Before Stonewall: Jenny's Interview Clip 2 of 3

From the collection of

Screen Archive South East at the University of Brighton collects, preserves, catalogues and provides public access to its collection of films and magic lantern slides. The collection charts the rise of screen culture in the region and the nation and captures many aspects of life, work and creativity in the South East from the late 19th century to the present day. It is available for research, screenings, creative re-use and commercial access.

Before Stonewall: Jenny's Interview Clip 2 of 3

Screen Archive South East at the University of Brighton
2003-03-17
Sound

After many trials and experiments, the time has come for Jenny to make the decision that will affect the rest of her life.

In this extract, Jenny describes the events leading up to her decision to undergo sex re-assignment therapy. Still living as a married man in Harrogate, Jenny found that the middle-class society he and his wife lived in, considered transvestism - which Jenny was experimenting with at the time - to be a taboo subject. However, it was in transvestite circles that she came across a number of transexuals and admired them, and in time felt that she had to adopt the transexual life as well.

Jenny's wife at the time suggested a compromise where she would live as 'Jenny' in a flat in Manchester during the week and as a man in the family home in Harrogate at the weekends. However, Jenny couldn't accept this as a solution and instead set a date to become a transexual, leaving her family the following year to undergo a treatment regime.

Driven by the feeling that it was the right thing to do, Jenny considers her decision to have been an act of bravery, which was followed by an incredible feeling of freedom and empowerment. Jenny's wife, however, found the situation very difficult and the couple would later divorce.

Jenny Roberts, assigned male at birth, lived in Yorkshire for most of her life. She eventually became a successful businessperson and was twice married with children. It was during her first marriage that she started wearing her wife's clothes as an experiment. Her wife found this difficult to understand and they eventually split up. Her second wife, with whom she had children, also found coping with her transvestism difficult.

Inspired by the journalist Jan Morris' transition into a woman, Jenny, as she now called herself, eventually decided to undergo sex-reassignment therapy. After a second divorce, Jenny moved from Harrogate to York, eventually becoming an author and coming out as a lesbian.

GLAM Before Stonewall: LGBT Oral History Project

This fascinating and important collection, recorded onto videotape, contains the testimonies, in the form of interviews, from individuals of varying ages, backgrounds and ethnicities from across the LGBT community.

‘Before Stonewall: An Oral History of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community’ was a Heritage Lottery Funded project organised in 2003 by a Brighton-based organisation 'Gay and Lesbian Arts and Media', otherwise known as GLAM. The project sought to record for posterity the first-hand recollections of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people from across the United Kingdom and beyond, of a time before the events in New York’s Greenwich Village which culminated in the Stonewall Riots of 1969. This was a time which was very different, and in many respects more oppressive for homosexual and transgender people, than the one we’re familiar with today. This fascinating and important collection, recorded onto videotape, contains the testimonies, in the form of interviews, of over one-hundred individuals of varying ages, backgrounds and ethnicities from across the LGBT community. With recollections that reach back as far as the 1920s, what all of the interviews describe and reveal is the whole gamut of human experience, from the deeply tragic to the exhilaratingly joyous - all from the perspectives of a section of society that has often been considered to be ‘different from the others’. Journalist Charlotte Cooper, who worked for the gay press at the time, co-ordinated the project’s video-recording with volunteers and conducted many of the interviews herself. Charlotte describes her time on the project as both a revelatory and profoundly moving experience. Screen Archive South East has made available from across this collection a total of eighty four extracts from thirty individual interviews. Together they give an insightful and first-hand account of what life was like for LGBT people, both in the United Kingdom and abroad, and in both the years before Stonewall and after.

75 videos in this collection

Before Stonewall Summary: Charlotte Cooper Clip 1 of 4

2003-07-31

Before Stonewall Summary: Charlotte Cooper Clip 2 of 4

2003-07-31

Before Stonewall Summary: Charlotte Cooper Clip 3 of 4

2003-07-31

Before Stonewall Summary: Charlotte Cooper Clip 4 of 4

2003-07-31

Before Stonewall: Jenny's Interview Clip 1 of 3

2003-03-17