Gwen Morgan

Gwen was born in Aberystwyth in the early 1970s and grew up on The Wirral, Merseyside.

In the late 1990s to 2000s she programmed mainframe computers in London. She looked for jobs in software development and saw one in Milton Keynes.

She’d seen Milton Keynes’ parks, rivers and redways from the train. When she visited, she decided it would be easier and cheaper to live than London. She also saw the roundabouts and that she would need a car. She had to buy one.

She rented in Loughton, then bought a home in Conniburrow. It was a diverse and tolerant area. She went to the Buddhist Temple at Willen and became a Buddhist. Her first visit to the Buddhist Temple was special. She joined the Interfaith Movement. The Ecumenical Church is a good thing.

She’d been in a choir in London and joined one in Milton Keynes. She started to socialise with people she met at the Buddhist Temple. Later, when she acknowledged she was LGBT, she started going to LGBT events.

Gwen is transgender and bi- or pan-sexual. She was in denial when she moved to Milton Keynes. She felt incomplete. She started to acknowledge she was transgender and cross-dressed. She realised that wasn’t it and decided to come out as transgender, seek medical support and live as a woman. She chose the name Gwen because it reflected her Welsh ethnicity. She told family and friends in 2016 and her boss (at the OU) in 2017. The gender identity clinic confirmed what she’d been feeling. She came across Q:alliance at an event at Campbell Park. It signposted her to events where she was accepted. She worked out about the medical and legal sides herself.

The Museum exhibition about the history of LGBT up to present-day Milton Keynes. For example, people at Bletchley Park in WWII must have known Alan Turing was gay, but things got tougher in the 1950s. She knows a trans lady who came out in the 1990s and had a very bad experience. There used to be more LGBT pubs and clubs than there are now. If not an exhibition, then a web page would be interesting.

The green spaces are a great thing about Milton Keynes. She explored them by cycling and jogging, then bought a drone and got a licence from the Parks Trust. She has a qualification in commercial drone operation.

The other great thing is the City Centre shops and restaurants. She particularly liked the now-closed Robotazia, where robots brought the food.

Public transport is poor: taxis are expensive and it’s difficult to find the right buses.

The future of Milton Keynes depends on the planners. It could be really great if public transport improves and there’s more rapid transport. Or it could become a characterless urban sprawl. It would be good if there was a technology or university campus in the city. She couldn’t comment about the OU moving to the City Centre.

She’s proudest of the work she’s done for the OU because it helps people get on with their lives. She volunteered with Q:alliance and may have helped some people.

PRIDE is important because it’s a safe space and it’s saying ‘This is who I am and I live in this country too. I am a citizen. I pay taxes.’ Her second visit to PRIDE was special because she met a particular pop star and she also gave a talk. Pink Punters is a safe space and Q:alliance organises social groups. There is wide diversity in the LGBT community. They stuck together because they were all treated the same. Going to gay clubs and wearing drag was a cover for transgender people because of the risk of being detained under the Mental Health Act and made to go for electric shock aversion therapy. Now, it isn’t always easy for the groups to co-exist.

She doesn’t go to LGBT clubs anymore because she wants to be seen as her true self by the wider community. She feels close to the non-binary community, although her gender has stayed at one pole.

She sees a conceptual intersection between religion and LGBT in the search for truth and being genuine. She pursued Buddhism because it is about finding the fundamental truths on which the universe operates; when you understand those you can configure your life.