During the shoot development of images with
Tina, a retired lorry driver from Basildon, Essex, we went for a brief walk around
her neighbourhood. Tina was fully dressed in a dramatic red sparkling number and red
heals. I am always impressed by the courage of anyone to be themselves, it reminds me of my own painful process of extricating
myself from my hetero-normative cocoon as a young gay man.
The ‘trans’ experience is similar but not
the same, gayness cannot always be 'seen', with sexuality there can be some relief from the
relentless attention when we step outside the heteronormative. The trans experience demands at some point that we will slip on a cute little number, a cheap wig and some lippy and nip down to Tesco and hope to be accepted by being ignored. We all
should take responsibility for the effect of any unwanted attention on our
fellow humans even if our motives are decent but it is hard not to be distracted
by a shiny object in all this mundanity. The emotional response to negative, unwanted attention
affects us in different ways, some of us withdraw into isolation and depression,
others find the strength to be ourselves and magnify our personas further as a
polite fuck you to society; there are many responses to the journey towards
self-realisation.
Although we live in a relatively free thinking society where we can ‘be’ and behave however we choose, there are
still forces externally and internally to be defeated and I think
anyone that does not rely too much on the scaffolding of conventional cultural
representation to define themselves should be celebrated as an inspiration for
us all.
So ‘coming out’ in the area we live, when
anger and frustration at society can easily be mis-directed towards difference,
is not without its perils.
These pictures show Tina walking me towards
the scene of the Guy Fawkes night bonfire where the flames were fed by the
children of the area, pulling up the fence around her property. No one else’s
fences were touched. What I see as a threat to individualism and to Tina personally, she brushes off casually, there is no
sense of stress or bitterness in her and she is matter of fact about the
experience. This is normal for her.
Tina on Burnt Ground (_7285) © Richard Ansett 2016 |
Tina on Burnt Ground (_7287) © Richard Ansett 2016 |
Tina on Burnt Ground (_7294) © Richard Ansett 2016 |
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