Ruth, 22, was born in a male body but knewfrom the age of 16 that she wanted to be a woman. She describes her hormone treatment and surgery, and how she feels now.
Holly Black commented:
It's scurrilous that you include trangender on your website, the clear innuendo being that transgender people somehow have mental health issues or need to be involved in psychiatry. Transfolk do not need this kind of smearing by an organization that claims to be for equality. As a matte of human rights please take down the pages on transgender. You don't have mental health pages on homosexuality, you should not have them on transgenderism either.
Sue Waterhouse- National Gender Programme Lead replies:
The Transgendered page appears under the Gender Equality part of the website because it is clearly included in the Gender Equality legislation (Public Sector Gender Duty). Including Transgender on our website does not suggest that Transgender in itself is a mental illness and we certainly do not believe this in the slightest. Similarly being a women or from a Black and minority ethnic group in itself does not mean you have a mental illness. Our organisation focuses on inequality and we recognise that Transgendered individuals are among the most discriminated in society. There are clear links between discrimination and poor mental health. Our aim is to raise the profile of the negative impact of inequality and discrimination. The main aim of our programmes is to improve mental health services and their response to diverse groups. In developing the page we sought views from a Transgender organisation to ensure that what we highlighted on the website was not inacurate or misleading. We are sorry that this has caused you concern and will be happy to review the page to consider whether we can make it clearer that Transgender in itself is not a mental illness.'