successful in the latter; as many as 40% are. Gender dysphoria can be a killer.
A key indicator is employment or lack of it. Unemployment and its fellow companions, poverty and ill-health, are common in the trans community. These are often due to an individual’s low self-esteem.
It’s been a long time coming, but it’s here. Being trans is ordinary, and the pictures in this exhibition are proving it – for what’s more ordinary than going to work?
Contrary to the historically negative and viciously derogatory images in the media, Stella images are of ordinary trans people with ordinary day jobs.
The more alert employers are realising the worth of trans people in the workplace, many of whom have historically suffered long-term unemployment as a result of discrimination. “It’s about what you can bring to the party.” as one employer put it.
Self respect grows out of challenge. There’s plenty in the workplace – but those challenges can be met and overcome, as the pictures in this exhibition show.
By assembling these pictures, Stella hopes that others will take heart and encouragement and be able to avoid some of the pitfalls of low self-esteem.
Often, the only thing that holds us all back is ourselves.
Yes, we may still have a lot of work to do and a long way to travel. But is may be a trans person selling us the ticket, driving the train, or even signing our pay cheque.
If your on the trans spectrum, work in public and would like to be in Stella’s exhibition next year contact her on FACEBOOK.
Event: TRANSWORKERS an exhibition by Stella Michaels
Where: Friends Centre, Brighton Junction, 1a Isetta Square, 35 New England Street, Brighton
When: Run till May 9
Time: Open Monday-Friday 9.30am – 5pm: 3pm during Easter Holidays and Bank Holidays.
Cost: Free entry
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