Notions such as bravery and uniqueness have been jiggling around my head for a while now. As a disabled person, from time to time people call me brave; I guess I am unique but only inasmuch as everyone is unique. But what makes a person special? I feel that I am neither brave nor special – I’m just myself. Yet I feel that I have found a person who is indeed special in Lyn: she has had to have incredible fortitude and strength in her life. For a time she lived in a scope home, but she escaped and now lives independently in her own flat. On top of this she also had the strength enough to transition from male to female. I find her incredible, and would certainly call her brave, but Lyn has repeatedly denied this – she does not call herself brave, but sees herself simply as a regular person. She says that I am brave, which, of course, is nonsense.

You see the contradiction? I used to think of my friends with MD as brave and stoic, and I guess I still do, yet Andy was just Andy, and donno is just donno: they would simply see themselves as regular guys. Bravery is a perception bestowed upon you by someone else – ultimately, all you can do is be yourself. however, the bit I’ve been mulling over is how to square this with the need to make people question their attitudes? Is what I’ve written about ‘making heads turn’ the same as ‘being yourself’?

Well, for me I think it is. As for Lyn, the fact that she questions attitudes and expands minds is irrelevant to her. Truth be told, I dress as a girl both because it feels good and because it feels good. Thus there’s nothing brave about it, and the fact that it helps people question their attitudes to disability, gender and sexuality is a byproduct which I am happy to exploit.

I’m looking at the picture, taken outside the gym, of me and Charlie in zentai suits, and asking myself why we did that. Was it political? Did we go out to ask questions or make statements? I think it was more a case of having fun screwing with people’s heads; it had nothing to do with disability – indeed, Charlie probably got more attention than I did. Thus there was nothing political or brave about it.

There are some of us who, in a way, go around shouting: ‘look at me, I’m a cripple; see how political I am.’ I object to this behaviour as crass attention-seeking, but am I guilty of it too? Am I merely being an attention seeker, congratulating myself for being all political and provocative? I don’t think so; after all, you don’t have to have c.p to be a tranny, or to wear a zentai suit. I do such things because they feel good, and the fact that they have what I call a political effect is a secondary, if rather funky, by-product. I guess I’m just being myself, and intellectualising it afterwards.