Hello all,
The year keeps galloping forward and now it is July. I ought to become
accustomed to these things. All my life time has moved at one second per
second. I don’t know why I am now surprised that it is done that for
the last six months. Personally, I am quite enjoying summer. It seems
pretty lovely and temperate so far.
The T4 Ceilidh
We have our T4 ceilidh coming up. It has become something of an annual tradition. This is a jolly good thing because there can be nothing better than fun, love and silly dancing. My apologies to people who take ceilidh dancing seriously. We are not going to reach those heights.
We will share your joy in movement, if not your skill. In any event, even if, like Ginger Rogers, you can do it all backwards and in heels, you are very welcome at the all-inclusive ceilidh. It is on 27th July at 18:45 at St Mary’s Church on Surrenden Road. Tickets are £15. If you are in the country, there will be no better way to spend your evening. If you are not in the country, you might consider travelling back. We would however ask you to think about your carbon footprint.
Transcend Borders
Ours is not the only event on the horizon. Our friends at Transcend Borders will be doing their Trans Pride
fundraiser event where they will be raising money for a trans refugee
to access gender affirming healthcare. It will have an entirely QTIPOC lineup, featuring drag, live music, and poetry. It will be held at Daltons
at 7:00pm, 21st July. Entry is pay what you feel (the Outsavvy makes
you pay a minimum of £1, but if you come down on the door and you’re
struggling for money, they will let you in for free). Find out more
right here: https://www.outsavvy.com/event/20719/transcend-borders-trans-pride-edition“.
In Limbo
It is a great project and well worth supporting. One of the things that I have been shocked by most recently is the treatment of trans and queer asylum seekers. I have no idea where we are at with names and official documentation in the law. It seems reasonable to address people by the name they wish to be known as. The Home Office insist on recording you under the name given to you at birth. This seems to be no process by which they will recognise your actual name or your gender. Although the Home Secretary is obliged to provide adequate accommodation to destitute asylum seekers, the Home Office does not seem to take account of trauma and vulnerabilities arising from your gender or sexuality.
Of course all of this neglect of asylum seekers goes beyond those who are gay, trans or non-binary. Single cis-women are placed in mixed sex hotel accommodation. No account is taken of what the women involved have been through. To my shame, it took me rather a long time to realise why so many women cross the Mediterranean or the Channel pregnant or with small babies, but the experience of sexual violence for women who make the journey via irregular routes is almost universal. Housing for asylum seekers is allocated on a no choice basis. People are thrown together. There is no real provision made for mental health support. The stress levels are enormous. The accommodation is badly maintained. Fights are a fairly common experience. It is no way to treat anybody.
The Way Out
One shouldn’t be too surprised by the mistreatment of people who have claimed asylum. The whole process is a dehumanising one. The trans movement has also taught us that the state of your genitals are nobody’s business but your own. For the Home Office, this does not apply to women who are fleeing to protect their daughters from FGM. The women’s movement has long made believing the victim a central demand. This is an injustice which applies to asylum seekers in spades (perhaps, even in no trumps). The Home Office demand an incredible level of detail about the most traumatic experiences of your life. Even when the interviewer is not downright rude and aggressive, you know full well that your future, and often your life, depends on convincing the sceptical person across the table from you that you are not making stuff up. Any tiny or apparent contradiction will be seized on as a reason to impugn your credibility. It is now on you to establish on the balance of probabilities that you fear a risk of persecution on return, although, once you have established that you are afraid, you still only have to show that you are facing a real risk of persecution. If you have passed through ‘a safe third country’, this, by legal fiat, is taken as damaging to your credibility.
Trans activists often highlight the massive injustice of having to justify your own existence. It is this very injustice that underpins the asylum system. Asylum seekers are systematically excluded from society. You may be here physically, but you remain in a liminal space. You are at the mercy of the Home Office, of their timetable, of their support, of their systems. You are not allowed to work to support yourself and resolve your own situation. Your agency, and with it your humanity, is stripped away. To regain it you must prove, despite all the odds stacked against you, that you are worthy of being granted asylum. In short, that your existence is justified.
We must, I think, as one of the team behind Radio Calais put it to me recently, work for a world in which nobody is in limbo. It is that demand, rather than safe and legal routes that must be central to our campaigning. It also has to be the principal around which we organise. We are trying to bring people in. That starts with a house and income and moves from there to build a community to bring everybody home. It is why your being part of this project is so valuable. It’s exactly what you are doing. It is why fun, love and silly dancing is more than just a way to raise money. It is a way to make space for all and part of building a world in which none of us have to justify our own existence.
See you on the 27th,
Jacob and all of us at T4k.
