Transvestites in women's discos (about 1975)
1975
"The
first time anything other than man on man, woman on woman that I became
conscious of was at a fund raising gay thing in the city centre and
there was some transvestites there. I couldn’t understand why they were
all wearing the sorts of fussy clothing that we’d flung off and they
sort of danced round their handbags, we just couldn’t understand why
they wanted to take on that subjugation. That was my first experience
of that.
The Communist Party's headquarters in Birmingham was called
the Star Club which we wanted to be a bit different so any (women)
could come but no men which was totally different to the other gay
clubs which were the other way round. We ran this disco which was
alright, we had one or two good nights but a transvestite turned up at
that and nobody knew what to do because this guy was all in drag and
was arguing ‘you should let me in because I’m a woman’. We had to be
politically correct so this guy went into this meeting with these
women, it was hilarious, you’ve got to laugh because people were
feeling their way.”
Contributed by: Jean Turley, 72