Sheila Cunningham, a trans woman from Red Deer and a UCP member to talk about Trans activism and c
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
194.37973
Summary
In this episode, I speak to trans activist, activist, speaker and activist advocate, about her experience as a transgender woman in politics. We discuss what it's like being a transgender person in politics, the challenges of being a trans person in the political system, and the benefits of being involved in politics as a person of colour.
Transcript
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well i guess part of why i'm involved at all is to show that not everybody that's trans is hard
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on the political left you can be in the conservative side and that that's fine and but
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there's so few people that are there and part of getting involved and going to events was to see
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how many other trans people are there very few there are very few that are evident in what they
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look like but people have been really respectful lots of people even regardless of if they agree
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with me or or like me or whatever a lot of people ignore me i ignore them a lot of people are really
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accepting and celebratory even come up to me and go even uh mlas cabinet mesh come up and go thank
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you so much for being here for showing there's another side to the story and thank you for
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speaking up and so to hear those things to know that they're that just simply being there and
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speaking it it makes a difference to peak to that many people has really been uh worthwhile well great
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yeah it breaks the ice i mean it's not just a time when you're at the microphone up front speaking
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to the whole room but you're there i mean those are social events everybody's getting together
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uh exchanging ideas now the the you you spoke to policy proposals you made your recommendations i don't
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believe any of them went the way you recommended but you still did it respectfully but do you still feel
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uh heartened about you know how things went that day oh yes because the the what happens that the
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policies that pass become advice to the government and so by speaking about you know how is the
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government might implement it or what other issues might there be around it that goes into
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the hopper of the things that the government considers as it goes from being party policy to
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potentially government policy and so and often the concepts that come from the party they're rooted
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they're rooted in something and there's a good concept there but sometimes the uh the
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administration of the concept how to actually do it doesn't isn't going to fit with how all the
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various mechanisms of government work so just trying to put those pieces in there both both for
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members to hear because they might hear next year that well the government couldn't do certain things
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because of and like in an accountability session but also then for the government to have
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then that becomes part of the whole of the whole process