Lilly Newton

Lilly is a wonderful trans lady whom I was introduced to at a support group for trans people in Ipswich. Upon mentioning the Trans Voices Project, she had enthusiastically asked to be involved, so a few weeks later, we met again, and we discussed her life as an older trans person who supports and advocates for trans people and works with several organisations on activism projects to uplift the voices of the community and protect the rights of gender non-conforming people. 

I will let Lilly introduce herself as she provided me with a piece of her work to include here, describing her life and work in the community: 

My name is Lilly, and I am a woman of a certain age! Thinking back to my childhood, I vividly remember seeing The Beatles and The Kinks on Ready Steady Go, England lifting the World Cup, and Neil Armstrong walking on the moon. Speeding forward to the present day, I just love my bus pass, and you often find me on the X41 to Norwich. I'm an only child from a family of only children. I am white, middle-class, with a loving family who supports me and encourages me to be my true self. For me, finding Lilly has been a long journey over many decades. I am a transgender woman who has fully socially transitioned and has had some medical assistance along the way. I've been on the GIC waiting list for three years. I spent most of my professional life in sales and marketing. As an extrovert, I delight in spending time with people, building relationships, and forming friendships. I believe I was very good at my job, which I loved.  My moment of truth? Each Monday night on ITV was David Nixon's Magic Show, and the female assistant held me spellbound. Oh, how I wanted to be that woman; the beautiful sparkly costumes, the high heels, and the long flowing hair. Each Monday evening was a wonderful torment. Without giving it much thought, I started to express myself using some of my mum's clothes. She had these little nylon slips that she would wear under a fashionable late '60s mini dress. I loved wearing two, one as a top and one as a skirt, to make a dress. One evening, Mum caught me prancing around! Now, I knew this was wrong because they were Mum's things, but I didn't feel there was anything wrong with simply expressing myself. Mum was not too cross but asked if I wished I'd been born a girl. My reply was, Yes! Still, to this day, I wish I'd been born a girl, but I love who I am, an out and very proud trans woman. Mum and I? We didn't speak about my gender again for 50 years until I finally came out to her. After a period of silence, Mum finally spoke, “I didn’t ever want a daughter”, was her retort, followed by her accusation, “You can’t be a girl because you love racing cars and football”. Like so many, I spent a large part of my life living in the closet with my terrible secret. On the inside, I was a girl, but on the outside, I was a boy who had no choice (or so I thought!) but to live a boy's life. Fortunately, for my own safety and well-being, I was able to live reasonably comfortably in the 'world of men'. I was able to speak their language, and it helped that I had typically male interests. I do like football, and I do like racing cars. I was able to hide in plain sight, living a rich and joyful life. At home or in a hotel room, always in private, I could be very different; dressing whenever the opportunity arose. In my mum's clothes, my partners', and finally (hurrah!), my own wardrobe, which to this day is ever-expanding! Those early trips to the shops were so exciting, so nerve-racking, so wonderful. I loved, and always will love, shopping for clothes. However, there was a price to pay. All those years in the closet were filled with shame, guilt, and self-loathing. I thought my terrible secret was a curse. Ageing can have its benefits. For me, my growing self-love gave me the strength to embrace who I really am, and finally, Lilly exploded out of the house into the real world in 2018. My third age has been an amazing exploration of a full and vibrant life. I joined Oasis thanks to a chance meeting with Serena in the Norwich Castle Museum at the beginning of 2018. The first day of my public Lilly life was on 1st February 2018, with my first Oasis meeting that May. After years of dressing in private, I knew my look and emerged fully formed. I didn’t so much step out of the closet as explode like the cork from a champagne bottle. I fell in love with Oasis, and the group quickly became the core of my life. Under Beccie, Oasis was thriving, and each month, we enjoyed a fun and joyful meeting. It was, and still is, a little safe space in a sometimes hostile world. The environment was warm, kind, and so encouraging. Each month, we could experiment with our look, get advice, and find our style. It was a joy to spend time with people who immediately understood my life story, and I found it so easy to make friends; friendships that have become the strongest and most important of my life. My friend and mentor Serena took over running the group in 2019, skillfully steering Oasis through the rigours of Covid. Then, in October 2022, it was my turn to lead the group. Running Oasis gives me a great deal of pleasure, and I look forward to each month’s meeting with great anticipation. We have also established a regular programme of visits to places of interest and have a busy schedule of Pride events over the summer. My favourite Oasis moments? Wow, there are so many. Setting up at Norwich Pride in 2022, the first Pride post-pandemic. On a beautifully clear, sunny day, it was so wonderful to be back and to represent Oasis at the Pride family gathering. Such a contrast to those dark days of lockdown, when we wondered if life would ever be the same again. Or a month later, at King’s Lynn Pride, when my friend Dee’s amazing generosity shone through. She arrived with a car full of goodies and created our own Oasis VIP area. That day, Oasis was the envy of Pride. Dee spoilt us rotten—especially me! Once the fridge (yes, fridge—Dee had packed a generator) had cooled, she presented me with a perfectly chilled glass of pink champagne. Such special, happy Oasis memories. Sadly, I never had the chance to meet Barbara, but I feel her legacy at every gathering, at every Pride event. For me, Oasis is a very special group, and I hope we continue to build on what Barbara started. It is such a joy to see our members grow, develop, and build friendships—just like I did. In 2025, we plan to grow the footprint of Oasis by having a more physical presence in Suffolk, a new drop-in in Norwich and a full programme of Pride events right across the region of East Anglia. Barbara’s work is still remembered by the transgender and queer communities in and around Norwich. I regularly meet people whom Barbara helped along their journey, and they always talk so fondly of her. Barbara lit a beacon that still burns brightly.

This piece encompasses Lilly’s personality perfectly: bubbly, expressive and passionate. She is a part of a writing group for queer adults that has recently focused on life writing, but she also enjoys writing fiction. Some of these pieces can be viewed on the Oasis website. She told me about one specifically called “The True Story of Lilly Newton,” which is an alternative story about her life had she been born the daughter of a notorious gangster in the East End of London. And another piece where she and the other main protagonist have a time machine and go back in time to save famous women in history. It was a truly safe space to share stories that everyone could relate to and find comfort in, knowing they weren't alone. 

She has been involved in plenty of activism in her journey so far. Along with being heavily involved with Oasis, a group based in the Norwich area focusing on supporting trans and gender nonconforming people. She also works with Norwich Pride and other organisations to promote community and togetherness among queer people. She does this in all areas of her life, trying to network and build a community around her: “Woe betide anyone who sits next to me on a train or bus, because I’ll talk to them, because I’m interested in what's happening in their lives… But it's also part of my, dare I say, missionary work. When I think about our community, the transgender community, we are spoken about and written about and talked about so much without our voice being heard. And I don’t deliberately out myself; I leave people to make their conclusions… We’ll talk about our lives, our grandkids and great-grandchildren in some cases. And what I wanted was, where people might realise who I am, what I am, so it was, when they read some headline, some nonsense in the paper, they’ll think, ‘well actually I sat next to Lilly on the bus, and she’s alright.’”

We discussed the recent news following the Supreme Court ruling and how other events in the news were feeling like a step backwards in progressing rights for our community. Upon asking her about her thoughts and feelings around the current political climate, she told me something I thought was incredibly powerful. “My optimism is at two levels: we are not taking this lying down. For example, we’re going to make ourselves visible… What I believe over the next year we will do is a mixture of protest and also creating safe spaces where we can meet as communities… The other thing is your generation. Now we can only see that sadly, that, whatever you call them, those forces that oppose us are largely speaking people of my generation, and there will come a time where they won't be able to articulate their voice because we will all be in the past… Overall, the mood is that we don't want to conform to these ridiculous binaries, and with the shift of generations, it will become self-correcting. And I firmly believe that.” 

Reflecting on these thoughts, she mentioned something that I found very important. She described a ‘micro and macro life’. The macro life is that of her wider community and what she sees in the headlines, her activism and feelings about our community as a whole. The micro life is her day-to-day interactions with people and how she can have that immediate impact on others. These two sections of her life are so vastly different. The people she sees and interacts with daily treat her as the woman she is, and it gives her so much hope that the person does not share the supposed collective view of the tabloids and the media. I think this is such a powerful way of describing this fairly unique experience of understanding that your life and the community you uphold can be so vastly different from our political landscape, and it’s important to bear both in equal weight. To understand that the people you meet are entire humans with lives of their own while also acknowledging the harm that the people in power can spread and how the positivity you feel from your community is just as important to be shared as the negativity of the bigots making the false claims about us.

Lilly’s coming out process was incremental. She described first coming out to her partner Leslie and gradually having more time where she could be herself, and her first day ‘out’, as they say, was a Norwich Pride event, where she made many incredible memories. And it was like that for a while until COVID, which included coming out to her mum and eventually being herself full time. There were some significant moments in the coming out process that she described, including talking to her son before pursuing a medical transition: “And that's when I came out to my son, which was, again, a very significant moment within all my coming out; there's never been like a big bang. I know some of my friends say, right on Monday, I'm going to be [myself] if you don't like it, tough. And for some of them, it's been incredibly fantastic, but for some it's been very damaging to friendships. And I've tried not to do that.” She lost a few friends in the process, especially friends from school, but as she said, if ‘they can’t accept [her] for who [she] is then they’re no friends at all’. Upon being asked if she could go back and do it differently, she said it’s complicated. She could pinpoint certain times in her life when coming out would have probably been okay, but overall felt that she was still happy with how her life had turned out, with a loving family and solid support network around her, and she wouldn’t want to change or jeopardise that.

At the end of our conversation, I asked the question, “If you could say one thing to those in power, what would you say?” and her response was incredible. “The first thing I'd tell them is, I'm just a person. The other thing is, I would tell them, I think I understand to a degree where they're coming from. So I would say that I've been a feminist my whole life. I was told I wasn't allowed to be, and maybe wasn't allowed to be. I was an ally, but I've always been a feminist… You know, there is a serious issue that remains constantly about misogyny, and it's never too far away under the surface; that's what we all have to fight against. And when I look at, you know, one of the uncomfortable things about my coming out journey with those old friends, those friends that actually have rejected me, is I also realise they haven't got particularly healthy attitudes towards women and never really have, which also sometimes, if I really think about it, gives me some issues of guilt, because did I challenge it? No, I didn't. Did I subscribe to it? No, I didn't. You know? Were there things that I could have done? So that's what I'd say to those people: that I understand why you think there's something to lose, and be it women-only spaces? It just drives me mad that ultimately it falls down to the toilet, and that complete unwillingness to accept: where are the statistics that trans women using women's toilets are in any way dangerous? There are no statistics. You know, I went in the toilet in the forum in Norwich the other day; there was a man. They were in disguise because they were disguised as a toilet cleaner. Oh, my God, no, they're actually cleaning the toilet. Nobody batted an eye.” And I think the message is so important.