‘My life was entirely exposed’
Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to LGBTIQA+ rights
Folk in the Wairarapa can spot a fake from 50 paces but no one could accuse Georgina Beyer of being a phoney.
From sex work to politics, the world’s first transgender mayor and later a Member of Parliament says her secret is no secrets — always be “straight up” and they’ll support a “battler from Struggle Street”, she says.
“My life was entirely exposed. I allowed it to be that way.”
This Queen’s Birthday, Beyer has been “humbled, grateful and delighted” to be made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to LGBTIQA+ rights.
There’s not one victory Beyer, 62, would point to and say in her deep voice with rounded annunciation honed by years of politics, performance and cigarettes: “That was it, that was the win.”
Instead, she said it was a slow, steady and patient battle fought over decades to achieve broad acceptance of the rainbow community.
There actually wasn’t a lot more to be done to ingrain equality in legislation, Beyer said. What was left was discrimination, prejudice and attitudes, and those came with gentle easing.
Beyer identified as a woman at the age of 5 and took up choir for the dresses and acting for the dress-ups. Her life took a turn when she became a sex worker because of a lack of job opportunities for a trans woman.
In 1979, she was sexually assaulted by a group of men. Beyer never reported it to the police, but it gave her a new fire in her belly to change the status quo. She turned to local government to affect change and in 1995 became the first openly transsexual mayor in the world in the supposedly conservative Carterton.
Four years later, Labour shouldertapped her to run for the Wairarapa seat but she wasn’t expected to win. It had always been a deep shade of blue and Beyer was up against highprofile opponent Paul Henry.
But win she did and became the world’s first transsexual MP.
Beyer went on to spend eight years in government and counts decriminalising prostitution and bringing in civil unions among her proudest achievements.
In 2017, Beyer had a life-saving kidney transplant and it took her a long time to get better. Finally fighting-fit, Beyer has a speech booked in Sydney in September and crosses her fingers at the mention of a transtasman bubble.