April
Ashley
at 60
"Forty
years after my sex change I'm still
treated as a joke, though I don't get
my face slapped any more"
By
Jane Warren
 SHE is beautifully dressed in a yellow
trouser suit, fuchsia pashmina and open-toe
sandals. Her Thatcherite bouffant hair
is a distinguished grey and the voice
is pure, cut-glass Thirties BBC.
April Ashley has the hauteur and bearing
of a duchess, she is also unmistakably
feminine, but she has only just received
her state pension despite celebrating
her 60th birthday five years ago. And,
unless legislation is changed, her death
certificate will describe her gender
as male.
"Legally,
I might die as a man but my friends
won't let me be buried as anything less
than a woman," she says.
April was the most famous transsexual
of the Sixties. Born George Jamieson
in a Liverpool slum, she went on to
marry as a woman and become a top fashion
model, showgirl and socialite. She was
queen of the catwalk, Vogue's favourite
underwear model photographed by Terence
Donovan and David Bailey, and was in
constant demand. And then, 40 years
ago, she "lost everything" when a friend
sold her story to a downmarket newspaper
for £5.
Her secret was out. The model appearing
in the glossies had been the ninth person
in the world to have a sex change. April
was pilloried and became, as she harshly
puts it, "a celebrity freak".
"I
was booked up for six months and it
was all cancelled. I couldn't even get
a job as a shop assistant. It was unbelievably
difficult."
Her husband Arthur Corbett, later to
become Lord Rowallan, who was well aware
that April was a transsexual when he
married her, divorced her when her story
became public. Their acrimonious case
caused a sensation but April did not
receive a penny when the marriage was
declared nul and void because she was
born a man.
Since then, she has had "normal, heterosexual
relationships" including a brief affair
with the late singer Michael Hutchence
in the early Eighties after they met
at a bar in Australia, but today she
is alone.
"Michael
was an absolutely beautiful man and
I was flattered by his interest in me.
I was so sad to hear of his death. He
had everything to live for," she says.
She
lives in exile in San Diego where she
works as a guide and saleswoman in art
galleries. She is known as a rather
eccentric, perfectly mannered English
gentlewoman and relishes her anonymity.
She remains convinced that "the breath
of scandal" will always follow her in
Britain and that finding a job that
would fund a new life here would prove
impossible, although she longs to return.
"I'm
too famous, too well known. People won't
employ me," she says. "But in the USA,
I'm just April. I don't hide what I've
been but I don't volunteer it either
and my bosses don't know. Being anonymous
is awfully nice but it's never going
to happen to me."
Yet last week she returned to Britain
to launch a brand new website, www.image100.com.
She will be a personal site navigation
assistant on a web-based, royalty-free
picture agency, Image 100. ITV is also
making a documentary about her. Anonymity
is going to be a while coming, but she
feels she has little choice. Because
she left Britain so long ago, her pension
is worth just £21 a week.
"What
can you do with that?" she asks. "If
I'd stayed in the UK, lived on the dole
and been a parasite, I would get a full
pension, housing and benefits but I'm
a penniless darling.
I
have been condemned to work for the
rest of my life." Yet she is excited
by her venture and hopes it may give
her the finances to return to the country
she loves. It
seems surprising that she does not live
in constant fear of the kind of public
disclosure that ruined her life in Britain.
"I
was in blissful ignorance, rather naive,
and I thought it was just marvellous
to be working as a model in the body
I'd always wanted," she recalls.
She is aware that, today, she could
have sued for sexual discrimination
when her jobs were cancelled but the
option was not open to her then. She
opened a restaurant, AD8, in Knightsbridge,
becoming one of London's most fashionable
hostesses, before she fled to the US.
"Have
you ever been slapped in the face just
because you are you?" she says, deeply
hurt at the memories of being bullied
in the street.
Last week, she asked Tony Blair the
same question in a letter. "At the age
of 65, I thought it was time I sorted
out my life. I wrote to Tony explaining
that for 40 years I've held a passport
in the name of Miss April Ashley and
I would like a new birth certificate
to go with it. It seems like such a
petty thing, but I'd like to get everything
in order."
Since her gender reassignment in Morocco
in 1960, April remains in the catch
22 situation that dogs the life of all
post-surgery British transsexuals. Although
the NHS recognises transsexualism as
a medical disorder and offers hormone
and surgical intervention to bring the
body into line with the mind (attempts
to do the opposite, using electro-convulsive
therapy were abandoned but not before
April was subjected to this treatment),
there is no follow through. Because
a ghost birth certificate cannot be
issued, transsexuals cannot marry, have
countless problems with employment law
and even go to the wrong prisons. They
have no rights in their new gender.
April's letter is unlikely to be successful
- several recent high-profile applications
have failed, as did a Private Members
bill brought by Alex Carlile, the former
Lib Dem health spokesman - but it is
only a matter of time before Britain,
like Scandinavia and New Zealand, offers
transsexuals the chance to enjoy lives
of quiet consistency.
Transsexualism is not a "lifestyle choice",
as April puts it. During foetal development,
one foetus in 100,000 receives a dose
of hormones that means its body develops
the opposite gender to the brain.
April's story provides a compelling
insight into the psychological and social
agonies this creates. "Although I was
bought up a strict Roman Catholic boy,
I knew from age dot that I was a girl,"
she says.
She claims that her parents "truly hated"
her and never came to terms with the
fact that their son felt like a girl.
"Being transsexual broke my heart. When
I was little, I used to kneel beside
my bed praying, 'Please let me wake
up as a girl'. I had no one to confide
in. I didn't tell anyone for years.
My entire childhood was spent trying
to conform to the male body I was born
into."
As a teenager, April - then called George
- watched Robert Mitchum films and tried
to copy his swagger, but at the age
of 15 after George had spent a week
forcing his voice to break, there was
a suicide attempt.
"I
spent my whole life trying to win the
love of my mother, but there was never
any reconciliation."
George
even joined the Navy in a desperate
and doomed attempt to kick start feelings
of masculinity. From then on, George
stopped trying to become a man and started
cross-dressing, taking on the name April
Ashley. For two years, she worked as
a compere at Carousel, the famous female
impersonator nightclub in Paris, but
after her surgery in 1960 never again
worked there, despite the apartment
and generous wage she was offered if
she stayed.
"I
wanted to live as normally as possible
and didn't want to make a career out
of that life. I wanted to be a normal
woman in a normal world with normal
people," she explains.
For while transvestites get a sexual
kick from cross-dressing, transsexuals
find only comfort in dressing their
mismatched bodies in line with their
minds. Transsexualism is not about sexual
kicks, but about gender identity.
April has fallen foul of every social
support system going. Upon her divorce,
she didn't receive a penny because -
in a move that changed the law and "unmarried"
all transsexuals - the judge declared
her marriage null and void because she
was born a man. "Lord Ormerod's summing
up was rude, crude and judgmental. It
was vicious and nasty. He was completely
dismissive of the experts my legal team
had assembled," says April, adding that
this decision still leaves her heartbroken.
"My doctor was going to explain that
it happens because the womb gets all
the wrong hormones at the wrong time..."
April knew her claim was doomed from
the start. "I told my team on the third
day, 'We've lost this case. He will
not even look at me.'" This seems surprising.
Although it is often difficult for male-to-female
transsexuals to make a convincing change,
April was not a burly six footer. She
has little feet for her slender 5ft
10ins frame, small shoulders and delicate
hands. Not only was she already naturally
quite feminine in appearance but she
also became an exceptionally beautiful
woman after her transition. "I had no
problems," she says. "As a child, people
would tell me I was beautiful and after
surgery many people just wouldn't believe
I'd been born a boy. I had to show my
passport to prove it.
I always told men I was involved with
about my background.
Many men have fallen for me but I've
only been in love twice. But you never
know, life always surprises me."
Just before our interview ends, April
says something unbearably sad. Sitting
in a taxi, she looks wistfully out of
the window. "People say things have
changed but they haven't changed at
all. I'm treated as a joke and I can't
escape that. I'm stuck with it for the
rest of my life."I suggest that scientific
understanding and public acceptance
of transsexuality have increased since
she left Britain. April smiles sagely.
"Happily, I don't get slapped in the
face any more but I think that has more
to do with my age," she says.
Visit
April at www.AprilAshley.com
Also
Read about Caroline Cossey
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