Transforming attitudes
 

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She is 50/1 on to win this year's edition of reality TV show Big Brother and the most famous transsexual in Britain. But is the flamboyant Nadia doing more harm than good to the transgender cause? Lobbyist Christine Burns investigates

Nadia Almada, the chain-smoking, ear-shattering, pneumatically enhanced Portuguese transwoman and Big Brother contestant with a penchant for bottom-smacking and showering in her high heels, is not the kind of person that I would have dreamed of recruiting to the transgender campaign if you had asked me ten weeks ago.

For most of us, having been painfully aware of the twisted public image of our kind for at least the past 40 years, the question of who should represent us has always been rather a sensitive one.

Having met and corresponded with several hundred transsexual people from very diverse backgrounds in the course of a 12-year campaigning career, the only generalisations I'm confident to make about my kind are that the vast majority of us are rather quiet, conservative and generally over-inclined to want to please.

True, like Nadia, we've all been through the dream of wanting to be loved and accepted for ourselves. It takes a certain degree of self-confidence and self-esteem to develop from early insecurities to the point of stamping your feet and being prepared to demand your own way. But I have never before seen another transwoman indulge in boisterous games with jam and mud, or stand their ground in a dispute, as Nadia has done.

This is not to suggest that the 5,000 people I help to represent are all as boringly conservative as me. Indeed I live in hope of creating a world where transsexual people may be as free to express themselves in exactly the same way as anyone else - whatever that involves. [/url]

For the full article Guardian