Before Stonewall: Jenny's Interview Clip 1 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 1 of 3

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

Inspired by a Sunday Times journalist, Jenny sets out on the long and difficult road to transition.

In this extract, Jenny Roberts, describes how, as a man, she felt more and more conflicted and began to perceive herself as being more feminine than masculine. This was when she began to call herself 'Jenny'. Marriage now became a major struggle, though she and her wife both came to terms with the fact that they were two women living in the same home.

Jenny also refers to the highly-publicised transition of the Sunday Times journalist, James Morris, into Jan Morris. Jenny read Jan Morris' account of her transition, including a sex-change operation in Casablanca, and though finding it all very interesting, didn't connect the experience with herself largely due to her still being very much in denial about her true feelings.

Jenny makes an insightful comment about how much easier it is to come out as gay man or woman compared with transitioning from one sex to another. Coming out as gay might mean divorce from a wife or husband, but each can still continue living as who they are. However, as Jenny observes, in the case of the transexual, the entire canvas must be 'wiped clean'.

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