‘I knew from the age dot, that I was a girl. My only dreams were about growing up to be a woman’
April Ashley was born in 1935 into a strict working-class family in Liverpool her birth name was George Jamieson. Her childhood was rough, she struggled with depression and was beaten and bullied at school. During WW2 she would often have to hide in underground shelters with his classmates, in her autobiography she explained; "They would tie me up, they would attack me", each evening she prayed "God bless mommy, God bless Daddy, God bless my brothers and sisters, and please make me a little girl when I wake up".
When she was 14, she joined the navy in an attempt to escape her life and fix her gender confusion. April would go on to have two suicide attempts, when discussing this, April explained "I new that if I were to live, it could only be as a woman", as her depression was so severe, she was given a ‘dishonourable discharge’ from them the navy. When April was 16, she was sent to a high security mental hospital where she received electric shock treatment, this was unsuccessful and she remained in a deep depression. In her late teens she again tried to escape her tough home life, at first, she moved to London and then Paris. When in Paris she began working at a night club called ‘Le Carousel’ here she performed as a drag queen character ‘Coccinelle’. At Le Carousel she heard about the opportunity to have gender reconstructive surgery and began saving all her money. Once she had saved enough, she travelled to Cassablanca, Morocco to have the illegal surgery. Her surgeon was Dr George Burou’s, she was his 9th patient (some of my resources say she was his 7th patient) and he gave her a 50/50 chance of surviving, but she did, she described the day after her operation the best day of her life. April endured bleeding for weeks after the surgery and lost large clumps of hair. After her surgery she moved back to Britain, April was in some ways lucky; she was able to afford the surgery and able to ‘pass’, this meant unlike a lot of trans people she could live life as a woman and often not be questioned on this. She began a very successful modelling carrier, she appeared in vogue, was a model for very prestigious photographers such as David Baily and was cast in a film ‘The Road to Hong Kong’ with Bing Crosby and Bob Hope. This all changed on the 19th of November 1961 when a close friend disclosed her story to the newspaper ‘Sunday People’ for £5, the newspaper publicly outed her as transgender under the title ‘Her secret is out’, she was never hired as a model again and was dropped from the film. Despite the blatant discrimination and transphobia April remained in the public eye she described her life as ‘schizophrenic’, she explained that she would go from acclaim to abuse and glamour to poverty. In 1963 she married British aristocrat Arthur Corbett, the marriage started of happily, Arthur knew April was transgender and described her as the ‘embodiment of femininity’. The marriage lasted 7 years but in 1970 the two decided to separate, April filed for a financial settlement during the divorce, which was standard practice, but Arthur was not willing to participate. He argued that, as April was transgender she was still biologically a man therefore the marriage was invalid, as gay marriage was not legal. The Judge, Lord Justice Ormand, made April go to extreme and humiliating lengths to prove she was a woman such as; showing the history of the hormones she was taking, openly describing and discussing the intricacies of her surgeries with members of the court and have a gynaecologist inspect her vagina. Ormond said; “Her outward appearance, at first sight, was convincingly feminine, but on closer and longer examination in the witness box it was much less so”. Ormand ruled the marriage invalid, he concluded that; your gender in society can be changed, but your sex can never be changed, and a person’s sex is a defining element of a legal relationship. The marriage was annulled, and Arthur did not have to pay a financial settlement. Thankfully more laws are being put in place to help trans people in similar legal situations (some are described bellow). Once April had been outed, her confidence and refusal to hide helped others in creating a more liberal and accepting world. She forced people to listen, she fought for their rights, she told her story through interviews and autobiographies and she went through hell and back to do so. In 2012 she received an MBE (Member of the British Empire).
New Laws to protect trans people:
Thanks to activists like April the LGBTQ+ community are beginning to be protected by the law. The gender recognition act of 2004 allowed people who were transitioning or had transitioned to legally change their gender and sex on their birth certificate, if a person’s gender and sex had legally been changed the same laws and protection would apply to them, as it would to a person who was born that gender. The ‘Equality Act of 2010’, further protected the rights of trans people, this act included people who were transitioning, who have transitioned, and people who were living as their correct gender but still in the physical body of the sex they were born in.
Sex:
‘the biological aspects of an individual as determined by their anatomy, which is produced by their chromosomes, hormones and their interactions. It generally male or female, and it is somethings assigned at birth. (I found the website listed below really useful to understand sex and gender when researching the Corbett v Corbett case)
Gender:
A social construction relating to behaviours and attributes based on labels of masculinity and femininity; gender identity is a personal, internal perception of oneself and so the gender category someone identifies with may not match the sex they were assigned at birth. Where an individual may see themselves as a man, a woman, as having no gender, or as having a non-binary gender – where people identify as somewhere on a spectrum between man and woman. (I found the website listed below really useful to understand sex and gender when researching the Corbett v Corbett case)
Passing:
‘When someone makes a gender transition, they may change how they look and act. They do this to match their gender identity. Sometimes the changes they make will cause them to ‘pass’. That means other people will not know they made a gender transition.’ –
Website: Transgender map (really useful website if you want to learn more about transitioning) https://www.transgendermap.com/social/passing/
Transphobia:
‘Dislike of or prejudice against transsexual or transgender people.’- Oxford Languages Dictionary.
Aristocrat:
‘A person of high social rank who belongs to the aristocracy’- Cambridge dictionary
An example of aristocracy would be the British Royal Family.
References
Gender description useful website:
Office for National Statistics. ‘What is the difference between sex and gender identity?’
April Ashley website:
Liverpool Museum, ‘New April Ashley Exhibition’
April Ashley, Home:
BBC, ‘April Asley, transgender icon: Liverpool exhibition opens’, by Helen Carter
The Guardian, ‘Voices from the trans community: ‘There will always be prejudice’:
Office for National Statistics. ‘What is the difference between sex and gender identity?’
The Models Market, ‘April Ashley’:
GLBTQ, ‘April Ashly’ by Claude J. Simmers
Vice, ‘A Brief History of the Gender Recognition Act’
Ranker, ‘23 Famous Transgender Models that are Beyond Beautiful’
April Ashley, MBE for transgender campaigner:
Image from AprilAshley.com
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