In a sign of the times – or perhaps, impending apocalypse – EastEnders has cast its first transgender character in the BBC show’s 30-year history. Even better, depending on how you feel about Armageddon, Kyle will be played by Riley Carter Millington, a young trans man in his first major acting gig. Well, I say good for him. And good for EastEnders too. Good for all of us, frankly, and by all of us I mean society, not just trans people. You want to live in a more equal world? That includes equality for trans people: legal rights, access to medical care and varied but authentic media representation.

As far as I’m concerned, Kyle’s entrance into EastEnders is a cultural landmark on a par with the show’s first gay character in the 80s or Brookside’s groundbreaking lesbian kiss in the 90s. Pop culture and progress go hand in hand. As a long-time fan of the show, I didn’t think that executive producer Dominic Treadwell-Collins could top bringing Kathy back from the grave, but he’s managed it.

Back when I was a student in Brighton and dealing, like many trans people still do, with family rejection, street harassment and mental health issues, the only time you ever saw a trans person on television was if they were being ridiculed in comedies or pointed at and pitied in those awful late-night shock docs. You didn’t see trans people on the news. You didn’t see trans people in drama. You didn’t see trans people doing anything, really, that suggested we were anything other than objects of ridicule. Most people turn on the TV as a form of escapism, a welcome distraction from the troubles and tedium of everyday life, but trans people didn’t even have that privilege until very recently. If you were depressed and too anxious to leave the house for weeks on end due to discrimination, would you want to watch people like you mocked for entertainment?

Thank the telly gods that times have changed. Last night, BBC2 aired the series finale of Boy Meets Girl, the first sitcom in the world, as far as I’m aware, to feature a trans character in the lead role. Star of the show Rebecca Root is trans herself and has earned warm praise across the media, with fans at the Radio Times and this newspaper to name but a few. A second series seems likely.

Annie Wallace will be playing a teacher on Hollyoaks.

I can also tell you – here, for the first time – that Hollyoaks is set to introduce its first continuing transgender character later this month, a teacher, played by Annie Wallace. Wallace, too, is trans, although Hollyoaks – which quietly had Rebecca Root on the show in a non-trans role earlier this year – isn’t making a song and dance about it. Wallace has been acting on British television for the past five years in what we call “stealth” – keeping your mouth shut about your transition. She felt she had to. In 2015 she’s changed her mind.

Also, this week, a series of films about trans people aired on Channel 4 that were made by trans filmmakers Fox Fisher and Lewis Hancox. Their production company, Lucky Tooth, is the first of its kind. Five years ago trans people didn’t create media on any level. Now we are making television, starring in it and writing about it in the paper the next day. Five years ago, the narrative of what it meant to be trans was completely controlled by people who were not themselves trans. Back then journalists could attack the trans community with impunity, knowing there weren’t any trans people with a voice to challenge them. If you can think of a better definition of bullying, let me know in the comments.

So what changed?

Five years ago, almost to the day, Sonia Burgess, one of Britain’s leading human rights lawyers, was pushed under a train at London’s King’s Cross station. Known professionally as David Burgess, she specialised in immigration law and her warmth, kindness and brilliant legal mind earned her the respect of not only her peers in the legal world but also the vulnerable people whose lives she saved. You’d have learned very little of Sonia’s worth, however, reading reports of her death at the time. Headlines such as “Transvestite pushed under train” dehumanised someone who had spent her entire working life celebrating the humanity of others. The journalist Nathalie McDermott witnessed Sonia’s death up close and, after tweeting about the tragedy, was inundated with phone calls from hacks eager to know what Sonia looked like and if she “could tell it was a man wearing a wig”.

Disgusted and shocked with the way the media handled Sonia’s death, McDermott decided she wanted to help the trans community: “It’s a really intimate thing to be there at someone’s death, especially someone you don’t know. After her death I learned she’d changed the face of immigration law in the UK and I realised I’d never really given that much thought to the issue of transgender people before. I felt really protective of her and how she was being portrayed in the press, so I wanted to find a way to honour her.”

I was steeped in traditional activism back then – the sort where you shout at people and tell them what they’re doing wrong. That sort of advocacy has its place, of course, but when you’re part of a tiny minority, as trans people are, boycotts and anger are of limited use. McDermott offered to share her skills working with marginalised social groups, so we set up All About Trans, a project to connect media professionals with young trans people in informal settings. We don’t preach, we don’t accuse and we don’t even really do trans 101. We just let you look into the whites of our eyes.

It may sound corny but so what? It works. Although we never go in with an agenda for creative outcomes, if you put people with stories in the same room as writers, filmmakers and journalists, it’s inevitable. Over the past few years All About Trans and our team of volunteers have met with the makers of Hollyoaks, Emmerdale, EastEnders and the BBC’s comedy department, to name a few. The explosion in the representation of trans people on your screens this autumn is no coincidence but, rather, the results of a determined campaign to see better media portrayals of trans people in the British media. Things are improving all around us regardless – you only have to look at the US and Laverne Cox, for example – but if Sonia Burgess hadn’t been killed five years ago, I doubt the pace of change would be as impressive in the UK as we see today.

I’ll be celebrating when Riley or, rather, Kyle arrives at Walford East tube station later this month, but my joy will be tempered with the memory of Sonia’s tragic departure at King’s Cross – and the unlikely legacy she left the trans community.