[Blog/Commentary] [USA] April Ashley, MBE
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Stephanie Stevens
Jun 25, 2012, 6:59:57 AM6/25/12
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Daily Kos, USA
Wed Jun 20, 2012 at 02:00 PM PDT
April Ashley, MBE
by rserven <http://www.dailykos.com/user/rserven> for Remembering LGBT
History <http://www.dailykos.com/blog/Remembering%20LGBT%20History>
April Ashley has followed a long and winding road to where she is now.
The 77 year-old Fullham (southwest London) woman was awarded the MBE
<http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/april-mbe-transsexual-crusader-is-honoured-7856581.html>
by Queen Elizabeth last Friday as part of the Queen's Birthday Honors.
An MBE is a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire,
an order of chivalry established in 1917 by George V. MBE is the
lowest rank in this order of chivalry.
It's unbelievable and wonderful and especially fantastic to
receive it in the year of Her Majesty's Jubilee.
--Ashley
She was born in April, 1935 near the Liverpool docks. Her father was
a Navy cook and her mother worked in a bomb factory. She was often
beaten by her mother for being a bed-wetter and her father was a heavy
drinker who often flirted with other men.
Sensing she was different from other children growing up with the name
of George, she tried to develop some masculinity by joining the
Merchant Navy at the age of 15. That proved to be a failure. She
attempted suicide before the age of 18 and was subjected to
electro-convulsive therapy for being effeminate.
She fled to Paris and reinvented herself as a hostess at Cabaret Le
Carrousel named Toni Jamieson. At the cabaret she hung out with her
friends, which included Jean-Paul Sartre, Ernest Hemingway and Nina
Simone. When she got £3000 scraped together, she traveled to
Casablanca, where she was the 9th person to undergo a sex change
operation performed by Dr. Georges Burou in an operation that took 7
hours. She was the first British citizen to undergo the surgery.
Burou and his first patients are the subject of a new film
<http://www.edgeonthenet.com/index.php?ch=entertainment&sc=movies&sc2=reviews&sc3=features&id=134021%3Cbr%3E>
, I Am a Woman Now <http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117947299/> by
Dutch film director Michael Van Erp.
[Video: <http://youtu.be/iJDdv0tSCoI> I AM A WOMEN NOW (Documentaire) - TRAILER]
Returning to London, she drew the attention of photographer David
Bailey, modeled for Vogue and dated Peter O'Toole and Omar Sharif.
She landed an (uncredited) acting role in the Hope-Crosby film The
Road to Hong Kong.
Unfortunately a "friend" sold her story to a tabloid for five pounds.
The greatest harm that did to me was that I have never been able
to get work in Britain again. I've been forced to live abroad to get
work.
She has lived in the south of France, Hay-on-Wye, New York, Los
Angeles, and San Diego.
How did she support herself?
You name it, I've done it. I've mainly been an art consultant,
advising people how to make their homes look nice.
In the 1950s she worked at a hotel in North Wales for the sous-chef,
John Prescott, who later became Deputy Prime Minister under Tony
Blair.
After she was outed, she had affairs with Salvador Dali, Pablo
Picasso, and a one-night stand with INXS lead singer Michael
Hutchence.
One admirer, the Hon Arthur Cameron Corbett, was the heir to a
castle and 7,000 acres in Scotland. Trouble was, he was also married
with four children, and had a weakness for dressing up as a woman.
Their affair and subsequent marriage, in Gibraltar in 1963, quickly
collapsed. A bitter divorce ensued, in which Corbett petitioned for
an annulment on the grounds that Ashley was born a man, making the
marriage invalid. Highly personal details of her anatomy were
plastered over the papers, and the court eventually agreed with
Corbett. It left Ashley distraught, feeling she had not been
recognised as a woman legally, socially or biologically.
It wasn't until 2004 that the Gender Recognition Act
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_Recognition_Act_2004> allowed
people to be legally recognized as their reassigned gender.
The MBE was awarded to Ashley for her work campaigning for that change
in the law. She spent a decade writing to Tony Blair and Lord
Falconer to provide her with a birth certificate identifying her as a
woman. After being continually told to "Be patient.", she finally got
a corrected birth certificate in 2005.
Over the years she received thousands of letters from people in a
similar predicament.
I would always wish people three things – to be kind to yourself
and to others. To be beautiful, on the inside, which makes you
beautiful on the outside. And most of all to be brave, because you
will need that.
She was the guest of honor at a dinner at Oxford in the 1960s.
We gave a celebrated dinner for her in the Oscar Wilde Room of
Magdalen College. The porters served the food and stood against the
walls like footmen. The climax came when April leaped on to the
mahogany dining table and performed a flamenco in and out of the
candlesticks. Magdalen had never seen anything like this. Ever.
--Duncan Fallowell, her biographer
It makes me proud to be British. Proud of an establishment that
can make such an award, perhaps a rather eccentric award.
--Fallowell
Jennifer Fabulous just posted a photo essay
<http://jenniferfabulous.blogspot.com/>
[http://jenniferfabulous.blogspot.com/2012/06/other-side-of-april.html]
.
© Kos Media, LLC
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/06/20/1101700/-April-Ashley-MBE
Wed Jun 20, 2012 at 02:00 PM PDT
April Ashley, MBE
by rserven <http://www.dailykos.com/user/rserven> for Remembering LGBT
History <http://www.dailykos.com/blog/Remembering%20LGBT%20History>
April Ashley has followed a long and winding road to where she is now.
The 77 year-old Fullham (southwest London) woman was awarded the MBE
<http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/april-mbe-transsexual-crusader-is-honoured-7856581.html>
by Queen Elizabeth last Friday as part of the Queen's Birthday Honors.
An MBE is a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire,
an order of chivalry established in 1917 by George V. MBE is the
lowest rank in this order of chivalry.
It's unbelievable and wonderful and especially fantastic to
receive it in the year of Her Majesty's Jubilee.
--Ashley
She was born in April, 1935 near the Liverpool docks. Her father was
a Navy cook and her mother worked in a bomb factory. She was often
beaten by her mother for being a bed-wetter and her father was a heavy
drinker who often flirted with other men.
Sensing she was different from other children growing up with the name
of George, she tried to develop some masculinity by joining the
Merchant Navy at the age of 15. That proved to be a failure. She
attempted suicide before the age of 18 and was subjected to
electro-convulsive therapy for being effeminate.
She fled to Paris and reinvented herself as a hostess at Cabaret Le
Carrousel named Toni Jamieson. At the cabaret she hung out with her
friends, which included Jean-Paul Sartre, Ernest Hemingway and Nina
Simone. When she got £3000 scraped together, she traveled to
Casablanca, where she was the 9th person to undergo a sex change
operation performed by Dr. Georges Burou in an operation that took 7
hours. She was the first British citizen to undergo the surgery.
Burou and his first patients are the subject of a new film
<http://www.edgeonthenet.com/index.php?ch=entertainment&sc=movies&sc2=reviews&sc3=features&id=134021%3Cbr%3E>
, I Am a Woman Now <http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117947299/> by
Dutch film director Michael Van Erp.
[Video: <http://youtu.be/iJDdv0tSCoI> I AM A WOMEN NOW (Documentaire) - TRAILER]
Returning to London, she drew the attention of photographer David
Bailey, modeled for Vogue and dated Peter O'Toole and Omar Sharif.
She landed an (uncredited) acting role in the Hope-Crosby film The
Road to Hong Kong.
Unfortunately a "friend" sold her story to a tabloid for five pounds.
The greatest harm that did to me was that I have never been able
to get work in Britain again. I've been forced to live abroad to get
work.
She has lived in the south of France, Hay-on-Wye, New York, Los
Angeles, and San Diego.
How did she support herself?
You name it, I've done it. I've mainly been an art consultant,
advising people how to make their homes look nice.
In the 1950s she worked at a hotel in North Wales for the sous-chef,
John Prescott, who later became Deputy Prime Minister under Tony
Blair.
After she was outed, she had affairs with Salvador Dali, Pablo
Picasso, and a one-night stand with INXS lead singer Michael
Hutchence.
One admirer, the Hon Arthur Cameron Corbett, was the heir to a
castle and 7,000 acres in Scotland. Trouble was, he was also married
with four children, and had a weakness for dressing up as a woman.
Their affair and subsequent marriage, in Gibraltar in 1963, quickly
collapsed. A bitter divorce ensued, in which Corbett petitioned for
an annulment on the grounds that Ashley was born a man, making the
marriage invalid. Highly personal details of her anatomy were
plastered over the papers, and the court eventually agreed with
Corbett. It left Ashley distraught, feeling she had not been
recognised as a woman legally, socially or biologically.
It wasn't until 2004 that the Gender Recognition Act
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_Recognition_Act_2004> allowed
people to be legally recognized as their reassigned gender.
The MBE was awarded to Ashley for her work campaigning for that change
in the law. She spent a decade writing to Tony Blair and Lord
Falconer to provide her with a birth certificate identifying her as a
woman. After being continually told to "Be patient.", she finally got
a corrected birth certificate in 2005.
Over the years she received thousands of letters from people in a
similar predicament.
I would always wish people three things – to be kind to yourself
and to others. To be beautiful, on the inside, which makes you
beautiful on the outside. And most of all to be brave, because you
will need that.
She was the guest of honor at a dinner at Oxford in the 1960s.
We gave a celebrated dinner for her in the Oscar Wilde Room of
Magdalen College. The porters served the food and stood against the
walls like footmen. The climax came when April leaped on to the
mahogany dining table and performed a flamenco in and out of the
candlesticks. Magdalen had never seen anything like this. Ever.
--Duncan Fallowell, her biographer
It makes me proud to be British. Proud of an establishment that
can make such an award, perhaps a rather eccentric award.
--Fallowell
Jennifer Fabulous just posted a photo essay
<http://jenniferfabulous.blogspot.com/>
[http://jenniferfabulous.blogspot.com/2012/06/other-side-of-april.html]
.
© Kos Media, LLC
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/06/20/1101700/-April-Ashley-MBE
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