Episodes
Saturday Aug 06, 2011
The Sunderland, by Leslie Burns
Saturday Aug 06, 2011
Saturday Aug 06, 2011
A couple of years ago, in March 2009, I recorded a Podcast interview with my own Father, Leslie Burns. I'm glad I did so because, just ten months later, he passed away. After his death I found a neatly typed manuscript which he had hoped to get published, about a big event in his life that had occurred only weeks before the end of the war. The story was never taken up by any editors. I'm sure that would have disappointed him. So, instead, I'm providing the opportunity for it to be heard.
Wednesday Nov 10, 2010
The Annual International Transgender Day of Remembrance
Wednesday Nov 10, 2010
Wednesday Nov 10, 2010
On November 20th or 21st those who care will be coming together in dozens of cities around the world to remember transgender people who have been murdered, often brutally, just because they are different. The event is held in November each year to honour Rita Hester, whose murder on November 28th, 1998 kicked off the “Remembering Our Dead” web project and a San Francisco candlelight vigil in 1999. Rita Hester’s murder — like most anti-transgender murder cases — has yet to be solved. This audio tribute is our contribution to those events, recorded with the generous assistance of colleagues and local broadcasters. To find out more about International Transgender Day of Remembrance and a vigil near you visit the web site: http://www.transgenderdor.org/
Tuesday Aug 24, 2010
The Diary of a Conference Campaigner (Part Two)
Tuesday Aug 24, 2010
Tuesday Aug 24, 2010
Part Two of this personal narration of an account written in 1995, about coming out as a campaigner to organise 'fringe' meetings at the Labour and Conservative party conferences. For more details and background please see part one.
Tuesday Aug 17, 2010
The Diary of a Conference Campaigner (Part One)
Tuesday Aug 17, 2010
Tuesday Aug 17, 2010
It’s nearly Party Conference season again. And it’s the first time with Conservatives in Government since the mid 1990's. It may surprise some listeners to know that back in those days I was a Conservative Party activist. I was the secretary of an active branch of the party in Cheshire. And a regular attendee at party conferences. I wasn’t “out” in those days. As a transsexual woman I had completed my social “transition” between genders many years before, and had settled into a quiet and discreet life among the well-to-do women who formed the backbone of a certain class of society in one of the Tory heartlands. I didn’t advertise my transsexual history and, if anyone harboured any suspicions, it had never ever been mentioned. All of that was about to change though. I had been a member of the campaign organisation “Press for Change” since shortly after it was formed in 1992. And now, because the campaign required visible representatives to put themselves forward on the public stage, I had taken the difficult personal decision to “come out”. I had volunteered to organise and speak at two key events at the Labour and Conservative conferences in the first two weeks of October 1995. This was momentous, life-changing stuff .. at least for me .. and so I wrote about it at the time. Fifteen years on, it’s therefore a good time to revisit those two weeks covered by The Diary of a Conference Campaigner...