Trans Positive Role Model
Published Date: 09 December 2009
By Sandra Dick
THROUGHOUT her 59 years – most as a man, the final nine lived as a woman – Jo Clifford has done some fairly extraordinary things.
She's witnessed human suffering while working as a geriatric nurse and later with psychiatric patients. Then there was a bizarre spell in Fife living in a commune and working as a bus conductor.
She's studied languages, lectured university students in the theatre, watched the love of her life die from a brain tumour and endured school bullying, taunts and prejudices on the bumpy road from being John, to finding peace in her sexuality as Jo.
Little, however, could compare to the night she waited behind the scenes of a Glasgow theatre as the minutes ticked down to the opening of her latest play while an angry mob laid siege outside.
"First night nerves were considerably worse because of all these people outside who were so angry," she explains. "I was frightened one of them might try to get into the audience and cause a fuss during the performance. That was very scary."
Last month's scenes at the opening night of
Jesus Queen of Heaven – Jo's take on what would have happen if Jesus returned to earth as a transsexual woman – brought the Christian fanatics out in force. In scenes reminiscent of the days when Pastor Jack Glass Bible-thumped in fury at films like The Last Temptation of Christ, 300 placard-waving protesters condemned her for daring to cast Jesus as not only a woman, but one who's just had a sex-change, and for grossly offending their beliefs and "assaulting Christian values".
The offence they caused Jo with placards which read "God: My Son is Not a Pervert" and retorts to comments that they hadn't seen the play such as "We don't need to go down the sewer to know it stinks", appeared, she says, completely lost on them....
Trans Positive Role Model
No comments:
Post a Comment