News filtered through over the weekend that Dr Tuppy Owens, a true pioneer and radical, has died at the age of 80.
She was rather less in the public eye over the last decade or so, having left London for Scotland, but she and her legacy should be better known. Like Nancy Friday, she was a woman who thought about, spoke about and wrote about sex: real sex had and sought by real people, which meant she was not immune to criticism, but she didn’t care. She believed that everyone had the right to seek out sexual pleasure and spent most of her adult life trying to help others do exactly that.
Tuppy started a sex education publishing company in the late 1960s and then went on to found the Outsiders’ Club, an organisation dedicated to supporting people with disabilities to have the sex lives they wanted. She ran the Sex Maniacs’ Ball for over 30 years, which included Erotic Awards for those acknowledged as having done important work towards making a happier, sexier world (at least three friends of mine have won one of these over the years.) For most of the 90s, when I worked on what we used to call top-shelf mags, Tuppy was someone I saw and spoke to fairly regularly: she wrote for Forum and some of the other titles I was involved in, we were both members of Feminists Against Censorship and I attended several SMBs.
I remember going to the pre-Ball event in 2004, when the shortlists for the various Award categories was announced, and I told her I hoped to make that year’s ball but, being pregnant and due around that time, I might not manage it. Tuppy said I should not worry and just come along even if I was close to my due date as her gynaecologist would be there on the night, he always got a ticket.
Rest well, Tuppy. The world could still do with more people like you.