Claudia McKay, a transgender activist from Wellington, New Zealand, and President of Agender New Zealand, a leading advocacy organization for the transgender community in Aotearoa, has dedicated much of her life to supporting transgender people and fighting for their rights. Before becoming deeply involved in advocacy, Claudia spent 35 years working as an artist, painting and exhibiting her work. She began her transition at the age of 40, and her personal experiences, together with her determination to improve the lives of others, helped shape her commitment to the transgender community. In 1996, Claudia and her then-wife Janet became involved in establishing Agender New Zealand, an organization that grew far beyond their original expectations.
As President of Agender New Zealand, Claudia has worked to raise awareness of the challenges facing transgender people, from inadequate access to gender-affirming healthcare and the high cost of surgery to difficulties with identity documents and the treatment of transgender prisoners. She believes that advocacy must go hand in hand with practical assistance, emotional support, and reliable information for those who need it. Throughout her work, she has also sought to give the transgender community a stronger, more unified voice in public life and politics. In our interview, Claudia discusses the progress and continuing obstacles facing transgender people in New Zealand, the importance of supportive relationships, her experiences of coming out publicly as an artist, and her hopes for the future. Her message to transgender people is simple yet powerful: believe in yourself, make informed decisions, and remember that you are equal to everyone else.
Monika: Welcome, Claudia! It is a pleasure and an honor to have you with us today.
Claudia: Hello Monika, and thank you for this opportunity.
Monika: Could you tell me a little about yourself?
Claudia: I am 57 years of age, born and raised in Wellington, New Zealand. When I left high school, I spent the next 35 years as an artist. I painted and exhibited all that time, and I married Janet in 1995. We were together for 12 or 13 years, and although we are now separated, we are still very close. It was Janet who came home one day with the idea that would eventually become Agender NZ. I began my transition at the age of 40 and have not had surgery. I have nothing against it, I just never had enough money at one time and am always spending what I do have on clothes and shoes. My current work for Agender is unpaid, so I work part-time as a rental property inspector and also do some cleaning and gardening.
Monika: You have been involved in transgender advocacy for many years. What challenges do transgender people in New Zealand face today?
Claudia: Challenges always depend on where you are. Those in New Zealand are not as difficult as, say, those in Uganda, but you deal with what you have to do. Probably the biggest problem is our health system. Our country is divided into about 20 District Health Boards (DHBs for short). These are bulk funded individually, and as they are controlled by locally elected boards, they make their own decisions on how the funding is spent.
The result of this is that the transgender community is usually near or at the bottom of the list of importance. This is less obvious in the five main cities, but the regional areas are poorly served, either with ignorance or, in some cases, outright hostility. An attempt was made to do away with this system in the late ’90s, but locals who saw control of their local hospitals disappearing reacted with a backlash that made the government of the day backtrack very quickly. What it means for us is inconsistent treatment and often the necessity for people to move to the cities. This is a tough nut to crack.
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| Rally in support of the Gender Identity Bill, Parliament grounds, 2004. |
Monika: Are there other issues beyond healthcare that affect the community?
Claudia: Other issues are progressing. It is becoming easier to change identity documents, but there is resistance regarding birth certificates, although I can see a time when this will be overcome. Youth are already creating problems for the system. They are savvier than ever before. The internet gives them access to information many of us could only dream of at their age, they know what they want, and they want it now. This is putting, and will continue to put, more pressure on systems that are simply not ready to deal with the rising tide of young people wanting to transition.
In addition, our prison system is struggling to deal with years of male chauvinist control, and while there have been some small changes recently, it still has a long way to go. I do see more enlightened people entering the prison service and am hopeful that change will continue on the inside, combined with pressure at the government level. There are many more issues that affect the community. Talk to 20 trans people and you will get 20 different issues, each equally important to the individual responding.
Monika: You are the President of Agender New Zealand. How does the organization support transgender people and their families?
Claudia: When we started in 1996, we thought we might have a few people get together from time to time for a meal. Boy, did we underestimate! What we do, aside from lobbying and suchlike, depends on what the individuals who come to us actually want, and this is as diverse as one could expect. My one rule of thumb is to say yes to any request and then work out how we can make it happen. Common requests are basic questions like ‘Where do I start?’ and ‘What do hormones do?’ While this information is available on the internet, many people need to hear it directly from real people with life experience.
Monika: Can you share a recent example of Agender’s help in practice?
Claudia: A recent example of what we can do: I visited a trans person in prison, and she related to me how she earns a little money working in the prison laundry. She sent a supposed friend on the outside all her money to buy her some underwear and other items that could not otherwise be obtained. The friend took the money and disappeared. This trans person was a proud individual who was relating the reasons for her lack of trust rather than expecting anything. She even said her ex-friend must have needed the money more than her. When I left the prison, I went shopping for her and have just sent her a selection of items she needed. As I have said, we will try to help in any way we can: practical, emotional, informative, and anything and everything in between.
Monika: In one of your interviews, you spoke about inadequate public health funding for gender realignment surgeries (GRS) over the past five years in New Zealand. How serious is this problem?
Claudia: Whether it remains a problem depends on how our Ministry of Health (MoH) responds to the current situation. For many years the MoH has provided two or three publicly funded MtF surgeries per year and one FtM in the same period. This sounds OK in principle, but the reality is a little different, because if a surgery is available in New Zealand, then it must be done here. The FtM surgery cannot be done here, but for many years a Christchurch surgeon, Peter Walker, has performed MtF surgery, so all the government funding was spent with him. This would have been fine if he had been providing good work at a good price, but he certainly was not. His technique was outdated, invasive, and prone to complications. In addition, his manner with patients was very male and patronizing, and he expected those who had the surgery to have relations only with men, and to have them regularly.
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| Speaking at the Transgender Day of Remembrance, 2005. |
Monika: How did patients respond to that situation?
Claudia: Not surprisingly, people voted with their feet and went overseas, most commonly to Thailand, where experienced, highly qualified surgeons performed penile inversion in world-class hospitals at far less cost than Peter Walker. For many years we pressed the MoH to provide some choice, but our requests were always referred back to the ‘available in New Zealand’ stipulation in the rules. Peter Walker has recently retired, and this leaves the MoH with a bit of a dilemma. What will they do? We are awaiting developments.
Monika: What other barriers stand in the way of accessing GRS?
Claudia: Primarily, in New Zealand we have to obtain a psych report saying we are not crazy, etc., which for most of us is a bit demeaning, as many in the community have a better understanding of themselves and what they require than the psychs do. The other barrier, which is no different from anywhere else, is cost. Somebody did the statistics a while ago on how long it may take to get to the top of the government-funded waiting list, and it was something like 20 to 25 years. Hence people find money where they can to go overseas. Some are in a financial position to afford it, while others may borrow, mortgage the house, sell themselves, or go without. Going without is most common for FtMs, who can access mastectomies here, but bottom surgery is prohibitively expensive and only available overseas.
Monika: Politics is built on interaction between interest groups pursuing their specific goals. How successful has the New Zealand transgender community been in that arena?
Claudia: The rainbow community is small here compared with countries with much larger populations, and the transgender community is only one small part of the rainbow. Many trans people are involved at many levels on a wide range of issues, and at times we do work with other interest groups, which are certainly supportive of us as a community. However, in the last few years our country has lurched to the right politically, and this has put pressure on organizations, both regarding funding and moral conservatism.
Monika: The transgender cause is usually presented together with the rest of the LGBT community. As the last letter in the abbreviation, is the transgender community able to promote its own cause within the group?
Claudia: When I came back to this role, it was apparent to me that while individual trans people were doing good work for the community, there was a lack of a consistent, unified voice from an organization that commanded respect not just from the transgender community but from the wider community as a whole.
I will be the first to admit that not all of our community have always agreed on our stances on any one topic. However, we have always taken a responsible and ethically based approach to everything we have done, and I believe that continuing to take this approach will restore Agender’s credibility, which has taken a beating in the last few years. It is interesting to note that in our first 12 years, when we made many, many TV appearances and were interviewed for many publications and on radio, we never had any negative publicity and were usually complimented by the public on our positions.
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| Speaking at the Transgender Day of Remembrance, 2006. |
Monika: Back when you were transitioning, did you have any transgender role models to follow?
Claudia: Growing up in New Zealand suburbia in the 1960s and 1970s, there was nowhere for me to look at all. There was an undercurrent nightlife revolving around a transsexual known as Carmen. She was connected to the sex industry and was the only nationally recognized transsexual. She had no appeal to me as a role model. Later, other transgender women came to prominence, such as Georgina Beyer, who was elected mayor of the rural town of Carterton and then became our first transgender Member of Parliament. However, she and others came from a similar background to Carmen, and their lives bore little resemblance to mine. When I finally transitioned, my role models were the ordinary trans people we were meeting in the support group rather than any well-known individual.
Monika: Coming out is rarely easy. What was the hardest part of it for you?
Claudia: I have been very lucky with my coming out. In the end, it was quite public, with Janet and me featured in our first television experience on ‘60 Minutes’, which introduced us to the wider world. This was in 1997, and we both believed that attitudes to our community would never change unless somebody fronted up and presented an alternative face for trans people to what the world had been exposed to until then. The program included filming at an exhibition of my paintings that included a number of self-portraits of myself as Claudia, and this was scary. I had a modest reputation as a painter and had no idea if this exhibition and publicity would destroy my career. I was fortunate: it was received well, and I sold more paintings than I had ever sold before.
Monika: How did your family react?
Claudia: The family was a little different. Initially there was some hostility, but mostly bewilderment. I have two brothers and two sisters and have to say that the sisters dealt with it better than my brothers, but today all just accept me as I am, even if they do not fully understand it all. My parents were elderly when I came out, and surprisingly my father dealt with it better than my mother. They have both since died, but I believe that in the end they were both reconciled with the change. I had been married in my early 20s and had a daughter from that union, who is now 34. She was in her teens when I came out, and I wrote to her in advance of the TV program. Unfortunately, I think she had been fed a lot of stuff from her mother, and she said in her reply a lot of hurtful things, as teenagers are wont to do. She knows where I am and that my door is always open, and I would welcome her with open arms.
Monika: You have mentioned Janet several times. What did her support mean to you during that period?
Claudia: I was lucky to marry the most supportive person in 1995. Janet was my closest friend and equal, who shared my transition and all the first years of Agender. I could not have done any of it without her, and her story is forever entwined with mine, despite our now living apart for six years.
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| With Joy Liddicott from the Human Rights Commission speaking at the Transgender Day of Remembrance, 2006. |
Monika: Are you active in politics, and do you take part in any lobbying campaigns?
Claudia: In the past, I have been very active in politics and have always voted for the Labour Party, but I am finding it harder these days to distinguish right from left, as most parties seem to want to appeal to the middle ground, where significant change is frowned upon. Our nation has been at the forefront in so many areas in the past that it saddens me that few, including our Prime Minister, are willing to stick their necks out and take stances on issues that the world will notice. As an example, New Zealand should have been the first country to introduce marriage equality, not the thirteenth.
Monika: Do you think transgender women can make a difference in politics?
Claudia: Any trans person can make a difference in politics, but it takes an incredibly thick skin, a personality that can transcend the trans identity and appeal to as many people as possible, and a commitment to do the things they believe in. I toyed with the idea of entering politics a few years ago, but my close-up exposure to the toxic environment of parliament was enough to put me off. Having said that, we have an extremely able transgender woman, Kelly Ellis, standing for parliament in this year’s election, and I believe she has all the qualities I described that will make a difference for all in politics.
Monika: What role does love play in your life?
Claudia: The big L word that no one likes to talk about. We all want and need to give and receive love in all its forms. That is simply a human characteristic, and I am not immune from it. I have been married twice, and the second time, with Janet, was the most complete time of my life. I admit that I am lucky to have had that, because I am aware that many transgender people never experience it.
Monika: Do you think it is harder for transgender people to find a partner?
Claudia: Most men and women want one or the other gender as their partner, and for those of us who take a position somewhere in between, the numbers who may be accepting of us diminish rapidly. I have not had a partner for more than six years, and I am willing to admit that at times it can be very lonely. As a result, I have filled my life with work that occupies me but does not provide the completeness I described earlier. I am not a closed shop and am always open to the possibility of a relationship with a woman who is accepting, but I have been spoiled by knowing what a good relationship can be, and I am not willing to settle for anything less.
Monika: What is your view on transgender beauty pageants?
Claudia: I have no great opinion one way or the other regarding them. I have never been someone who would be a candidate for entry. However, I am conscious that they can reinforce stereotypes that can be demeaning, and from that aspect I do have reservations.
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| Speaking at Agender’s 10th birthday celebrations in the grand hall at Parliament Buildings, 2006. |
Monika: Many transgender women share their stories in memoirs. Have you ever thought about writing a book of your own?
Claudia: It has been suggested to me a number of times, but I don’t think it is in me to do it. If someone else can see it as a possibility, then I would co-operate with them, but I would not instigate it.
Monika: Are you working on any new projects at the moment?
Claudia: We are always working on projects large and small. We have a concept for a National Gender Centre that we would like to see established, but this will take more money than we can raise at present. I am convinced it will happen, as there is a growing need, and it should be there for anyone to turn to at any time. Right now I am looking at having our Lotteries funding reinstated to allow us to do more than just put band-aids on issues. Just yesterday we heard that because accounts were not provided for the time my predecessor was in charge, the Lotteries Commission will not renew our funding. Someone else’s incompetence in the past is affecting what we can do in the next 12 months, and that I find unacceptable and worthy of fighting against.
Monika: What would you recommend to transgender girls who are struggling with gender dysphoria?
Claudia: Go with what your heart tells you. Whatever choice you make, there will be things that you can consider wins and things that you have to accept as losses. Inform yourself as best you can to make decisions that are right for you. Believe in yourself and be proud that you are equal to everyone else in the world.
Monika: Claudia, thank you so much for this interview!
The main photo credits: Dominion Post.
All the photos: courtesy of Claudia McKay.
© 2014 - Monika Kowalska
