Before she transitioned, Brenda Appleton found refuge in an unassuming St Kilda restaurant.
The Fitzroy Street institution Monroe’s, in the inner-Melbourne seaside suburb, is steeped in queer history and was a regular meeting spot of Seahorse Victoria, a social group for the state’s trans and gender-diverse community.
“It was just absolutely amazing to be able to go there on a regular basis and be ourselves,” Appleton recounts.
“In the 1990s there were very few places that we could go where we were safe and it was difficult for us to go to a restaurant in our presenting gender and use the bathrooms.”
The site of the former venue is now home to Australia’s first Pride Centre which comprises LGBTQ+ organisations including Transgender Victoria – a not-for-profit that Appleton, 71, led for 17 years.
A pioneering advocate who led the charge on Victoria’s birth certificate reform for trans and gender-diverse people, Appleton has been honoured with a Liberty Victoria Voltaire human rights award.
As the former chair of Transgender Victoria, Appleton cites the birth certificate reform as an achievement that boosted the profile of trans and gender-diverse issues.
“It brings such joy to my heart to see people being able to describe themselves the way that they want,” Appleton says.
In 2019, the Victorian parliament passed legislation – bringing it in line with Tasmania, the Northern Territory, South Australia and the ACT – that allowed trans and gender-diverse people to change the sex on their birth certificate without having to undergo gender reassignment surgery. In 2016, the Andrews government had been unable to pass the reform – that had been called for by the trans community since the late 1980s – after it was narrowly voted down after opposition from the Coalition and some crossbench MPs.
Rochelle Pattison, Appleton’s successor as chair of Transgender Victoria, says Appleton’s quiet but forceful advocacy style allowed her to engage with MPs across the political divide to pass the reform in 2019.
“It’s her manner of quietly listening to others and connecting people across different groups,” she says.
“She’s fairly quiet and reserved, which is unusual to find in an advocate. But she can be extremely firm in expressing the view and she’s quite inspirational in the way that she is able to forge relationships and find common ground.”
After transitioning at the age of 50, Appleton’s mission was to make it easier for other transgender people who follow. She spearheaded advocacy work at Transgender Victoria and sat on the Victorian government’s LGBTI and mental health taskforces.
She credits the support of her family – she’s been married to her partner, Janice, for 50 years – alongside her adult children for supporting her transition.
Despite four years of counselling before transitioning, Appleton had three suicide attempts, pointing to the well-documented mental health struggles faced by the trans community, particularly young people.
“I really had to get to the stage of deciding I wanted to live more than I wanted to end the pain that I was in,” she says.
The landmark Telethon Kids Institute Trans Pathways research in 2016 – the largest Australian study of gender-diverse youth and their health – revealed that 79.7% of trans young people had self-harmed, compared to 10.9% of adolescents in the general population.
Appleton believes barriers to mental health practitioners with experience in gender identity issues remains one of the biggest challenges for the trans community.
“Life is just so difficult and it’s not a lifestyle choice. It is who we are. And we should be trying to find ways to encourage people to be themselves,” she says.
In her retirement, she is also focused on the issues faced by older trans people such as many LGTBQ+ people going “back into the closet” when they move into aged care facilities.
Appleton retired from the corporate world in 2008 but is as an ambassador for the Pinnacle Foundation and BreastScreen Victoria, sits on the state government’s senior Victorians advisory group and her local council’s LGBTQ+ reference group.
The annual Voltaire human rights award from Liberty Victoria – one of Australia’s longest running civil liberty organisations – recognises a person or group of people who have made an outstanding contribution to human rights and free speech advocacy.
The Liberty Victoria president, Michael Stanton, says Appleton has been a “fearless” advocate for trans and gender-diverse people and a role model for the community.
“In a political arena where we have seen LGBTQ+ people become political footballs, and in particular over recent times young and vulnerable transgender people, we are proud to award the Voltaire human rights award to Brenda,” he says.
