Architect / Urbanist / Sustainable Urban Mobility Senior Mobility Planner @SustransScot Co-founder @SKELFBikePark
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ALT First third of letter: Derek Bryce (Letters, July 26) writes as a gay man of 57, about what he considers the lack of connection between the struggle for LGB equality and for trans equality. I am a gay man of 66, who has been involved in that struggle in Scotland for four decades. My experience is that trans people have always been part of my community, and we have always campaigned together. I first began to meet people who were openly trans 40 years ago, when I started going to Edinburgh's Laughing Duck gay bar. I first campaigned alongside a trans activist when I was one of the organisers of the Lark in the Park event protesting the introduction of the anti-LGB section 28, in May 1988. What was perhaps at the time the most public such event ever in Scotland was compered throughout by trans activist Fay Presto. Later, in 1997, a group of us founded the Equality Network, an organisation which went on to work successfully for many of the changes Mr Bryce notes have happened. It was
ALT Second third of letter: founded as an LGBT equality organisation, with LGBT people working together on LGB and T issues, throughout. But it should not be necessary for me to note trans people's involvement in lesbian, gay and bisexual equality campaigns to justify support for trans equality. Opposition to both is about a wish to control what people should and should not do, based on their sex and gender. We're seeing now, in parts of the USA, how attacks on trans equality, apparently perceived by the right currently as an easy target, parallel attacks on women's and LGB equality, with moves to roll back all of our rights. Equality is not a zero sum game - you don't have more of it available for one group of people by denying it to another group. In fact, quite the opposite - equality embodies the principle of fairness and non-discrimination for all, a principle that of course is fatally undermined if you claim it only for yourself and deny it to others.
ALT Last third of letter: I hope it is not hubristic of me to say that, as a campaigner continuously since the 1980s, I am one of those "generations of gay men and lesbians who fought ... for our rights", mentioned by Mr Bryce. I am proud to have done it for LGB and trans equality, and alongside trans colleagues and friends. Tim Hopkins, Edinburgh.
ALT City centre map to illustrate the proposals.
