CARIMAC Times 2016: The JREAM Edition Journalists Reviving Awareness of what Matters | Page 94

Growing up, Burton said she did not know
the words gay, transgender or bisexual, or the
depths of their meaning.
The 2014 Gleaner-commissioned Bill Johnson
poll revealed that, 72 per cent of Jamaicans do
not support equal rights for transgender people.
The figures for other LGBTQ people were just
as jarring; 68 per cent did not support equal
rights for gay men, and 65 per cent did not
support equal rights for lesbians.
“I knew within myself, I knew I was a woman.
I am a woman,” Burton said, “I like to say
woman, because people will say, since you’re
transgender, you’re not yet a woman. So even
if you go and do your sexual reassignment
surgery, get a vagina, you’re still not a woman
because you’re not born with it. So I don’t like
to be called transgender.”

Burton said she had an image of who she
wanted to be when she was young, and how
she wanted to be seen. She adorned herself
with her sister’s clothes and her mother’s heels,
even sported her mother’s slippers to the shop.
Her parents acceded to their child’s ‘quirks’,
but the scrutiny of other parents became too
strong. They said, “Jermaine is not behaving
the way society dictates a man should behave.”
In time, the streets grew into a battlefield, where
her neighbours hurled insults and nicknames.
At home and at Church, her mother’s “prayer
warriors,” as Burton called them, descended
with a storm of prayers in the hope to “save”
Burton from her “demons”.
While the warriors raged, a battle raged within
Burton as well — doubts arose from her religious
upbringing and society’s expectations.

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Transgender pride flag