The Bellinger v Bellinger Recognition of Marriage Case 2000

Elizabeth Bellinger, born 1946, was raised as male, and at age 21, under some pressure, was married to a woman. The marriage lasted for four years. After that she undertook eight years of counselling which led to transition.  She had completion surgery in 1981. Later the same year, she went through a ceremony of marriage at a Registry Office with Michael Bellinger, a widower of the same age who was fully aware of the situation. She was described on the marriage certificate as a spinster. In the late 1990s, following the claims of BSTc differentiation in trans women, and the Human Rights Act, 1988 which made rulings of the European Convention on Human Rights authoritive in UK courts, she sought to clarify the legal status of her marriage,

For 30 years since Corbett v Corbett, the criteria for determining sex for purposes of marriage had stood. Trans women were not women for such purpose, but an exception was made for intersex women using the definition of a natural non-congruence of the chromosomes, gonads and genitals.

In 2000 two cases came to court. In the first W. v W., a divorced husband attempted to have the marriage annulled also, but his request was denied when it was established that his wife did meet the Corbett exception.

In November that year, Mrs Bellinger sought a declaration under the Family Law Act, 1986, c. 55, § 43, Part III, Declaration of Status (Eng.), that her marriage had been valid at its inception. This would require that she be recognised as female for the purposes of section 11(c) of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 (which incorporated the Nullity of Marriage Act, 1971), which in turn would necessitate giving the expressions 'male' and 'female' in that Act a novel, extended meaning: that a person may be born with one sex but later become, or become regarded as, a person of the opposite sex.

The respondent Mr. Bellinger filed no objecting reply. It was the Attorney General who elected to intervene to argue the case against granting the declaration. Evidence was taken from Professors Louis Gooren and Richard Green and consultant urologist Timothy Terry, and Russell Reid was cited. However the High Court applied the Corbett test and found that Mrs Bellinger was male in that at birth the chromosomes, gonads and genitals had been congruent: ‘the present state of medical knowledge lead inexorably to my dismissing her petition’.

In 2001 at the Appeal Court, Mrs Bellinger’s counsel argued that the terms ‘male’ and ‘female’ had been deliberately left undefined in the Nullity of Marriage Act, 1971. They sought to expand the range of factors in that scientific understanding had advanced since 1971, and referred to the non-congruance of brain structure, particularly the size of the BSTc (stria terminalis) citing Zhou et al, 1995, and argued that therefore she should be understood as covered by the intersex exception as set out in Corbett. Two of the three judges responded that they were intrigued by the evidence but as the evidence would require a dissection at autopsy, evidence with regard to Mrs Bellinger’s brain could not be obtained. Thus the stated advances could not be brought to her aid. They ruled that Mrs Bellinger was not female as the law then stood. The third judge did dissent, and urged the abandonment of purely biological tests. On psychological grounds he would have recognised Mrs Bellinger as a woman under English law. All three judges accepted that "the profoundly unsatisfactory nature of the present position and the plight of transsexuals require careful consideration". However, the two judges said any change in the law must be a matter for Parliament. The court was dismayed to hear that no steps had been taken by the Home Office following the report in April of the previous year of an inter-departmental working group on transsexual people.

An appeal went to The House of Lords. In the meantime the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) had ruled in Goodwin v United Kingdom and I. v United Kingdom. In both cases involving completed trans women the claim was that UK policies violated their rights to privacy under Article 8 and to marry under article 12 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The ECHR repudiated the Corbett test, arguing that gender dysphoria is a medical disorder and that this obviates any need to determine its aetiology and that the emphasis on chromosomal sex was disproportionate in that in some intersex conditions the gender identity is not congruent with the chromosomes. The minority opinion in the Bellinger appeal was cited with approval.

While it was still left to the UK to establish a workable definition of gender transition and marriage, the ECHR did conclude that the UK’s policies were in violation of articles 8 and 12 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

In December 2002 the UK Government announced that it would bring forth legislation on the matter, and government counsel conceded that UK law was incompatible with the articles 8 and 12.

In April 2003 the House of Lords considered Bellinger v Bellinger and upheld the majority decision of the Court of Appeal, but indicated its incompatibility with the judgements of the ECHR. This was the first such declaration of incompatibility. However they declined to apply section 3 of the Human Rights Act 1988 which states that domestic law must, if possible, be interpreted in a way that makes it compatible with the ECHR. The judges did not accept that the terms ‘male’ and ‘female’ in the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 could be extended to include the marriages of transsexuals. To read the 1973 Act in such a new way would be a major change to the law and such change is not the duty of the courts. The issue was handed back to Parliament.

In 2004 the UK government enacted the Gender Recognition Act, and then Bellinger would be entitled to apply for a Gender Recognition Certificate. Certainly a step forward, but hardly the confirmation of the legal status of her marriage in 1981.

• J-N Zhou, M A Hofman, L J Gooren & D F Swaab. “A Sex Difference in the Human Brain and its Relation to Transsexuality”. Nature, 1995, 378: 68-70. Reprinted in The International Journal of Transgenderism, 1997, 1,1. Online.
• “W. v W. Case Law”. October 2000. Online.
• “Rights of Transsexual are upheld”. Dublin Evening Herald, 23 May 2001.
• “Transsexual loses appeal over 20-year ‘marriage’ “. The Telegraph, 18 Jul 2001. Online.
•  "Judgments - Bellinger (FC) (Appellant) v. Bellinger" House of Lords, 10 April 2003. www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200203/ldjudgmt/jd030410/bellin-1.htm.
• Clair McNab. "Government FAQ: Bellinger v. Bellinger". Press For Change, January 2004. www.pfc.org.uk/node/326.
• S Cowan.  ‘That Woman is a Woman! The Case of Bellinger v Bellinger and the Mysterious (Dis)appearance of Sex’ Feminist Legal Studies, 12, 2004: 79-92.
• Lisa Fishbayn. " 'Note Quite One Gender or the Other': Marriage Law and the Containment of Gender Trouble in the United Kingdom". Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law, 15,3, 2007: 429-432. http://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1252&context=jgspl.
• Christopher Hutton.  The Tyranny of Ordinary Meaning:  Corbett v Corbett and the Invention of Legal Sex.  Palgrave Macmillan, 2019: 145-152. 

_______________________

There are issues not discussed in the source accounts. Was Mrs Bellinger risking being charged with ‘perjury’ for presenting herself as female, or her status as 'spinster' at her marriage in 1981?

Did the Gender Recognition Board require the Bellingers to divorce before she was awarded her Gender Recognition certificate?

It is just as well that the legal changes were not built on the assumptions about BSTc as proposed by Zhou et al. Twenty-five years later that line of research has not proved productive. 

The European Convention on Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights are not part of the European Union. They are part of the Council of Europe, a wider organisation. Russia is a member. Only Belarus is not. The current Johnson government equivocates and does not commit to remaining in the Council of Europe. If it were to withdraw, and also repeal the Gender Recognition Act, the legal status of trans persons would be back to what it was in 1971. 

Case of Sheffield and Horsham v. The United Kingdom, 1998

Rachel Horsham (1946 - )

Horsham was raised in a small village in Surrey, with a father who had been born in India, and a mother from Ireland. Horsham knew from an early age that she was not really male. As Rachel she emigrated to the Netherlands in 1974 because that country recognised trans women as women at a time when the UK did not.

She became a patient of Professor Dr Louis Gooren at the Vrije Universiteit (Free University) of Amsterdam, wrote the first version of her autobiography in 1991, and completed transition in 1992.

She applied to the UK Consulate for a re-issued UK passport in her new name and gender:

“During an interview with the Consul, I was informed that it was not possible to be issued with a new passport reflecting my current status, at the time. Nor would they accept a letter of Deed Poll from a Solicitor for a change of forenames. Their reasoning: that the issuing of passports to transsexuals in the United Kingdom, showing their female status, on production of a letter of Deed Poll from a Solicitor, and a letter of acknowledgement from a qualified doctor, that the bearer was a transsexual, was not legal outside of the United Kingdom.” (Plaintiff’s Observations)

She was told that she needed an order from a Dutch Court. This was obtained and the passport re-issued. She became a Dutch citizen in 1993, and obtained a ruling in a Dutch court that her UK birth certificate should be amended. As this did not happen she initiated legal proceedings in the UK. This was appealed to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in 1994.

Kristina Sheffield (also born 1946)

Sheffield was a pilot with Brittania Airways, and had 34 years experience when she transitioned in 1986.

Kristina divorced from her wife as was almost always required in the 1990s (in retrospect she felt that she had been coerced into it underhandedly), and a judge also granted an injunction banning Kristina from seeing her daughter as “transsexuals are not suitable company for children”.

She applied to every UK airline, but was always obliged to show her birth certificate which said that she was born male, which resulted in her not getting employment.

While her passport was re-issued in her new name, she was still unable to obtain a US visa, and twice in court to stand surety for a friend, was obliged to reveal her previous name. A misunderstanding with the police with regards to a replica firearm indicated that they were aware of her gender change although the topic had not come up. A request under the Data Protection Act 1984 would have required her to state all previous names.

She also appealed through the UK court system and then to the ECHR.
 

And then

 
Both cases were initially accepted by the ECHR in 1994. Kristina met with Rachel in Amsterdam. Following advice from Rachel, Kristina revised the statement of her case. This made the two cases rather similar although the circumstances were different, in that Rachel wanted to marry and Kristina to find employment. The ECHR decided to couple both appeals.

Rachel, with Kristina’s assistance researched the Ewan Forbes-Sempill case and the Corbett divorce case. They obtained the birth certificates for April Ashley, Roberta Cowell, Michael Dillon and Georgina Turtle, and the marriage certificates for Georgina Turtle and April Ashley. Only April had not had her birth certificate amended re her name and sex. From this they were able to conclude that the Corbetts’ divorce trial could have been quickly concluded in that April was still legally male and thus the marriage was invalid according to the law at that time. There was no need for the detailed medical examinations that were done. Unless, of course, something other than an annulment of marriage was being enacted.

The original birth certificate for Ewan Forbes-Sempill proved impossible to obtain, however a copy specifying his male sex and name was available. The Sempill and Corbett cases had been more about establishing the boundaries of aristocratic privilege than of determining the best governance of transsexuals.

“It was also found, that there had been prior knowledge of these birth certificates by the plaintiffs of former cases that had gone to the ECHR. They were the cases of Rees and later Cossey. None of the fact that it was possible to amend a birth certificate, within existing statute law, was ever presented to the ECHR in those cases. They were based on a demand that the UK government must change the law. The court in those cases was not prepared to demand that a government must restructure its laws. Both cases lost and this created a case law in the ECHR upon which any further cases from the UK would be accepted and judged. The ECHR works on the basis of creating its own case law upon which to judge a case presented to them and where they have none they create it. If a case challenges existing case law, then the court can examine the situation.” (Rachel Horsham .4)

In May 1996, Rachel wrote an anonymous article that was published in The Independent, "Trapped in a man's body with a woman's mind". She detailed the then lack of human rights for transsexuals in the UK; explained how HRT and reconstructive surgery have a 97% success rate and attributed the condition to an incongruence of pre-natal hormones (a theory that was accepted in the late 1990s). She rightly points to the 1970 Corbett v Corbett divorce case as the point where things went wrong.

“All that is required is for government to accept a return to the pre-1970 status quo, a move that is supported by medicine, a large section of legal opinion and many parliamentarians. There is no need for new legislation or new administrative systems; the Birth Certificate still contains a column where errors at registration can be corrected as they were before 1970. Time has shown that there were no practical complications with those corrections, and thus there is no realistic argument for not reinstating the practice. Indeed, there is every reason for regarding it as an urgent necessity.”

The ECHR gave its judgement 30 July 1998. By 11 to 9 it voted that the Article 8 right to respect for a private life was not violated (although the court noted “no steps taken by respondent State to keep need for appropriate legal measures in this area under review despite Court’s view to that effect in Rees and Cossey judgments — Court reiterates that view”). By 18 votes to 2 it voted that the Article 12 right to contract lawful marriage was not violated. Unanimously it voted that Article 14, the right not to be subjected to difference in treatment was not violated. The judgment does not address Horsham’s argument that Corbett vs Corbett was a bad judgment and a simple reversal would solve the problems.

As Rachel summarises the result on her home page:

“The United Kingdom rejected [the plaintiffs’ plea] on the grounds that under British law a person’s sex is fixed at birth and cannot be amended or changed and argued that the Court of Human Rights had given two Judgments in their favour upholding this contention in two previous cases, Rees and Cossey. The plaintiff, in her submissions, proved that the government had lied to the court in those previous cases, and that English Statute law did have the required legislation to amend a person's birth certificate, in such cases. In 1998 the court decided to uphold its case law based on Rees and Cossey and the case of Rachel Horsham was never judged on the facts presented to them.”

Rachel expanded her autobiography to include the appeal to ECHR, and published it, also in 1998.
Kristina won an employment discrimination case in 1998 at an industrial tribunal in that she was unable to obtain even an interview with Easyjet to be a pilot despite her 34 years’ experience.

Context

In 1997, after 18 years of homophobic Conservative misrule, the Labour Party became the new government. Initially it continued the Conservatives’ homophobic policies, one of which was to oppose appeals such as that by Horsham & Sheffield. The GLBT censorship known as Section 28 was not repealed until 2003.

While government lawyers were in Strasburg arguing against the petitions of Horsham and Sheffield, Petra Henderson, British but resident in Germany, had completed surgical transition and wished to be recognised legally as female, which the government quietly permitted. She had threatened to go to the ECHR and the Government wished to keep her out of the newspapers. It was insisted that this was a one-off exemption and did not set a precedent. There were some other similar one-offs, such as the UK citizen in Paris who was able to obtain a similar result with Petra's assistance. Prime Minister Tony Blair spoke of ‘joined-up government’, but this was one area where it was definitely not so.

Press for Change had been founded in 1992. It engaged with lawyers and Members of Parliament. Inevitably a slow process. A private member's bill was introduced in 1996, but as the then Conservative Government refused to endorse it, it was without success. In 2002, another appeal to the ECHR finally met with success, and two years after that the Labour Government passed the Gender Recognition Act – not perfect, but the best in the world at that time.

Comments

Rachel’s book is not listed in either Amazon or Abebooks. It is on the Dwarf Empire web page.












In recent years Rachel has self-identified as HBS, although independently of the two major strands thereof.   In 1998 the only Benjamin Syndrome movement was the Association du Syndrome de Benjamin in Paris run by Tom Reucher, Diane Potiron, Hugues Cariou, and which was inclusive unlike the HBS movement which developed after 2005.

• "Trapped in a man's body with a woman's mind", The Independent, 1 May 1996. Online.
• Rosa Prince. “Transsexuals in test case”. The Independent, 22 February 1998. Online.
• “British Pilot Wins Discrimination Case”. NewsPlanet, June 1, 1998. Online.
• Case of Sheffield and Horsham v. The United Kingdom. European Court of Human Rights, 30 July 1998. Online.
• “UK Transsexuals lose court case”. BBC News, July 30, 1998. Online.
• Christine Burns. “Court Judgement Criticises UK Government's Lack of Action”. PFC, 9^th August 1998. Online.
• Rachel Horsham. Release of the Dove. Dwarf Empire, 1991 and 1998.

Rachel Horsham’s Home Page

Sonia Burgess (1947 – 2010) lawyer

David Burgess was born in Castleford, West Yorkshire. His mother was a secondary-school headmistress, but he never knew his father. He went to boarding school in Skipton, and then to Cambridge University where he met Robert Winstanley and gained an upper second in law in 1969. He was already openly bisexual.

In 1975 Winstanley Burgess Solicitors opened in offices above a pizza restaurant opposite Islington Town Hall. Burgess had already been doing voluntary work for the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, and rapidly began to build his reputation in immigration law, working especially with Tamil and Kurd refugees, and the firm moved to larger offices.

Stephen Whittle describes a visit:

“I had expected a London lawyer to work in a fancy building, with polished furniture, and rich carpets. Instead I entered a dark, dingy, decaying building on the East London Road, where dirty magnolia woodchip papered stud wall partitions, with holes where they had been torn and kicked in frustration by the firm’s clients, and which looked as if they would collapse at any moment. Inside that den of iniquity, there seemed to be hundreds of grey people hanging out, hoping for a bob or two, or a cup of tea whilst they waited for the British Government to decide on their lives. Rarely did money change hands. Sonia, supported by her legal partner Robert Winstanley and backed by an army of pro-bono law students, mostly gave away her services.”

By this time Burgess was experimenting in going out as Sonia. For a while he had a relationship with a Chinese man, whom he took home to Castleford.

In 1979 Burgess acted on behalf of Mark Rees so that he could change his legal gender. This was taken as far as the European Court of Human Right (ECHR) in 1986, but his petition was finally denied.

In 1985 David married a Tibetan refugee who worked as a nurse. They had two children, and adopted the wife's 7-year-old niece. The wife knew of and accepted that David was also Sonia.

In 1987 a group of 52 Sri Lankan Tamil asylum seekers were refused entry on arrival at the UK border. Burgess intervened to stop their deportation, using the only in-country legal remedy then available, a judicial review of the decision to reject the asylum claim. Burgess won the case in the court of appeal, but lost in the House of Lords, and the men were returned to Sri Lanka. The next year Burgess and a colleague travelled to Sri Lanka, traced the 52 men and documented the ill-treatment they had suffered since their return. This permitted an out-of-country appeal and the men were subsequently accepted as refugees and allowed into the UK. Burgess did lose this case when it reached the ECHR in 1991, but the case highlighted the inadequacy of judicial review being the only in-country challenge to a refusal of entry, and the law was later changed.

Burgess represented the Sri Lankan Viraj Mendis who sought sanctuary in the Church of the Ascension in Hulme, Manchester, before being deported in 1989.

In 1991 a Tibetan official who was visiting London as part of a Chinese delegation decided to defect and Burgess provided accommodation for several weeks until asylum was granted.

The same year, Burgess was brought in at the last moment in the case of M, a teacher from Zaire, who was actually on a plane at Heathrow and about to be deported. Burgess filed a new asylum application and understood that he had received an undertaking from the government solicitor that deportation would be stayed. Officials phoned Heathrow, but were put through to the wrong terminal, and M was flown to Zaire. On discovering this, Burgess phoned the judge at home at midnight, who ordered that arrangements be made to fly M back to the UK. However the Conservative Home Secretary Kenneth Baker interfered to cancel the arrangements. At this point M disappeared, probably fleeing to another African country. Burgess began contempt of court proceedings against the Home Secretary and pursued the case to the House of Lords, which ruled against the government. Baker was spared a fine, but was ordered to pay costs.

“It would be a black day for the rule of law and the liberty of the subject if ministers were not accountable to the courts for their personal actions”.

This has been described as the most significant constitutional case for 200 years in that no previous serving minister had been so chastised. In the House of Commons, Jeremy Corbyn, Labour MP for Islington North, and future leader of the Labour Party, criticized the Home Secretary for putting M's life at risk.

After the transsexual action group, Press For Change, was founded in 1992, Burgess acted as their solicitor.

However Burgess was first and foremost a human rights lawyer, and if she had transitioned at that time would have lost credibility and career.

In 1992 Burgess acted on behalf of Stephen Whittle's eldest child, referred to as 'Z' and argued that Stephen should be on her birth certificate as 'parent'. This took four years to get to the ECHR, and although they technically lost, the ECHR did recognise Stephen, his wife and children as a family.

In 1996 Burgess' partner, Robert Winstanley, who had specialised in criminal defence work, was made a judge. They parted on good terms, but Winstanley had been the more business oriented, and his departure coincided with government changes to legal aid that required more documentation that Burgess found irksome.

In that year Burgess acted for Karamjit Singh Chahal, an alleged Sikh militant facing deportation to India, where he claimed he would be at risk of torture. Burgess travelled to India and collected four volumes of cogent evidence, while the Attorney General had only a thin file of press cuttings. The ECHR ruled against deportation, that the risk of torture is absolute, even for those who may pose a security risk to the UK. This precedent prevented the deportation of accused terrorists rounded up after 9/11.

While David and wife had kept the existence of Sonia from the children, one night in a restaurant with another trans woman, Sonia realised that she had been recognised by another parent from her son's school. She forced herself to tell the son, and got the reaction:

“I thought you were really the most boring person I had ever known, thank god there is something interesting at last”.

After that the family was open and both as Sonia and David she was accepted. Sonia semi-transitioned in the early 2000s. By that time she was able to work part time, and was recognised by the courts as an expert in immigration law. Her appearance had become androgynous, and many lawyers and judges knew of her as Sonia.

However the firm was in financial problems and her back was giving her a bad time. The firm folded in 2003. Burgess was burned out from years of representing clients traumatised by rape and torture, and by the political and media abuse heaped on asylum seekers. He spent time in Tibet learning the language. After returning to the UK Mr and Mrs Burgess agreed to separate, and in 2008 they were divorced. A flat was found in Cambridge Circus, on the edge of Soho, where Sonia could be herself, and was considering facial surgery and breast implants.

Sonia

Burgess did not stay away from refugee work, and began working for the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, and also for a law firm in north London, where her Sonia identity was an open secret.

Sonia met 34-year-old Nina (Senthooran) Kanagasingham, probably in a nightclub.. Nina was a trans asylum seeker from Sri Lanka who had been in the UK since 2000. On 25 October 2010 they were at Kings Cross tube station, after visiting Nina's doctor, when Tina, probably in despair at the inhumane immigration system, lashed out and Sonia was under the train.

Sonia's funeral was held at St Martin-in-the Fields, Trafalgar Square on 17 November, attended by around 600 persons, a mixture of lawyers, former asylum seekers and trans persons. The three children delivered a eulogy about the father they had known, slipping easily between female and male pronouns.

Kanagasingham was charged with murder, and remanded in Wandsworth men's prison.

Kanagasingham pleaded guilty to manslaughter on grounds of diminished responsibility because of schizophrenia, and chose to be referred to as a man and by his male name during the trial. He was sentenced to life, and to serve a minimum of seven years.

He was sent to Belmarsh men's prison – one of the first trans prisoners to be housed in defiance of the New prison Guidelines of 2011, which said that those living as female should be sent to a woman's prison. In February 2015, he was found dead in his cell with a plastic bag around his head, and hands tied to the bed. At the inquest, nearby prisoners reported hearing cries for help.


 * David Burgess is apparently a common name for lawyers. Google brings up such in various English-speaking cities. There is a book, Fighting for Social Justice: The Life Story of David Burgess, but it is about the US labour activist.

• Mark Rees. Dear Sir or Madam. Cassell, 1996: Chp 26.
  
• Katharine Knox & Tony Kushner. Refugees in an Age of Genocide: Global, National and Local Perspectives During the Twentieth Century. Routledge, 1999: 385.
  
• Stephen Whittle. "Sonia ('David') Burgess (1947 – 2010): An Obituary". whittl(e)ings, 1 Nov 2010. http://whittlings.blogspot.com/2010/11/sonia-david-burgess-1947-2010-obituary.html.
  
• Alexandra Topping. “Woman accused of tube murder was undergoing sex change”. The Guardian, 1 November 2010. www.theguardian.com/uk/2010/nov/01/tube-death-woman-sex-change.
  
• Fiona Bawdon. “David Burgess obituary: Influential lawyer and tenacious defender of asylum seekers' rights”. The Guardian, 2 November 2010. www.theguardian.com/law/2010/nov/02/david-burgess-obituary.
  
• Elizabeth Day. "The extraordinary life and death of David Burgess". The Observer, 9 Jan 2011. www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jan/09/david-burgess-sonia-lawyer-death.
  
• Kate Saunders. “Celebrating a Compassionate Friend: David/Sonia Burgess”. Huffington Post, 01/31/2011. www.huffingtonpost.com/kate-saunders/celebrating-a-compassiona_b_809229.html.
  
• Pater Walker. “Man who pushed solicitor under tube train jailed for life”. The Guardian, 22 December 2011. www.theguardian.com/uk/2011/dec/22/man-pushed-solicitor-under-tube-train-jailed.
  
• Kiran Randhawa. “Transsexual killer of top lawyer found dead in prison cell”. London Evening Standard, 17 February 2015. www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/transsexual-killer-of-top-lawyer-found-dead-in-prison-cell-10051098.html.
  
• Kiran Randhawa. “ 'Inmates heard shouts of 'help me' before transsexual prisoner was found dead' “. London Evening Standard, 20 February 2015. www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/inmates-heard-shouts-of-help-me-before-transexual-prisoner-was-found-dead-10053295.html.

EN.Wikipedia
______________________________________

Sheila Jeffreys, in her 2014 book, Gender Hurts: A Feminist Analysis of the Politics of Transgenderism, p160-1, uses this case of all cases to raise alarm that Kanagasingham might be placed in a woman's prison.

The Evening Standard has two articles from February 2015 re the then ongoing inquest into Senthooran Kanagasingham's death, but I could not find any articles in the Standard or elsewhere re the conclusion of the inquest.

Mark Rees (1942 - ) Part II: activist, councillor.

Continued from Part I.

The refusal from the Church of England spurred Mark to consider a challenge through the legal system. A friend told him of Daniel van Oosterwijck who had applied to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on the same issue. In 1979 he found a lawyer, David Sonia Burgess (1947 – 2010), also transgender, who would take the case.

In 1981 Mark chastised a local boy for breaking glass close to his house. In revenge the boy's mother put out the word about Mark's gender history and he was then continuously taunted by local kids. Another disappointment in this period was that Mark's younger sister, Jane, who had been initially supportive of his transition, turned against it in 1984, and even cut herself off from their mother.

That same year Mark wrote to the BBC's Claire Rayner's Casebook, and suggested that they do a program on transsexuality. The film crew came to Mark's home for the interview, but did not give his full name or whereabouts on the air.

Mark and David Burgess had been appealing through the courts and finally the ECHR decided that there was a case. Supposedly Mark's identity was to be confidential, but in April 1985 the ECHR issued a press release giving Mark's full name, and it was reprinted in The Guardian. This was quickly picked up by a local newspaper.

The ECHR hearing was held in 1986. Eleven days before, Mark and his mother were featured on BBC 1 Nine O'Clock News, and on Woman's Hour. The Thatcher government sent expensive lawyers to argue against Mark's petition, and it was denied. However, on the day that the ECHR's decision was handed down, Mark received a letter from the Liberal MP and barrister Alex Carlile expressing support. He was also invited to the Tunbridge Wells Civic Banquet by the incoming mayor.

In Liz Hodgkinson's 1987 book, Bodyshock, Mark explained:

"Sometimes I think  that I should know all about cars, now that I'm supposed to be a man, but many of my male friends don't understand mechanical things. I don't feel that it is essential at all. I see myself as an ideal person in the middle. Having been a woman, and having grown up, albeit reluctantly, in a woman's world, I find that my sympathies are with women. I find many men boring and pompous. I prefer to listen to women, and feel I know all about them, having been one. Everybody knows about me and I don't try to hide my background as many female-to-male transsexuals do."

In 1988 Mark encountered his sister's two daughters in town and said 'Hello'. A solicitor's letter letter came three days later demanding that he not attempt to see the children. Following this their mother went to visit a friend in Somerset, and died. A cousin from South Africa turned up for the funeral, who was also a female-to-male transsexual. Jane came but refused to sit with or even look at her brother. The local yobos jeered as Mark followed his mother's coffin. Later in the year a memorial service was held, without Jane being invited.

Mark fell into depression and stopped attending church. In 1989 Wendy Cooper got Wales On Sunday to commission a life history from Mark, and in June he went to Brussels as the European Parliament had accepted a motion that transsexuals be legally recognised. The motion was passed in September, but, as expected, the Thatcher government totally ignored it. On the trip Mark met with Pastor Joseph Doucé, a year before he was assassinated.

Mark started on a career as a public speaker, mainly to the Samaritans charity. Financially he was still relying on the dole. Alex Carlile organized a meeting of transsexuals and supporters in 1992 that started in his office and finished in a nearby café. This resulted in the foundation of Press for Change(PFC). Mark was happy to let the younger, and computer literate, do most of the work, but continued to write letters , especially to Anglican dioceses, and spoke at many meetings across the UK.

In 1994 Mark was elected to the Tunbridge Wells Borough Council representing the Liberal Democrat Party, one of the first openly trans candidates to be elected. However it resulted in an ill-mannered article in The News of the World. Nonetheless the local paper published a photograph of Councillor Rees a few weeks later with no mention at all of his gender history.

In 1996 Cassell published Mark's biography with a foreword by the Dutch professor Louis J Gooren and a preface by Alex Carlile.

In 2002, Mark turned 60, and being legally a woman was able to start drawing a state pension.

The Gender Recognition Act which PFC had campaigned for, came into effect in 2004, despite fierce opposition from the Evangelical Alliance and the Christian Institute. In July Mark had a letter published in The Church Times.

"It has been my hope that it might be possible to organise a service to give thanks for the passing of the Act, and to include penitence and reconciliation; but this has met with considerable antagonism from some colleagues, solely because of the bishops’ opposition. I wonder if there is any serving bishop who would have courage enough to say, 'On behalf of the Church, I am sorry for the hurt we have caused you'."

This generated enough response that an event, “The Gender Recognition Act 2004, Reflection and

Thanksgiving,” was held in St Anne’s Church, Soho, London, on 21 May 2005. Mark's local vicar in Tunbridge Wells came and preached a sermon against Christians who would not show love. Ironically, within the preceding week the Act had been amended by a Statutory Instrument in order to accommodate the objections of the fundamentalists. As a result they have the right to check on anyone who they might suspect to be transgender. If the individual is so, these religious people are permitted by law to refuse him or her employment, accommodation or even entry to worship.

By now Mark considered himself to be agnostic, and no longer attended church. He did however take a diploma course in applied theology. After the priest tutor mentioned that her church organist was transgender, Mark outed himself to the tutor and then the class. This went well and several wanted to read his biography which was by then out of print. This led to Mark expanding the book and adding photographs. The new publication in 2009 was at his own expense.

He finally registered as male under the Gender Recognition Act as an act of closure in completing the revision of the book.

*not the footballer, nor the neuroscience professor

• European Commission of Human Rights. Mark Rees against the United Kingdom: Report. Strasbourg: Council of Europe, 1984.
• Terence Shaw.  "Sex Change Rights Plea to Court".  The Daily Telegraph, 17 Mar 1986. 
  
• Liz Hodgkinson,. Bodyshock: the truth about changing sex. London: Columbus, 1987:136, 140-3.
  
• Jane Jackson (dir). Sex Change - Shock! Horror! Probe. Scr: Kristiene Clarke, with Mark Rees and others. UK TV Channel 4 50 mins 1989.
  
• Mark Rees. "Becoming a man: The personal account of a Female-to-Male Transsexual". In Richard Ekins & Dave King (eds). Blending Genders: Social Aspects of Cross-Dressing and Sex-Changing. London & New York: Routledge 1996: 27-38.
  
• Mark Rees. Dear Sir or Madam: the autobiography of a female-to-male transsexual. London & New York: Cassell, 1996. Revised as Dear Sir or Madam: A Journey from Female to Male. Tunbridge Wells: Mallard, 2009.
• Sophie Goodman.  "New hope for transsexuals as MPs move to change the law on birth certificates". The Independent, 23 June 2002.  www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/new-hope-for-transsexuals-as-mps-move-to-change-the-law-on-birth-certificates-646151.html
  
• Pat Califia. Sex changes : the politics of transgenderism. San Francisco: Cleis Press 1997. Second edition by Patrick Califia 2003: 178-186.
  
• Judith Halberstam. Female Masculinity. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1998.155-6
  
• Mark Rees. "Reproaching opponents of Gender Recognition Act". Church Times, 02 Nov 2006. www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2004/30-july/comment/letters-to-the-editor/reproaching-opponents-of-gender-recognition-act.
  
• Christine Burns. "Dear Sir or Madam – The New Edition". Just Plain Sense, October 4, 2009. http://blog.plain-sense.co.uk/2009/10/dear-sir-or-madam-new-edition.html.
  
• Mark Dalby. "Book Review: Mark Rees, Dear Sir or Madam: A Journey from Female to Male". Modern Church, Jan 2010. www.modernchurch.org.uk/publications/st/jan2010/3.htm.
• Christine Burns.  Pressing Matters, Volume 1.   Kindle, 2013. 
  

LGBThistorymonth     LGBTran

_________________________________________________________________________________

The second self-published autobiography came out in 2009 as the original was by then out of print.   The irony is that now it is fairly easy to buy a copy of the 1996 book on Amazon Marketplace or AbeBooks, but it is very difficult to find a copy of the 2009 version.

Joanne Cassar SG (1981 - ) hairdresser, activist

Cassar, a hairdresser resident in Cospicua, Malta, achieved transgender surgery in January 2005. In June 2006 she successfully applied under Article 257A of the Maltese Civil Code and her sex and name were changed on her birth certificate.

Subsequently Joanne and her boyfriend, T. applied for a marriage licence. However they were refused in that the Marriage Act prohibited unions between persons of the same gender.

Joanne sued and in February 2007, a Justice noted that the proposed union did not contravene any provision of the Marriage Act. He upheld her request and ordered the director of Public Registry to issue the marriage banns. The marriage registry appealed. In May 2008, another Justice observed that Maltese Law offered no legal definition of either gender, but took into account an affidavit by the former chairman of the parliamentary bio-ethics committee, Dr Michael Axiak, who wrote: "after gender reassignment therapy, a person will have remained of the same sex as before the operation".

In 2010 Joanne was assaulted and had her bag stolen as she left the dance floor at a carnival party. She was frequently insulted and pushed around by strangers.  

Joanne then opened a case in the First Hall of the Civil Court in its constitutional jurisdiction, claiming a breach of human rights. She won in April 2011, but then lost on appeal a month later.

Joanne, at some financial cost filed a case against Malta in the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. The then Attorney General filed submissions arguing that the reassigned gender on Cassar's State-issued identity card was intended only to "spare her embarrassment", and was not meant to entitle Cassar to legal privileges associated with the female gender.

The Maltese General Election of 2013 returned the Labour Party after 15 years of rule by the Nationalist Party.

The new government then relinquished the case in the European Court and presented amendments to the Civil Code under which transgender people re now considered as individuals of the acquired sex with full rights, including the right to marry. Furthermore Joanna Cassar was awarded compensation and also honoured by being accepted into the Xirka Ġieħ ir-Repubblika Society which is limited to 20 members.

* Not the academic at the University of Malta

• Claudia Calleja. "‘I’ve been fighting for a human right for seven years’: Transsexual is still facing abuse from strangers because of who she is". Times of Malta, January 20, 2013. www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20130120/local/-I-ve-been-fighting-for-a-human-right-for-seven-years-.454050.  
• "Malta: Transgender woman wins legal right to marry after government drops case". Pink News, 2013/04/03. www.pinknews.co.uk/2013/04/03/malta-transgender-woman-wins-legal-right-to-marry-after-government-drops-case.
  
• "Joanne Cassar loses transsexual marriage case". Times of Malta, May 23, 2011. www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20110523/local/joanne-cassar-loses.366791.
  

• "Transgender who challenged government’s intransigence to be honoured". Malta Today, 13 December 2013. www.maltatoday.com.mt/en/newsdetails/news/national/Transgender-who-challenged-government-s-intransigence-to-be-honoured-20131213.
  
• "Settlement between Joanne Cassar and government signed". Malta Independent, 08 January 2014. http://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2013-04-16/news/settlement-between-joanne-cassar-and-government-signed-1402109962/?___c=___c.
  

L. v. Lithuania, 2006

After being evaluated at the Vilnius Psychiatric Hospital and the Vilnius University Santariškės Hospital in 1997, L. (1978 – ), who lives in Klaipėda, took testosterone, had his breasts removed and has been in a stable relationship with a woman. He also adopted a Slavic name to avoid the gender-specificity of Lithuanian names. However he was constantly being embarrassed in that the prefix on his official documents identified him as a woman. Furthermore, his doctors refused him more operations until he is legally a man.

In 2003 the new Lithuanian Civil Code came into effect of which Article 2.27 § 1 provides that “an unmarried adult has the right to gender reassignment in a medical way, if that is medically possible”. The paragraph of the provision said: “the conditions and procedure for gender reassignment shall be established by law”. However the said conditions and procedures never came to pass.

In 2006 L was able to take his case to the European Court of Human Rights, where it was ruled in 2007 that Lithuania must adopt the subsidiary legislation to its Civil Code on gender-reassignment of transsexuals, within three months of the present judgement becoming final, or L would be awarded €40,000. He was also awarded €5,000 in respect of non-pecuniary damage.

Lithuania did not adopt any relevant subsidiary legislation, and in July 2008 paid the €40,000.

Subsequently, in 2009 and 2013, parliamentarians have proposed to eliminate Article 2.27 § 1 from the civil code, in effect banning all gender changes.

• "Lithuania sued over transsexual". BBC News, 17 October 2006. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6060114.stm.
  
• "Transsexual's rights were violated by Lithuania". Pink News, 2007/09/11. www.pinknews.co.uk/2007/09/11/transsexuals-rights-were-violated-by-lithuania.
  
• "L. v. Lithuania" European Court of Human Rights, 11.9.2007. http://hudoc.echr.coe.int/sites/eng/pages/search.aspx#{%22itemid%22:[%22002-2533%22]}.
  
• "Lithuania pays transsexual $63,140 for surgery". Reuters, Jul 2, 2008. http://in.reuters.com/article/2008/07/02/us-lithuania-transsexual-idINMAR24689620080702.
  
• Cec Busby. "Lithuania plans to ban trans surgery" Gay News Network, 11 September 2013. http://gaynewsnetwork.com.au/news/lithuania-plans-to-ban-trans-surgery-11906.html.
  

Christine Goodwin (1937 – 2014) bus driver.

Goodwin had dressed female since childhood. He married and fathered four children. He worked as a bus driver. He had aversion therapy in 1963, but later was accepted on the program for transsexuals at Charing Cross Hospital, London in 1985.

She started hormones, had vocal cord surgery, and started living full time as female. She had genital surgery paid by the National Health in 1990. However, like all transsexuals in the UK at that time, she was unable to marry as a woman, suffered embarrassment and harassment at new employment when her National Insurance Card and birth certificate revealed her previous gender, was unable to draw a pension at the female age of 60 and was obliged to continue National Insurance payment until age 65.

She sued the UK government, and then appealed to the European Court of Human Rights. At that time the only other European countries that did not recognize a sex change as legally valid were Andorra, Albania and Ireland. The European Court in 2002 ruled in her favour, overturning its previous rulings in the case of Mark Rees and Caroline Cossey, and awarded £14,685 costs and expenses.

This victory was a major push to the Government’s passing the Gender Recognition Act of 2004.

She died after a long illness at age 77.  


*Not the painter, Christina Goodwin.

• ” Grand Chamber Judgment In The Case Of Christine Goodwin V. The United Kingdom”. European Court of Human Rights. 11 July 2002. www.echr.coe.int/Eng/Press/2002/july/GoodwinjudGrand%20Chamber.htm.
• “Transsexual wins right to marry”. BBC News. 11 July, 2002. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2122094.stm.
• Joshua Rozenberg. “Transsexual bride wins the right to marry man”. The Daily Telegraph. 12 Jul 2002. www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/4183012/Transsexual-bride-wins-the-right-to-marry-man.html. 
• "Christine Goodwin, whose case launched the Gender Recognition Act, dies".  Pink News, 19 December 2014.  www.pinknews.co.uk/2014/12/19/christine-goodwin-whose-case-launched-the-gender-recognition-act-dies.

Caroline Cossey (1954 - ) model.

Barry Kenneth Cossey was born in Norfolk, with XXXY chromosomes, Klinefelter’s Syndrome. She started living as Caroline in 1971 at age 17, and began work as a showgirl and topless dancer.

She had breast augmentation and Adam’s Apple reduction surgery, and then genital surgery in 1974, under Dr John Randell at Charing Cross Hospital.

She developed a career as a model, using the professional name Tula. She was featured in fashion advertisements particularly. She was noted in Smirnoff Vodka’s “Well They Said Anything Could Happen” advertisement in 1981 that shows her water-skiing behind the Loch Ness Monster. She was a Page Three Girl for The Sun. This led to a small part in the James Bond film, For Your Eyes Only, 1981, and an associated article in Playboy.

This exposure led to her being outed in The News of the World, a rerun of what had happened to April Ashley in 1962, which ruined her modelling and acting career. She responded with her first autobiography, I am a Woman.

In the mid-1980s she was featured in music videos by Duran Duran and Power Station.

In 1983 she and Count Glauco, an Italian, intended to marry, but UK law at that time did not recognize her as female. She applied to the Registrar General and to her Member of Parliament. She started appeals to the English courts for the right to have her birth certificate re-issued and to marry.

In 1989 her appeal reached the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, and the Court ruled in her favour. On this basis she married businessman Elias Fattal, whom she had known for four years, but press attention outed her to his family, and he left her.
 

The Thatcher government appealed the European Court of Human Rights ruling, and it reversed its decision. This enabled Fattal to have their marriage annulled.

In 1991 she became the first transsexual as such to be featured in Playboy, and also released her second autobiography which featured her legal battle.

In 1992 she married a Canadian man, David Finch under Canadian law, and lives with him in US Georgia. She ranked #24 (1995) in FHM's 100 Sexiest Women.

• Lynn-Holly Johnson and Robin Young photographed by Richard Fegley. “For Your Eyes Only (Bond Girls)” including Tula. Playboy. June 1981.
• Bill Rankine. “James Bond Girl was a Boy” The News of the World 1981
• Tula. I am a Woman. London: Sphere Books: Rainbird, 167 pp 1982. First autobiography.
• European Court of Human Rights. Affaire Cossey: arret du 27 septembre 1990. Publications de la Cour européenne des droits de l'homme. Série A, Arrets et décisions, vol. 184. Strasbourg: Greffe de la cour, Conseil de l'Europe, French and English on opposite pages, numbered in duplicate. 54, 54 pp 1990.
• Michael Binyon. "Sex Change Woman Loses Legal Case". The Times. 28 September 1990 Home News.
• Jane Dunn. "How Barry Became Carrie". Sunday Times. 5 May 1991. Features.
• Gretchen Edgren, photographed by Byron Newman. “The Transformations of Tula”. Playboy. September 1991.
• Caroline Cossey. My Story. London & Boston: Faber and Faber. xiii, 225pp.1992. Second autobiography.
• Jo Alexander. “I'm getting married ... and my sister's having the baby”. Woman 25 May 1992.
• Sophie Goodchild. "New Hope for Transsexuals as MPs Move to Change Law on Birth Certificates". The Independent. 23 June 2002 (p. 13).
• “Caroline Cossey”. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caroline_Cossey.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________

The parallels with April Ashley:

• Both were natural beauties.
• Both became models.
• Both had tiny parts in one the weakest entries in an ongoing film series, April in Road to Hong Kong,1962.
• Both were outed in the News of the World.
• Both lost their screen credit.
• Both suffered in their modelling careers.
• Both wrote two autobiographies.

Are Caroline Cossey and other persons with Klinefelter's Syndrome intersex?   The question whether April Ashley had Klinefelter's Syndrome was raised during Corbett v. Corbett, but despite her blood being examined by Professor FTG Hayhoe, a chromosome expert at Cambridge, no clear answer was given.  Either way, the result of Corbett v. Corbett was to establish a legal criterion for intersex that was not the same as the medical criteria.   Because Klinefelter's Syndrome persons have a Y chromosome (no matter how many Xs) they are 'chromosomally male' and therefore concordant in their chromosomal, gonadal and genital sex.   

Let us go to Stephen Whittle's Blog, posting of 14 July 2008, where he says that: "In English law, there has been *NO* change of the position of intersex people with the coming into force of the Gender Recognition Act. Since time immemorial, intersex people in the UK have been able to apply to have their birth certificates amended to better reflect the sex they are. This system is still in existence for those who wish to use it." Unfortunately this statement does not distinguish between the medical and the legal concepts of intersex.

Therefore, Caroline Cossey, intersex by common sense and medical opinion, spent six years of her life going through the hassle of court after court because she was not intersex by Justice Ormrod's definition.

It is to Caroline's credit that she is not hung up on these distinctions and in her autobiographies  uses the word 'transsexual' of herself.

It is a nasty irony that although Caroline's appeal to the European Court paved the way for Press For Change and the Gender Recognition Act, person's such as herself with Klinefelter’s Syndrome are being given a hard time by the Gender Recognition Board.

Whatever happened to ... Daniel van Oosterwijck (1944 - ).

Danielle van Oosterwijck was raised in Brussels. From 1963 she worked at the Secretariat of the Commission of the European Communities.

In 1966 he socially transitioned to Daniel. In 1969 a neurologist and an endocrinologist took the advice of a Belgian psychiatrist and Dr John Randell in the UK and prescribed male hormones. In 1970, two surgeons, Mr. Fardeau and Mr. Longrée, successfully performed a mastectomy and ovariectomy. Subsequently, he received a phalloplasty carried out in ten stages, from October 1971 to October 1973, by Professor Evans, a surgeon at Queen Mary’s Hospital in London.

He then applied that his birth certificate and identity card be reissued with a male designation and forenames. This was disallowed by the ministère public, in that the initial record had not been in error, and there was no provision in Belgian law to deal with a transsexual change. This disallowance was confirmed by the Brussels Court and then the Court of Appeal. He then appealed to the European Court, which in 1980 rejected his appeal on the grounds that he had not exhausted domestic remedies.

Daniel qualified as a lawyer in 1979 at the Free University of Brussels.

*Not the Belgian cyclist.

• The Van Oosterwijck case (ECHR, 1980): Judgment of the ECHR. October, 1980. Online at: www.pfc.org.uk/node/335. No Longer Available
• Daniel van Oosterwijck.  Affaire van Oosterwijck: 1. décision du 27 février 1980, 2. arrêt du 6 novembre 1980 = Van Oosterwijck case : 1. decision of 27 February 1980, 2. judgment of 6 November 1980. Strasbourg: Greffe de la Cour, Conseil de l'Europe, 1981.
• Marie-Bénédicte Dembour.  "Why should biological sex be decisive? Transsexualism before the European Court of Human Rights".  In Alison Shaw & Shirley Ardener. Changing Sex and Bending Gender. New York: Berghahn Books, 2005: 44.