A pioneer in the fight for trans rights in the UK, actress and model April Ashley has died at the age of 86, UK media reported on Wednesday. Icon and activist, she was awarded the Order of the British Empire by Prince Charles in 2012 for her work and commitment.
Among the very first people in Britain to have gender reassignment surgery in the 1960s, she left her country for more than three decades because of discrimination.
An exile of more than 30 years in the United States
Born in 1935 in Liverpool (north-west of England), into a working-class family, April Ashley joined the merchant navy as a teenager. After several suicide attempts and a stay in a psychiatric hospital, she moved to London and then to Paris where she performed in drag-queen shows at the cabaret Le Carrousel.
She saves money for her sex reassignment operation, carried out in 1960 in Morocco. Back in England, April Ashley succeeds in obtaining a passport and a driver’s license identifying her as a woman. She then worked as a model and actress, appearing in the fashion magazine Vogue. But his career came to a halt when the tabloid Sunday People made public his transidentity in 1961.
In 1963, she married aristocrat Arthur Cameron Corbett. When the couple wanted a divorce in 1970, a court annulled their marriage. For good reason, the change of gender is not legally recognized, their union is then invalid, marriage between two people of the same gender being prohibited at that time. April Ashley then moved to the United States and did not return to her country until 2005, when the law allowed her to be recognized as a woman.
A “force of nature and a high priestess”
April Ashley was honored in 2012 by Prince Charles for her work in support of transgender rights. “I know better than anyone how people can judge, but all that matters is being true to yourself,” said April Ashley, who has appeared frequently in recent years with her long hair dyed purple, in an interview quoted by the British media.
After the news of her disappearance, singer Boy George hailed a “force of nature and a high priestess” of the transgender cause. LGBT rights activist Peter Tatchell hailed “a heroine” and “a great trans pioneer for decades.”