2014: The Transgender Warriors and Heroes I wish Leelah Alcorn had known this year.

Hayley Cropper (nee Patterson)

Laverne Cox 

Leslie Feinberg
Dr Jay Stewart MBE

Last night my daughter sat quietly reading twitter and then burst into tears. She had just read the suicide note of a young trans person from Ohio, Leelah Alcorn, whose parent’s refused to accept that she could be a girl, not a boy, even to the extent of forcing her into ‘Christian’ 'Gay Conversion' / 'Transgender reparative’ Therapy' – which clearly failed. 

For those who don’t know the story go here and here

As we comforted my daughter, she kept saying she was sorry for being silly. But, of course it is anything but silly to feel great sadness at the loss of any life, but even more so when it is a young person, and the loss is entirely avoidable.

Forty years ago when I transitioned in 1975, I frequently felt like I was the dirt that people wiped off their shoes – and I think from reading Leelah’s suicide note that she envisioned that future for herself.

I am so proud that my daughter, the daughter of a Trans man, does not shy away from that fact. Her university friends are all told the story, and when we went to see her sing in last year’s opera society’s performance, her friends lined up to shake my hand. I wish I could have told Leelah that one day she would discover how cool we now are.

Leelah Alcorn 1997-2014

Seventeen year old Leelah killed herself because her parents could not /would not accept she was trans. 


But this is 2014, well -- 2015 tomorrow. We have spent the last 25 years (or in my case 40 years) doing the social education, winning the court cases, getting the legislation passed, and working with clinicians, the Press, and politicians to create change: to make a world where it is OK to be whatever gender you really are.

And, despite Leelah's death, the evidence of that work is everywhere.

Hayley Cropper (1998 – 2014)

In January 2014, 9.7 million people stopped for a moment and wept over the death of a trans woman, albeit a fictional character; Hayley Cropper (nee Patterson), the red-anorak’ed café owner in Coronation Street, the nation’s longest running soap.

Hayley first appeared on British televisions in January 1998, and was the globe’s first transgender character in a British soap, and the first permanent trans character in any serialised TV show.

Julie Hesmondhalgh who played the character had worked with the Trans community, notably Annie Wallace from Press For Change to ensure the character and her on-screen life was realistic and plausible. Annie Wallace now plays the part of Transgender school Headmistress; Sally St. Claire in Channel 4's Hollyoaks. She has just been nominated for a BAFTA for her work in that role (October 2016). Hayley became a stalwart of the show, despite earlier opposition from some parts of the public. Julie also provided huge amounts of moral support for the work of the trans activist group; Press For Change.


And it was the public who wrote hundreds of protest letters about Hayley’s marriage, or rather her inability to be able to legally marry Roy Cropper, another of the show’s character’s. 

The protest combined with the campaigning work of Press For Change led, on April 14^th 1999,  to Jack Straw, the Home Secretary to announce the government's Interdepartmental Working Group on Transsexual People. 

The 1999 Non-Wedding

The 2010 Wedding

Ultimately the working group recommended action needed to be taken by the British Government, as the alternative was no longer acceptable. In 2005 the Gender Recognition Act 2004 came into force. Hayley, recognised as a woman for all legal purposes, finally married Roy in 2010.

The character Hayley, took her own life in January 2014, not because she was trans; but because she had terminal pancreatic cancer. Having seen my Mum die from the disease, I understand why the show’s writers chose to highlight the inadequacy of current research and treatment into this disease. Research into it receives only 1% of cancer research funding in the UK despite being the country’s fifth deadliest cancer, and by 2030 is predicted to overtake breast cancer to become the 4th largest cancer killer. Five year survival rates have not increased in the last 40 years, and remain at 4% - compared to the current breast cancer survival rate at 5 years of 87%.[1] 

During the week in which Hayley’s suicide was screened a petition to persuade the government to increase funding for research into pancreatic cancer gained a massive amount of support. With Julie's support it ultimately reached the 100,000 needed for a parliamentary debate just before the Parliamentary imposed deadline of 1 year for such petitions.

Not many actors will have had the opportunity to massively increase parliamentary and social awareness of major social problems. Julie Hesmondhalgh, playing a trans woman, has made the most of the opportunity twice in her character’s career, and she was recognised for not just her acting but also her commitment to justice for Trans people and cancer sufferers in the 2014 National Television Awards earlier this year.

If only Leelah had had the opportunity to watch Coronation Street, 3 nights a week.

Laverne Cox: 2014 - The Tipping Point

In May 2014, the actress and trans woman, Laverne Cox who is one of the stars of the Netflix hit ‘Orange is the New Black” (OITNB) set in a women’s prison, was featured on the front of Time magazine with the headline “The Transgender Tipping Point: America’s Next Civil Rights Frontier”.  

On Facebook, Laverne wrote that the Time cover  published on her birthday, was a wonderful present , and

"I realize this is way bigger than me and about a tipping point in our nation's history where it is no longer acceptable for trans lives to be stigmatized, ridiculed, criminalized and disregarded."

In the series OITNB, Laverne plays a trans character in the show – finally an out trans woman playing an out trans woman. One more small victory for the many trans people who have spent, either in the past, or more recently, years of their life being an activist, campaigning for core human rights and fairness for trans people.

A Small Aside

I came to activism in 1974, when the then Manchester and Bradford Gay Liberation groups stormed a British Medical Association conference at Bradford University. We were objecting to the participation of Dr John Randell, a psychiatrist at London’s Charing Cross Hospital who specialised in ‘treating’ transsexual people. His treatment consisted primarily of insisting you take off all your clothes so he could photograph you, and then telling you that you would do what he told you to do, or you could forget having any gender reassignment treatments (he is the unseen psychiatrist here). 

Our invasion was successful – John Randell MD stormed off the stage never to be heard again at an academic conference,  Dr Rosemary King, a cross-dressing, trans-identified GP took his place, and Bradford University gave the Gay Lib groups a free hall and disco a month later to compensate for the distress they had caused.

I was fortunate not to be Dr Randell’s patient whilst starting my gender reassignment treatments. I had seen a psychiatrist in Manchester who had thrown me out, refusing to treat me, telling me that I would never live as a man. 

My GP came to my rescue and in 1975 took the extremely daring step of deciding to have a living trans patient instead of a dead one, and prescribed me testosterone.

Unfortunately, though, in 1978 I did become Dr Randell’s patient for a short time. I was taken to the Emergency Room at the hospital after collapsing during a trip to the theatre in London. Because I am trans, instead of being treated for being ill, I was admitted to John Randell’s secure, locked, psychiatric ward. This meant plastic knives and forks, and a male nurse observing me whilst showering (I was pre-op so this was incredibly humiliating).

It was during this stay, and whilst in his office, that John Randell asked me to remove all of my clothes so that he could photograph me. I refused to do so, telling him to get lost - he wasn’t my psychiatrist and there was nothing wrong with my mind, anyway. He then told me that I would stay in his ward until I was willing to be photographed. It took my Mum, Barbara Valente, a senior medical secretary, with the help of her boss, a Professor of Oncology at Christie Hospital in Manchester, ten days to get me released from the hospital. 

The experience on that ward is another story entirely, but I realised then what a megalomaniac Randell was, and how very strange was his behaviour – for a start, he used to walk around the ward muttering under his breath ‘tick tock, tick tock, tick tock’.

Several psychiatrists who trained as junior doctors under John Randell tell the same story – of how he would invite the juniors to dinner at his flat. On his arrival, he would open the door wearing a long blue evening gown and white ‘above the elbow’ long gloves which he wore throughout dinner. One told of going into a rather sleazy East End pub where women of ill repute were known to congregate to discover sat in a corner, dressed like a ‘tart’, the eminent psychiatrist who would a year later in the infamous 1971 Cossey v Cossey Court case declare that the transsexual woman April Ashley could only ever be ‘a pastiche of a woman’. 

Talk about the pot calling the kettle, though in this case it was a mucky frying pan condemning a gleaming copper bottomed kettle.

Gender is the new Black

That aside was about reflecting on how Laverne Cox said we have reached the ‘Transgender tipping point’ – in other words, what happened in the late 1970s is now ancient history.

But is it? The National Review's Kevin Williamson wrote his column with the title "Laverne Cox Is Not a Woman" and said:

"The mass delusion that we are inculcating on the question of transgendered people ... would impose on society at large an obligation — possibly a legal obligation under civil-rights law, one that already is emerging — to treat delusion as fact, or at the very least to agree to make subjective impressions superordinate to biological fact in matters both public and private."

I remember saying (c 1990) 

“I don’t care what they say behind my back, but I do care what they say and do in front of my face”. 

I may be/have been suffering  a delusion for the last 56 years - that I was much more of a boy than a girl, much more of a man than I could have ever been a woman. But the rest of my life (as a teacher, a researcher, a father, a tax payer etc.) is fine - so does my gender matter at all to anyone other than myself and those who love me. 

Of course not. What matters is that as parents we help our kids, like my daughter, and like Leelah's parents should have, grow up into being responsible, tolerant, happy, confidant world citizens acting throughout their lives as eco-warriors, gender warriors, and peace warriors . 

So do I care what Williamson wrote? Not a jot – except it is ignoramuses like him who persuade people like Leelah Alcorn’s parents to announce that their 'son' 'Joshua Alcorn died in the roadway on I-71 in Warren County, Ohio, after being struck by a tractor trailer'.

However, ultimately it is the Williamson’s of this world who have lost the war. The clock will not be turned back. We may still be fighting skirmishes, and Leelah’s death is, very sadly, one of those skirmishes. 

But, the truth is Trans is everywhere, and especially on British television. The highlight of this Christmas’s telly was an adaptation of David Walliam’s novel for children and young teens; “The Boy in the Dress” (still available to watch on BBC iPlayer here). Enough said. 

I wonder whether the people who used to wipe me off their shoes, ever thought it would come to this in 2014.

The Boy in The Dress

And, I do wish Leelah had sat in her bedroom watching Lavern Cox in 'Orange is the New Black', and this christmas, that she had sat down with her Mum and Dad to watch 'The Boy in the Dress'.

Leslie Feinberg (1949-2014)

Leslie Feinberg being hirself

November again, saw many memorial events take place for the International Transgender Day of Remembrance (TdoR 20th November each year). The TDoR came about as a result of the  “Remembering our Dead” website built by Gwendolyn Ann Smith, to remember those Trans people who were killed by actions conceived in transphobia, transgender hatred or prejudice. Read 2014's horrendous roll of 226 victims here.

Having MS and finding the cold unbearable, I have rarely attended the outdoor event that takes place here in Manchester on a late afternoon on the Sunday nearest the TDOR, in Sackville Gardens (Manchester M1 3HB). But just as we stop to remember soldiers who have died, each Armistice Day on the 11th November, a week or so earlier, on TDOR, I stop for a minute or two and remember our trans community's warriors and heroes who have been killed.

As the years pass, I find myself now, not just remembering those who have died at the hands of others, but also those trans people, trans heroes and trans friends who we as a community, are now losing to illness and old age. Death will claim us all, but when much of a person’s early life was lost to prejudice, discrimination and the hatred of others, it makes the lives of some amazing people seem to have been very short. 

In November 2014, we lost one such trans hero – the Transgender Warrior, hirself, Leslie Feinberg (partner of the poet Minnie Bruce Pratt) – who died, aged 65, from the complications of Lyme disease.

Lyme disease is a tick borne illness which if treated early with antibiotic can now be resolved quickly. It is endemic in the USA.

Unfortunately, the cause of Lyme disease was not discovered until 1982, meaning those US residents infected prior to then, at a time when accessing health care was incredibly difficult for those were poor, frequently developed consequent lifelong health problems, ranging from arthritis to heart damage.

Leslie was one of the poor - working in dead end jobs, despite being an amazing Trade Union organizer, and a several times published author. Leslie could have gone much further than ze did, despite having moved mountains in hir life, but being trans and refusing to live in only one gender, or to live in stealth, ze had little opportunity to advance hirself, either academically or financially. 
The consequences of prejudice can be very long standing.

Your History Homework

If you know little of the Trans community's history, and need to learn more, I can recommend as a must that you read two of Leslie’s books:

• Trans Liberation: BeyondPink or Blue

• TransgenderWarriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman

And for those who need to know what it actually felt like in the 1970s and 80s, or

• If you are a trans man and you want to know how it was like in those early years of trying to access treatments, or
• If you are an activist and you want to know what activism was like when all we could do was struggle to survive merely as a community of consciousness raising friends, or
• If you are anyone who wants to create change and end the ridiculous idea that you can ascribe gender to a baby,

then read Leslie’s amazing novel “Stonebutch Blues”.





What a great shame that Leelah Alcorn never managed to read Leslie Feinberg’s books.

Dr. Jay Stewart, MBE

And so to the end of 2014. If there is one person I really wish Leelah Alcorn could have met, it is trans man and (like myself) a dad of twins; Dr Jay Stewart. Co-founder and director of Gendered Intelligence, the UK’s trans youth support organization.

Jay Stewart speaking, with his partner and co-directer of Gendered Intelligence; Catherine MvNamara

This morning's news was that Jay Stewart has rightly had an honourable mention in the Queen’s 2015 New Year’s Honour’s list and he has received an MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire) For Services to the Transgender community. I expect he is sharing it with Catherine, as undoubtedly their life has been a real partnership of strength and love.

Isn't it amazing how things change. In 2005 I received my OBE for services to ‘Gender’, presumably as nobody dared to let the Queen know such people as us really existed. This year's New Year's Honours list, finally says it as it really is.

Here in the UK there are so many trans folk, family and friends doing all we can to prevent young people from having the same experience as Leelah. 

This year over 20 primary schools have ordered and read PFC’s Guide The Gender Variant Child’s Right To Attend School[2]. That means 20 primary school age children are able to go to school in their own gender identity – the one they know they have themselves, not the one their mum and dad tried to give them several years ago, at a time, when after all, nobody knew what they might grow up to be.

    

Leelah Acorn’s death is a terrible tragedy. If she lived in the UK, I would like to think that she would be alive today, reading this blog. Next week, Leelah would be returning to college as she prepared to take her A’Levels, before  going on the University. She would meet up, on the way, with her large gang of friends – as Leelah.

Leelah's Mum and Dad would have been in touch with Mermaids when she was much younger, and having learnt how to support their gender variant child in her developmental choices, they now would be leading members of their local PFALG UK group. 

And Leelah might well have regularly seen Hayley Cropper  on Coronation Street, sat with her Mum and Dad, after dinner. She would have certainly sat in her bedroom, with her girl friends, watching Laverne Cox in OITNB. She would have known of Leslie Feinberg, and maybe even read the one of his books by now. And she would have probably met  Jay Stewart and the amazing Gendered Intelligence team, having spent some time last summer working on one of Gendered Intelligence’s Art projects for young trans people.

2015's New Year Resolution

In 2000, after the publication of my personal commentary in 'Perfidious man' my mother told me that I was embarrassing the whole family (by going on television, the radio and speaking out in magazines and the newspapers) and would I please stop 'doing this' ... now. 
I told her that I had resolved many years earlier that I would carry on 'doing this' until no child or teenager had to go through the fear and terrors that I had gone through. 

Thankfully my Mum came round to that idea., especially when, in 2005,  she got to come, with my wife Sarah,  to the 'Palace' to watch me receive my OBE. Jay will now have that pleasure with his own family.

Sadly though, Leelah Alcorn’s death means that to carry on 'doing this', is once again my New Year’s resolution, as 2015 knocks at the door.

---

[1] - See more here

[2] Available by contacting Press For Change at office[ – at – ]pfc.org.uk (remove[ – at –] and replace with @. PDF copy free to Schools and the parents and guardians of young gender variant children. All others; £12.50 plus £2 postage and packing for a hard copy, £3.50 for a pdf copy by email. All money raised goes to Press For Change. 

Time Passes ... and do, sadly, do Friends.

  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. 

JoAnn Roberts, Cross Dressing Woman Extraordinaire, dies aged 65

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.

___________________________________

Trans Pioneer JoAnn Roberts Dies

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.  

__________________________________________________

CHRIS WILSON: CONVICTED BECAUSE OF HIS CLOTHES.

 Chris Wilson 

The case of Chris Wilson is by no means the first case in which a ‘gender variant born female bodied’ person has been convicted of an offence related to having ‘consensual’ sex with another younger woman. This week has also seen the jailing for the excessive period  3 years of goth Justine McNally who had been accepted by a 16 year old girl as her boyfriend. When confronted McNally said she wanted to have a 'sex change' to continue the relationship. McNally ended up pleading guilty to 6 counts of sexual assault. 

Last year we saw the conviction and jailing for 30 months of the inadequate and lonely 19 year old Gemma Barker for sexual assault (and a comparatively derisory sentence of 3 months for an unrelated fraud). At one point Gemma was pretending to be 3 different boys in order to have relationships with girlfriends. The assaults ‘included kissing, cuddling and sexual touching’, no penetration took place. 

Twenty two years ago, as we were founding Press For Change we heard of the appalling conviction in a similar case which received a great deal of publicity at the time. It illustrates that the values of the type of canteen culture found in policing permeate through society and the criminal justice system at the behest of our tabloid press;

‘The most bizarre case ever heard in a British Court’ as the Sun put it, has resulted in an 18 year old woman being sentenced to six years imprisonment for having consenting sex with two other women. Jennifer Saunders (no not that one) was alleged to have posed as a man, Jimmy, throughout a five month affair with a 17 year old. She was also accused of taking the virginity of another 17 year old. It was claimed in court that the girlfriends had no idea that Saunders was not a boy. Saunders made love using a dildo, and kept her chest covered because she had a boil, it was alleged. Saunders was sentenced for six years for indecent assault and Judge Jonathan Crabtree said he suspected the victims would "rather have been raped by some young man . . . . you have called into question their whole sexual identity "A bizarre case indeed not least because of the extraordinary sentence. In his summing up the judge completely ignored the consenting nature of all the acts and instead focused on the psychic violation the girls had suffered. "For a long time vicious and unthinking people are likely to jeer at these unhappy girls as a result of the misery you have caused them by your evil behaviour". Jennifer Saunders was particularly dangerous not only because she posed as a man, but because she seemed to keep it up for 5 months, and withheld her true sexual identity. (Pink Paper, 196, 12 Oct 1991)

You can find several online confessions of confused young people doing exactly the same thing that Jimmy Saunders, Gemma Barker, Justine McNally and Chris Wilson did.

The comment by the judge in the Saunder’s case that the young women would “rather have been raped by some young man” would now probably be considered beyond belief, but apparently the assumption that consent cannot have effectively been given in these cases is still not beyond such beliefs. 

WILSON’S CRIMES

Wilson, who committed his offences in Scotland, has been convicted of the offence of obtaining ‘sexual intimacy by fraud’. Wilson kissed and cuddled with one girl, and apparently used some sort of prosthetic phallus during sexual activity with a second girl. 
These cases have always bothered me. 

Frequently the complaint is not instigated by the young women concerned but by their parents. It appears the young women only agree to go forward with the complaint because they are frightened of their parents thinking they might be lesbian (and worse, beating them for being lesbian). 

However, what is really strange about the Wilson case is, as I will later discuss, is that Wilson appears to have been charged with a non-existent criminal offence.

To a large extent the following discussion is about that. Sexual offences in Scotland are covered by the legislation contained in the 2009 Sexual Offences Act.  The 2009 Act in Scotland is somewhat different from the English Sexual offences Act 2003. However, the fundamentals are the same. The Scottish Act has very similar definitions of rape and sexual assault in that they occurs when a person recklessly or with intention does one of the prohibited acts, which in rape means the penetration of the vagina, anus or mouth of another person with a penis. The English Act does not include the word ‘recklessly’ but there is a long history in English case law in which it has been held that recklessness as to consequence of an act is able, in some circumstances, to be the same as having the intention to do the act. 

Interestingly, the Scottish Act goes further than the English Act, probably because of the benefit of  being drafted after the Gender Recognition Act 2004 came into force,  in  that it makes it clear that rape of the neo-vagina is possible, and it can be done by a neo-phallus.  In English case law, it has been held possible to have the neo-vagina raped, but there is nothing as yet to show that rape can be committed with a neo-phallus.

THERE WAS NO RAPE, BUT WAS THERE CONSENT?

However, what we all were clear on here is that Wilson’s was not an offence of rape, there was no penis – old or new -  involved in the sexual acts that took place. The alternative charges, under the 2009 Act therefore could have been under s.2; sexual assault by penetration, or s.3; sexual assault, or s.4 sexual coercion. These are however subject to there being a lack of consent and consent is defined in the Act in ss. 12 and 13.

Under s.12, “consent” is said to mean ‘free agreement (and related expressions are to be construed accordingly)’. Consensual sex, prima facie, cannot lead to a charge of assault or rape, unless that consent can be held to have not been true consent, i.e. without free agreement.  S.13 of the 2009 Act expands on this to outline circumstances in which conduct takes place and the consent given will be regarded as not having been freely given. Only s. 13(d) has any possible relevance to the Wilson case. Section (d) states that consent is presumed not to have been given when the victim agrees or submits to the sexual activity because they are mistaken, as a result of deception by A, as to the nature or purpose of the conduct.

The two young women in the Wilson case consented to taking part in the sexual activity. In the first case, apparently the ‘sex’ went no further than kisses and cuddles. In the case of the second ‘girlfriend’ it seems it did involve some sort of penetration and she was slightly under age at the time. However though when a girl is under 16, although consent is held not to have been freely given and sex is therefore assault or rape, it is rarely of concern to us. As long, there is no abuse of a position of trust, or great difference in age  AND if the parties are both consenting, as a society we all turn a blind eye to youngsters of 15 having sexual relationships – for heaven’s sake we were all young once, and many of us did the same. This point is discussed much more extensively in Daniel Donaldson's blog. 

More to the point though, the girls consented to this activity with the person they knew as Chris. If Chris had been a biological male at birth, these charges would not have been brought. They have only been brought to the court because Chris was born female bodied. 

THERE BUT FOR THE GRACE OF GOD, GO YOU AND I

Hey, but let’s stop there for a moment, I and so were many of my friends were also born female bodied. Most of us now have Gender Recognition certificates making us male for all legal purposes, or at least that was what we thought. Interestingly - and very ironically - the Equality Act 2010 provisions to allow single sex services to discriminate against any trans person, whether or not they have a Gender Recognition certificate, has already put the knockers on that myth. 

So if I or any of my mates,  had persuaded a young woman to have some sort of sexual activity without telling her that we were actually a trans man, could result in us facing charges of sexual assault. According to the Wilson case, that is exactly what could happen. The issue is not what my gender is, but whether I tell any potential partner, male or female, what I have or do not have between my legs, before we even think of kissing. 

If we don't, even though we are now supposedly men for all legal purposes, the same claim could be made;  that the complainant would not have consented to the activity if they had been informed in advance that we were trans. Therefore by not informing them, any of us could have effectively committed a fraud to obtain the person’s ‘mistaken’ consent to the sexual activity. 

In the Wilson case, as in all of the other documented cases where young women are the ‘victims’ of sexual assault by ‘gender variant born female bodied persons’ (in short, trans men), the women always admit that they consented to the sexual activity that took place. There is no doubt that the 2 young women in the Wilson case both consented to what happened. There was no evidence of coercion beyond the normal sort of coercion that takes place between loving sexual partners. Technically the second young woman did not have the capacity to make that choice – but hold on what was the choice she was making. If she truly did not know that Chris was born female, it therefore seemed she felt old enough and capable enough of giving consent to the risk of pregnancy
Clearly to have a conviction, the jury/judge must have relied on section s.13(d) of the 2009 Act;  that is the consent was mistaken because Wilson deceived the women as to the nature or purpose of the relevant act. That seems very strange when the nature and purpose of the act is much the same regardless of the gender the of the person you do it with. 

WHAT IS MEANT BY MISTAKE?

Unfortunately, neither the explanatory notes of the legislation nor case law provide us with much guidance as to what mistake there must be to eliminate consent. 

in R v Jheeta,[2007] the defendant (D) was convicted on several counts of rape and procuring sexual intercourse by false pretences in addition to blackmail. D went through an elaborate ruse with his girlfriend. He sent her malicious messages as if they were from a third party. She would be distressed and he would comfort her, leading on several occasions to sexual intercourse. When she got really worried and wanted to go to the police, D said he would go. He then he sent her various texts as if he was a third party police officer. Meanwhile the malicious messages did not stop, so then D, again as the fictitious policeman, sent a text offered her a protection service which would keep her home under surveillance for a fee of £1,000 pa. She gave D the £1000 believing he would take it to the police to pay for the protection service.  During this period she had several times tried to end her relationship with D but always came back to it because of the on-going problem of the malicious texts.

Now think about the victim’s position in Jheeta. Whilst her consent may not have initially been as freely given without the malicious texts, she did ultimately give it freely in relation to the intercourse that took place, and she was certainly not in any way mistaken as to the nature and purpose of the sexual act. The court consequently faced a problem with this. The Appeal judges took the view however, that D’s 
‘actions deprived the complainant of her freedom to choose whether or not to have intercourse with him’. 

However, the Appeal court did agree that the trial court judge had been correct when he held that 
(D)’s behaviour, unpleasant though it was, as something of a "juvenile plot", and also acknowledged that the incidents of rape had to be considered in the context of an on-going sexual relationship which, at least in part on the basis of plea, was consensual.(Jheeta 2007, para 30).

The problem with consent is that its formal requirement by legislation, prima facie, makes all sexual activity both amoral and illegal unless there is a guarantee of certainty that consent has been given. Thus, there are an awful lot of people who have had drunken sex who could find themselves therefore in trouble one day. In the Student Journal of Law, Jordan Franks explains the difficulties of defining what we mean by ‘mistaken consent’:
Does (consent) mean they agreed, gave in, wanted or permitted the act to happen? None of these are wrong, but this, it appears, is exactly the problem we face. We cannot begin to analyse whether … consent is given under a mistake unless we know what consent means.

I find myself wondering when or at what stage Chris Wilson’s plot moved from being ‘juvenile’ into the intentionally fraudulent and malicious. I also wonder at what point in the activities the young women, had they known his gender history, would have wanted it to stop, Personally, like most trans men, I have found disclosure to pose no problem in the development and forming of sexual relationships. 

The REAL problem for Chris and the others in these cases was that they were isolated and not in touch with the trans community, so did not have the benefit of people like me telling them to spill the beans because it would probably just get the young women into bed even more quickly.

DISCLOSURE AND THE TRANS PERSON

Of course, there is no law requiring a trans person to reveal their gender history to their sexual partner.

Well that is not quite true. An oft unknown aspect of the Gender Recognition Act 2004 is contained in Schedule 4, Part 1 , section 4 which inserts a new section (h) in the relevant English law; the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973, Part 1, section 12, which reads:
(h) that the respondent is a person whose gender at the time of the marriage had become the acquired gender under the Gender Recognition Act 2004

Initially that looks terrifyingly as if all trans people after they have contracted a lawful marriage in their new legal gender can find their marriage being voided. Actually, it isn’t that bad because there are controls in place in s.13 of the 1973 Act, which provides ‘Bars to relief where marriage is voidable’, i.e. reasons why a court would not void the marriage even if the provisions of s.12 existed. 

s.13(1) states that: ‘The court shall not … grant a decree of nullity on the ground that a marriage is voidable if the respondent satisfies the court— 
(a)that the petitioner, with knowledge that it was open to him to have the marriage avoided, so conducted himself in relation to the respondent as to lead the respondent reasonably to believe that he would not seek to do so; and (b)… it would be unjust to the respondent to grant the decree.

i.e. if a person knew they were marrying a trans person with a Gender Recognition certificate but went ahead anyway, the court would consider it unjust if they later sought to have the marriage voided. 

Secondly, s. 13(2) states the court will only void a marriage, if a person did NOT KNOW their spouse was trans, if that person instituted proceedings: ‘s.13(2)(a)within the period of three years from the date of the marriage’, or if the applicant had suffered from ‘s.13(4)(a) a mental disorder’ during the relevant period, and the court thought ‘s.13 (4)(b) it would be just to grant leave for the institution of (annulment) proceedings.’ s.13(3) makes it quite clear that the court will only provide relief if ‘it is satisfied that the petitioner was at the time of the marriage ignorant of the facts alleged’, i.e. they must not have known the person was trans when they got married. 

Put simply, if a trans person does not tell a prospective spouse, they have a window of 3 years in which they must not be found out, because if they are they may well find their marriage being voided if the couple separates. Settlement on divorce or annulment is now very similar in English Law, so the only real advantage to getting one’s marriage to a trans person voided would be that a vengeful spouse could probably doubly punish the trans person by having their character trounced in the national newspapers.

At the time of developing the Gender Recognition Act 2004 the stakeholder group did extensively discuss these provisions. In Scotland, there is no concept of marriage annulment – a marriage might be considered void, i.e. as if it never took place, but that would be an equitable decision for a court to make. But the courts in Scotland will only end an existing marriage through divorce. Even non-consummation is not a ground for annulment, merely a ground for divorce. It has not as such been tested, but one can imagine that if a trans person did not tell a prospective marriage partner about their gender history, the courts would similarly only make it a ground for divorce. 

As far as the English, Welsh and Northern Irish provision, after long discussions we felt that as marriage is a commitment for life, then non-disclosure had to really be on a par with a prospective spouse’s failure to say they were pregnant by another person, or that they wilfully refused to consummate the marriage. It was not an easy decision. I cannot imagine any trans person wishing to commit to marrying a person without knowing that their prospective spouse would accept their gender history. However that rests on my romantic assumption that there is such a thing as true love.  

However, that does leave us in the position that in Scotland there is no provision anywhere in the law which might require a trans person to disclose their gender history.

THE OFFENCE OF SEXUAL INTIMACY?

Secondly, another aspect of the Wilson case is the very strange charge: “obtaining ‘sexual intimacy by fraud’”. The Scottish Sexual offences Act 2009 dictates the possible offences; of rape, sexual assault or sexual coercion. There is no mention in the Act of an offence of ‘sexual intimacy’. So how on earth has someone concocted this peculiar form of words. If the offence is one in which consent is the key issue, then the charge should have related directly to those offences contained in the 2009 Act. 

Maybe that is only a technicality, but if we can only manage to convict 1% of born male rapists (see here), it is a technicality which could have been used in an appeal, except of course that Chris Wilson has pled guilty to this bizarre offence and therefore has little right of appeal. 

MISTAKE OR COERCION

What is meant by mistake in these cases is a real and serious issue. Mistake as to the identity or some other feature of a sexual partner is sometimes referred to as coercion. That is by telling some lie, essentially defrauding the victim as to the real situation they are consenting to have sex in, the victim’s consent to sex has been coerced from them.

For many, this is an easier way to comprehend the offences that have taken place. Bit referring back to the question posed as to whether consent to a sexual act means in fact a person has agreed to it, given in, wanted it or permitted it – then coercion can seem semantically very close to the notion of ‘giving in’. There are a lot of people who have sex simply to stop the irritating persistence of their partner. Would we consider that to be coercion, probably not , because they are not mistaken as to the nature of the act – they are agreeing to have sex with their partner, and they know what it will entail.

I say that but we all know that is quite far from the truth in many cases. There are a lot of people who do not want to have sex but ‘agree’ to it  - have they really consented? And afterwards could they claim that they were raped? 

Do we differentiate successfully enough between the “oh, for heaven’s sake, get on with it” because sleep will come much quicker if they stop arguing from the “just do it” because the alternative will be a fist in the face? Probably not.

And counter to that, there are people who do want to have sex, who are truly consenting, but under the false misapprehension of some feature of the other person.

One close friend told us of the brilliant interior designer she had met, and gone to bed with. The more she said the more I was convinced that this was a case of gross exaggeration I suggested that perhaps 'Ken' was nothing more than a painter and decorator and unemployed at that. She was furious with me at the time, but 2 months later tearfully came to tell us that that was indeed the case. It never occurred to us or her that she should have pursued him through the courts for the offence of rape - that is the offence of penetration obtained by mistaken consent. I suspect the police response would have been 'these things happen' .

Let's face it, many of us have exaggerated or told not quite the truth in order to get closer to someone, many of us have been victims of exaggeration or simple plain lies. What of the guys who stuff a sock in their pants when they go out for the night? Could they  find their implied claim to have a large todger result in their imprisonment when the girl sees the truth of their miniature dick? Gay men have advertisers throwing specialised briefs at them, which provide a pocket for a bit of extra padding. Will they face jail when the lad they have bedded discovers he is rather disappointed at the final result?

And how about those girls who stuff tissues down their bra? Is that a fraud which could result in a claim of mistake thus eliminating the consent of a lad. The lad could claim he had been sexually assaulted by her, because he would not have had sex with her if she had taken off her top and he had seen how small her breasts really were.

If convictions such as this one are to stand, then there are a lot of people (not just trans people) who need to think very carefully about what they imply before they persuade someone to consent to a kiss and cuddle, never mind anything more strenuous than that.

The truth is the law on mistake is in these cases being judged as a moral issue rather than a criminal concern. 

FOLK DEVILS & DAILY MAIL PANIC

Have Saunders, Barker, McNally and Wilson all been convicted not because of what they did but because of who they are? 

Criminalisation and labelling is a process that according to that great, recently deceased sociologist, Stan Cohen leads to the creation of Folk Devils and a consequent moral panic. We know this process is not limited to any one particular individual or group of people, rather it creates many victims of a judicial system which still judges individuals in the moral terms of the judge (and in these cases the boorish bullying fathers of the victims) rather than the remainder of society.  The system has not addressed any real misdemeanour. If the girls had known of Chris’s history they would have almost certainly still been prepared to have sex with him. Is it not really the case that Chris’s conviction has turned upon the Daily Mail assessment of the fraudulent lives of all trans people. 

I am very concerned. When the Criminal Justice system gets it so badly wrong it is not just the Chris’s of this world who suffer, it is all of us who are different, and who are afraid of what the consequences of what that difference may bring. And that really is down to the Daily Mail and all the other similar vacuous hysterics in the press who will do anything for a headline.