Liz Hodgkinson on Bodyshock: The Truth about Changing Sex

Monika: Today I have the sheer pleasure of talking to Liz Hodgkinson, a British prominent author and journalist who has written more than 50 books that have been translated into over 20 languages. She has also written articles for most of the major British national newspapers in London, and for magazines for women. And she is the author of “Bodyshock: The Truth about Changing Sex” (1987), one of the best journalism books on transsexuality, a book that is very dear to me too. Hello Liz! Thank you for accepting my invitation.

Liz: That’s OK. Happy to talk to you.

Monika: We have just entered into a brand new year. Do you have any special commitments for 2024?

Liz: Just to get my new books published!

Monika: Are you working on a new book now?

Liz: I have just finished a new book, titled: "A Mink Coat in St Neots: My Mother’s Flower Shop and the mystery of a Wealthy Russian Princess." It is an extraordinary true story, never before told, and will be published this Autumn by Mount Orleans Press.

Monika: When did you realize that writing will be your vocation, especially having stated that your parents would have been happy enough for you to leave school at 16 and train as a secretary?

Liz Hodgkinson.

Liz: I always wanted to be a writer but had no idea how to go about it. I used to read avidly my mother’s magazines and longed to write for them. Eventually, I did.

Monika: Did your mother have a chance to read magazines with your articles?

Liz: She didn’t take a lot of interest, unfortunately.

Monika: You can boast an illustrious number of jobs in Fleet Street: a Deputy Editor of the mother and baby magazine Modern Mother, a columnist on the London Evening News, a Women's Editor for the Sunday People, The Sun, the Daily Mail, and The Times, and a freelance journalist, writing for The Times, The Guardian, The Independent, the London Evening Standard. Over all these years you have been witnessing how technology has permanently changed the way news is presented. So although there's more easily accessible content than ever before, many would argue that the overall quality of journalism has declined. Would you agree?

Liz: Unfortunately that is true. Anybody can be a journalist now whereas in the old days you had to go through quite a rigorous training programme. One reason for the decline in quality has been the gradual decline of circulations. Very few young people ever read a newspaper these days, or take a magazine. They pick up all their news from online content.

Monika: And magazines for women? How have they changed?

Liz: For one thing, circulations have plummeted. When my mother took Woman magazine, it had a circulation of between three and four million, which meant that just about every housewife read it. Now, such magazines have a circulation of perhaps 70,000, if they are still going. This means that they are no longer an influence in the land and are just full of celebrity and royal gossip. In the past, editors used to send journalists out on investigations but now, with the decline in circulations and advertising, there is no longer any money to do this.

Monika: I must confess that “Bodyshock: The Truth about Changing Sex” (1987) had a great impact on my life. It was the first book about transgenderism and transgender people that I came across in my life and while reading it, I felt a constant rush of blood to my head realizing that this is a book about people like me and I am not the only transgender woman in this world! Did you expect that the book would become such a helpful resource for the transgender community?

Liz: Yes, that was why it was written, as previously the only books about transgenderism were medical textbooks.

"The back cover of Bodyshock."

Monika: Before focusing more on the book, let me digress a little and state that It was not your first work on transgender people. In 1971 you became friends with Roberta Betty Cowell, a British wartime fighter pilot and pioneer trans woman. and even started writing her biography. But she did not agree to have it published…

Liz: That is correct. We discovered the truth about her and she threatened to sue if the book was published. However, we remained friends.

Monika: Roberta Betty Cowell was said to be always reluctant about admitting that she had ever been a man, and she cut off contact with her family, including her daughter Diana, who was desperate to trace her father, but was rejected at every attempt…

Liz: That is also true. Roberta always maintained that she had basically been female, which was not true. Her father, Sir Ernest Cowell, was a leading surgeon of the day and came out and said that Robert had been a perfectly normal boy. When I met Diana, she had a strong resemblance to her father, which was one reason she and her sister had to be kept hidden.

Monika: In the early 70s, transgender people were living totally in the closet. What made you interested in presenting their stories to the public? Curiosity? Taboo? Battle of the Sexes? 

Liz: The transgender people I interviewed wanted their stories to be made public, so that there could be more understanding of what motivated them to change sex. I found the whole area fascinating and yes, the battle of the sexes was one major reason I became interested. Also, very many transgender people I met were themselves interesting people with important stories to tell. As a journalist, I think it was curiosity that motivated me originally.

Monika: In 1980 you wrote an article for The Sun about two other transgender pioneers: Julia Grant and Judy Cousins. Julia Grant had just appeared in the BBC documentary whereas Judy Cousins had just founded SHAFT, the Self Help Association for Transsexuals (SHAFT), formed as an information collecting and disseminating body for trans people and later known as ‘Gender Dysphoria Trust International’ (GDTI). Were they your friends too? 

Liz's article (1979) about Judy Cousins
 and her daughter Penny
via Transgender Archive

Liz: I never knew Julia Grant, whose story was told on television but Judy Cousins became a close friend, as did many other transgender people. I have to say that this was not just because they were trans that we became friends, but because I liked them as people, whatever their gender.

Monika: In addition to Judy Collins, “Bodyshock: The Truth about Changing Sex” includes the stories of Rachael Webb (lorry driver and the first elected trans person in Britain), Michael Dillon, Mark Rees, Adèle Anderson (I interviewed her in 2014) and Stephanie Anne Booth. Why did you focus on them?

Liz: They were the people who agreed to be interviewed, and who wanted their stories to get out there. Michael Dillon died in 1962, before I knew anything about transgender matters, but Roberta gave me all his letters, documents and so on, and he was such a pioneer that I felt his story had to be told. He actually wanted his story to be told but his brother, Sir Robert Dillon, prevented publication. Gradually I pieced together Dillon’s story from when he (then she) had been a student at Oxford University, to when he died as a Buddhist monk in India.

Monika: The title of the book was “From a Girl to a Man: How Laura Became Michael” (2016), and it included the letters of Roberta Cowell and Michael Dillon. Were they in love? 

Liz: Michael was very much in love with Roberta, or Bobbie as he called her but I don’t think it was reciprocated. Michael thought they would get married, as would have been legal at the time, since both of their birth certificates had been changed, but Roberta refused him, and I believe it was this that decided him to become a ship’s surgeon and get away from it all. I believe that Roberta shamelessly used Michael to bring about her sex change.

Monika: The book was one of the first non-medical books about transsexuality but it also had chapters on surgical and hormonal procedures; legal aspects, as well as the impact of someone’s transition on family and friends.

Liz: Yes, I wanted the book to be as thorough as possible and for family and friends of trans people to be able to read it, to gain some understanding of what was involved and the often harrowing experiences of trans people, especially in the early days.

Liz's article (1980) about Julia Grant
and Judy Collins
via Transgender Archive

Monika: Thanks to the social revolution, transgender women have been able to overcome a lot of challenges and stigma that prevailed in the 20th century. Some of us are successful fashion models, actresses, politicians, scholars, journalists, writers, artists, and engineers, as well as many of us are happy wives, mothers, grandmothers, and partners. Yet we are still denied as women by some feminists. What is your view on this?

Liz: Yes, I am very glad that trans people have been able to take their place in the world as the women (or men) they always felt themselves to be. It has been a long hard struggle. The only area where I feel that trans women should not be included as women is in competitive sport. I feel very strongly about this as an athlete who has gone through male puberty will still have the strength and muscle mass of a man, and as such, likely to win competitions in swimming, cycling, weightlifting and other sports where male strength and height is a distinct advantage.

But when it comes to chess competitions or quiz shows on television, I can’t see any reason why a trans woman cannot compete as a woman. Biologically of course, trans people will always have the chromosomes of their original gender and will not be able to reproduce in their desired gender. But then – not all biological men and women can reproduce, either, so I don’t think there is much mileage in banging on about this. Here, we have had a lot of heated discussion about trans women using women’s toilets and here I would say that I often went into female toilets with Roberta, Judy Cousins and others and nobody took the slightest bit of notice. All they wanted to do, like anybody else, was to go to the toilet, wash their hands and leave. Most trans people just want to get on quietly with their lives and not bother anybody else.

Monika: In the 1950s, there were only a few hundred transgender women who underwent gender reassignment surgery whereas based on recent statistics there are more than 2 million of us already. And until 2000 the idea of a genetic male (XY) being pregnant with a baby was still science fiction, but since then huge advances in female fertility treatment have made it a real possibility for transgender women, especially in the field of uterus transplant. Are you surprised with the scale of the progress?

Liz with Roberta Betty Cowell in 1972. 

Liz: Not really, since the first successful sex change by means of hormone treatment and surgery was carried out in the 1940s. However, I do believe that uterus transplants are a long way off. The first - unsuccessful - uterus transplant was carried out in about 1936.

My book Bodyshock does point out that the desire to change sex is by no means new and goes back to Greek times, but it was only in the modern era that successful transitions could be achieved. This is probably why there seem to be so many more trans people than in the past. Also, in the past there was a lot of prejudice against trans people, and this has taken a long time to be overturned.

Monika: And puberty blockers for transgender children? There is a heated debate in many countries about whether children could start taking puberty blockers to avoid undesired masculine features when growing up.

Liz:  I am not an expert on puberty blockers but I believe they can have dangerous side effects. Also I am by no means convinced that children can or should, make these decisions for themselves.

Monika: Liz, thank you for sharing and having some time for my blog readers and I would like to thank you once again for the book that changed my life and helped other transgender people all over the world and all your works dedicated to the female audience.

Liz: My pleasure.

All the photos: courtesy of Liz Hodgkinson unless indicated otherwise.

© 2024 - Monika Kowalska

Liz Hodgkinson (born 1945) is a British author and journalist who has written more than 50 books. Liz was born Elizabeth Garrett, and grew up, in the small Cambridgeshire town of St Neots. She graduated from Huntingdon Grammar School and attended Durham University where she studied English.

She started her prefessional career as a teacher but it was journalism that became her vocation. In 1966–1970, she worked in Newcastle upon Tyne in north-east England, on the Thomson Newspapers the Evening Chronicle, the Newcastle Journal, and the Sunday Sun. During these years she married Neville Hodgkinson, also a journalist, and a Daily Mail science and medical columnist and author of books.

In 1971–1972, she was Deputy Editor of the mother and baby magazine Modern Mother, and then in 1972–1973 she worked as a columnist on the London Evening News. Her articles were published in national newspapers: the Sunday People, The Sun, the Daily Mail, and The Times, where she was Women's Editor. In 1986 she became a freelance journalist, writing for The Times, The Guardian, The Independent, and the London Evening Standard, and the Daily Mail. In addition to her work for the press, Liz taught intermediate, and advanced classes in journalism at City Literary Institute for 10 years (1995–2005).

She continues to contribute to publications and websites, including the Daily Mail’s Femail pages, The Daily Telegraph, and the magazines House Beautiful, The Lady, and Woman. She is a member of the Society of Authors, the Guild of Health Writers and the National Landlords’ Association. She has two sons and five grandchildren. More info about Liz on her website and Wikipedia.

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