"WELL KNOWN TS"

CAROLINE COSSEY (TULA) Model, activist

Name : Caroline Cossey (aka Tula)
Age : 44 (Virgo)
Born : Brooke, Norfolk, England
Lives : Atlanta, Georgia, USA
Hair : Dark Brown
Eyes : Blue/Green
T* Type : Post-op TS

Famous model & actress (Most famous for her role in the James Bond film "For Your Eyes Only")
Caroline was also the first openly-TS covergirl of Playboy magazine
Caroline is now married and lives with her husband David in Atlanta, Ga

The early eighties.. A funny time, everything changing. But boys still liked their Raleigh Choppers, Doctor Who on a Saturday afternoon. Marmite soldiers for tea, imagining that they were James Bond, licensed to rescue the beautiful screaming girl from the vile clutches of the villain.

Unless, of course they were the sort of boy who wanted to be the one doing the screaming.The sort of boy who wanted to be glamourous, gorgeous and, hopefully, gagged and bound, waiting to be whisked away in the nick of time by a handsome man in a safari suit and an improbable foreign location.

You see, some boys wanted to be Bond girls. Boys like Barry Cossey, cruelly bullied at school in Norfolk. Barry knew something was wrong and left home in his teens to become Caroline, a Parisian topless dancer also known as Tula.

Tula was the archetype of the early seventies showgirl: tall, skinny, exotically androgynous, with hormonally assisted curves and a surgically augmented bust, the face of an angel. And a little bit extra, which she hid with a cruelly tight customised G-string until she could have the surgery, at the Charing Cross Hospital in London, 1974.Post-op, Caroline's career took off. No longer a topless burlesque dancer, she became a highly sought-after glamour model and commercials actress, in an age when her lanky, other-worldly looks were the height of fashion. The pinnacle, and a step onto a bigger stage, she hoped, came in 1980 when she was cast in the Bond film For Your Eyes Only. The boy from the fens had become a Bond girl.

Then her world fell apart.The Sunday tabloid rag The News of the World outed Caroline soon after the release of the film. She was devastated - any opportunity for a normal, successful life as a glamour model and actress wrenched away from her in one weekend.

An unpleasant period of her life now began. She was the perfect target for a peculiarly British sort of prurience - fascinated by a "bloke who got his tits out for the lads". The country had never seen any thing like her. She was hounded by the press, persecuted by tabloid journalists and photographers asking unbelievably ignorant questions.

In the first of many brave steps, Caroline made the decision to take it head on. The result was the publication of her 1982 book, Tula: I am a Woman, which sought in straightforward terms to defuse the situation by telling the story in full, from her point of view. If anything, the press coverage intensified, but now it was largely sympathetic pieces in organs like The Sunday Times. Eventually, Tula was able to return to modelling. But a career on a bigger stage was now irretrievably gone.

Eventually, she was able to pick up the threads of her life. A romance followed with an Italian Count who knew her story in full before meeting her (a first). They fell in love and he proposed.

British law regarding transsexuals is farcical. The law regards gender reassignment as merely a cosmetic procedure, and the changes in legal status allowed are accordingly cosmetic. Caroline was allowed to be called female on her passport, and.. that was about it. To all intents and purposes, in the eye of the law, she was and is still male. It says so on her birth certificate. It is illegal for her to use a women's lavatory. If she were convicted of a crime, she would go to a men's jail. Obviously, she was not allowed to marry another man.

Again, Caroline would not take this lying down. In 1983, she began legal proceedings against he British government to get the legal status of transsexuals changed. The process was to drag on for seven years and go through successively higher levels of the judiciary until it reached the European High Courts in Strasbourg in 1989.

During this period, she campaigned tirelessly for transsexuals' rights, appearing countless times in the media. Her ties with the Count suffered and they separated. In 1985, she met Elias Fattal, a Jewish businessma. A professional relationship soon became personal, and in 1988, they were engaged.

On May 21, 1989, Caroline and Elias married, at a synagogue in St. John's Wood, London. The European High Court had ruled in her favour a fortnight before, so she was now legally allowed to marry, although the government had immediately lodged an appeal, scheduled for the subsequent year.

On their return from a blissful honeymoon in the Caibbean, Caroline discovered once again that what fortune and commitment create can be dashed in a day by the tabloid news.

The News of the World had done it again. Elias' family were orthodox Jews, and immediately summoned him to account for his marriage to Caroline. Soon, she had lost him back to his family.

Now she received death threats. Her car was sabotaged. At the lowest ebb of her life, she again attempted to cope by writing, publishing her second book, My Story, in 1990. Again, she was in the public eye as the British government's appeal against the Strasbourg ruling came to court. This time, the court found in the government's favour. The year of transsexual enfranchisement was over.

The one that tried hard to rescue herself...

Caroline has since returned to modelling, and has continued her fight against the system and society that has treated her and those like her so shabbily. We can expect to hear plenty more from the Transgendered Bond Girl.

More of her pictures here: http://www.geocities.com/WestHollywood/Park/9200/tula.htm

BüLENT ERSOY

more about her here:
http://d1o202.telia.com/~u222600821/Geir%20Site/Bulent1.html

Bülent Ersoy is one of Turkey's most popular and profilic singers. She is conservatory trained in classical Turkish and Ottoman music - Art Müzigi, and also records Türk Sanat Müzigi. However, she is also one of the most important Arabesk stars in Turkey.

The most striking aspect of Ersoy's music for someone who has never heard her before is her deep voice. Now, deep voices are not uncommon among Turkish female singers in general, but in Ersoy's case the fact that she is also Turkey's most famous transsexual artist serves to explain her voice quality.

Ms. Ersoy was already well established as a recording artist when she had gender reassignment surgery in 1980, and accordingly did not change her first name (Bülent is a common male Turkish name). This also led to a high level of publicity around her choice, and it is safe to say that she remains a controversial figure in Turkish show business to this day.

Now, celebrities can often allow themselves to behave in a more eccentric way than what is otherwise common, and this may explain why Bülent Ersoy enjoys huge popularity and wide respect among Turks (though there is no comparison with the general adoration of the late Zeki Müren) despite her flamboyant lifestyle. (For information on the pledge of other transsexuals in Turkey, read an interview with the transsexual activist Melike Demet Demir.)

However, it has not always been easy for Bülent Ersoy either. In the early 80s she had trouble with the Turkish authorities, who banned her from performing in public in order to limit her popularity. The paradox was that they exploited a law stipulating that women cannot perform in public without a permit from the authorities - which in itself can be interpreted as a recognition of her gender reassignment. The end result still turned out to be that she chose to live in exile in Germany and Australia for many years during the 80s.

In 1988, she published a classical Turkish tape (Konseri), which may have been a factor to her being allowed to return and to perform in public - maybe in a hope that she had left the highly controversial musical style of Arabesk. Alas, no! She had hardly landed before going into a studio to record a new harcore-Arabesk cassette... The following year she was shot (!) on stage by a paramilitary right-wing extremist (from the Grey Wolves) as she refused to sing the national anthem, possibly because of her somewhat strained relationship with official Turkey. During her reconvalescence in hospital, the whole family of the would-be assasin went public in the Turkish press asking Ms. Ersoy's forgiveness and proclaiming that he was no longer their son. Not very long after being discharged from hospital, Ms. Ersoy created a new scandal by proclaiming her engagement. The ups and downs of this relationship have been described in minute detail in the gossip columns of Turkish newspapers and magazines. The last few years have seen a media revolution in Turkey as a number of TV stations broadcast by satellite have come to compete with TRT (the official Turkish Broadcasting Corporation), and in 1994 Bülent Ersoy launched her new career as a talk show host. She soon became fairly controversial on this stage also, with a very direct style and most risqué language. Every now and then she takes time off to record new albums, the last one being Maazallah which was released the summer of 1997.

In 1988, she published a classical Turkish tape (Konseri), which may have been a factor to her being allowed to return and to perform in public - maybe in a hope that she had left the highly controversial musical style of Arabesk. Alas, no! She had hardly landed before going into a studio to record a new harcore-Arabesk cassette... The following year she was shot (!) on stage by a paramilitary right-wing extremist (from the Grey Wolves) as she refused to sing the national anthem, possibly because of her somewhat strained relationship with official Turkey. During her reconvalescence in hospital, the whole family of the would-be assasin went public in the Turkish press asking Ms. Ersoy's forgiveness and proclaiming that he was no longer their son.

Not very long after being discharged from hospital, Ms. Ersoy created a new scandal by proclaiming her engagement. The ups and downs of this relationship have been described in minute detail in the gossip columns of Turkish newspapers and magazines. The last few years have seen a media revolution in Turkey as a number of TV stations broadcast by satellite have come to compete with TRT (the official Turkish Broadcasting Corporation), and in 1994 Bülent Ersoy launched her new career as a talk show host. She soon became fairly controversial on this stage also, with a very direct style and most risqué language. Every now and then she takes time off to record new albums, the last one being Maazallah which was released the summer of 1997.

DANA INTERNATIONAL

Dana International was born anatomically male, but from early childhood felt she was female, leading her to seek hormonal and surgical intervention to better present herself as female. The medical term for this is 'transsexuality'. Transsexuality is a very complex phenomenon, and there are different ways of looking at it.(More about her soon)

I would like to refer you to a number of sources where you can learn more about the subject.(www.transsexual.org)

LINKS

http://www.geocities.com/tzeling2001
::A friend::

http://d1o202.telia.com/~u222600821/Geir%20Site/Bulent1.html
::Bülent Ersoy is one of Turkey's most popular and profilic singers::

http://d1o202.telia.com/~u222600821/Geir%20Site/Geir_Danna_1.html ::Dana International, or Sharon Cohen, is one of the biggest popstars in Israel::

http://www.transsexual.org/mystory.html
::Being the Dysphoria Story of Jennifer Diane Reitz::

http://www.phreak.co.uk/dragnet/
::Miss K Dragnet::

http://heartcorps.com/journeys/
::Melanie Anne Phillips presents...::

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