I've often thought there should be a thread with quotes by James Morton.
Morton has been very influential pimarily in Scotland but also in Westminster.
Morton has had extraorinary influence on public policies which should protect children & Vulnerable Adults.
December 2019 Holyrood exclusive interview by Mandy Rhodes
10 December
(extract)
“It is so hard to explain because it wasn’t like a delusion – I know I was born female – but in my dreams, I just always had a male body, I was always a boy, and even though I could see when looking in a mirror that I had a female body, I would often forget others weren’t seeing me as male. There would be a weird dynamic because I was unmistakably looking and sounding female at that point.
“I don’t know why I developed such a strong sense of myself as male and a strong need to be seen by others that way but, for whatever bio-psycho-social reasons, I did. By the time I was in my teens that was what had really crystallised for me. I think sometimes it’s like how much gelatine is in someone’s identity to make them set. Some people clearly have a more movable sense of themselves and other people are set firmly.
“Looking back, people would probably have seen me as a very troubled teenager but not known why. People would probably have said that this – being trans – all came out of nowhere because my physical appearance in my early teens was as such a girl, a very librarian-looking, long-haired girl.
“I don’t think that people would have thought my issues stemmed from gender and when I came out as trans, I think people were quite surprised. Once they thought about it … it started to make more sense, but their initial reaction was like, ‘what…what?’”
The political backdrop was the early 1990s – Thatcher’s Britain – with an ugly row over Section 28 at its height when schools were effectively banned from covering LGBT issues. Consequently, Morton had no one to talk to, no role models to see himself in, and when his periods started, he became increasingly anxious about what his body was doing. And by the time he was 16 and preparing to sit exams, he was depressed, self-harming, and suicidal. Despite this, he achieved five ‘A’s in his Highers but while contemplating university, one teacher told him, pointedly, not to apply for any face-to-face interviews because he would “come across as too weird”.
Increasingly distressed about who he was, Morton made several suicide attempts and attended the Young People’s Unit at the Royal Edinburgh where, for the first time, he found a way to meet other LGBT young people.
“There was this little photocopied black and white leaflet in the YPU for what was called the Stonewall Youth Project back then but it’s now LGBT Youth Scotland and so consequently, all the folks who were going to the youth group had come from the YPU and we were all quite distressed but that was the first time I had knowingly met anybody else who was LGBT.
“To put this in some context, this was around the same time as the very first Scottish Pride and so the LGBT youth group made a banner but only about three people felt able to take it and go on the march because the rest of us were too scared." (continues)
www.holyrood.com/inside-politics/view,making-the-change-exclusive-interview-with-scottish-trans-alliance-manager-_14834.htm