Article first published: 30th December 2007 Source: http://www.ukgaynews.org.uk/Archive/07/Dec/3101.htm Copyright: Creative Commons Licence.
Selecting what we consider the best article in the English language published by a newspaper anywhere in the world – and “listed” on the UK Gay News ‘front page’ – was a relatively easy task this year.
The article taking pride of place is Sandra’s Long Fight to be Her True Self [Broken Link] by Martin Freeman and published last September (2007) in the Plymouth Evening Herald.
In his 2,000-word feature, Mr. Freeman gives the reader a rare written insight into the little-understood world of a transgender people.
“Clive Leslie wasn’t the first person to reach his fifties and decide to change his life,” Freeman started his article. “Twenty- three years of marriage had ended. His two children were grown and gone.
“Three classic ingredients for a mid-life crisis, you might think. Time to buy a sports car, maybe? Or quit his job to tour the world? Have an affair with a younger woman, perhaps?
“No, no and definitely no.”
Seventy words – and the reader was already ‘hooked’. And by the hundredth word, Clive had become Sandra.
The Evening Herald was not alone in addressing transgender or transsexual people and their problems. The French news agency AFP distributed to its customers Singapore Transsexual Battles Culture of Shame by an un-named journalist.
And there were many more instances of newspapers and magazines from around the world addressing the transgender issue.
Pity that, in some instances, the “T” in LGBT is often forgotten.
Plymouth LGBT Archive 
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