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Queer as Fact

Roberta Cowell

Queer as Fact

Queer as Fact

History

4.8 • 644 Ratings

🗓️ 14 September 2020

⏱️ 84 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Today's episode is on transgender pioneer, Roberta Cowell. We'll be covering everything from her career as a race-car driver and her time flying Spitfires in WWII, to her battle to access medical transition in the 1950s and the complexities on how she presented her story to the public. Check out our website, where you can find out everything there is to know about Queer as Fact, including source posts for each episode of our current season. If you enjoy this episode, consider supporting us on Patreon, checking out our merch, and following us on Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hello and welcome to Queer's Fact, the podcast bringing you queer history from around the world

0:04.2

and throughout time. My name is Eli. I'm Alice. I'm Jason. And today we're talking about the

0:09.2

British race car driver, fighter pilot and transgender pioneer Roberta Cow.

0:24.0

We have some content warnings before we start this episode.

0:29.2

The major content warning, unsurprisingly, is for discussion of transphobia as well as internalised transphobia throughout the episode.

0:31.9

We will also be discussing homophobia, intersexism and the appropriation of intersex issues,

0:37.1

and will include outdated language to refer to intersex people. the appropriation of intersex issues, and will include outdated

0:38.1

language to refer to intersex people. There are also going to be brief mentions of World War II,

0:43.6

Roberta's experiences in a POW camp, brief mentions of starvation, violence against animals,

0:49.5

suicidal ideation, drug and alcohol abuse, and people being outed in the press. If any of that sounds like something that you don't want to listen to, please feel

0:56.8

free to skip this episode and listen to a different episode.

0:59.9

Before we start talking about Roberta's life, I also wanted to talk, as we often do,

1:04.9

about the sources for this episode, because it is a particularly convoluted time this time

1:10.7

around.

1:11.7

Roberta herself wrote a memoir that was originally serialized in a magazine in the 1950s,

1:16.8

and this is pretty much our major source on Roberta's life,

1:20.3

which is tricky because it is full of lies.

1:22.6

What sort of magazine are we talking?

1:24.7

I don't really know the vibe of the magazine, to be honest. I would

1:28.3

assume it's kind of like a bit of a trashy tabloid magazine because it's interested in publishing

1:33.8

a sensationalised story about Britain's first transsexual, but like that's just an assumption.

1:39.1

Yeah. To complicate matters further, there isn't actually any published biography of Roberta,

...

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