My Knight's Quest: The story of a transwoman’s search to find a space for herself and a place where she could exist.

By Adrian Barnes

Few of us consider that our life is particularly interesting or unusual. We can recall some brief highlights over the years with a smile, but often our lives are cluttered with moments we would rather not remember. I was no different in this respect, though perhaps I had more clutter than many. The events that could make up my life story, such as my career and family life, were clearly of little interest to anyone. My past was captured in photograph albums and travel diaries, all hidden away in cupboards.

There was one aspect of my life that I would have preferred to remain buried, and that was my long quest to create a space for myself as a woman. Those memories might have remained comfortably hidden had it not been for one man who was determined to dig them up.

This autobiography tells the story of a Australian transwoman’s search to find a space for herself in the world; a place where she could truly exist. It is a story of how her life went from being secretive and unknown to being accepted and understood.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Dec 17, 2022
• ISBN: 9781470936136

Book preview

My

Knight’s Quest

The story of a transwoman’s search to find a space for herself in the world; a place where she could truly exist.

by Adrian Barnes

First published October 2022

This edition published December 2022

Text copyright © Adrian Barnes 2022

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Published by Adrian Barnes

ISBN 978-1-4709-3613-6

Printed in Australia by LuLu

https://www.lulu.com/shop

Cover image by RawPixel

Not for Profit

All profits from the sale of this book are donated to the Australian Queer Archives at the Victorian Pride Center to support their mission to document and preserve the history of transgender people in Australia.

Why fit in when you were born to stand out?

– Dr Suess

This book is dedicated to Noah Riseman.

Without his persistent and perceptive questioning, the details of my knight's quest would have remained forever hidden.

If you are an LGBT person and you come out then you have to go through your knight’s quest to create ground for yourself, to create a space for yourself, to stand there and say I exist. I have no reason to feel guilt or shame. I am proud to exist, and while I’m not perfect, I deserve to exist in society just like everyone else.

–  Eddie Izzard. Believe Me.

Introduction

Few of us consider that our life is particularly interesting or unusual. We can recall some brief highlights over the years with a smile, but often our lives are cluttered with moments we would rather not remember. I was no different in this respect, though perhaps I had more clutter than many. The events that could make up my life story, such as my career and family life, were clearly of little interest to anyone. My past was captured in photograph albums and travel diaries, all hidden away in cupboards.

There was one aspect of my life that I would have preferred to remain buried, and that was my long quest to create a space for myself as a woman. Those memories might have remained comfortably hidden had it not been for one man who was determined to dig them up.

Noah Riseman was a professor at the Australian Catholic University researching the histories of sexuality, gender and race in Australia. In late 2021, out of the blue, he approached me with a most unexpected request. He wanted to interview me as part of a project recording the lived history of transgender people in Australia. And most importantly he wanted me to tell him about those memories of the past that were consigned to be forgotten.

I wanted to refuse the offer, but something told me that if a historian was genuinely interested in that part of my life, then I had an obligation to share it with them.

He sat with me over a couple of days armed with a voice recorder, asking me probing questions about my life, gender and experiences. As I opened up to Noah I found that we were exploring long overgrown pathways of my memory. I found that I could remember more than I would have previously thought possible had I just been given a pen and a blank sheet of paper.

It was bizarre to spend hours talking to Noah because I have always considered those who just talk about themselves poor company.  Those interviews with Noah were one of the few occasions in my life when I’ve talked at length about myself. When I looked at the transcripts of our dialogue I realised that I had dictated my autobiography. Not a dry catalogue of chronological events but rather a story of one person’s quest to create a space for themselves. It was a story that, in retrospect, I realised might be worth sharing; so came the idea of writing this book.

The biggest challenge I now find in describing my quest is painting the broad picture.  There is plenty of detail in sixty years of life, but that detail would not help others understand my journey or the lived experiences of being transgender. My story is one of how the transgender community went from being secretive and unknown to being accepted and understood.  How it managed to make such a change within one lifetime, in my lifetime; and how my life was wrapped up in those profound changes.

This is the story of my quest¹.

My beginning

To begin is the most important part of any quest and by far the most courageous.

- Plato

My story begins in Abingdon, a quaint, bustling English market town nestled on the river Thames just south of Oxford. When I was introduced to the world in 1954 I was physically a boy and reportedly altogether unremarkable. Abingdon was a rural country town then, a town that turned its back on the nearby University City and looked instead to the rolling agricultural lands of Berkshire and the Vale of the White Horse. This pleasant environment was my home for almost twenty happy years

My father had been part of the team developing Radar during WWII. He was based in Malvern which was where he met my mother. They moved to live in Abingdon after they married when my father took up a new position developing computers for the then recently formed Atomic Energy Research Establishment (A.E.R.E.). At the time, the peaceful use of atomic power was seen to be the way of the future, and the work of A.E.R.E. was held in high regard.

I was brought up on an estate of houses built by A.E.R.E. for its employees; the estate was a homogenous environment where everyone’s Dad was a scientist or engineer. I had a happy childhood living in a place where you could play with everybody. My parents gave me the freedom to roam and make my own discoveries. I remember exploring in the wilderness of the woods, running model trains round the flower beds, playing with electricity, go-cart sailing up the footpath, and camping in the garden. Without the distractions of computers or television, there was plenty of time to play.

My mother was a draftswoman before she married; a profession that disappeared with the rise of computers; the very computers that my father was designing. But she retained and subsequently passed on to me the draftswoman’s skill of printing clearly with a pen on paper. After I was born, she devoted herself to bringing up the family.  She enrolled in many adult education courses; she was a seamstress, a tailor, and an ambitious cook.  But none of these things was a vocation; they were just skills that she studied and became proficient at.  I enjoyed the benefits of a stay-at-home mum to look after me and a smart dad to pay the bills.

I was the second child in the family; I have an older sister but no younger siblings. I was close to my sister Rosalind growing up as a child. We spent a lot of time together as a family; playing games, making music, and going on holidays. I drifted away from Ros when she left home and went to university.  She was very academic; a pure mathematician; and not a great communicator.  I headed off the other way as a more practical engineer - following in my father’s footsteps.

My parents spent a lot of time making presents for us; times were tough and toys were expensive. My mother made me a colourful cotton wigwam that we played with in the garden, and my father gave me an electronics board with lamps, switches, and a contactor from a WWII aircraft. When I was nine I was given a wooden table Dad made with a Hornby Dublo model railway layout on it.  Even the stilts we wobbled up and down the street on were of solid wood construction with bolts to adjust the height.  I never had the opportunity to tell my Dad how much I appreciated the time he must have spent in the shed making us so happy.  We were indeed lucky.

My world was small and compact.  The Primary School I went to was at one end of our street, the Secondary School at the other end, and the town centre just a short walk away; my school friends lived close by. A.E.R.E had built several large housing estates on the outskirts of what was then a sleepy country town. With the influx of new professional families, the area became quite aspirational middle class. The scientists were relatively well off and the estate was beautifully kept.  Like everyone else we rented our house; it was only very late in my childhood, that A.E.R.E sold off the houses and my parents became house owners. Up till then everyone on our street was renting and they were all involved in scientific work, and their children were all going to the same schools.

My earliest substantive memories of childhood start when I went to primary school. There were two choices; my sister went to Dunmoor School, a school that had been established longer. I was initially sent there too. On my first day of school, I was distressed, I cried, I couldn’t stand it, it was threatening, and I didn’t feel comfortable. Images from that traumatic day are still etched in my mind. My parents wisely pulled me out of the school and enrolled me instead into St Nicolas School which had just been opened, down the end of our street. I have happy memories of my first day there, memories of playing with toys on the floor. St. Nicolas School was quite progressive; they had a swimming pool, which, in England at the time, was quite unusual.  Unfortunately, it was an above-ground pool with no heating.  I earned a certificate to say I could swim half a mile without touching the bottom, in ice-cold water! The teachers