FTMs Vulnerable and Misunderstood - Barcelona conference workshop.

The workshop facilitated by Liesl Theron, Executive Director of Gender DynamiX and Tebogo Nkoana, Outreach Officer, at the International Congress on Gender identity and Human Rights in Barcelona, Spain in June 2010, was attended by few people, but it was well received, and the audience participated fully, and contributed with their own experiences.
Tebogo spoke about “Working with Diverse Communities”, which highlighted the challenges like language and culture.
“Different languages and cultures would each have their limitations and we need to find different ways of dealing with issues,” Tebogo said.
Over and above difficulties Trans people experience in society in general, they face even more challenges in the LGBT community. Those who decide they do not want to go through surgery are discriminated against, even by transsexuals who subscribe to the notion of “true transsexuals”. There is also discrimination against transgender homosexuals by other LGB people who still do not understand the difference between gender identity and sexual orientation. Facing discrimination in society as a whole, a number of transgendered youths drop out of school and society, then face even bigger problems
Added to this is the violation of their basic human rights, which they are sometimes not even aware of.  When accessing medical care, even for non-transgendered related issues, there is serious misunderstanding of the needs of a body that may seem unfamialiar and threatening to a medical proffesional.   A transgendered person coming out late in life experiences resistance from all corners. This, Tebogo said, confuses society who thinks the transgendered person wants to transition to get away from unrelated problems in their lives.
Tebogo admitted that organisations working and dealing with transgendered people are still young in South Africa, and although the Female to Male (FTM) Transgender Community is the most vocal, they are also the most vulnerable and misunderstood. People think FTMs want to transition from female to male in order to gain perceived privileges in a male world. The discrimination and violence FTMs suffer  is still largeley in the dark.
Tebogo also facilitated a workshop on Trans-national networking, during which he shared experiences of how we use networking as a tool in South Africa because a large part of the population has no internet access, and mostly uses cell phones to access social sites like Facebook and Mixit.

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