Time Passes ... and
so, sadly, do Friends . .
Saturday 20th April 2013: Lucy Meadows - her impact on the
town of Accrington
Tuesday 11th June 2013: JoAnn Roberts, Cross-dressing and
trans pioneer has died-------------------------------
Lucy Meadows: How a Trans Woman's Death brought Accrington into the 21st Century
 |
| Nathan Upton, before he transitioned to become Lucy |
20/06/2013: When the trans, primary school teacher Lucy Meadows committed suicide earlier this year, after press harassment, just over a month later the folk
of the small town she lived in; the parents and children from the school she
worked in; and many neighbours and teaching and trade union colleagues, marched
through the town centre of Accrington.
If you have read 'Oranges are not the Only Fruit' by
Jeanette Winterson (and if you haven't, you should, even better watch the films) you will realise that
Accrington is the town in which Winterson's evil, evangelical mother raised
her, and tortured her, throughout the 1960s, because Jeanette was 'unnatural;
i.e. she fell in love with other girls, she
was a lesbian.
Accrington is not far from Manchester, the big cosmopolitan
University city, where I live, but it is in reality, a world away. It is a
place where until Lucy Meadows' death, most
people were still living in the past. If Dr Who. had landed his Tardis in Accrington, he would have said he had landed in 1973.
Whilst Lucy Meadows has become a
martyr in the Trans community's fight against transphobia, her death has
reached far beyond the trans community,
out to every right thinking person in that small northern town which, until
now, time had forgotten.
April 2013, Teachers and Pupils, neighbours and friends march
against the transphobia that led to the
death of trans woman, and primary school teacher, Lucy Meadows.
If you had told me 40 years ago, in the real 1973, when I was coming
out for the first time, that one day the folk of Accrington and their children would
march through their streets in the battle against transphobia, I would have
responded "never in my lifetime". (see here for Manchester Evening News story)
How things have changed. And it is down to folk like JoAnn Roberts (see below), who have made that change happen.
Graham Jones, Member of Parliament for Accrington has said that Lucy Meadows death could be a "watershed moment" for Britain's transgender community. I sincerely hope he is correct.
In the meantime Lucy Meadows has, in some ways, become the United Kingdom's own Brandon Teena.
11/06/13: JoAnn Roberts, Cross-dressing and trans pioneer
who co-founded the Renaissance Transgender Association has died from cancer at the age of
65. Joanne unusually for the trans political community was not a
transsexual woman. She was a man who enjoyed model railways, and cross
dressing. And she never pretended to be anything different.
Whenever I went to the 'States' in the 1990s, whatever the
event was, JoAnn was there with a huge smile, pushing the services of CDS
Publishing - her cross dressers book publishing imprint and what was
effectively, a cross dressers support organisation. She always remembered names, and
other aspects of one's life, and I enjoyed her company, her laughter, and her wonderful enthusiasm, not
just for life - and she really did have great enthusiasm for life - but also the
'cause'. She was an amazing, true to life, big hearted, beautiful, pioneer
for the cross-dressing community.
JoAnn wrote her first
book, Art and Illusion: A Guide to Crossdressing in 1985, which
eventually became a 3 volume guide, and
a dozen more books were to follow, including support for those who lived
with cross dressers in Coping with Cross Dressing, (1991). At least a dozen
video's were produced, all intended to
help the ordinary cross dresser to feel that they could succeed in either
passing successfully enough to be able to go to the shopping mall, or to dress
and do their hair and makeup in a way they that made them feel good with their
personal presentation as a cross dresser. JoAnn's work was about Liberation,
not dictation. She did not tell anyone how they should dress, or speak, or be -
rather she told them about the options they had and the 'tricks of trade', so
to speak.
In 1986 she organised her first Cross dressers weekend
event, and these have continued to this day - now called "Beauty and the
Beach" held at Rehoboth Beach in Delaware, 2013's weekend in November would
/ will be the 27th such event. There is no news on the event website - I am
assuming it will still go ahead, because clearly JoAnn had a community of
people who loved her, and I am sure they will not wish to have her memory and
what became her life's work ,vanish overnight.
In 1994, CDS went online. Along with Cindy Martin and Jamie
Faye Fenton she created the still continuing Transgender Forum, a weekly e-zine
and an online resource guide.
JoAnn was so much more than just a crossdresser - or as she
put it 'a bit of a drag queen' , she was a political animal as well. She was
Chair of the board of the American Educational Gender Information Service
(AEGIS) from 1992 to 1996. She was elected to the International Foundation for
Gender Education board twice last serving in 1994, and she was a co-founder of
the Congress of Transgender Organizations (CTO), the Transgender Alliance for
Community (TAC),GenderPAC, and lastly the National Transgender Advocacy
Coalition (NTAC). Joann was also one of the authors of the original Bill of
Gender Rights in 1990, which was later expanded into the International Bill of
Gender Rights. I remember being honoured to read out one of the Bill clauses
alongside her, as attendees did, one by one, at the ICTLEP conference in Houston,
Texas. Furthermore, JoAnn is credited as one of three people who coined the
term 'transgender community', the other two being the trans women, Justice
Phyllis Frye and Kymberleigh Richards.
There will be a large hole now where JoAnn once fitted. She
will, be very greatly missed by those
who loved her. I am sure there is a real need now, for someone with high enough
heels to fill her place.
I will miss knowing that JoAnn is out there, she was very
much a sister in arms. She believed in being truthful. She didn't pretend to
have some sort of intersex condition, or to have the brain of a woman trapped
inside a man's body. Joanne, was exactly what it said on the packet. And I
admired her tremendously for that. And
there I go, - using she, and her all the time.
The thing is that to me JoAnn was a woman, I only ever saw
the man a couple of times, and even then I could never recognise him or get my
head around the fact that this was one and the same person. JoAnn effectively,
very effectively, demonstrated that gender was much more important than sex
(the biological duality, that is, not the action stuff, done mostly in
bed).
JoAnn was not female, she was a man who was a woman -
most of the time and all of the times I saw her, even when pretending to be a
man. JoAnn was clear, she wasn't a male lesbian, she wasn't an effeminate man,
she was a man who was a strong woman with a good but fair business head, a
caring heart, and a political will for the liberation from tyranny of all those
who are not white, middle class, reactionary men.
So how else could I describe her, except as a woman.
I believe that at times all activists need their own political space in which to commune and raise consciousnesses. And sometimes that means trans women's space, or trans men's space, or born bio-women's space, or Marxist space, or kids space etc.
The
Radical feminists who chant "'womyn born womyn' only" in order only to exclude trans women from their events, seem to forget what it is to be a woman.
Being a woman means embodying an actual
physical space in which the light of day is too often blocked out. It is a space in which the fear
of experiencing, and often the actual experiencing, of patriarchal, macho,
masculinist institutional and structural instruments of hate, oppression and
violence are the norm.
Yet it is also a space which embodies, despite that, values of care which can and do thrive.
JoAnn embodied all of that, so in her space she was a woman. Many
non-female as well as female people are women; fearfully but also politically, socially,
financially, and emotionally, if not biologically. Yes, JoAnn was
a man who experienced much of life as a woman - and it wasn't fake. The train
set was the exception - but we are all
allowed a small peccadillo.
Now rad fems may need some space of their own sometimes - but they should say truthfully what it is they want. Their shout should be
"rad fems only: that is women/womeyn/intersex women/intersex womyn born with vaginas/ or without vaginas or with vaginal stumps/chromosomes irrelevant, and raised as girls, but nobody born with a penis or micro penis/ and nobody born with a vagina who identifies as a man or not as a woman" only space"
Because 'womyn born womyn' sounds that ridiculous.
If women who have not had the experience of being transgender wish to meet without transgender people, it really is easy: State the meeting is for women without the experience of being transgender. In other words, instead of being insulting, and belittling the experience of trans women, be truthful and recognise that the only people whose lives have less experience of oppression are your own.
[Remembering some of the discussions at the 1973/4 Women's lib conference (yes, I did attend) in Edinburgh, perhaps Rad Fems could also try adding no skirts, no tights, no bras, no sons, no boyfriends, no husbands.]
"Womyn born womyn" just doesn't cut the mustard, Third Wave of Feminism has moved the rest of us on - sometimes, it seems by light years.
The death of Joann once more reminds me, though, that age is
creeping up on so many of us.
Whilst in my head I may think I am exactly the
same as I was when I was 25 - dashing, charming, handsome, slim, a really good
win for anyone who manages to snap me up - in reality, like many of my friends,
I now carry around a very rusty, clunky, ill fitting, cage with me wherever I
go.
And then I remember - we must not forget to write the record of the amazing
events we have witnessed.
___________________________________
posted by Monica Roberts at 1:00 PM , Tuesday 11th June 2013This was originally posted on the TRansGriot website here
I was shocked and saddened to read the TG Forum and Chrysalis posts from Angela Gardner and Dallas Denny announcing the June 7 death of one of the pioneers in the trans community in JoAnn Roberts at age 65 due to lung cancer.
JoAnn Roberts was one of the five founders of the
Pennsylvania based Renaissance Transgender Education Assn., the ill-fated
GenderPac, and served on the boards of IFGE and AEGIS in which she was the
board chair from 1992-1996.
She also was one of the persons who helped give us a major
boost in the founding and formation of NTAC in 1999.
She was an early trans political activist and major leader
during the renaissance of trans activism in the early 90's. She authored the Bill of Gender Rights in
December 1990 that was subsequently expanded into the International Bill of
Gender Rights at the 1993 and subsequent ICTLEP conferences.
JoAnn appeared on many television shows to discuss our
issues including the Donahue talk show and served as the founding
owner/publisher of TGForum.
'Cousin JoAnn' as I affectionately referred to her as in
addition to publishing 'Art and Illusion-A Guide To Crossdressing' also
published a 'Who’s Who of the TG Community' and was the driving force for The
Second International Congress on Crossdressing, Sex and Gender hosted by
Renaissance in suburban Philadelphia in 1997.
I met JoAnn during the 1999
Southern Comfort Conference. I have fond
memories of sitting outside the Buckhead area hotel that used to host SCC with
her, Polar, Pam Geddes and Dawn Wilson drinking a 21 year old bottle of scotch while discussing a wide range of subjects.
Our conversation was interrupted when the chartered bus
arrived from an SCC convention excursion to an Atlanta club called the
Chamber.
The persons on the bus began stumbling off of it in various
stages of inebriation and hilariously and unsteadily attempted to negotiate in
their 5 inch heels the distance from the spot where the bus was parked to the
hotel's front door.
She had wound down her interaction with the trans community
in recent years to spend more time with her family and work on her beloved
model train set when she was diagnosed with cancer in February.
She'd undergone chemotherapy treatment that appeared to
successfully halt the cancer spread in her lungs and liver. Radiation treatments were begun to deal with
a tumor on her spine but were halted last week when it was determined that the
tumor there had spread and she opted for hospice care where she passed away on
June 7th 2013.
There is a Facebook page that has been set up to commemorate
her life and in which people who knew JoAnn can pay their respects. But I'm sad to report that one of the early
leaders in the American trans community and a trans community pioneer has moved
on.
Rest in peace JoAnn, you will be missed.
__________________________________________________
