Month: October 2011

Vocal androgyny in speech and singing

Posted by Nat – October 31, 2011


Video: Practical Androgyny – Vocal androgyny in speech and singing - Download audio-only version

Video Summary

Full summary of the video follows with links to all the people and songs mentioned. Alternatively you can skip directly to the bonus content at the end.

Introduction

The video talks about vocal androgyny, both in speaking voice and in singing voice.

I’ve seen a lot of videos out there aimed a binary transgender people (so, guys or girls) looking to develop a voice that is more easily perceived as their true gender rather than their assigned gender, but there’s very few for nonbinary, genderqueer, gender variant or gender nonconforming people who wish to produce an ambiguous, more androgynous voice that defies binary gender classification.

I like singing, it’s really important for me and I think my singing has helped me to gain more control of my voice in general, so I think it’s right to cover both speaking voice and singing voice in the same overview video.

Before I start, here’s a bit about me; I’m nonbinary, my gender is complicated but I live as ‘gender neutral’ with an androgynous presentation. I transitioned medically about 12 years ago but still experienced gender dysphoria from what was supposed to be ‘passing’, so about two years later I transitioned again to a more intentionally androgynous state. I’ve been presenting androgynously for over a decade now.

Obviously my voice has been changed by testosterone (I have quite a lot of resonance in my chest), but I’m lucky enough to have ended in a the higher end of a male range – I sing as a high tenor, possibly a little low alto too.

I want this video to be as useful to as many people as possible so I’m going to try to cover a lot of different types of voices, not just those like mine, but obviously I have the most experience with my voice! But I’ll try to cover people whose voices are higher than mine or lower than mine.

I don’t want to make assumptions about whether your voice has been affected by testosterone, or if it has I don’t want to assume when and why that happened. I’m also only going to assume your aiming to be more vocally ambiguous, nothing about your gender or identity – for all I know you could even be a cisgender voice actor looking for tips or you could be looking at this out of sheer curiosity!

I’m not a vocal expert or a trained singer, I have very little formal training (I had two singing lessons over the summer, that’s it). So I’m self-taught – expect any music theory I try to include to be a little bit wonky!

I have been dysphoric about my voice for a very long time. When I was a teenager I used to cope with my voice my being a mimic, singing in the voices of other people. I could sing songs I loved and think it wasn’t my voice but someone else’s, so disconnect from the fact that they were assigned a gender by those listening to me.

I’ve never felt comfortable with either binary gender and I’ve always been drawn towards androgyny, so I’ve been exposed to and singing like the voices of vocally androgynous people for most of my life. I think as a result I think I’ve become at least a bit more adept at controlling my voice.

Warming Up

If you’re going to work though these exercises yourself, especially if you’re planning to sing, be sure to relax (very important!), keep your back straight, loosen your shoulders and keep them relaxed but don’t slouch forwards (although I realise many trans* people have issues around their chests and prefer slouching posture). I’ve already warmed up, you have a vocal warm up of your own, maybe sing a little and get used to finding the lowest and highest pitches your voice is comfortable at. I have some sweet ginger tea here and as I’m asthmatic I also just took my inhaler as a pre-emptive strike (my doctor recommends this).

Pitch

OK so let’s start off with vocal pitch, how high or how low your voice is. Most people believe this is the only vocal gender cue. The pitch of your voice can be extended by altering where you’re speaking from, which part of your body is being allowed to resonate. Obviously your voice comes from your throat, but it’s affected by whether you’re making use of the ‘resonance chamber’ in your chest. The two extremes are singing from your chest only, or singing from your throat only. These are typically conceived of as a ‘chest voice’ and a ‘head voice’.

You’ve heard my normal speaking voice, well here’s my unaltered singing voice with nothing fancy going on

[Sings a verse of Second Hand Songs by Jonathan Turner]

Chest Voice

As I said before, my voice is affected by testosterone so my chest voice is quite resonant and so gives a more impressive contrast, so I’ll start there. Despite my vocal range not going down particularly low, it still sounds impressively deep compared to normal when I speak or sing in chest voice. Even if your voice has not been affected by testosterone and won’t be so dramatic, you will have a chest voice that you can speak in to emphasise the deepest parts of your voice (Look for resources aimed at men with high voices and naturally transitioning trans guys for help with this [if you have recommendations for these, please suggest them in the comments!]).

[Humorous chest voice example sounding like a pretentious Shakespearian actor and Brian Blessed]

My go to song for singing in chest voice alone is Mmm mmm mmm mmm by the Crash Test Dummies:

[Sings a verse of that]

If you’re planning on taking testosterone, I recommend singing that every day to track your progress as it’ll be deeply satisfying when your chest resonance kicks in.

Head Voice

So head voice is cutting out the chest entirely and only talking from the head, and I can go even higher and push into falsetto which with my particular sounds kind of unnatural and babyish or like a cartoon character, but can be useful for hitting higher notes. Depending on what your range is like, your falsetto may sound totally different to mine and might be something you’ll use far more than me.

If you’re interested in learning how to do push your pitch up like that, search for tutorials aimed at helping trans women to find voices they’re comfortable with, there are some excellent and very effective tutorials out there [again, I'm looking for recommendations of resources to link to - please comment below!].

As an example of me singing in head voice without putting on any of the vocal techniques I’ll look at later, I’ll sing something that sounds almost like a choir boy:

[Sings a verse from Who Will Buy This Wonderful Morning from Oliver!]

Now you’ll have noticed while I was going in and out of those examples that it’s perfectly possible to start in the chest voice, raise the pitch, gradually add more and more head voice and take away chest voice until you’re talking in head voice alone. Obviously regardless of what vocal range you have, somewhere within that process will be your ‘androgynous pitch’.

It’s been my experience that although voice pitch is a gender cue, it’s not necessarily the highest point your voice goes but the range it covers. If you have a voice with audible chest resonance under it, it can be quite high and still perceived as male or androgynous.

Mixing Both

If you’ve done any singing lessons you’ve probably been taught that mastering your chest and head voices is vital and the richest, most pleasing singing voices mix the qualities of both the head and chest voice into one unified sound. I’ve certainly found that this is something I tend to do when I’m singing androgynously, and you’ll likely hear that almost all the voices I’ll sing in (and the singers I’m mimicking) from now on have that quality to some degree.

As for speaking voice, my own speaking voice (as well as varying wildly in pitch depending on what I’m thinking and who I’m speaking to), having analysed it with a pitch range analysis computer program, has a low chest voice firmly in the male range and a high head voice that’s outside of the male range that I somehow unconsciously mix together as I speak. This results in my voice being surprisingly androgynous. Often if I’m passed between two people on the phone one may read me as female, the other as male. Which is annoying sometimes but also kind of brilliant as it means I’m ‘passing’ as androgynous.

Other factors

Vocal gender cues aren’t just based on pitch. The average vocal ranges for adult female-assigned (not affected by testosterone) voices and male-assigned voices affected by testosterone overlap quite comfortably. There are plenty of well known female voices that are well within the male range and vice versa. Pitch is not the only signifier of gender – intonation, speech patterns, range, choice of words and degree of chest resonance are all factors. If we’re in that overlap then the way they speak, like an accent, is what causes people to read their voices as female or male.

For example, Joanna Lumley of Perdy from the Avengers and Patsy from Absolutely Fabulous has a particularly low voice that’s nonetheless perceived as female. That’s all down to intonation, speech patterns and a kind of whispery husky quality.

If you have a high voice, you could adopt aspects of the voice and intonations of Mick Jagger of The Rolling Stones – this voice is quite high but it’s kept quite flat and drawn out.

[Speaks 'in the voices' of each as demonstration]

Obviously those were both extremely exaggerated and quite poor impersonations, but I’m not trying to sound like them exactly, I’m trying to take on certain qualities of their voices. By learning to do that and listening to the results, you can find places you can push your voice that sound more like you while keeping those androgynous qualities. I recommend listening around for celebrities of the other binary gender to your assignment with a speaking pitch similar to the highest or lowest (which every you’re aiming for) pitch you’re able to comfortably speak in, then practice taking on aspects of their voices.

Mimicking androgynously toned singers

Now for singing voice, there are a number of singers who sing in an androgynous way and within the female/male pitch range overlap. Find one that fits into your range and work to perfect singing in that style. Yes, you’re doing an impersonation but you’re really not singing in someone else’s voice. You’ll notice that when I sing ‘as’ other singers, I still sound like myself, I’m still using my voice and putting my unique interpretation on the end result. So it starts as mimicry, but really you’re singing in your voice just finding new ranges and techniques that you can adopt, and making all of these songs and vocal styles your own. So well done!

Singers featured:

James Blunt – Beautiful – Has quite a high voice

Tracy Chapman – Fast Car – Her voice is androgynous and lower than James Blunt’s

Nico – These Days – Her voice was useful to me as it involves going down to low notes without shifting into chest voice

Tori Amos – Cornflake Girl – Is in high tenor-ish range but firmly female sounding

Thom Yorke of Radiohead – Karma Police – Is in a similar range to Tori Amos but sounds male

Mama Cass Eliot – Dream A Little Dream of Me – Lower than Tori Amos and female sounding, could be more comfortable for lower voices to mimic

Soul music is often sung in a rich, multi-toned, androgynous style, for example a male singer and a female singer who have similar voices:

Aloe Blacc – I Need A Dollar

Nina Simone – Feeling good

If you want to learn the tropes of this vocal style, start with someone really exaggerated and work back to more natural sound, I personally learned to sing this way by impersonating Heather Small from M People.

Higher or thinner voices

If you have a higher voice and you’re looking for someone to mimic, try the legendary David McAlmont whose high male voice is mostly out of my range.

If you can only sing in a ‘thin’ high range, like a falsetto, you could find singers who have particularly high/reedy voice but manage to make that sound strong or androgynous. My favourite example of this are Skin from Skunk Anansie who talks in a surprisingly ‘small’ voice but has a bold ‘big’ singing voice:

Skin – Skunk Anansie – Brazen

And for a Male androgynous falsetto voice try icon Brian Molko from Placebo, my favourite of his is:

Placebo – 36 Degrees

If you have a female sounding ‘thinner’ high voice and you want to sound more male, try mimicking male singers with a classically falsetto sound. Jimmy Somerville is probably the archetypal example.

Wrapping up

Once you’ve mastered singing in a more androgynous way, then talking that way becomes kind of trivial. People with speak impairments like stammers often learn to sing as speech therapy and then put themselves in a singing state of mind while talking (this also means you can pretend your entire life is musical theatre, fabulous dharling!)

If you’ve got good at singing in the styles or androgynous singers within your range, you shouldn’t have too much problem taking a singer outside your range and pushing the song into a range you can achieve. So if you come across other singers with androgynous vocal qualities you wish to emulate, try singing in their style but in a lower or higher key to match your voice. If this proves difficult, listen to other singers in the same genre (my go to genre seems to be soul, yours may well be different) and start by emulating one closer to your comfort point.

You should also be able to take the aspects of other voices you’ve sung in and apply them to songs by other people, so sing a well known song in the style of a different singer, or mix up all the qualities you like from the voices you’ve mimicked and the new aspects of your voice you’ve developed to sing an interpretation that’s uniquely yours.

Well that’s the end, I hope you’ve found my perspective helpful!

[I end by singing my own personal interpretation of the Christina Aguilera song Beautiful, which on listening back sounds like a mash up of Tracy Chapman and Alex Parks' styles]

Bonus content

Speaking voice as an accent or an impersonation

A tip I meant to include in the video but don’t seem to have mentioned is to suggest that intentionally mimicking a particular person or a particular accent can be helpful when trying to learn a new vocal pitch or speech pattern.

When you put on an accent or do an impression of someone, you’re moving your voice into another ‘character’ rather than trying to make your own voice sound different. So it may be helpful to conceptualise your androgynous voice in the same way, as a character or accent you can move in and out of (as you’ll have seen me do several times throughout the video, including several times where I get ‘stuck’ in the wrong one!).

I think it’s significant that trans women who transition in a different city or country to where they grew up often find that the accent they were surrounded by when undergoing speech therapy ‘sticks’ with their new voice but report that their pre-transition voice in the lower pitch remains associated with the accent they grew up with.

Giving your voice more or less of a ‘singsong’ quality

Generally people who have been socialised in a female gender role tend to have a more expressive and singsong quality to their voice, while those socialised in a male gender role tend to keep their voice constrained in a lower range. Female socialisation also encourages women to raise the pitch of their voices slightly when talking to someone in a friendly tone.

Resources aimed at helping trans women to ‘pass’ vocally should be helpful in giving you a toolbox or palette of vocal social gender cues that you can then intentionally play up or suppress as you balance the other cues in your voice like pitch, range and husky qualities (as explained in the video).

There are also resources aimed at men with high voices (something that is deemed to be negative in our gender conformist hetero/cisnormative society) who wish to deepen their voices and naturally transitioning trans guys looking to make their voices more easily perceived by others as male without taking testosterone. These may well also give you tips that you can play up or play down (or do the opposite of!) to balance whatever vocal gender cues you’re trying to negate or blur.

If you have recommendations for your favourite existing voice therapy or voice training resources, please share them in the comments below!

Other singers with androgynous voices

My favourite sound is soulful and I tended to go back to soul singers for my examples, but there are a lot of androgynous voices out there across all sorts of genres. Look for the genre that resonates with you, fits your personality and feels like your most authentic self-expression.

Here are some vocally androgynous singers I love to listen to:

David McAlmont – One of the most influential singers in my teenage years. I briefly tried to sing the McAlmont and Butler song Yes in the video then realised it was too high for my range.

Alison Moyet – One of the most often cited female vocalists with androgynous vocal qualities

Greg Gilbert of Delays – Indie guitar band with a higher pitched male vocalist with a pleasant sound

Tanita Tikaram – Female vocalist with a lower voice that has ‘sultry’ aspects

Chris Colfer of The Glee Cast – Famous for having an amazingly pure sounding high voice with an impressive range. Much like with David McAlmont, I can’t hit half the notes in the high end of his range

D. Lucille Campbell of Help Stamp Out Lonliness – Strikingly similar to Nico but sings in a contemporary Indie style

CN Lester – Genderqueer singer who sings early, classical and contemporary music. Their contemporary music tends to be in the high tenor range. (I recommend the song ‘Brackets’ on the EP Resurrection Men but all are fabulous)

Adèle Anderson of cabaret group Facinating Aida – Famous trans woman singer whose voice was affected by male puberty but is firmly female sounding. She sings the lower pitched parts in the female cabaret group

Antony Heggarty of Antony and the Johnsons – Mecury music award winning transgender singer who seeks ‘an equilibrium between the genders’. Has a distinctive androgynous sound in the high tenor range

Alex Parks – Not necessarily androgynous but has an incredibly distinctive voice, one of my favourite singers of all time (you can hear her influence in my closing song)

If you’re looking for pop music, I’m afraid that’s not really my genre but Darren Hayes of Savage Garden and the ubiquitous Justin Bieber come to mind.

As I keep saying, please suggest your own favourite vocally androgynous singers in the comments below!

Useful links and resources

Practical Androgyny: Vocal androgyny: Speaking voice - From the Practical Androgyny Tumblr (which you should all be following!), talks about the voice pitch range analysing software I mentioned in the video

CN Lester’s Singing and vocal production for trans guys – Video tutorial aimed at trans guys but likely to be useful for everyone [disclosure - CN has given me two singing lessons in the past]

TransgenderVoice.net: Genderqueer – The genderqueer section from a transgender-specialising speech therapist’s website

Transguys.com: Testosterone and the trans male singing voice - Fantastic article full of videos about the affects of testosterone on the singing voice and the best way to transition using testosterone without losing your singing voice (NB, assumes male identity)

The Straight Dope: “That was a guy singing?!” wrong calls on singers’ genders thread - Useful for finding more androgynous voices

Please suggest your own resources in the comments!

Update: CN Lester’s Trans Beauty: Vocal Edition part 1 was inspired by this article – Packed with classical music videos showcasing high male/androgynous roles and female tenors, baritones and basses!

Being Constructive About the Independent on Sunday Pink List

Posted by Nat – October 29, 2011

The Independent on Sunday Pink List 2011Last weekend the UK Independent on Sunday released their annual ‘Pink List’, described each year as a ‘celebration of the gay and lesbian community’. It’s been a tradition of mine to look through lists such as these each year and bemoan the lack of representation for the wider LGBT and queer communities. Last year’s list produced a lot of justified criticism for not including any visibly bisexual or openly trans* people and not representing the grassroots activists within the LGBT community. It’s been very easy to be critical of a list of ‘influential British LGBT people’ that reads as a hierarchy of mainly cisgender (as in, not identifying as trans*), apparently able-bodied, gay and lesbian famous people and politicians who mostly live in England, mainly London. Cynicism is especially easy when it’s arranged as a league table complete with comparisons to where each entry charted in the previous year.

Since last year’s list was released, Time Out Magazine produced an even more problematically structured ‘Pride Power’ list, which at least included one openly trans* person, highly deserving activist Christine Burns MBE, albeit handled in a pretty problematic way. As you’ll see from that blog post and its comments, that spurred Christine and the equally wonderful Trans Media Watch to put pressure on the Independent on Sunday to produce a truly trans* inclusive Pink List this year. As a result of this campaigning, and I’m sure pressure from other parts of the LGBT community, the IoS appointed trans* journalist and activist Paris Lees to the panel of judges and asked their readers to put forward their own ‘unsung champions’ and ‘heroes’ of the LGBT community for inclusion in the nominees for the 2011 list.

Real Progress

With those announced changes, I approached this year’s Pink List with some degree of optimism, and I was indeed extremely pleased to see a considerably improved list with:

  • The frankly amazing teacher Elly Barnes, who has done invaluable work to exorcise the ghost of Section 28 from the nation’s schools, in the top position
  • A performer clearly described as bisexual in the third position
  • More women included in top positions
  • An openly intersex activist in the ‘Nice to meet you section’
  • Six trans women and one trans man in the numbered league table
  • Another two trans women and one trans man in the Lifetime Achievement Awards
  • And yet another trans woman in the ‘Nice to meet you’ section

Note though, five of trans women included were not explicitly noted as trans*.

It was clear that this wasn’t just a small step towards token trans* representation as I’d worried, but a significant jump towards treating trans* people as equally valid members of the LGBT community.

Valid Criticism

Is the list perfect? No, by no means. It’s still arranged in league table format, it’s still mainly white, English, well educated, apparently able-bodied (there is not one mention of ‘disabled’, ‘disability’ or any particular impairments on the entire list), apparently dyadic (non-intersex) people. People who lampoon these things as ‘Pride Privilege Lists’ still have much to rightfully criticise.

My traditional scouring of the list has been to look for bisexual representation and, despite singer-songwriter Jessie J now appearing in third position with a clear declaration of bisexuality, there are no other entries described as ‘bi’ or ‘bisexual’. All other uses of ‘bisexual’ are simply writing out LGBT or ‘gay and bisexual’, there is not one usage of the term ‘bi’ which is preferred within the UK Bi Community or the word ‘queer’, my label of choice. There are other people on the list who I know are bisexual, but not one of them is identified as such, and so bi invisibility continues. As a long term active member of the UK Bi Community, which is hugely accepting of queer-identified, trans*, nonbinary and genderqueer people such as myself, I was particularly disappointed to see all the hard working bisexual activists overlooked yet again.

This year the Bi Community focused its visibility activism efforts onto equal bi inclusion in the Lesbian and Gay Foundation’s ‘Homo Heroes’ award, gaining hugely deserving nominees in four categories (none of whom won the popular vote). It’s quite telling that the trans community aimed its visibility activism one way, the bi community another and the end result was that two prominent perviously ‘lesbian and gay’ lists gained more inclusive representation for one of the usually overlooked B and T but not the other (although one of the bi ‘Homo Heroes’ nominees is also trans*, so L, G, B and T are all represented there). I think it’s highly likely that the next Bi Activist Weekend will be discussing strategy to get a bi activist judge on next year’s Pink List panel.

So yes, there is much to criticise and much of my immediate response (on Twitter) after congratulating those listed was to critique the list’s failings. Many others in the trans* community (and beyond) have criticised the list too, some with anger at how the trans* people who were included were all transitioned binary transsexual, mainly trans women rather than trans men, not people of colour and mostly from England rather than Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. There was considerable disappointment that not one openly nonbinary (living as neither a woman nor a man) or explicitly genderqueer (identifying as challenging the gender binary through non-normative gender expression – your definitions may vary, I find the distinction useful) person was included. The trans* people who were included all fit the dominant transgender narrative of cross-binary gender identity and transition.

Some people defending the lack of such people on the list have argued that no British nonbinary, genderqueer or solely gender nonconforming (as in not trans* in other respects) people have done anything notable enough yet and this will come with time. While this may be true of activists (those prominent in the field live overseas while British activists have only come to the fore recently), it isn’t the case of performers and famous people. What about Richard O’Brien of Rocky Horror and Crystal Maze fame who came out as nonbinary transgender in 2009? What about stand up comedian, world famous actor, ‘executive transvestite’ and ‘male tomboy’ Eddie Izzard who has helped normalise femme male gender expression, has been an inspiration to a huge number of trans* people of all stripes for years and who recently ran seven weeks of back-to-back marathons (with Sundays off) across the UK to raise money for Sport Relief? Personally I’d have liked to see at least one nonbinary or genderqueer activist or performer on the ‘Nice to meet you’ list and I am hugely disappointed that CN Lester was overlooked for that honour. But I am hopeful for next year.

Unfortunately much of the perfectly valid criticism of the structure and composition of the list inadvertently reads as an attack on the trans women and men who are on the list for the first time this year. There is a very uncomfortable air of belittling or dismissing the achievements of the people who are on the list, because they are ‘tokenism’ or because others ‘more deserving’ are not there. Some of the critiques feel like they’re dragging those people down rather than lifting others up, which CN Lester eloquently describes and confronts here.

This Stuff Is Important

Much like CN, I had an ‘inspiration board’ on the wall of my teenage bedroom, full of printed out song lyrics, pictures and newspaper clippings that kept me going through my last couple of years as a closeted queer teenager at a rural comprehensive school (1996 to 98). My board included people like teenage Age Of Consent campaigners Chris Morris (who was the same age as me) and Euan Sutherland, and famous performers like Ellen Degeneres, Wilson Cruz, Brian Molko, David McAlmont, Ani DiFranco, Michael Stipe and Skin from Skunk Anansie. Being surrounded by images of successful queer and gender nonconforming people and listening to their music made me feel like less of a freak and gave me hope for the future.

As a community, we need visible inspirational ‘heroes’ to look up to. Some people survive, get through it and are inspired to succeed and perhaps become activists themselves due to newspaper articles just like this one. It is possible to critique the form of an award and the nature of the organisation that issued it while still seeing it as important and valuable. As little as I believe in the honours system and the monarchy, I still found it incredibly significant and inspiring when the establishment recognised the work of trans* activist Christine Burns by issuing her with an MBE in 2004 and Stephen Whittle by issuing him with an OBE in 2005.

Being Constructive

I see these lists and the tendency to single out certain prominent famous and notable people for recognition and awards as only problematic in isolation. If we let this be the only way that trans*, queer and LGBT people are celebrated in our communities, then yes, it is problematic. If we let this start a conversation about who else should be recognised and celebrated, the hard work that so many others do in our communities and all the different ways people make a difference, then it becomes just one of many ways that the deserving, inspiring people in our communities receive thanks.

When Dan Savage started the It Gets Better campaign, I was among the critics who found it deeply problematic. But it started a conversation that prompted complementary and constructive campaigns that focused on helping young people to Make It Better, and inspired many other It Gets Better videos that weren’t problematic in the ways that Savage’s had been. There are now some amazing trans* and queer It Gets Better videos out there and no end of testimonials from people saying how seeing them has helped them in the way my inspiration board helped me.

I would like to see positive and constructive reactions amongst the justified critiques of the organisation and form of the current Pink List. While campaigning for next year’s list to end bi invisibility, recognise bisexual, pansexual, asexual and queer activists and include more trans men, nonbinary, genderqueer and gender nonconforming people, we should also be putting forward our own lists of inspiring queer and trans* people, and thanking and celebrating all those who inspired us personally, or who have worked to make our lives better as queer or trans* people.

As such, last night I asked my Twitter followers to indulge me for a while as I thanked those who had inspired me. Rather than focusing solely on individuals, I tried to thank entire groups and classes of people who have helped our communities, while highlighting particular examples that I’ve personally come across and been inspired by. My own personal Inspiration List. You can read it in my Twitter favourites, starting at 10:12pm. Note, there are many many more people who I could name (each category was limited to 136 characters) and, as I was reacting to a list of inspirational British LGBT people, my list was intentionally focused on people from the UK. I would write a very different list if I was including those who are active in other countries and internationally.

I would love to read other people’s Inspiration Lists, especially international lists and lists covering queer and trans* communities of which I’m not a member. I encourage you all to thank everyone who’s inspired you, made it easier to be queer, trans* or gender nonconforming or helped you or your communities in practical ways.

Deserving Their Recognition

And let’s not forget that we do have eleven openly trans* people and several more trans* allies recognised within the Pink List article. Forget the numbering and the different categories and focus on the recognition these people have been rightfully given. As I said above, I want to see more trans* people included, more trans men, more trans* people assigned female at birth, more nonbinary, openly genderqueer and solely gender nonconforming people, and I want us to work towards getting those people into next year’s list and given recognition through our own community efforts, independent of The Independent. But let’s not play down the hugely important work those who are listed have done to represent, inspire and improve the lives of all trans* people.

So here’s my personal take on how some of the trans* people who are recognised in this year’s Pink List article have inspired and represented me as a nonbinary, genderqueer, gender nonconforming, queer-identified, atypically transitioning, androgynously presenting trans* person…

Longterm Inspirations

I was extremely pleased to see people who have been personal longterm inspirations to me on the lists:

Stephen Whittle and Christine Burns, whose campaigning work for Press For Change was a practical help and inspiration to me while transitioning in the late 1990s, especially as their website and resources recognised that not all ‘trans people’ they campaigned for transition in the same way or at all, live ‘full time in role’ or identify as simply female or simply male.

It is thanks to Press For Change that Britain now has legal employment and provision of goods and services protection for trans* people (by adding the protected class of ‘gender reassignment’), including the changes in the Equality Act 2010 that mean those protections are no longer prerequisite on a ‘gender specialist’ psychiatrist’s approval or any medical treatments. Stephen has also featured in two prominent television documentaries about transsexual men and numerous trans* publications, providing inspiration to many. As mentioned above, Christine is one of the most vocal campaigners for recognition of the full diversity of trans* activists and influential people in lists such as these.

Travel writer Jan Morris whose groundbreaking 1974 memoir Conundrum and its journey through her transition (most notably chapter 12) was my first exposure to the reality that it was possible for me to become androgynous, it wasn’t just something that some people were naturally gifted with that I could never achieve. I cannot overstate how important this was to me and how much hope and inspiration it gave me as a dysphoric nonbinary person trying to find comfort with my body and social role.

Activists I Admire

I was also overjoyed to see recognition given to current activists who I admire, all of whom have in some way helped nonbinary and gender nonconforming trans* people as part of their work to represent the entire trans* community:

Sarah Brown, Britain’s only openly transgender activist serving in an elected political position; a Liberal Democrat Cambridge City Councillor, and chair of the Lib Dem Transgender Working Group. Sarah was instrumental (along with Zoe O’Connell) in influencing Lib Dem MP Julian Huppert to raise the issue of gender neutral documentation such as passports in the House of Commons. Something that will be vitally important to many nonbinary, genderqueer, transgender and gender nonconforming people in this country (including myself).

Jay Stewart of Gendered Intelligence, an organisation that does hugely important creative work with young transgender and genderqueer people and is explicitly inclusive of the wider transgender spectrum. Jay organised the wonderfully positive and inclusive Trans Community Conference, that I was lucky enough to attend this year, and was previously the chair of FTM London, an AFAB (assigned female at birth) trans* support and social group known for being inclusive of all identities and expressions within the wider transgender spectrum. I have briefly spoken with Jay and seen him speak from stage and on video. He comes across as someone who comfortably challenges stereotypical assumptions that all trans men are hyper-masculine. Read him here encouraging readers of the Times Educational Supplement to celebrate transgender students and allow male assigned students to express femininity in their schools.

Journalist Juliet Jacques (in the ‘Nice to meet you’ section) whose blogging for The Guardian has talked frankly about the process of coming to terms with being a trans woman and undergoing transition in a very public and visible way that has exposed the human story behind trans* people’s lives to a whole new audience. In her earlier articles, Juliet talks about how she did not have the stereotypical transsexual childhood story (in a way I hugely identified with), and tried on and explored numerous transgender identities and communities before transitioning. She writes about having been drawn to male crossdressers, made to feel less alone by the comedy of ‘action transvestite’ Eddy Izzard and going through years of identifying as a gay male crossdresser and later ‘transgender’ as described by Leslie Feinberg and Kate Bornstein. As such she is one of the few journalists to have written about transgender people who ‘live beyond the traditional gender binary’ in a mainstream outlet.

Creative People

Creativity and consuming the creative works of others is hugely important to me. As such, I was pleased to see three creative trans women whose work I enjoy recognised in the lists as much for their non-activist careers and artistic merits as their work as ‘professional trans people’:

Roz Kaveney is given recognition as a poet and novelist. I first saw Roz on television talking about science fiction and fantasy, then later met her in person through science fiction conventions (where she is well known and respected in the community of authors and fans). If you like a science fiction or fantasy author, Roz is probably friends with them. I later learned she is openly transsexual from her (highly recommended) poetry LiveJournal and from there found her Twitter feed, where she’s shared sonnets about transgender history, remembrance and bodies [NSFW], and challenged the prejudices of others (most notably Julie Bindel) in a relentlessly reasonable and open minded way. Roz is notable to the nonbinary community for having talked about neutrois (agender) identity along with the wider inclusive meaning of transgender, for the Guardian newspaper’s blog in June 2010.

Comedian Bethany Black is given recognition for being successful in the competitive and male dominated world of stand up comedy while being openly transsexual. She describes herself as “Britain’s only Goth, lesbian, transsexual stand-up comedian” and challenges binary transgender stereotypes enough to proudly feature in the MtF Butches Tumblr. She’s also very funny.

Actress and singer Adèle Anderson of marvellous humorous female cabaret group Facinating Aida is recognised under ‘lifetime achievement’. Adèle is recognised for her acting and singing career, and her campaigning for the British Humanist Association, most notably against the Pope’s recent state visit to the UK. Adèle came out as a trans woman in the mid-1980s after success while ‘stealth’, in part due to pressure from the press, she later talked publicly about how difficult that process was. As a transgender singer and lover of comedy music, I personally find inspiration in Adèle and her willingness to pursue a singing career despite the risk of it outing her.

To Conclude…

So while I am not aware of any nonbinary, genderqueer-identified or solely gender nonconforming trans* people recognised on the Pink List this year, every one of the trans* people listed above has either worked for their rights and/or recognition in some way, or challenged binary gender roles and the public’s stereotypical view of transgender people through their openness, their humour or their own gender nonconformity. I don’t know about you but, as a genderqueer and nonbinary person, I think that’s worth celebrating.

And let’s not overlook the significance of the inclusion of openly intersex activist and LGBTQQi addiction specialist Sarah Graham recognised in the ‘Nice to meet you’ section, who has been frank and open about her life experiences in an article for The Independent and an episode of the BBC radio programme The Essay broadcast on Radio 3.

Finally, we should not forget all the people on the list who work for trans* people as part of their careers or wider LGBT activism. I want to wrap up this article by pointing you at a video of the person who made the number one spot in this year’s Pink List, Elly Barnes talking about how her Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans History Month work in schools led to her pupils being exposed to positive queer and trans* role models in assembly and taught in science classes about how gender variance and transition is a normal part of some people’s lives. If Elly’s recognition in the Pink List leads to just one other teacher following her example and achieving the same, then it will have been an indisputable success.

* The asterisk at the end of ‘trans*’ denotes that this is the wider inclusive form of trans that includes all transgender, transsexual, nonbinary, genderqueer, gender variant and gender nonconforming people regardless of gender identity or expression.