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

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

Now fulfilled in herself, Jenny reflects on how boys and girls are different - even if they eventually make the transition.

In this extract Jenny makes some interesting observations on her life as a transexual. Finding now that people respect her for who she is, she feels she's been empowered to initiate a Neighbourhood Watch Scheme in the part of York where she now lives. Reflecting on her life as a transexual, who then goes on to discover a lesbian inclination, Jenny begins to identify as a 'dyke' and begins wearing less feminine clothing. She also mentions the political undercurrent that exists in lesbian circles.

Jenny makes an insightful comment on how trans women cannot be the same as those born women because they have been raised as males - and that the upbringing of a boy is an entirely different experience from that of a girl. She advocates respect for those original circumstances, qualifying her comments by saying that she's 'seen both sides'.

She summarises her life today as being a bit like Virginia Woolf's 'Orlando' - seeing and experiencing life from all sides. Such experiences, Jenny claims, have 'moulded me as a person' and that, ultimately, everyone should break out and be themselves.

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

Before Stonewall: Jenny's Interview Clip 2 of 3

2003-03-17