LL LIFE
Lifting spirits with Spirit Level
©Steph Gray
©U
nsp
las
h Im
age
s
By AIDAN AIDAN CRISP CRISP By
A
self-help group for Liverpool’s LGBT community has been maintaining its support activities despite the
pandemic. The ‘Spirit Level Transgender Support Group’ provides help for people with gender identity issues, and has continued to do so throughout the past year The support group, which has existed for more than 10 years, usually has face to face meetings where trans people from Liverpool can come and seek advice. However, due to the pandemic, the meetings have been conducted over Zoom since March last year. Steph, who asked for her full name to be withheld to protect her privacy, has been chair of the
16
group for two years, and said: “We still have meetings twice a month, so we’ve maintained the usual meetings schedule that we would’ve had prior to the pandemic.” The group has faced a loss of attendees, as many members are unable to join the meetings due to living in a household where their families aren’t aware of them being transgender. She added: “There are a number of trans people who are not able to attend the Zoom meetings, because of their cirumstances at home. “It’s frustrating, we can’t help them. They would normally come along to a meeting and be themselves, talk about themselves, but they clearly can’t, particularly if they haven’t come out to family. “We had a meeting last night where we had 10 people there.
“A number of the members are quite shy about going online for various reasons. When we normally have our face-to-face meetings, we can have up to twice that number.” Steph hopes that the meetings can return to normal this summer. Other ways that the group has been offering help is through a Messenger service, where people can contact the group and talk to somebody about their problems.
A
nother issue that the group has faced due to COVID-19 is the cancellation of Liverpool Pride. Steph said: What we’ve normally done in the past, is we usually go on the march or meet up with one of the other charities and march with them. The group would also have an in-
formation table in one of the event marquees. Miss Gray addressed transphobia in Liverpool. She said: “I would say that it’s less common in Liverpool, Liverpool society does tend to be more tolerant. “Whether that’s because Liverpool is a much more open city and is quite cosmopolitan in many ways (I’m not sure). We’ve always had issues with everyone else, so I think we can be a bit protective about people in our community, whether they be gay, straight or trans. “When I came out as trans, where I used to drink, I had no issues whatsoever with the regulars in there. If anyone did come in who started to give me abuse, others would jump in and say ‘Get out the door’.”
