>Ten years ago, Private Barry Winchell’s captivation for a young and beautiful show girl from Nashville Tennessee cost him his life. Two fellow soldiers decided that dating a trans woman made him gay and a candidate for summary execution in his sleep. US media and anti-hate crime campaigners decided it was easier to cast his trans girlfriend as a gay man too. And thus the die was cast for the erasure of two lives, and the nature of their love (Their story has been told in the 2003 film Soldier’s Girl).
Ten years later Calpernia Addams has recovered from those horrific events and is making a rapid ascent as a US media personality. She was in Britain last week for the screening of her short film on media misrepresentation, Casting Pearls, and to attend a packed panel discussion at the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival.
Christine Burns was in London too and recorded an in-depth one to one interview with Calpernia where she talks about growing up, her spell in the US Navy, Barry’s murder, her blossoming career, and the representations of trans people in film and on TV.
You can listen to the interview here.
Calpernia Addams – Wikipedia