Tributes Paid To Transgender Activist April Ashley
Tributes have been paid to model, actress, and transgender activist April Ashley, who has died aged 86.
One of the first Britons to undergo gender reassignment surgery, she was made an MBE in 2012 for her campaigning work for the transgender community.
Singer Boy George tweeted: “R.I.P April Ashley! A force of nature and transgender high priestess!”
LGBTQ+ rights campaigner Peter Tatchell called her “the GREAT trans trailblazer for decades” and a “hero.”
“I was so honored to know and support her in a past era when she was reviled after being outed as trans,” he said.
Trans activist and actor Jake Graf wrote: “A true trailblazer of the trans community has left us. April Ashley MBE was the definition of grace and humility, despite having fought hard throughout her life for her place in society.
“A true queen. Gone, but never forgotten. Rest in power.”
Artist Daniel Lismore said Ashley was “a pioneer and a great British icon, she was a beautiful and gracious woman and her humor was legendary.”
Born George Jamieson to a working-class family in Liverpool in 1935, Ashley joined the Merchant Navy as a teenager.
After repeated suicide attempts and a stint in a psychiatric unit, she moved to London in 1955 and then to Paris, as the Independent reports.
Performing at Le Carrousel nightclub, which was famous for its drag acts, she saved up money for the operation.
Ashley traveled to Casablanca, Morocco, in 1960 and underwent the surgery.
Though excruciating, the procedure made her the happiest she had ever been, Ashley said in later interviews.
Back in England, she obtained a passport and driving license which identified her as female.
A year later, she was being photographed for the pages of Vogue magazine as a top London fashion model and appeared in films including Road To Hong Kong.
But her blossoming modeling career was cut short when the Sunday People outed her as transgender in 1961.
In 1963, she married aristocrat Arthur Cameron Corbett.
Their divorce in 1970 marked a landmark legal ruling when the judge ruled that she remained a biological man and that the marriage therefore was invalid.
She moved to the US west coast to escape the prejudice and discrimination she faced at home, only returning to Britain in 2005, when she was legally recognized as female thanks to the Gender Recognition Act.
Read related myGwork articles here:
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