Transcript:
Fox Fisher: I'm here in Stirling to meet Mridal Wadwha, who is a trans woman who also runs a rape crisis centre. Let's go say hello.
Mridul Wadwha: I am Mridul Wadwha. I am trans and a Piscean. A mother. A wife. Half zoroastrian, half Hindu. I'm an immigrant. I run a rape crisis centre. I'm a feminist. I'm a boss. And I speak my mind even when I shouldn't.
FF: Mridul, tell me a bit about where we are and how you came about to work here.
MW: This is the Forth Valley Rape Crisis Centre and I am the Manager. So the centre works with anyone over the age of thirteen who has experienced sexual violence. And anyone who is affected by it. The centre is part of the rape crisis movement. We are a woman only space in the sense that only women work in the centre. Although we work with anyone who's been affected respective of gender identity. I think one of the key things that I'm proud of that has happened in this movement is the increased awareness about forced marriage in Scotland. And how we worked pretty hard to make sure that the law was implemented effectively. Most of our services, violence against women services, largely cater to white, cis women. But there are others that do naturally come to our spaces. You can't expect people to know that you are inclusive if you're not explicit of your inclusion. So, I think our journey around inclusion as a violence against women movement is ... we are getting there, but I think there are some key things that we have to do. And consistently, because equality is too fragile. I spend most of my life thinking about the status of minority ethnic women and migrant women in particular. Any minority who experiences oppression, you expect to be treated badly wherever you go. So you steel yourself up for that. So when you say: "We are inclusive" .. well. you have to show what you are doing not to treat people badly. Can you connect with people's humanity? For me it is an investment in attitude. We need to expose ourselves to difference so that difference is normal. We just dare not to think of ourselves as different.
FF: Is there a personal reason for getting into this line of work?
MW: Staying on has been personal because it is pretty clear to me that I was the only transwoman in the women's aid movement. And I wasn't even sure that if I had been hired, if they had known that I was trans. When I came out individually to various colleagues, there was this disbelief: "Oh, you can't be trans". You know, what does a trans person look like? What does a cis woman look like? How do we know? Over a period of time it became more and more important within my work in this movement to be a transwoman. My activism wasn't around trans activism because really what mattered to me more was my status as an immigrant woman and the women I worked with who came from immigrant backgrounds. It means I've had the opportunity to deliver training across this country and so invariably I would come out in all of my training, not just for people to change their perception of what an immigrant woman looks like or who she is, but also what a transperson looks like. So I think staying in it has become a personal thing.
FF: So tell me what it was like growing up for you and who was the first transperson you met?
MW: So I grew up in India. To me now I would say it was like living in a war zone. And it really came home to me, I really understood when people started speaking about the civil war in Syria and the use of snipers. That's the analogy I use. A sniper would hit me every day, multiple times. From name calling to sexual violence, all of that happened, all the time. When I became an adult, when I began to think a lot more practically and seriously about my transition it was empowering to have grown up in a country where there is a recognition of the third gender or the non-binary in a sense. A transperson I identified with? I don't think I ever met one. I didn't have any resources, I didn't know where to go. And then I remember that I chanced upon this article. A journalist had written an article about how they had set up a helpline for transpeople. So I went to meet this journalist and they put
me in touch with the local hospital's psychiatric unit. It was a complete nightmare, where this guy essentially told me "I don't believe you're trans because you would have insisted on going to a girls' school. Why did you go to a boys' school?" And all that sort of shit. It was like 'I am trans I'm not stupid'. But eventually I found some doctors elsewhere in a different city, but it was so expensive and trying to find a job and keep a job was a challenge. So when I was 17-18 and I made a decision after a failed suicide attempt. I wanted to thrive. I just didn't want to ... manage. So I think coming to that decision was very transformative. I just said to people: "This is who I am, take it or leave it." I got two gifts. One was that I grew up in a household where my parents, not in any every day way ever told me not to be who I was, this effeminate child. But I also grew up to a spiritual outlook that doesn't have a concept of guilt in the same way. I think that has been the biggest gift. I don't know what it feels like to be guilty or ashamed of who you are. I have been lucky somehow to find myself in places where I was able to influence. And I think it is therefore important if you have been given this opportunity by fate to use that effectively. It's a responsibility to be your honest and true self at all times. I have the gift of being the eternal minority. From growing up in a mixed faith background to being a transwoman; to being a person of colour here, and a migrant. What is important for me therefore in doing this work is to try and do something to make sure that others who come after me can come on their own merit. But I think what is most important right now is for more diverse voices to be heard. Whether it is the survivors of sexual violence, or my colleagues who do a lot better work than I do. I need to make sure that my colleagues who I manage here, that their ideas really come to fruition. That is the most important reason why I do this work. What I am really interested in is to make sure everyone that goes through here feels that they have a opportunity to express what is really going on for them. That's why it is important, because this movement, particularly the feminist women's movement that is built on the history of so many women who have transformed. One of the dangers of being in this movement sometimes is that we don't know when to let more people sit around the table. And I think I do know the importance of it. Because I just don't want to be the token trans BAME woman in Scotland for many things in many spaces. Hopefully that will not be forever, and hopefully people won't call me to speak at events anymore. Because I think that is important too. We have to become redundant. That's why it's important.
[A film by Fox Fisher and Owl]