Pirotessa stated "...but don't most girls want to just disappear and lead a normal life?" Although there are a rare few that can actually do that, most transsexuals wish that they could. I have seen many extremely "passable" transsexuals in support groups in the past, sobbing about the harrasment they had been given in various situatons daily, when they were "read."

I'm not sure why you brought it up in the first place. Even if one could blend in and become invisible, they still need a role model at some time in their formative years, to help them with their confidence and focus, to better clarify their own identity and what they might truly become.

Many of the role models mentioned so far, helped me in some detached way, but not very strong. Christine Jorgenson, though a towering symbol of strength, was not a personality that I could relate to with much vigor or interest. Wendy Williams, though I loved and still love "Switched On Bach" as well as the work she did for Stanley Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange" was not a fleshed out personality for me. None-the-less, just knowing that there were people that were actually transforming their lives, bodies and personnas was a great source of hope.

It may sound trite or even crazy, but what really helped fire me up was the surge of transsexual "Shemale" porn in the 1980s. There were suddenly seedy XXX starlets like Sulka and Shalimar that were not only going through the transformation publicly, but were looking like they were having such delicious sexy times. Suddenly I was seeing what I felt to be MY sexuality portrayed in some form. It's something like blacks never seeing themselves until recently in TV and film, or gay and lesbians. Strange as it may seem, those "Shemale" pornstars gave me a lot of strength to go ahead with my life. It was such a boost to see men being turned on to them and ravishing them.

In the early 90s I found myself in TS support groups, and found myself on the so-called "Benjamin Scale" of Transgender Identification as a Type 4 Transsexual, or non-op (as far as genital conversion surgery goes), yet found total discouragement to stay on that path. There was huge peer pressure to set a date for SRS. If you didn't have SRS, or have a date for it set, you were simply not legitimate. I don't know how many had surgery as a result of that pressure, only to regret it afterwards. There was also much pressure from the Medical/Psychiatric Community as well, to say nothing about law enforcement to have the inversion of the penis performed. This is now changing, but the role models to be a non-op transsexual, or as the porn industry dubbed us, "Shemales" are hard-to-find anywhere proclaiming their right to their self-identity and right to stay "in-between" the legal definitions. Even the so-called shemale pornstars all seem to go on to have genital surgery, so they really don't count either.

I therefore have to look at this point to classical Greek Mythology and find my role model in Hermaphrodite, the shemale Love child of Hermes and Aphrodite." 

[This message was edited by Stacy Amber on 06-06-02 at 07:27 PM.]

SHE is beautifully dressed in a yellow trouser suit, fuchsia pashmina and open-toed sandals. Her Thatcherite bouffant hair is a distinguished grey and the voice is pure, cut-glass Thirties BBC.
April Ashley has the hauteur and bearing of a duchess, she is also unmistakably feminine, but she has only just received her state pension despite celebrating her 60th birthday five years ago. And, unless legislation is changed, her death certificate will describe her gender as male.

"Legally, I might die as a man but my friends won't let me be buried as anything less than a woman," she says.

April was the most famous transsexual of the Sixties. Born George Jamieson in a Liverpool slum, she went on to marry as a woman and become a top fashion model, showgirl and socialite. She was queen of the catwalk, Vogue's favourite underwear model photographed by Terence Donovan and David Bailey, and was in constant demand. And
then, 40 years ago, she "lost everything" when a friend sold her story to a downmarket newspaper for £5.

Her secret was out. The model appearing in the glossies had been the ninth person in the world to have a sex change. April was pilloried
and became, as she harshly puts it, "a celebrity freak".

"I was booked up for six months and it was all cancelled. I couldn't even get a job as a shop assistant. It was unbelievably difficult."

Her husband Arthur Corbett, later to become Lord Rowallan, who was well aware that April was a transsexual when he married her, divorced her when her story became public. Their acrimonious case caused a sensation but April did not receive a penny when the marriage was declared nul and void because she was born a man.

Since then, she has had "normal, heterosexual relationships" including a brief affair with the late singer Michael Hutchence in the early Eighties after they met at a bar in Australia, but today she is alone.

"Michael was an absolutely beautiful man and I was flattered by his interest in me. I was so sad to hear of his death. He had everything to live for," she says.

She lives in exile in San Diego where she works as a guide and saleswoman in art galleries. She is known as a rather eccentric, perfectly mannered English gentlewoman and relishes her anonymity. She remains convinced that "the breath of scandal" will always follow her in Britain and that finding a job that would fund a new life here would prove impossible, although she longs to return.

"I'm too famous, too well known. People won't employ me," she says. "But in the USA, I'm just April. I don't hide what I've been but I don't volunteer it either and my bosses don't know. Being anonymous is awfully nice but it's never going to happen to me."

Yet last week she returned to Britain to launch a website:

www.image100.com.
She will be a personal site navigation assistant on a web-based, royalty-free picture agency, Image 100. ITV is also making a documentary about her. Anonymity is going to be a while coming, but she feels she has little choice. Because she left Britain so long ago, her pension is worth just £21 a week.

"What can you do with that?" she asks. "If I'd stayed in the UK, lived on the dole and been a parasite, I would get a full pension, housing and benefits but I'm penniless darling. I have been
condemned to work for the rest of my life." Yet she is excited by her venture and hopes it may give her the finances to return to the country she loves.

It seems surprising that she does not live in constant fear of the kind of public disclosure that ruined her life in Britain.

"I was in blissful ignorance, rather naive, and I thought it was just marvellous to be working as a model in the body I'd always wanted," she recalls.

She is aware that, today, she could have sued for sexual discrimination when her jobs were cancelled but the option was not open to her then. She opened a restaurant, AD8, in Knightsbridge, becoming one of London's most fashionable hostesses, before she fled to the US.

"Have you ever been slapped in the face just because you are you?" she says, deeply hurt at the memories of being bullied in the street.

Last week, she asked Tony Blair the same question in a letter. "At the age of 65, I thought it was time I sorted out my life. I wrote to Tony explaining that for 40 years I've held a passport in the name of Miss April Ashley and I would like a new birth certificate to go with it. It seems like such a petty thing, but I'd like to get everything in order."

Since her gender reassignment in Morocco in 1960, April remains in the catch 22 situation that dogs the life of all post-surgery British transsexuals. Although the NHS recognises transsexualism as a medical disorder and offers hormone and surgical intervention to bring the
body into line with the mind (attempts to do the opposite, using electro-convulsive therapy were abandoned but not before April was subjected to this treatment), there is no follow through. Because a ghost birth certificate cannot be issued, transsexuals cannot marry, have countless problems with employment law and even go to the wrong prisons. They have no rights in their new gender.

April's letter is unlikely to be successful - several recent high-profile applications have failed, as did a Private Members bill brought by Alex Carlile, the former Lib Dem health spokesman - but it is only a matter of time before Britain, like Scandinavia and New
Zealand, offers transsexuals the chance to enjoy lives of quiet consistency.

Transsexualism is not a "lifestyle choice", as April puts it. During foetal development, one foetus in 100,000 receives a dose of hormones
that means its body develops the opposite gender to the brain.

April's story provides a compelling insight into the psychological and social agonies this creates. "Although I was bought up a strict
Roman Catholic boy, I knew from age dot that I was a girl," she says.

She claims that her parents "truly hated" her and never came to terms with the fact that their son felt like a girl. "Being transsexual broke my heart. When I was little, I used to kneel beside my bed praying, 'Please let me wake up as a girl'. I had no one to confide in. I didn't tell anyone for years. My entire childhood was spent
trying to conform to the male body I was born into."

As a teenager, April - then called George - watched Robert Mitchum films and tried to copy his swagger, but at the age of 15 after George had spent a week forcing his voice to break, there was a suicide attempt.

"I spent my whole life trying to win the love of my mother, but there was never any reconciliation."

George even joined the Navy in a desperate and doomed attempt to kick start feelings of masculiity. From then on, George stopped trying to become a man and started cross-dressing, taking on the name April Ashley. For two years, she worked as a compere at Carousel, the
famous female impersonator nightclub in Paris, but after her surgery in 1960 never again worked there, despite the apartment and generous wage she was offered if she stayed.

"I wanted to live as normally as possible and didn't want to make a career out of that life. I wanted to be a normal woman in a normal world with normal people," she explains.

For while transvestites get a sexual kick from cross-dressing, transsexuals find only comfort in dressing their mismatched bodies in line with their minds. Transsexualism is not about sexual kicks, but about gender identity.

April has fallen foul of every social support system going. Upon her divorce, she didn't receive a penny because - in a move that changed
the law and "unmarried" all transsexuals - the judge declared her marriage null and void because she was born a man. "Lord Ormerod's summing up was rude, crude and judgmental. It was vicious and nasty. He was completely dismissive of the experts my legal team had assembled," says April, adding that this decision still leaves her
heartbroken. "My doctor was going to explain that it happens because the womb gets all the wrong hormones at the wrong time..." April knew
her claim was doomed from the start. "I told my team on the third day, 'We've lost this case. He will not even look at me.'" This seems surprising. Although it is often difficult for male-to-female transsexuals to make a convincing change, April was not a burly six footer. She has little feet for her slender 5ft 10ins frame, small shoulders and delicate hands. Not only was she already naturally quite feminine in appearance but she also became an exceptionally
beautiful woman after her transition. "I had no problems," she says. "As a child, people would tell me I was beautiful and after surgery many people just wouldn't believe I'd been born a boy. I had to show my passport to prove it.

I always told men I was involved with about my background.

Many men have fallen for me but I've only been in love twice. But you never know, life always surprises me."

Just before our interview ends, April says something unbearably sad. Sitting in a taxi, she looks wistfully out of the window. "People say
things have changed but they haven't changed at all. I'm treated as a joke and I can't escape that. I'm stuck with it for the rest of my
life."I suggest that scientific understanding and public acceptance of transsexuality have increased since she left Britain. April smiles
sagely. "Happily, I don't get slapped in the face any more but I think that has more to do with my age," she says.

This appeared in the GAIN Digest July 30, 2000/ Jane Warren

http://www.lineone.net/express/00/07/28/features/f0200woman-d.html

Thank you so much for this, Rose. What an amazing woman!
She also has a website with various links at:

web page

Hattie, odd that you responded to this "amazing woman" as you did, because something about her made me think of you, as I read her story.
It was this description: "perfectly mannered gentlewoman" with the "bearing of a duchess.

And not the 30's BBC accent?

No, it was more her demeaner that made me think of you. I recall your rarified manner @Cheez Whiz.

Friday, 22 November, 1-7pm
Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies
City University of New York--Graduate Center
Skylight Conference Room, 9th Floor
365 Fifth Avenue
(between 34th and 35th streets)

Free and open to the public
Wheelchair accessible

This half-day symposium focuses on the impact of Christine Jorgensen's historic "sex-change" of December 2, 1952, which made headlines around
the world, even pushing news of the hydrogen bomb tests on Eniwetok off the front pages. The Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies, The GLBT Historical Society, and the Social Sciences Research Council are primary sponsors of this event, with about a dozen local, regional, and national non-profits as co-sponsors. C. Jacob Hale (California State
University-Northridge), Susan Stryker (GLBT Historical Society), Joanne Meyerowitz (Indiana University) will present papers examining the impact of Jorgensen's life and celebrity. In a roundtable format, activists and legal and medical advocates will discuss the implications of the medical model of transsexualism as well as current debates over access to surgical and hormonal technologies. Finally, artists and cultural critics will present and assess past and contemporary images of transsexuality.

Other participants include: Paisley Currah, Brooklyn College; Hugh McGowan, GMHC; Mariette Pathy-Allen, photographer; Dean Spade, The
Sylvia Rivera Legal Resource Program, Urban Justice Center; Ben Singer, Rutgers University; Chris Straayer, New York University; Dinh Tu Tran, Tom Steele Fellow, "Homeless Queer Youth of Color Project," Peter Cicchino Youth Project; Salvador Vidal-Ortiz, CUNY Graduate Center.

For more information, phone the CLAGS at:
212-817-1955
or email:
clags@gc.cuny.edu

Christine Jorgensen is a true American shero!
I have a tribute page dedicated to this great, very courageous human being:

Joel's Tribute To Christine Jorgensen

I am glad that people are celebrating Christine. She is a real saint!

Lynn Conway, a role model in her own right, has compiled a great site specifically to showcase successful, thriving T's!

It'll make you feel good, so go look!

http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TSsuccesses/TSsuccesses.html

Or:

http://www.lynnconway.com

[This message was edited by Stephanie on 06-27-03 at 04:46 PM.]

Holly Woodlawn

Hey, if anyone sees Holly, tell her to visit my site: Joels Salon

Ever since I saw Alexis Arquette playing the fierce tranny, Georgette, in the 1990's film Last Exit To Brooklyn, I knew I was watching a Major Star. Lots of times, the youngest member of the famous Arquette family plays the parts of drag queens in films. Here is a still of him from the movie The Wedding Singer. That's him in the background playing the keyboards.... Yikes!

yeah, but his performances for the bathroom cam at Click & Drag are far more legendary...

Randella, you MUST tell me more!

Memories lighting the corner of my mind, and going back to 1996/1997, one of the more dicey & fun nights of Click & Drag was the bathroom cam was up and running. At MOTHER, in the upstairs bathroom was the camera above the stall (and most knew that it was there as there was signage stating the purpose) and the huge monitors were downstairs so those who cared had their cocktail viewing pleasure. Alexis was around in town for a while and carrying on, and came by Click & Drag one night, and ended up doing a wild performance. As to the details how it happened that 4 ended up in that cubicle (and I am sure that footage was catalogued, right Rob & ChiChi?), I don't recall, but I watched all the action downstairs while smoking a cigarette and having a cocktail (those were the days, sigh).

It was Alexis, Sherry Vine, a straight-ish fetishy boy as the novice crossdresser, and the 4th, I don't recall- was it a girl? (*Others who were there, please feel free to add/correct details). These 4 carried on in various contortions sucking each other off, kissing, as I do recall lots of smeared lipstick on each's mouths during the viewing of all this debauchery. Alexis' tool was just massive (and there are enough printed pics to corroborate) and I remember crossdresser boy trying to get it in his mouth (novice boy i believe and not very skilled at such things), and Sherry made out with him (though she never exposed herself, smart girl looking out for her career) and also serviced him I believe.

My main recollection was the size of Alexis' penis, the shock of seeing Sherry (my friend, sister, and neighbor) in action, and how everyone downstairs had stopped, crowded around the monitor to view this whole scene (and this was a heavy duty fetish crowd so it would take a lot to pique intereste), and I had never seen anything like that live at that point in my life.

I remember that night!
It was so funny. Alexis does have an enormous piece. I remember we were stunned by the size of it. And Sherry Vine is always an amazing performer.
You should see some of the footage we have for "The Jackie 60 Movie"!

I just got off the phone with Sherry. She called to say Hi. I told her about this topic and she was howling.

quote:

---

She told me,
"I totally remember that night like it was yesterday. There was NO WAY I was going to take out my lady stick with that camera on. Alexis's cock is huge. How could I ever forget THAT!"

---

Hi,

I'm new to these boards. I just wanted to say that I am a huge fan of Wendy Carlos' music and I had no idea she is a TS. This board is great, my first day and I learn something new!

BB

I am so happy for canadian bicyclist Michelle Dumaresq!!!
Now that the greeks at this year's athens olympics are allowing tanssexuals to compete, Michelle (once known as "Michael") can now show the world that just because a guy becomes a woman, this doesn't mean she can't compete in the Olympics!!! Yea rah, Olympics! Yea-rah, Michelle!

Read all about it: Michelle Wins!

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Joel,

MIANNE BAGGER - TRANSSEXUAL GOLFER

Good looking Aussie golfer, Mianne Bagger, used to be a male, now she is on the Womans Professional Tour. Yikes, talk about a gal having balls (and I don't necessarily mean the kind you putt)!

Annika Sorenstam has nothing on Mianne. Check out Mianne's website: Mianne Bagger

MISS COCO PERU

The other night a good friend came over and we watched a really cool and funny DVD together. It is called Girls Will Be Girls. It stars a really cute and talented honey named Miss Coco... yikes, this grrl is GREAT!

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Joel,