W11 in the 70s.  Chapter 12: Conclusion

When I look back at the seventies in W11 I can say that those years affected my whole life. The whole environment, good and bad, was incredible. At the very beginning of women’s liberation and gay liberation people came together, talked about ideas, and argued about ways to achieve a better world. We took risks for what we believed in, and we opposed the system when we thought the system was wrong. Through meetings and demonstrations we all endeavoured to change the law so that all women and gay people were not the target of violence and abuse of any kind. There was lots of laughter and friendship between everyone. Men and women were supportive and were willing to help when there were difficulties. Many people were there for me when the going got tough, especially Bobby MacKenzie who influenced me greatly and who seemed to know instinctively when I needed support.

A lot of gay men supported women, seeing women’s struggle as part of their own struggle. When you were inside the courtroom, said Paul Theobald to me, we were outside staging an alternative Miss World in support of your action. Women found ways of living together to help with childcare.  Gay men worked in drag in the community, for example in a children’s playground. The idea was to help children and their mothers to become less prejudiced about gay people. One gay man went every day to teach in a college and he went in drag. This was very brave indeed.

But even in the beginning when everything seemed open, transsexuals were never really accepted. Some gay men saw them either as a bad example of the drag queen or just as something they didn’t understand. The effeminate gay men and drag queens did not like them either. And although some gay men are effeminate and open to abuse in the gay world, they still function within the masculine ideal, so the transsexual was the other in this arena, as she functioned within the feminine ideal.

However, later in the GLF movement, people like Bob Mellors were able to see great significance politically in the transgender position. It is interesting that in GLF gay women were the first to split from the gay men and became separatists. There was more splitting when some women moved to socialism and marxism, and the radical feminists who saw this as a move to the masculine left formed their own groupings. And parallel to this, gay men mirrored the fracturing of the gay women. This happened also in the women’s liberation movement. And now that the splitting had started there was no stopping it, with many bitter quarrels occurring until one only felt safe with a partner.

At the beginning when everything was exploratory and open and anarchic it was good, but when it was broken up, the powerful ideology of right-wing capitalism engulfed it all. The pink pound won. Now everything is dominated by the masculine language of the systematised global market and both women and men have found a place in it. The feminine is nearly extinguished. Women now act like men, whether they are in executive positions in finance and politics or caught in the glitter of a personality cult. And have all these women in power made a difference to the world? No. They have certainly increased their own market value, which would not be bad in itself if the result were a more just and humane world; but that has not been the result. It has only changed the distribution of manpower in the marketplace which now includes many more women than before. The USA went to war in Iraq with Condoleeza Rice, a black woman in the Bush government, taking a major part in it. Blair’s babes, even if they did not come out decisively to approve the war, condoned it by their silence. The greater role of women in society has not diminished the exploitation of poor banana growers and coffee growers who cannot make enough to live.

The transgender community as yet has not been completely engulfed by it all. You could say at this point that their feminine side is true, and I hope it will remain so. As a genetic woman I am always made welcome by them and I always feel a feminine warmth of friendship when I am with them.  

So here we are today. There is much more known about the transgender community and there is more support for them than there used to be. Also, more is known about Huntington’s Disease. I have been to several meetings of the Beaumont Society in London, who support the transgender community, and there are several societies and groups, whose names can be found on the web, supporting people with Huntington’s.

In the seventies we talked of revolution, but ultimately what has happened is just that one system of power has been overcome by another and become the status quo. In the last meeting of the Beaumont Society, Kay said to me: we don’t use the word revolution here, we talk of evolution.  And for some reason or other that made me feel optimistic and happy.

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