This news isn’t exactly hot off the press, but as I don’t think anyone will have noticed when it happened in February I think it’s worth bringing up now. The world’s first transgender MP, Georgina Beyer, has resigned. In her valedictory speech she highlighted the ‘nature and character of our country and its fairness, in my belief, that we can look at a person and put aside some of the foibles and human frailties that occur in all or most of us at some time in our life, no matter what our beginnings have been’.

No, this wasn’t Britain - can you imagine it here? I certainly can’t - not in an atmosphere where it’s still risky to come out as gay or bisexual. This was in New Zealand, which is certainly not a bastion of liberalism but at least doesn’t suffer from the scourge of the tabloids which I think makes a big difference.

So I was all prepared to write a post about how the world now has no transgender MPs, and whether this matters or means anything, but a spot of research brought up the gloriously named Vladimir Luxuria who is a Communist member of the Italian parliament, as well as transgender local body politicians in India and Japan. In the States, however, when a local government official, Steve Stanton, disclosed he was undergoing sex reassignment surgery he was instantly fired.

The interesting thing about both Georgina Beyer and Vladimir Luxuria is that they came into politics from an acting career - not a bad training you might think - and also both having been sex workers. I find it encouraging that such an unusual route into politics is possible. But I wonder if Beyer was overly optimistic in suggesting that ‘we can look at a person and put aside their foibles and human frailties’ and judge them on their abilities. I’m touched by her expectation that voters will accept, and look past, human frailties in their elected officials (if they don’t affect how they do their job.) It seems like a more humane kind of politics, and if this is what comes from electing a broader range of representatives, then long may transgender MPs continue to flourish.

Filed under: gender on May 3rd, 2007