I wanted to focus in on some more famous transgender people that I knew of before researching too much into the topic. It really interests me to see how different people transition and how they are perceived and the way they present themselves to the public. I do think that it can almost be harder to transition when so many people know who you were and there is also so much pressure and stigma coming from those who don’t know much about the topic. I wanted to research this topic as it is something that I don’t know a lot about and want to find out more so that I can make accurate images. I am intrigued by this topic as for me it seems so sad that a lot of these people never go through their transition because they feel to scared or trapped based purely on fear that society will judge and ridicule them.

Caitlyn Jenner
Caitlyn Jenner has to be the most famous transgender person in the world right now. She went from being father, Bruce Jenner, of the Kardashians as well as an Olympic gold medalist for the men’s decathlon in 1976. Everyone knew who Bruce Jenner was. He was married to Kris Jenner for 24 years. Caitlyn’s transition seemed to come as a shock to everyone, including his own family. It must have been such a difficult transition as it would have been so different to any other trans person’s transition. His was televised all over the world as he is part of one of the most famous families at the moment, the Kardashians. On Keeping Up With The Kardashians we really get an insight to the struggles that the entire family are going through and how they are dealing with their father coming out and going through this transition. It really does interest me to see this and I feel that because they are so much in the public domaine that they kind of have to accept the transition as they don’t want to be seen as transphobic and I do think it’s hard to live your life constantly being followed by cameras. When Caitlyn transitioned she said she felt free and that she could be her “authentic self”. I could never imagine being trapped inside a body that you know isn’t really who you are, it seems like such a hard thing to accept and to be able to openly come out and have the strength to go through that transition. I do think that the topic of transgender people is becoming more widely known and possibly becoming more accepted within our Western society. Caitlyn has also started her own TV show entitled I am Cait, I think that this show is actually educating people on transgender and what it is to feel the way she does and how people can be their true authentic selves.

Lili Elbe
I had no idea who Lili Elbe was before late last year when I went to go see a film entitled The Danish Girl. The film really enlightened me on what transgender people go through and this was the first time I really think that I sat down and thought about it and the lives that this topic effects. The film was amazing, showing the fun aspects of Elbe’s life and how she lived. Lili was born a male, Einar Magnus Andreas Wegener, and lived alongside his wife. They were both painters and in fact he was a very well known one. At first Einar posed as a woman for his wife to finish off a painting but it turned into something more, he came to realise that he was a woman authentically. The film goes through the ups and downs of Einar’s life as a man and Lili’s life as a woman. This film was so interesting to watch and I really think that I learnt a lot from it. Without this film I would never have known about Lili at all. She was one of the first known people to undergo proper surgery to become a woman. She successfully transitioned in 1930 but later died due to complications of one of her sex reassignment surgeries. Lili’s memory lived on in Gerda [Einar’s wife] who made her fortune on paintings of Lili. This story actually makes me really emotional as it seems so rare to have a transgender case at such an early time period, 1920s-1930s, yet Gerda was so understanding and supported Lili the entire time. She must have loved her very much as she painted her.

Colonel Victor Barker
Possibly a less famous transgender person but a local one. I came across this story while working with the Jersey Archisle. This story really is amazing and almost unbelievable to actually fathom that there were many, not just one, transgender people across this island at a period as earlier at the 18th century. It really amazes me how still so many people are transphobic and don’t care to understand it. I myself do not fully understand but I am trying and am finding out more and more about this community through my research. I want to know because I want to be able to fully accept it. Victor Barker was a war veteran, he worked as a hotel clerk when he was arrested for not paying a debt he owed to a restaurant. This story truly is gripping and, in a way, it excites me that it happened in Jersey because so often I feel that not a lot happens here and that not many great people live or have ever lived here. I find this island to be very consumer driven, we seem to passively accept things most of the time but the more I look into local history the more I find that not to be the case. It is so interesting to find that Victor Barker was on the island around the same time as Claude Cahun, a photographer who challenged gender norms. When reading Colonel Barker’s Monstrous Regiment I found that Barker seemed to want to be a man because of the life men led back then compared to how women lived theirs. This has really taken my interest and made me want to research into the lives of transgender people more.

Gigi Gorgeous
Gigi is a Canadian YouTuber who has actually gone through her transition in the public domain. She has been making videos since she was male and has carried on making those videos throughout her transition. In Gigi’s videos she comes across as a very open and strong character and is full of confidence. It just shows how different it is nowadays for transgender people and, in the Western world especially, people are more open to them and more accepting. I do think it is still really difficult to be transgender in our current world and society but Gigi is just living as her authentic self regardless. I find it baffling to even think that she was ever a man. Obviously she has undergone a somewhat large amount of surgery to get to the physical stage that she is at now and it is so interesting to see how far surgery and procedures have come even from the 1930s. Gigi is always so open in her videos and lets people know about her personal life and how she feels and who she is, something that those in the 1930s for instance would never be able to do. I really do think we live in a more intelligent world where most people can accept others for who they are and although might not fully understand it they will still accept that it is that person’s choice. Gigi is also friends with Caitlyn Jenner’s daughter Kylie Jenner who, I feel, has become more open to the transgender community and showing other young people that accepting transgender people is a good thing. The age of social media really is taking over and celebrities are becoming more and more influential which is why I think Gigi is so great as she is in the public domain and does show herself for who she is.

Gigi’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/GregoryGORGEOUS/videos

When working with the Archisle I was given a really interesting book to have a look at and take inspiration from. This book is basically about a Colonel who came over to Jersey during the first world war after getting a bad injury. He made his way through the circles and men of Jersey, unknown to everyone else that he was actually a woman. He was arrested and imprisoned when he was found out. This is the basic information that I know but after reading the book I found out so much more and find it so interesting and unique to actually have a transgender person living in Jersey as well as Claude Cahun around the same time who challenged gender norms. The book is called Colonel Barker’s Monstrous Regiment. To me the title sounds awful as if Barker had done something so horribly unforgivable and evil that is was a ‘montrous’ thing to do as if they could be nothing much worse, when in fact all that Barker ever did was pose as a man and maybe because she felt in her self that she was a man.

Victor Barker

Barker was obviously treated differently as a man to when he was a woman and preferred the treatment he received as a man. 1929, Central London Barker was a reception clerk of the Regent Palace Hotel. He wore very formal clothing and constantly wore an extremely tight belt. The story goes that he would tell a long story of how he was blown up in the war and without his surgical belt he would not be able to move. He would often tell stories about his experiences during the war. Something that I found interesting too was that in 1929 there was a warrant for Barker’s arrest, he owed a lot of money after the failure of a restaurant he once owned. The book also suggests that Barker had a son who he looked after and was at boarding school. His first wife left and in 1929 he was with another woman who he took good care of and would take time off work to care for her. This is really intriguing to me as maybe as a woman Barker had a child and when he then went through the transformation [non-surgical] into a man he had to make up a back story and came up with this.

Family Background

father: Thomas Barker
mother: Lillias Adelaide Hill
The couple married in Jersey when he was thirty and she was just eighteen years old. He spent his time on gentlemanly pursuits and enjoyed playing out this role. He also put his dog into shows alongside his wife. He had a smooth-haired fox terrier while she had two bloodhounds. Lillias Adelaide Hill belonged to a family whereby a relative, Olave Baden-Powell [female], founded the Boy Scouts and the Girl Guides. The Barker’s moved to Jersey in 1889 and settled in St. Clements. Around this location in the sixteenth and seventeenth century it was the prevalence of witchcraft, were witches were tried. Thomas was the Honorary Secretary of the Jersey Dog Club. He was also club captain at the Royal Jersey Gold Club in 1898. The Barkers first born was a girl on 27 August 1895 but she wasn’t registered until 13 September 1895 due to her father being busy with the Jersey Dog Club holding its 8th Annual Show at the Vegetable Market. She was named Lillias Irma Valerie but everyone was to address her as Valerie. They had a second child, a boy, on 20 April 1899 he was named Tom Leslie. Valerie was very tomboyish and grew up enjoying reading boys books and pranks. Thomas [father] taught her the skills of fencing, cricket and boxing. Valerie attended a convent school at Graty to finally finish her schooling. She would shock the nuns by dressing up as a boy as well as smoking.  Back in the Victorian days it was not seen as feminine to aspire or want to achieve success.

Local Transgender cases

William Pallot was an islander who went to court because he would dress as a woman and walk around near Fort Regent. In the court it was declared that ‘from the eccentric manner in which he had seen him parading in the streets’ that he had no sanity and was to be taken to the asylum. He ‘dressed partially like a woman, with curled hair, powdered face, bracelets, etc. He had the voice and gait of a woman, as well as the mind of a woman.’ I find this so interesting to see how people would react to possible transgender cases and how they could not see that a gentleman would ever be trapped inside his own body or that he could quite possibly be trying to be himself with becoming a woman. Their immediate reaction is to say that he must be insane and that he must go to the asylum because no man would ever think in such a way. It amazes me that back then people would be so naive and unaware of what others may be going through. We now live in a time were we are a lot more accepting of transgender people, women and gay people [nowhere near a perfect world but a better one]. These people are so narrow minded and closed minded to the fact that quite possibly this man was born in the wrong body that he knows deep down that he is not a man but in fact a woman. I guess back then that it would be uncommon for a transgender person to be so open and free but then again it seems to me that people have been challenging gender norms more often then than say now in Jersey. Claude Cahun, Victor Barker and William Pallot all seem to know who they are and they all seem to have had this fascination with challenging gender norms and seeing what life is like as someone else or even if they adopted to the opposite sexes way of living. This book is really interesting and I am really enjoying finding out more about local history too. It is interesting to see how men were treated compared to women and how Pallot was found to be insane and that a sane man would never think is such a way. It shows how differently they treated men to women. Women were often found to be witches and were tried and killed while men were never really tried as witches and even though Pallot stated that he was reading another man’s fortune with cards he was not tried as a witch but seen merely as insane.

During the 1890’s there was a huge amount of suicides and attempted suicides. This suggests that for most people that was there only escape with there being on average two suicides a month with a population of barely 55,000. Jersey seemingly hated anyone or anything that was different and so if you did not conform to the norms of life back in the 1890s you were seen to be a witch or insane.

Edward de Lacy Evans was an Australian man who married his third wife, Julia Marquand, a Jersey girl. He would dress as a woman and when in the mines, to amuse the other residents, he would dress as a woman and sing. He suffered an accident in the mines and somehow ended up in court and was checked by doctors and the verdict came of lunacy and was certified with amentia [softening of the brain]. He was admitted to a lunacy ward where he shared a room. He would never change in front of anyone. After a six week period on this ward he was transferred to a hospital in Melbourne where he was furthered examined. It was revealed that Edward de Lacy Evans was in fact Ellen Tremaye, a woman. He was deemed to have amentia by doctors and was insane. There was no way that he could actually think in such a way as a woman. Ellen Tremaye was the anonymous author of a book entitled The History and Confession of the Man-Woman.

Louis Jobosch was a German in his late fifties. He wanted to travel over to France but was stopped and checked by a doctor who then would not allow him to travel into France. As a result he headed to Jersey where a witch hunt was going on and people were told to keep an eye on him. He was arrested as soon as he arrived at his lodgings. He was in fact a woman. The Jersey police soon learned that Jobosch had been living as a man for forty-two years. He was orphaned at the age of thirteen and then went on to travel the world working as a courier and who by then could speak several languages.  He was often head saying that he wished he was dead and had before attempted to jump into the sea but was caught by passing boat’s. He died after being taken from Jersey to a Southampton hospital where he died on pneumonia. A note was left after his death that read ‘I die of misery – trust God forgive me’. This is so sad because I think that Jabosch truly felt trapped inside the wrong body and that dressing up as a man wasn’t enough and that throughout Jabosch’s whole life he could never come to terms with himself or make peace with his own demons. He asked for forgiveness from God as though he had done something terribly wrong, this is really sad to read as it makes me think about all those that feel trapped and encaged in their own bodies that the body that they inhabit isn’t actually their own and that they don’t belong.