Joburg: For most people, gender and sex means one and the same thing. But try and imagine for just a moment, being a male in a female body. Or vice versa. It's an incredibly difficult concept to understand and has social taboos attached to it that can prove fatal. Broadly speaking, transgender people are individuals whose gender expression or Gender identity differs from societal expectations based on the physical gender they were born into.

To try and break through the veil of secrecy and fear that surrounds people trying to break out of a social mould, a group of men and women recently went through a process of Body Mapping at the Women's Jail on Constitutional Hill. This led to an exhibition of the body mapping. Curator of the exhibition, Kate Chisholm, explained. "It’s a way of telling individual stories using art. We first held a three-day workshop with 13 Transgendered people in various stages of transition. The first day was spent working out what they wanted say, that is, what was important to them in terms of their experiences, their problems and happiness’s." The second and third days involved the participants lying down on a piece of paper and drawing their outlines and filling in the information they wanted to share. "It was an incredible experience. They had a lot to say and it was all important," noted Chisholm.

Robert Hamblin, a board member of Gender DynamiX (an organisation which supports transgender people), was initially sceptical of the process when he was invited to take part. "It's not like sitting in a psychiatrist's office, where you talk and talk, and all your words are so subjective and open for judgement by another person. When you make a picture, it most often comes from the conscious self, and somehow it becomes a bit more of a visceral truth. And this is what happened here. With guidance from people who understood the issues, the process made it easier to tell our stories."

Sally Nettleton, of women’s rights advocacy group, Women's Net, said, "The frank, vivid and beautiful panels illuminate the experiences of trans- and gender-variant people, while at the same time celebrating their differences. Visitors are encouraged to see, read and understand transgender experiences in a subjective and compassionate way."

Alarmed at the lack of awareness across South Africa of the issues affecting transgender and gender variant people, Gerald Kraak, of The Atlantic Philanthropies, felt there was a general failure on the part of society to embrace these issues. Emphasising no studies have been done on the amount of violence Transgender people face, Kraak said, “Anecdotal evidence suggests that a large number of transgender and gender variant people have been physically or sexually assaulted, or have had reason to fear for their lives, their jobs and their families. Transgender youth are especially at risk, and are often rejected by their families once they discover they are transgender. They also may be beaten or sexually abused as a result of their gender nonconformity by siblings and parents. Transgender youth may be kicked out of their homes or forced to run away from abusive situations. This exhibition is a mouthpiece for self-expression and gives powerful voice to the experiences of transgender and gender variant people. I am proud of the work that GALA, Gender DynamiX and Women’s Net are doing to raise awareness of these issues.”

Women’s Net, The Atlantic Philanthropies and the Gay and Lesbian Archives facilitated the Body Mapping exhibition.

© Amanda Watson, 2007