Chichester's trans community comes together for city's first ever march

Melissa and other members of the trans community marched through Chichester city centre bearing flags and banners.

Members of Chichester’s trans community came together over the weekend to take part in a visibility march through the city centre.

Organiser Melissa Hamilton said this could be the first march of its kind here in Chichester, and hopes it will have a snowball effect: leading to a stronger, louder and more vocal trans community, empowered to fight for what it needs.

"We started out at Priory Park at 11.30, made some speeches and then walked down through to the market cross,” she said. “The key word here is visibility. We wanted to show that we’re here, that there are trans people in Chichester. And if even one person who needed to see us, watched us walk past, saw us with those trans flags, and felt a little glimmer of hope, that’s an absolutely huge success."

International Trans Visibility day isn’t actually until March 31, but Melissa said she wanted to get the ball rolling as soon as possible, providing care, support, solidarity and community to members of the trans community in Chichester who are suffering now.

For her, and for many of those who joined her on Saturday’s march, the suffering experienced by trans people up and down the country is an urgent problem, which needs to be addressed as soon as possible.

"The systems at the moment are failing trans people and non-binary people on a fundamental level. Because we are 1 per cent of the population, we are seen as almost too small to cater to.”

That’s why, citing long waiting lists and a lack of knowledge from some GPs, Melissa is also campaigning to introduce a gender GP to Chichester.

Melissa says Gender GPs can work with trans patients on the hormonal aspects of treatment: “What they do is they work with you on your hormones. They don’t offer voice coaching, or breast implants or breast reduction surgery, it’s all about the hormones. Which is a really key thing. For me, starting hormones had a big impact on my depression.”

In order to keep up all the positive momentum she’s built from Saturday, then, Melissa is also looking forward to more events in the near future, with a similar march on Trans Visiblity Day itself next year, and, before, that, the Transgender Day of Remembrance next month.