Trans woman spat at by a woman walking with her kids in Stoke-on-Trent
Fiona Wood. (Twitter)
A transgender woman called Fiona Wood has revealed that she was spat at by a woman walking with her two children near Staffordshire University in Stoke-on-Trent.
Wood, 57, said the attack – which happened in broad daylight on a busy street – was “pure hatred.”
Speaking to StokeonTrentLive, Wood said, “I was at Staffordshire University and I just went for a walk along Leek Road. It just happened without warning.
“It was done by a woman with two children. She just spat at me as she walked past. It was pure hatred.
“It’s very hard to react when something like that happens. I felt disbelief, it was total shock. Instead of going out, I just went straight home and stayed in all day.”
Hate crimes against trans people in the UK rocketed up by 81 percent in the last year.
Wood, a former president of the Staffordshire University Students Union, said she believes there is still a lot of work to be done to counter homophobia and transphobia in Stoke-on-Trent.
“It happened about five years ago, but if anything, things are getting worse for us now,” she said.
Stoke-on-Trent incident less than an hour from current Birmingham schools protests
Wood was the first trans president of a university students union and the first trans officer of the National Union of Students.
She added, “With the attitude to the community in America with Trump and his white supremacist comments and everything else, it has given some people a free reign towards discriminating against us.
“Then there is what’s happening in Birmingham in the education system.
“You get more people standing up and shouting now but we need to say that it’s OK to be different.”
Birmingham has seen protests against an LGBT-inclusive curriculum at primary schools in recent months.
On July 3, a poll by YouGov for PinkNews found that, despite the public protests, 59 percent of the UK population – including 47 percent of Conservative voters – back teaching LGBT-inclusive relationships education in schools.
