{please note - I'm having to work very hard at remembering the
following - it all blurs a little, and please excuse the shorthand
ts/tv descriptors}
I was involved with TAO in the UK, for a short time in around
1974/75.
TAO/GB [I'll distinguish it by calling it TAO/GB] at that time was a
very small and shortlived organisation - though organisation seems a
somewhat over-blown description.
I can't remember how, but I discovered Brooklyn (ftm) and Leila (mtf)
who appeared to be running TAO. They lived together [they were
haveing a relationship at that time] in a bedsit in Birmingham and I
went to stay a couple of times. They greatly influenced my 'trans'
politics (and have done so to this day). I eventually lost touch with
them around 1976, but discovered shortly after that Brooklyn had
changed his name to Lou.
{as a sideline I met Leyla again in 1990, when I started my part time
Master's Course at Edgehill College, Ormskirk, when a person called
Trevor introduced themselves as 'having been Leyla'. Trevor didn't
stay on the course for very long, however he did say he was running a
small antigues shop on Bond Street in Liverpool. He met a woman
(originally from Goa) on the course, and I heard that they had got
married.}
When I originally met Brooklyn and Leyla, TAO/GB consisted of some
headed paper designed by Brooklyn and a clear anarcho-transformative,
transsexual-seperatist agenda - for example we (the three of us) went
to protest at the National Front March that was taking place one
weekend through Birmingham.
At around the same time as all this was happening, I was leaving the
radical-seperatist lesbian collective I had been involved with in
Manchester, and was involved with setting up the Manchester TV/TS
group which met in Stan's bedsit in Camp Street in Salford. It was
mixed tv/ts.
Also at around the same time 'Pat' set up the London tv/ts group that
met in her bedsit (note we were all broke and we all lived in grotty
1970's bedsits - of the sort immortalised in the film 'Room at the
Top') which was just off the Archway in London.
Sometime in late 1975 (and I'm not sure how this came about, at all)
there was a meeting/party held in Leeds in Carol's bedsit. Carol had
become involved with the Leeds TV/TS group which was run by John/June
Willmot - a tv who died in the late 1980s, who lived with his partner
Audrey - a ts.
Carol (and company), who had already produced a couple of magazines
(which I just wish I could get hold of copies of) -wanted to do
something more radical than was happening in the tv/ts groups - and
so TAO became the obvious vehicle.
It didn't however really last - Brooklyn and Leyla went back to
Birmingham and disappeared. Carol met Paul at the party and they
became lovers and escaped to the sunshine of the south coast for a
while. Then it appears they separated, I've heard nothing of Carol,
but had a weird phone call from Paul in 1990 when someone had sent
him some stuff from the FTM network (that was just after we set it
up) - and he demanded that no-one ever contact him again.
At the Leeds party I met Pat who ran the London group and we had a
relationship for about 18 months - she moved up to Manchester with
me, the London TV/TS group went off and became a little more
organised with their centre at French Place. In the meantime the
Manchester tv/ts group moved into St Peter's chaplaincy at the
university and we were quite together for some time. During 1976/77
we worked with other groups to set up the Manchester Gay Switchboard
(on which there still is a tv/ts night).
Also at the party was Nick (ftm), from Manchester, - and we joined
the Beaumont Society - which was for straight tv's. In late 76 we
went to the Beaumont Society dinner in London - where we met June
Willmott and Audrey (see above) from the Leeds tv/ts group. At the
dinner - I 'copped' off with Alice - a ts who went on to become the
Beaumont Societies president and I went on to move to Sussex to be
near her, and got very involved in putting together the Beaumont
Society magazine. As for Nick - well thats another story which I
won't bring up unless the other person on this list who was involved
chooses to do so.
>From this involvement with the Beaumont Society we were to become
involved, in 1979, with the Judy Couzins and the creation of SHAFT
(the self-help association for transsexuals) which was the primary
'transsexual' group - from which all else such as the Gender Trust,
Gems, the FTM network and Press For Change have grown.
However it is worth noting that transsexual seperatism started with
TAO/GB - really to distinguish our issues and our needs - and through
the 1970s those were about getting access to hormones and surgery,
and avoiding aversion therapy and the locked ward. It was NOT about
condemining tv's at all - in fact there was real close co-operation
for some time. but it was about seperate issues.
As for TAO/GB - well we had one night of glorious partying and
radical sexual relationships in Leeds in autumn 1975. And well - that
was probably it!
Stephen
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Stephen Whittle Tel: 0161 247 6444 (work)
Senior Lecturer in Law Tel: 0161 432 1915 (home)
The School of Law Fax: 0161 247 6309 (work)
Manchester Metro University Fax: 0161 432 8454 (home)
Hathersage Rd
Manchester M13 0JA
United Kingdom
work email: [log in to unmask]
home email: [log in to unmask]
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Celebrating and affirming insurgent intellectual cultural practice
.... an invitation to enter a space of changing thought, the open
mind that is the heartbeat of cultural revolution (b.hooks, 1994)
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