The media is showing an ever-increasing interest in all things to do with transgender, transsexual and intersex people, which is very welcome. However, if we TG, TS or IS persons don't speak up for ourselves and get our own stories told in our own words the so-called 'experts' will do it for us, with disastrous results. So I exhort all such individuals to speak up whenever they feel able to, so that the general public can get a more accurate picture of our tremendous diversity. The more individuals the public knows about, the more we become real people to them, and the greater is their understanding and their compassion.
--Mix Margaret Jones
Margaret is an androgyne. For a brief history of events and organisations relating to trans* and intersex people in Perth, see http://members.tripod.com/hovea_music_press/WATGTSISHistory.html
Television
George Negus Tonight. ABC Television, Tuesday 20 July 2004, 6.30 - 7pm. A seven-minute pre-recorded profile of Mx Margaret as an androgyne, featuring her playing a piano solo she composed at the age of 16. (Music published by Hovea Music Press. To read about the Androgyne Adagio and see a sample of the score, click here.)
Radio
96fm radio: The Naked Truth. 04 October 2004, Perth, 9pm. A live-to-air programme on sexuality, love and relationships, with phone-in calls. Margaret was a guest of co-hosts 'Macca,' and Dr Gabrielle Morrissey, coordinator of sexology programmes at Curtin University of Technology (see www.sexology.health.curtin.edu.au and www.96fm.com.au) Circa 55 minutes.ABC Radio 6WF 720 AM. 20 July 2004. Live-to-air breakfast radio programme, Mx Margaret interviewed by Eoin Cameron. 9 minute interview to publicise Margaret's television appearance that night on the George Negus Tonight show. Read the transcription.
Radio Adelaide: The Wire. 16 April 2004, broadcast in many Australian states. Mx Margaret interviewed by Amelia McFarlane about the decision of the Family Court of Australia to allow a 13 year old boy, born female, to begin hormone therapy to delay or prevent the onset of female puberty and to later have testosterone injections. Listen to the audio files at RadioAdelaidelow.mp3 (low quality 916 kb file) or RadioAdelaidehigh.mp3 (high quality 7000 kb file). (Files used with permission.)
ABC Radio 6WF 720 AM. Broadcast ca. October 2003, Perth. A pre-recorded radio interview of Carol Peers and Mx Margaret Jones by Monty Sangar (20 min edited down to 5 - 6 min). Monty asked us about Carol's "Myth Conceptions," the first professionally-run workshop for transgenders and transsexuals ever conducted in Western Australia. The workshop was presented by TransWest in conjunction with FTM Australia in September 2003.
ABC Radio National: Life Matters 05 September 2002. Julie McCrossin interviewing Margaret Jones and Tarquam McKenna live on air. "Unseen Genders---Is there only male or female?" Margaret said "I'm an androgyne, I'm not a man or a woman, except when I am". www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/lm/stories/s667155.htm (intro) and www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/lm/audio/lifemats_05092002.ram (audio).
Print media
Post Newspapers (eg Subiaco Post, Claremont Post). Many articles and photos since 1989, concerning choirs or Trans* issues.The latest Post story, 31 July 2004, is headlined "Locals in tune with my gender" and concerns being an androgyne, Margaret's music teaching, and TransWest. On the front page it features a wonderful colour photograph of Margaret in front of her burr-walnut 1903 Thurmer piano, with candles, accompanied by a great article which spills over to page 57. It's online as ordinary html at www.postnewspapers.com.au/20040731/
There are other ways of viewing that story. For a PDF of the whole paper (11mb) use www.postnewspapers.com.au/20040731/2004-07-31.pdf To read the just the front page in PDF format (fastest): www.postnewspapers.com.au/20040731/2004-07-31-front.pdf To read the front page as a huge image (no Acrobat required): www.postnewspapers.com.au/20040731/2004-07-31-front.jpg
Community Newspapers group, September 2003 (three of their papers, being the Guardian Express, Western Suburbs Weekly & Eastern Suburbs Reporter): photographs of, and articles about Carol Peers and Mx Margaret publicising the first professionally-run workshop for TG & TS persons in WA, called "Myth Conceptions," run by Carol on behalf of TransWest.
Australian National Choral Association (ANCA) Journal, 2002. Article about Margaret as an androgyne and Girls, Guys & Others: the GGO Quire.
Fremantle Herald. Interviewed for an article about TG issues, June 2001.
Letters to the Editor
The West Australian, Wednesday, August 4, 2004:"The State Government must not allow the destruction of any part of the tall tuart forest. The plan to sand mine a significant section of this unique, precious and now very small ecosystem for the sake of keeping a processing plant going for just three years is madness.
My late father, John Joseph Jones, wrote:
- Tuart Forest, Ludlow.
- Grey is the bark of the tuart trees,
- Grey is the soil where they stand,
- Grey is the day if we mine them away
- For their joy will be lost to the land.
Margaret Dylan Jones, Nedlands."
Public speaking
Poetry recitals
The Weight of the Baby (by Andrew Lansdown)Read to a gathering at a reception at Government House, Perth, for the launch of the Children's Week poster, under the auspicies of Meerilinga Young Children's Foundation, 05 August 1998.
Tuart Forest, Ludlow (John Joseph Jones) and Forest Giant (Jack Davis)
Read on the steps of Parliament House, Perth, to a protest rally to defend the tall tuart forest in Ludlow against sand mining, 28 July 2004.
TransWest: the Transgender Association of Western Australia (Inc.). Joined ca. 1998 when the group was called The Gender Dysphoria Foundation of Western Australia (Inc.) (GDFWA). Was Convenor July 2003 to August 2004. www.geocities.com/transwest_wa/ and http://groups.yahoo.com/group/transwest
Equal Opportunity Commission of WA, Gender Identity Working Party (voluntary position, one of several community representatives). After six months of regular meetings at the commission in 2001 we produced a report for the WA Attorney-General recommending changes to the EO Act. To date (June 2004) he has done nothing with it.
B-Legits, a committee of the State School Teachers' Union of WA (SSTUWA). Active member in 2002.
Gay and Lesbian Equality WA (GALE). Ordinary member.
The International Foundation for Androgynous Studies (IFAS). Margaret joined the executive committee in mid-2000 and became Treasurer two years later. She stepped down from the committee in June 2003.
The Wilderness Society (WA branch) (TWS). Margaret joined around 1994 and was an active committee member for a couple of years. Her work was principally concerned with saving old growth forests in the south-west of WA. See her choral composition "...where eucalypts green-tip the sky."
Fellowship of Australian Composers (FAC)
Australian Music Centre (AMC, Sydney): recognised as an Associate Composer
Music Arrangers' Guild of Australia (MAGA) (WA & NSW Branches)
Musicians' Union of Australia (MUA)
Australian National Association of Teachers of Singing (ANATS, formerly ANZATS)
Australian National Choral Association (ANCA, formerly Australian Choral Conductors' Association, ACCA)
State School Teachers' Union of WA (SSTUWA). Member in 1995 while Teacher-in-Charge, Music, at Swanbourne Senior High School.
Androgyne sites
An interview with Margaret about being an androgyne: http://glbt.pilbara.net/xya.html
My favourite email list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Intersex-Androgynous
Another androgyne email list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/androgynes
www.neutrois.com/defin.htm
People affected by diethylstilbestrol in utero or neo-natally (DES is an artificial oestrogen):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/des-sons
Outstanding book on endocrine (hormone) disruptors
Major intersex sites
www.vicnet.net.au/~aissg/
www.BodiesLikeOurs.org/
www.isna.org/
Infant (or Intersex) Genital Mutilation (IGM): email to and from the Minister for Health:
Brain Autopsy studies:
A Sex Difference in the Human Brain and its Relation to Transsexuality (1997):
http://www.symposion.com/ijt/ijtc0106.htm
Male-to-Female Transsexuals Have Female Neuron Numbers in a Limbic Nucleus (2000):
http://jcem.endojournals.org/cgi/content/full/85/5/2034
Sexual Differentiation of the Bed Nucleus of the Stria Terminalis in Humans May Extend into Adulthood (2002):
http://www.jneurosci.org/cgi/content/abstract/22/3/1027