Scotland PIE and LGB research thread

I found these initial findings from the (Scottish Government and NHS funded) INCLUSION project in Gay Men’s Health:

Writers - Paul Matthews, Nick Laird, Allie Cherry, James Whyte, Alan Surgeon, Linda Thompson, Ann Mariott, Paul Robertson
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During August, three workshops were held in Glasgow to better understand the health needs and experiences of transgender people in Scotland. These were part of a range of initiatives by the INCLUSION Project; a partnership project working for LGBT health.
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The survey will be ready for distribution within the next couple of months and the key findings from this research will be available in 2004. Here’s a summary of findings from the days (one for transsexual women, one for transsexual men and a transvestite workshop).
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The term transgender as an all-encompassing umbrella term was viewed as being sometimes problematic because there is a huge range of diversity within the transgender label. It was felt that the categories of transsexual and transvestite being put together under transgender didn’t help with the understanding of the issues because both categories are very different. Education on transgender issues was felt to be the solution.
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Some of the most significant health-related issues for transsexual women (Male to Female) included; alcohol abuse, suicidal feelings, feeling stress about gender and disgust with body parts.
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Some of the most significant health-related issues for transsexual men (FTM) included, anxiety, fear of what people would think/say, suicidal feelings and distress about body parts.
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Self-harm and depression were also significant for trans women and trans men.
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Solutions to the problems faced by some trans women and trans men included; good access to clinical treatment including hormones and surgery, peer support and counselling.
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All of the participants in the transvestite workshop were accessing health services as heterosexual men and did not feel their transgender status was relevant in relation to this.
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Peer support was viewed as very important to the transvestite group.
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Transsexuals and transvestites can experience difficulties because of people making assumptions about sexuality and sexual expression.
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Transsexuals and transvestites can experience difficulties because in general people have very fixed ideas about what a man/woman should be like, i.e. 'not a real man'.
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Education on transgender issues was seen as a way of challenging assumptions.
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For further information on the transgender research, or for information on support for transgender people contact, Nick Laird https://www.gmh.org.uk/core/16/research.shtml

If the findings of this research found that it wasn’t useful to lump ‘transsexuals’ and transvestites together under the umbrella ‘transgender’, where did the directive come from to persist with it?

Pics added

Hugo Greenhalgh Used to write for the FT and now is editor of Openly News,
which, bizarrely, has a banner at the top making the crisis in Ukraine all about the trans. See pics

https://www.openlynews.com/profile/?id=003D000002SiAdXIAV

I managed to find some info confirming Tim Hopkins role in OUTRIGHT from a ScotsGay archive:

SCOTSGAY MAGAZINE Issue 1 - December 1994 States under NATIONAL ORGANISATIONS:

"OUTRIGHT SCOTLAND is Scotland's premier lesbian, gay and bisexual rights organisation. It was founded in 1969 as the Scottish Minorities Group, later became the Scottish Homosexual Rights Group and changed its name to OUTRIGHT SCOTLAND in December 1992. OUTRIGHT SCOTLAND owns the Edinburgh Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Centre. Send sae for their new leaflet and membership application form to: The Secretary, OUTRIGHT SCOTLAND, 58a Broughton Street, Edinburgh. EH1 3SA or e-mail [email protected]

OUTRIGHT SCOTLAND has other Focus Groups. The contacts are: LGB Disability Forum - Jim Liddle 0131-669 3205 or Jim Halcrow 0131-661 5398. Diversity (Anti racism group) - Andy Gentle 0131-557 1662. Outright Women - Alison Rowan. International - Mungo Bovey. Law Reform - Tim Hopkins or Hugo Greenhalgh. Police Liaison - Ian Dunn 0131-557 1662. If no telephone number is given, you can write to the person listed c/o 58a Broughton Street, Edinburgh. EH1 3SA. Why not join OUTRIGHT SCOTLAND? Membership is UKP10 waged and UKP5 unwaged. Please make out your cheque/Postal Order to OUTRIGHT SCOTLAND and send to The Membership Secretary, OUTRIGHT SCOTLAND, 58a Broughton Street, EDINBURGH. EH1 3SA."

Hugo Greenhalgh who worked with Tim Hopkins on law reform was one of the young men who was part of the test case to change the age of consent.https://metro.co.uk/2022/06/30/history-is-for-interfering-with-lgbtq-activists-share-their-story-16906410/

Two questions about this 1. Ian Dunn as police liaison? 🤔2. Since Hein said Dunn had form for taking credit for other people’s work, would it be truly accurate to call all these focus groups OUTRIGHT focus groups?

Because it is pretty hard to get info on Tim Hopkins, I am putting these links here

https://www.gscene.com/news/scottish-lgbti-campaigner-honoured/

https://www.thepinknews.com/2014/09/19/comment-what-does-the-independence-referendum-result-mean-for-lgbt-scots/

Morton was at LGBT Youth Scotland from 1997-2001 when a need arose for a special ‘trans’ support group. Could it have been that in a very sexualised, blokey space, with predators like Rennie as youth workers knocking about, that this was a lesbian exodus calling itself a ‘trans’ one?

Photos here

Here’s h’’ account of the formation of The Scottish Transgender Alliance in Trans Britain. (Interesting that Tim Hopkins doesn’t get a mention).

Morton was the manager of The Scottish Trans Alliance from its launch as a project of the Equality Network in 2007.
https://www.scottishtrans.org/announcing-new-scottish-trans-manager/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equality_Network

I want to talk a bit about James Morton.

£he joined LGBT Youth Scotland as 17 year old in 1997, at around the time disagreements were occurring at OUTRIGHT, breaking it apart and forming The Equality Network (Morton says there was overlap with Pride with the Equality Network, but doesn’t mention Hein in Trans Britain).

My impression is that this scene at the time was very male dominated with male attitudes to boundaries, risk, sex, sexuality, setting the tone. Basically ‘anything goes’ and not being up for something or being shocked or disgusted would have made you a wimp and a prude.

Morton said about thinking £he was male “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.” https://www.holyrood.com/inside-politics/view,making-the-change-exclusive-interview-with-scottish-trans-alliance-manager-james-morton_14834.htm

Now I can completely relate to what Morton says about forgetting that others are seeing me as female. I have been told that I have an Elektra complex, that I’m not like a proper woman, etc, etc, because of it, I am always shocked when I realise that I’m not being treated with proper respect because I am female. Because Morton was in a very blokey environment, totally absent of feminism (it seems feminists were bracketed with religious prudes in those circles), it would be far preferable to be perceived as one of the boys.

I find it all a bit fuzzy around Stonewall Youth Scotland turning into LGBT Youth Scotland and where it overlapped with OUTRIGHT/The Equality Network, in terms of personnel. Rennie was involved from that time, even though he didn’t become CEO until 2003. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_Youth_Scotland

The thing I find curious about Tim Hopkins, is that he doesn’t have a Wikipedia page.

Another thing I find curious, is all the dead links - to the Herald, etc in the OP of the other MN PIE thread. https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/3755189-PIE-again has someone been cleaning up?

Yes, there seems to be a rewriting of history.

Coupled with the facts there weren’t proper investigations - abuse in Celtic boys being ‘investigated’ by co-founder of LGBT Youth Scotland’s Martin Henry, even though James Rennie, co-founder led a paedophile ring and raped a baby, which wasn’t properly investigated either.

Also,

How about Rennie’s evidence to the Scottish Government?- Pivotal in enabling gay men to adopt children, a change in law which would have helped him to cut out the hassle of befriending and grooming parents.

I know that my view isn’t a popular one, but Section 28 was also about school children and his evidence was used in the repeal.

I keep coming back to PIE and they're involvement, which i don't believe was accidental.

Although PIE was started off as a gay thing (I am so sorry I have read so much and I can’t remember where I saw it now), it’s Headquarters were moved to London and it grew into something primarily for men with an interest in abusing little girls.

The true ‘Magic Circle’ the one involving the QCs John Watt, Robert Henderson and Sir Nicholas Fairbarn, was also a bisexual/heterosexual group.

My feeling is that Dunn’s circle would have overlapped with theirs in terms of ‘sexual minorities’ activism, rather than ‘parties’ where children were abused.

I like the sound of Hein too, I know that aspies are usually truthworthy and truthful, because they can’t handle the mental load of deceit. He seemed like such a grafter too, I have to respect that. Also being very non-judgmental and accepting of people and having a fondness for cats.

In recent years I have really been learning to accept people more in there entirety (I think it was the unequivocal stuff about Michael Jackson being a child abuser coming out - such talent and originality, making brilliant music, I needed to reconcile it), so I am suspending my judgement because Hein sounds very likeable but he still could have been part of something sinister.

Although Tim Hopkins didn’t register the Equality Network with Companies House until 2001, he must have been there from its inception, since he won the first Ian Dunn Memorial Prize at Pride Scotia in 1998 as a representative of the Equality Network.

He also seems have been involved in the formation of Pride Scotia, but, it seems that John Hein’s involvement have been now written out by the Equality Network’s account of the history, according to Pride organisers Laura Norris and Duncan Hothersall:

“We’ve said this many times since, but the honest truth is that the small band of people who set up Pride Scotland in 1994 and ran the first march and festival in 1995 only managed it because we were too stupid to realise it was impossible. If any of us had had any significant events experience, or any insight into how the commercial gay scene operated, or any inkling of the sheer amount of goodwill that needed extracted from all manner of public agencies and private organisations in those days to put on a successful Pride event, we’d have just ruled it out.

One of the earliest meetings we had was with Tim Hopkins, now well-known as Director of the Equality Network and the tireless architect of many of the legal advances LGBT people have made in Scotland over the last 20 years, but then, as it happened, one of D’s lecturers in the Department of Computer Science. So he was nabbed after a lecture, invited over for pasta, and quizzed about Lark in the Park (which he had helped organise a couple of years previously) and whether the idea of an actual Pride march and festival in Edinburgh – and then, we were determined even from the start, swapping to Glasgow every other year – was feasible. Yes, he said. And I’ll help. We were on.

It’s been tricky 25 years on to piece together exactly in what order things happened after that. There were certainly long meetings in various front rooms. There was definitely a public meeting in autumn 1994 in the old LGB Centre on Broughton Street – the room was filled with brilliant, motivated people, which blew us away and basically gave us our organising committee. There was a lot of bucket shaking at Fringe venues as a joint fundraiser for Crusaid and Pride. And there was a lot of bucket shaking every Friday and Saturday night in every gay and lesbian bar and venue that would let us in (which wasn’t all of them).”

https://www.equality-network.org/pride-in-scotland-history/

https://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/people/tributes-pour-after-founding-member-edinburghs-pride-movement-passed-away-aged-63-3078909

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duncan_Campbell_(journalist)