I felt it was also appropriate to pay our respects to Eleanor Lister, who was always in the forefront of organising Sydney's Day of Remembrance and active in many other ways in support of her transgendered sisters and brothers. Eleanor died in May 2008 and will be missed. Her image is on the front cover.

There were a number of descriptions of observance submitted for publication and I have selected from these in an attempt to show how widespread the observance has become, and the variety of different ways of remembering our dead. Dawn services are becoming popular, as are night vigils.

This is not a conventional memorial day which celebrates the sacrifice of those who died for us in various wars. Our war continues and it is sadly one-sided. It is not often that any sort of retribution is exacted on the perpetrators. The cases of Brandon Teena and Gwen Araujo are rare exceptions but the case of Rita Hester, whose murder prompted the first Day of Remembrance, has never been solved.

Queensland is establishing a research study into homophobia and transphobia and various other studies have been carried out (although some of these have never been published) but clearly there is a growing awareness of the problem of violence against G.L.B.T.I. people. An example of this awareness is that our Day of Remembrance brought to the attention of the Senate this year and duly recorded in Hansard.

Phinn has suggested that I tell you about my experience as a Living Book. This was my third go at the game and took place on 8 October in Martin Place, Sydney, for the Mental Health Association. Being a Living Book is a bit like speed dating. The Living Books sit at little tables and members of the public can "borrow" a book for half an hour. This means they come and sit opposite a "book" and ask questions and, if they wish, make statements. The whole session only goes on for two hours so that normally one would not speak to more than four people, although sometimes they turn up with a friend for moral support. My own feeling is that the session could go on for much longer without unduly exhausting the "books" but maybe that is because I enjoy chatting with people, especially if I can tell them something about transgender. There was a variety of "books" on this occasion, in addition to the Transgendered Woman (me), there was the Triple Animal, a man who had played Rugby for Argentina, Australia and Tahiti and saw himself as a Puma, a Wallaby and a Topo.

There was a couple with gay and lesbian children (one of each). They were there to talk about P.F.L.A.G. (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays). There was an Androgynous Christian Anarchist (our much loved norrie mAy welby) who worked with the Sex Workers' Outreach Project (S.W.O.P.) for years and spends time visiting banged-up asylum seekers at Villawood " as the most reachable, persistent and objectionable manifestation of the right-wing authoritarianism crippling humanity".

There was a drag queen/community activist/performer, Tobin Saunders, possibly better known as Vanessa Wagner. There was a lesbian clergywoman, who has written fifteen books and won the Australian Human Rights Medal. There was a woman who has been living with obsessive compulsive disorder since she was eight and another who is bipolar and revels in her heightened perception of reality. And there were more, but you get the idea. People with a story to tell, a life to share, a lifestyle to defend against ignorance and prejudice.

This time it was slightly different because Julie McCrossin was there. Julie is an activist who spends a lot of her time working for charities. She is a practised public speaker and communications expert. She interviewed three of us on stage between sessions and I think this was an excellent stratagem. It meant that instead of dealing with four enquirers in depth I was able to make a connection with something like a hundred people as Julie interviewed me. Julie asked sensible leading questions and the audience responded well.

In the last few weeks of the year I also spoke to a class of around ninety Community Services students at Nirimba TAFE, a post-graduate seminar group at Sydney University from various disciplines who were completing a postgraduate Bioethics qualification.

On 20 October I interviewed Penny Sharpe at Parliament House and on 23 October I took part in the formal opening of the G.L.B.T. collection housed in the Terrigal branch of the Wyong Shire Library. Busy, busy.

I also spent time on 11 November at the Anti-Discrimination Board's Sex and Gender Diversity Community Consultation. This group meets several times a year and includes representatives from the A.D.B., the N.S.W. Registry of Birth Deaths and Marriages, the Attorney-General's Department, the Police, the Gender Centre, various shelters, the Australian Human Rights Commission and some interested individuals who come in their own right. Currently we are talking about identity documents and the problems faced by pre-op M.T.F.s in gaining access to female shelters.

On 1 November the Gender Centre hosted a mini-forum which had been advertised through the Centre. About a dozen individuals from the transgender community met to exchange views and to help Catherine Wilson formulate ideas for a paper to be presented to a "Women in Psychology" conference in December. I have seen an early draft of this paper and hope we will be able to bring it, or parts of it, to you in a later edition of Polare, but for the present I will deal only with aspects which struck me as being of vital concern to the transgenders present.

Perhaps the most prevalent of these was the persistent problem for transgenders who have transitioned and find they cannot find work, or in some cases cannot hold it even if they find it. A few years ago there was an employment agency which advertised for clients in Polare and made every effort to find work for them. Maybe we need an agency like this again, but there is also a need for employers to accept responsibility for a measure of affirmative action. In the United States there was an Employment Market recently at which a number of large employers co-operated to provide employment for transgendered employees. Perhaps we could do something similar in Sydney? There are many companies whose employees number in the thousands, and whose staff positions range from the unskilled to the highly qualified. Surely they could be persuaded to make a small percentage of these positions available to transgendered applicants?

In the United States there are annual conferences where those seeking employment and those looking for employees come together. Resumes of those seeking employment are filed in one section and job descriptions needing candidates are filed in another. Bookable space is provided for employer/employee interviews and the system works well. We should try it.

Another outcome of our mini-forum was less predictable. A number of those present felt that it might be time for T.I. to distinguish itself from G.L.B. I agree. T.I. are not expressions of sexuality, whereas G.L.B. are. I am not saying we should not support G.L.B. to gain their human, social and legal rights, merely that it may be time for the general public (and the authorities) to recognise and accept our differences. Transgender and Intersex will always involve a vital need for medical attention and possible identity document changes which are usually irrelevant to the needs of G.L.B.

Polare is published in Australia by The Gender Centre Inc. which is funded by the Department of Community Services under the S.A.A.P. Program and supported by the N.S.W. Health Department through the AIDS and Infectious Diseases Branch. Polare provides a forum for discussion and debate on gender issues. Advertisers are advised that all advertising is their responsibility under the Trade Practices Act. Unsolicited contributions are welcome, though no guarantee is made by the Editor that they will be published, nor any discussion entered into. The editor reserves the right to edit such contributions without notification. Any submission which appears in Polare may be published on our internet site. Opinions expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect those of the Editor, The Gender Centre Inc.I, the Department of Community Services or the N.S.W. Department of Health.