A Gender Variance Who's Who

The First Drafts of Trans Histories Part III: 1970 onwards

2026-09-13T20:09:19.777-04:00

It is a cliché that journalism is the first draft of history, and so it is with trans history. The following are journalists who were in the right place at the right time and saw the potential story.

Part I: 1900-1950

Part II: 1950-1969

Part III: 1970 onwards

Arthur Bell (1939 - 1984)

Brooklyn born, Montreal raised, Arthur Bell was an early member of the New York Gay Liberation Front and a founding member of the Gay Activists Alliance, and became a journalist mainly for The Village Voice. Bell was in Europe with his lover Arthur Evans the summer of 1969, and thus was not at Stonewall.

Bell and Sylvia Rivera publicized the plight of Chris Thompson, a dancer who went for treatment for asthma at New York’s Bellevue Hospital in 1970, but was locked in the psychiatric wing for being black, gay and trans.

Bell publicized Sylvia Rivera’s trial in 1970 for soliciting signatures on a petition for gay rights, and then later her involvement in Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) and then STARHouse. It is presumably the fame resulting from this that led David Isay and Martin Duberman to include her in their accounts of Stonewall (although apparently she was not actually there).

Arthur Bell chronicled STAR’s relationship to both Gay Liberation Front and Gay Activists Alliance, theorizing that internal GAA ideological conflict contributed to its recalcitrance toward providing financial support.

Perhaps Bell had said too much about the hustling patterns of STAR members in that a flurry of 42nd Street arrests followed The Village Voice article “STAR Trek”.

Mafiosi Mile Umbers owned the rundown building where STAR house was located. In July 1971 he confronted them about unpaid rent and settled for eviction. His bar Christopher’s End was also raided, and Bell wrote about Umbers’ influence in straight and gay pimping and in the gay bar scene in The Village Voice, 22 July, and shortly afterwards GAA organized a protest campaign outside Christopher’s End.

In December that year, Bell wrote about the wedding of Liz Eden and John Wojtowicz/Basso, and in August 1972 John attempted what became known as the Dog Day Afternoon bank robbery which turned into a hostage situation. Bell phoned into the bank and Wojtowicz answered and gave his version of what he was doing. Bell understood that Wojtowicz had shared his plans with Mike Umbers who supplied guns in exchange for 50% of the take. Bell later that evening went on Barry Farber’s radio program to discuss what he knew about the incident. Bell also interviewed Liz.

Arthur Bell’s investigation of claims that Wojtowicz had been set up by the Gambino mafia family brought bomb threats to the Village Voice. At Gay Activist Alliance (GAA) meetings

“conservative and radical gays debated over whether Wojtowicz was a counterrevolutionary lumpen adventurer victimized by the mob or a proud gay superfly caught in an act of righteous expropriation, but the debate was inconclusive.” (Holm, 1976)

In May 1972 Bell also found time to interview the Andy Warhol ‘superstar’ Candy Darling.

In May 1979 Bell interviewed composer Wendy Carlos who had just revealed that she had transitioned some years earlier.

And later that year he wrote in support of the campaign against William Friedkin‘s film Cruising being filmed on the streets where real gay and trans persons were endangered. While the film was partially based on news articles he had written about unsolved murders of gay men, he was leaked the screenplay and deplored its negative depiction of gay men.

Arthur Bell died in 1984, age 44, from complications related to diabetes.

*Not the golfer, or the convicted murderer, or the dancer.

Arthur Bell & Sylvia Rivera. “Chris: Gay Prisoner in Bellevue.” Gay Flames, Nov. 14, 1970. Online
Arthur Bell. “NYU Sit-In Story.” 1970, NYPL.
Arthur Bell. “Ray Rivera is known as.” 1970, NYPL.
Arthur Bell. “Sylvia goes to college”. Village Voice, October 13, 1970.
Arthur Bell. “Statement to G.A.A. About the Weinstein Sit-In.” Sept/Oct 1970, NYPL
Arthur Bell. “STAR Trek: Transvestites in the street.” Village Voice, July 15, 1971, 1, 46.
Arthur Bell. “Mike Umbers: The Emperor of Christopher Street”. Village Voice, July 22, 1971. Online.
Arthur Bell. Dancing the Gay Lib Blues: A Year in the Homosexual Liberation Movement. Simon & Schuster, 1971.
Arthur Bell. “For immediate release: Transvestite Forum to Kickoff Series on Alternate Life Styles.” March 5, 1972, NYPL.
Arthur Bell. “Candy Darling, Where Were You the Night Jean Harlow Died”. Village Voice, May 18, 1972. Online.
Arthur Bell. “Littlejohn & the mob: Saga of a Heist”. The Village Voice, August 31, 1972. Online.
Eric Holm. "Dog Day Afternoon, Dog day aftertaste". Jump Cut, 10-11. 1976:3-4. Online.
Arthur Bell. Kings Don't Mean a Thing, William Morrow and Co, 1978.
Arthur Bell. “Wendy/Walter Carlos: a candid conversation with the “switched-on Bach” composer who, for the first time, reveals her sex-change operation and her secret life as a woman”. Playboy, May 1979. Online.
Arthur Bell. “On ‘Cruising’: The Hollywood Hassle”. The Village Voice, September 3, 1979. Online.
Stephen L Cohen. The Gay Liberation Youth Movement in New York: “An Army of Lovers Cannot Fail”. Routledge, 2008.
Zagria. “Sylvia Rivera Part II: GAA & Weinstein Hall”. A Gender Variance Who’s Who, 8 September 2017. Online.
Zagria. “Sylvia Rivera Part V: Later Years”. A Gender Variance Who’s Who, 14 September 2017. Online.
Zagria. “Liz Eden and Dog Day Afternoon: Part I - Two Weddings and a Bank Robbery”. A Gender Variance Who’s Who, 22 August 2020. Online.
EN.Wikipedia(Arthur Bell (journalist))
Village Voice(Arthur Bell)

Kris Kirk (1950-1993)

Christopher Pious Mary Kirk (1950 – 1993) was a journalist for Gay News in the early 1980s. Later he was the first openly gay music journalist writing for Melody Maker, The Guardian and other publications. In 1984 he published Men In Frocks, with photographs by his lover Ed Heath.

The title, Men in Frocks, was of course ill-chosen. Kris, several times in the book has to apologize that a person (Poppy Cooper, Roz Kaveney, Letitia Winter) is not a man in a frock, she having become a woman. However the book is of major historical interest, and many of its observations are still valid.

The book remains the best history of drag and trans women from the 1940s to the early 1980s. In the ‘40s there was drag performance in the soldiers-in-skirts revues; in the ‘50s some went to Paris and were employed at Madame Arthur/Le Carrousel. A very small number were able to transition, and others did drag acts on the ships of the merchant navy, and there was actually still a molly house, that of Stella Minge in Silvertown, London. In the ‘60s drag shows in pubs became common, and then drag balls which attracted drag performers at first, and then trans women started coming. The ‘70s started with the Gay Liberation Front in which otherwise cis gay men did political drag. There was also a Transvestite, Transsexual and Drag Queen group for the more committed. In the ‘80s Kirk and Heath went to the London TV/TS group and featured several of the participants in their book.

In their ‘TV & TS’ chapter Kirk discusses the differences between DQ, TV and TS. The stereotypes, and the fact that many do not fit the stereotypes. He concludes:

"If there is any one lesson to be learned from studying this field it is that the individual is individual. People define themselves and the self-definition must always takes priority over the received wisdom. I have met self-defined drag queens whom others would describe as TV either because they enjoy 'passing'; or because they 'dress' so often that it could be seen as a compulsion; or because they wear lingerie, either to turn men on or to make themselves feel sensuous. I have met drag performers who have grown to dislike drag, and men who insist on being called 'cross-dressers' because they dislike what the word 'drag' stands for, and men who wear part-drag in order to create confusion and doubt amongst others, but who would never wear full drag because that would defeat their object. I know self-defined TVs who are gay or bisexual or oscillating, some of them having learned to cross this sexuality barrier through their cross-dressing. I have met TVs who dress like drag queens and drag queens who dress like TVs, and TVs whose cross-dressing has encouraged them to question their 'male role', which in turn has made them examine their idea of 'femininity'. And perhaps most important of all, I have learned how marshy a terrain is the middle ground between our earlier clear-cut distinction between transvestites and transexuals."

In 1986, Channel 4 television broadcast a documentary-drama about Kris Kirk entitled A Boy Called Mary. In 1988 Kris and Ed moved to rural Wales to open a bookshop, but three years later Kris found that he had Aids. He went blind in 1992, and died in 1993.

Kris Kirk with photographs by Ed Heath. Men In Frocks. Gay Men's Press 1984.
Kris Kirk. Boy Called Mary: Kris Kirk's Greatest Hits. Millivres Books, 1999.
Zagria. “A review of Kris Kirk & Ed Heath - Men in Frocks, 1984”. Gender Variance Who’s Who 16 April 2013. Online.
“Men in Frocks”. LGBT+ Language and Archives: Cumbria’s Queer heritage, August 3, 2020. Online.
EN.Wikipedia(Kris Kirk)

Liz Hodgkinson (1945 -)

Liz Hodgkinson and her husband became journalists at first in North-East England. In 1970 they moved to Richmond, London and both obtained work with the national and the London papers then located in Fleet Street. Liz found work at The Sunday People, The Sun, The Daily Mail, and The Times.

In Richmond she heard rumours of the local trans woman, and then encountered Roberta Betty Cowell in the post office. Betty took a shine to Liz, and made many of her documents available. They started writing a book together about Cowell's life, but in the end Betty did not approve it for publication.

Later Liz met Judy Cousins who established SHAFT (Self-Help Association For Transsexuals) in 1980, and Julia Grant who had just been featured in a BBC documentary. She wrote an account of the two for The Sun in October 1980, her first publication on trans persons.

Hodgkinson visited SHAFT and interviewed several of its members. This resulted in her 1987 book, Bodyshock (review). The book is dedicated to Judy Cousins, but an account of her life is missing in the book. However Hodgkinson also published a profile on Cousins in The Sunday People around the same time that the book came out. Likewise Betty Cowell is mentioned only in the section on birth certificates, and no profile otherwise given.

Betty Cowell had told Liz about Michael Dillon, and in researching her book Liz was introduced to Andrew Hewson, the literary agent who had taken over John Johnson Ltd, and who was holding Dillon's then unpublished autobiography and others of his documents. In addition to writing about Dillon in Bodyshock, she wrote a full-length biography of him, based on the autobiography. Her collection and the autobiography of course are a major source of Pagan Kennedy's more recent joint biography of Michael Dillon and Betty Cowell, which gives Hodgkinson only the most cursory credit.

Cowell never re-established contact with her two daughters. She died age 93 in 2011.

In 2015 there was a Channel 4 television documentary about Michael and Betty, and Hodgkinson contacted one of Cowell’s daughters, and wrote up an article for the Daily Telegraph, and issued a second edition of Michael, Née Laura, but with a slightly changed title.

Liz Hodgkinson. “Why are Julia and Judy different from other women”. The Sun, 14 October 1980. Online.
Liz Hodgkinson. "Father, Dear Father: Ex-officer and gentleman Judy Cousins and her daughter Penny Croucher talk to Liz Hodgkinson". The People, ?, 1987. Online.
Liz Hodgkinson. Bodyshock: the truth about changing sex. Columbus, 1987.
Mary Kenny. “They've looked at life from both sides now”. The Irish Independent, 26 September 1987. Review of Bodyshock.
Liz Hodgkinson. Michael, Née Laura: The Story of the World's First Female-to-Male Transsexual. Columbus, 1989.
Liz Hodgkinson. “Bridges across the divide to the opposite sex: how attitudes to transsexuals have changed and what help is on offer”. The Independent, 9 October 1990.
Liz Hodgkinson. “Goodbye Samantha, hello Sam: What motivates increasing numbers of cross-dressers to escape their sex”. The Independent, 14 September 1992. Online.
Review of Bodyshock. The Tartan Skirt, 6, April 1993. Online.
Pagan Kennedy. The First Man-Made Man: The Story of Two Sex Changes, One Love Affair, and a Twentieth-Century Medical Revolution. Bloomsbury Press, 2007.
Liz Hodgkinson. "The true story behind Britain's first transsexual woman". The Daily Telegraph, 24 Oct 2015. Online.
Liz Hodgkinson. From a Girl to a Man: How Laura Became Michael. Quartet Books, 2015. A second edition of Michael, Née Laura.
Maggie Hartford. "Liz Hodgkinson explores the history of transgender people in new book". Oxford Mail, 9th February 2016. Online.
Zagia. “A Rereading of Liz Hodgkinson’s Bodyshock: The Truth About Changing Sex, 1987”. A Gender Variance Who’s Who, 5 June 2022. Online.
EN.Wikipedia(Liz Hodgkinson)

David Batty (1974? -)

David Batty graduated BA in literature from the University of Birmingham in 1995, and BA in journalism at Cardiff University, 1997, and became a Guardian journalist in 2001. He specialises in social affairs, inequality, cultural politics, adoption and trans issues.

In 2004, as the Gender Recognition Bill was proceeding through parliament, psychiatrist Russell Reid faced a complaint to the General Medical Council (GMC) that he too easily accepted patients for hormone therapy and surgery. The complaint was brought by four of his colleagues at the Charing Cross Hospital Gender Identity Clinic, psychiatrists James Barrett, Richard Green, Donald Montgomery and senior registrar Stuart Lorimer on behalf of four of his former patients. Batty wrote this up for The Guardian in January, February and June.

Starting with some of Russell’s patients, Batty reached out and met other transsexuals, especially those with doubts or regrets. He was preparing an article on such.

In July, a few weeks after the Gender Recognition Act had been passed, Batty returned to the University of Birmingham where Chris Hyde ran the Aggressive Research Intelligence Facility (ARIF). The Guardian had actually asked ARIF to study more than 100 international medical studies of post-operative transsexuals. Hyde said: "There is a huge uncertainty over whether changing someone's sex is a good or a bad thing. While no doubt great care is taken to ensure that appropriate patients undergo gender reassignment, there's still a large number of people who have the surgery but remain traumatised - often to the point of committing suicide." He also warned that “the results of many gender reassignment studies are unsound because researchers lost track of more than half of the participants” - and that “the high drop out rate could reflect high levels of dissatisfaction or even suicide among post-operative transsexuals”. He ignored the much higher suicide rate of those denied transition, and that it is well established that post-operatives often disappear because they are pleased and completed, not dissatisfied.

This article was later cited in various places against the acceptance of gender surgery - notably at the US Supreme Court case Joel Doe Et Al., V. Boyertown Area School District Et Al., and Pennsylvania Youth Congress Foundation, 2018 on whether trans persons are protected under Title IX. Online.

Batty followed up the article, the very next day, with a major account in the magazine supplement to The Guardian’s sister publication, The Sunday Observer, “What happens if you change your sex ... and then change your mind” with before and after photographs of some regretters. He featured Marissa who changed sex three times (m-f-m-f) having reversed after joining an evangelical church and then having regretted reversing, and Claudia, a singer, who transitioned 18 years earlier, lost her confidence to perform and only in 2004 was suing Russell Reid. Marissa and Claudia were then cited in other publications. Batty cites the ARIF estimate that 3-18% of transsexuals regret transition (most other estimates say 1-2%). He quotes the Australian changeback Alan Finch who advocates for all sex changes to be banned, and for supposed balance Batty tells of a single successful transition, that of physicist Rachael Padman.

In 2006-7 the GMC proceeded with its inquiry into Russell Reid, and Batty wrote up the developments. He profiled some of the patients under single letter pseudonyms, and Charles Kane by name. Kane was suing Reid separately. Kane who was then in his reversion-to-male phase, later also had a third sex-change again to female(m-f-m-f), and settled on the name Samantha.

Russell Reid’s practice was taken over by Richard Curtis, himself trans. In 2013 similar complaints were made as those against Russell Reid, and again it was Batty who reported this in The Guardian.

*not the footballer

David Batty. “GMC inquiry into gender change expert”. The Guardian, 20 January 2004. Online.
David Batty, “Sex-change patient complains to GMC”. The Guardian, 18 February 2004. Online.
David Batty. “Inquiry into sex change specialist”, The Guardian, 19 June 2004. Online.
David Batty. “Sex changes are not effective, say researchers”, The Guardian, 30 July 2004. Online.
David Batty. “What happens if you change your sex ... and then change your mind: Mistaken Identity”. The Observer, 31 July 2004.
“I need some rebuttals for this study that says sex changes are not effective”, r/asktransgender, Reddit. Online.
David Batty. “Sex change experts should err on the side of caution”. The Guardian, 10 October 2006. Online.
David Batty. “Psychiatrist rushed me into having sex change, says patient”. The Guardian, 26 October 2006. Online.
Julie Bindel. “Mistaken identity”. The Guardian, 23 May 2007. Online.
David Batty. “Sex Change Doctor Guilty Of Misconduct”. The Guardian, 25 May 2007. Online.
David Batty. “Russell Reid inquiry: key figures”. The Guardian, 25 May 2007. Online.
David Batty. “Sex-change doctor found guilty of misconduct”. The Guardian, 26 May 2007. Online.
David Batty. “Doctor is accused of breaching rules on sex-change surgery”. The Guardian, 7 January 2013.
Zagria, “Claudia (1958 - ) opera singer, drag performer”. A Gender Variance Who’s Who, 3 November 2008, Online.
Zagria. “Russell Reid (1943 - ) psychiatrist”. A Gender Variance Who’s Who, 18 May 2010. Online.
Zagria. “Richard Curtis (1967 - ) doctor, yacht racer”. A Gender Variance Who’s Who, 24 July 2019. Online.
The Guardian(David Batty)
Muck Rack(David Batty)

The First Drafts of Trans Histories Part II: 1950-1969

2026-08-31T12:39:05.251-04:00

Part I: 1900-1950

Part II: 1950-1969

Part III: 1970 onwards

Irmis Johnson (? - ?)

Johnson was a noted journalist who had written on a variety of topics. When the Christine Jorgensen story broke in December 1952, the Hearst company negotiated an exclusive deal with Jorgensen for $20,000 and sent Johnson to Copenhagen early in 1953 to interview Christine. Christine and Irmis got on well This resulted in five consecutive weekly articles in the the American Weekly, actually written by Johnson but attributed to Jorgensen.

Later Jorgensen paid Johnson $5,000 to expand the American Weekly articles into a full autobiography, but did not like the document that Johnson produced. Jorgensen’s 1967 autobiography was written by Lois Kibbee, an actress. Kibbee did have access to Johnson’s document.

In 1969 Lyn Raskin was looking for a writer to write her biography. There were discussions with Johnson, but as there was no publishers’ advance on offer, Johnson bowed out.

Christine Jorgensen. “The Story of my Life”. The American Weekly, February 1953 for 5 weeks. Actually written by Irmis Johnson.
Christine Jorgensen. A Personal Autobiography. Bantam Books, 1967. Actually written by Lois Kibbee.
Richard Docter. Becoming a Woman: A Biography of Christine Jorgensen. The Haworth Press, 2008.

Ron Kenyon (1921- ?)

In 1954, Francis Marie Jefferson, who had recently had completion surgery, moved to Port Colborne, Ontario where she had some minor operations with Dr Stuart Wilson in nearby Welland, mainly to remove scar tissue. There had been rumours that a ‘Miss X’ had had a sex change, but she was not identified until Wilson spoke to the Toronto Telegraph – with her permission he said. He gave her name as ‘Josephine Jefferson’, falsely gave her male name as ‘Kenneth Jefferson’, and claimed that she had had surgery in the US. Her real name, her correct male name and the actual Canadian surgeons who had operated on her were not given.

Wilson’s version was written up by Ron Kenyon and published in the Toronto Telegram, 19 March 1954, and was repeated in other Canadian newspapers and also in the US and Australia.

However Kenyon realised that there was something wrong with the story. The population of Port Colborne at that time was just over 8,000. So Kenyon contacted each of the Jefferson families in town, and found Francis Marie. She agreed to be interviewed, and Kenyon’s real story of Francis Marie was published in the Toronto Telegram in three issues, on page 3 in each case, March 20, 22 and 23.

Marie Jefferson as told to Ron Kenyon. “ ‘I Felt Guilty Living as a Man’ … Marie: People who think I’m Amusing Don’t know the horror …”. The Toronto Telegram, March 20, 1954 p3.
Marie Jefferson as told to Ron Kenyon. “ ‘Now Men whistle at me …’ I like that, too – Yet I ran out on my wedding“. The Toronto Telegram, March 22, 1954 p3.
Marie Jefferson as told to Ron Kenyon. “ “Sex switch aids understanding: Has escaped depths of horrible despair: Home, family her aim”. The Toronto Telegram, March 23, 1954p3.
Zagria. “Frances Marie Jefferson (1929- ?) truck driver, domestic”. Gender Variance Who’s Who, 5 June 2026. Online.

Noyes Thomas (1916-2001)

Noyes Thomas was named after Alfred Noyes the Welsh poet, his uncle.

He became a leading foreign correspondent in the 1930s. In World War II he joined the Ghurkas, served in east Asia, and rose to Lieutenant Colonel. Afterwards, he returned to the News of the World as a journalist.

In the 1960s, the News of the World, which was a Sunday paper then selling for 6d (2.5p in the new money), was the biggest-selling newspaper in the world normally selling over 8 million copies of each edition. It was known for its emphasis on sex and scandal. Its major competitor was The People, also a Sunday paper, which had outed April Ashley 19 November 1961, and destroyed her career as a model and actress.

The News of the World made the best offer for April’s story offering £3,000. April asked for £15,000. They settled at £10,000. Thomas interviewed her and “My Strange Story” ran for six Sundays May-June 1962.

The next year, the big scandal was that of Christine Keeler who had slept with both John Profumo, the Secretary of State for War, and Soviet naval attaché, Yevgeny Ivanov. The News of the World paid Keeler £23,000, and Peter Earle and Noyes Thomas spirited her away so that journalists from other papers could not interview her.

However Noyes Thomas had, despite his experiences with April and Christine, a rather old-fashioned attitude to sex:

“In July 1964 the News of the World’s Noyes Thomas warned readers about the ‘creeping menace of homosexuality in Britain today’. There was, he added, ‘a vast “queer” brotherhood with tentacles reaching around the globe’.” (Joyce p167) In August he published a check list in how to spot a homosexual. (Joyce p233-4).

Roy Kant “‘Her’ Secret is Out”. The People, 19 November 1961.
Noyes Thomas writing as April Ashley. “My Strange Life”. The News of the World. 6 May 1962.
Noyes Thomas writing as April Ashley. "Goodbye M'sieu, hello Mamsells, the doctor said". News of the World, 13 May 1962.
Noyes Thomas. “Arthur Meets Mother”, News of the World, 20 May 1962.
Noyes Thomas writing as April Ashley. "Roman Scandal – hotel throws us out". News of the World, 27 May 1962.
Noyes Thomas writing as April Ashley. "The Operation". News of the World, 3 June 1962.
Noyes Thomas writing as April Ashley. "There, in a crowded pub, Arthur told me he loved me". News of the World, 10 June 1962.
Noyes Thomas, ‘Into the Twilight World’, News of the World, 26 July 1964.
Noyes Thomas, ‘The Men Behind the Mask’, News of the World, 2 August 1964.
Robert Warren. “Noyes Thomas” Press Gazette, June 26, 2001. Online. Obituary.
John-Pierre Joyce. Odd Men Out: Male Homosexuality in Britain from Wolfenden to Gay Liberation, 1954-1970. The Book Guild Ltd, 2019:167.
Zagria. “The authors of April Ashley’s autobiographies”. Gender Variance Who’s Who, 7 August 2024. Online.

Barry Farber (1930-2020)

Farber was born in Baltimore and raised in North Carolina. He had a knack for languages, and, to varying extents, picked up 25 of them, and published a book, How to Learn Any Language. He attended the Zagreb Peace Conference, 1951 in Yugoslavia, and the 1952 Summer Olympic Games in Helsinki. As a newspaper reporter in 1956, Farber was invited by the US Air Force to cover the airlift of Hungarian refugees from the uprising in Hungary that year. By 1960 he had his first talk show; in 1962 he had an evening talk show on radio station WOR in New York, and in 1967 he became an all-night host, also on WOR.

His first wife was Norwegian, and for some years he was an advocate for Norwegian-style social democracy, and at that time supported the US Democrat Party. However in 1970 he ran for the the U.S. House of Representatives in New York City's 19th district as the candidate of the Republican and Liberal parties, and in 1977 he ran for New York City Mayor for the Conservative Party - in both cases receiving only a small percentage of the votes.

Despite his turn to the right, he - like Lyle Stuart - believed in free speech. He featured Frank Kameny the pioneer gay activist, and Anton LaVey of the Church of Satan in 1969.

Trans activist Siobhan Fredericks was interviewed July 1966. The interview was arranged by Lyle Stuart, publisher of A Year Among the Girls. Farber had done his homework well on the topic of transvestites: he'd read the book thoroughly and familiarized himself with Turnabout magazine in advance of the broadcast. He was so favorably impressed with both the book and magazine that he expanded the originally scheduled forty-five minute interview to a full ninety minutes. This was the first time a radio discussion of transvestism reached a national audience.

In June 1968 Virginia Prince was interviewed by Farber.

In March 1975, after a discussion by a Deputy Police Chief from the Times Square area, of the problems of prostitution and other illegal sexual activities in mid-town New York, there was a panel discussion of transvestism. The panel included a psychiatrist who specialized in transvestite and trans-sexual cases, a transsexual, the wife of a transvestite, a transvestite, and the proprietor of a TV boutique in mid-town Manhattan.

And, August 22, 1972, the day that John Wojtowicz did what came to be called the Dog Day Afternoon bank robbery, he was phoned in the bank by journalist Arthur Bell, who later that evening went on Farber’s program to discuss what he knew including about Wojtowicz’ trans lover Liz Eden.

Farber remained active in broadcasting until May 5, 2020, the day before his 90th birthday. On the 6th he died at home.

Zagria. “Barry Farber (1930-2020) radio host”. Gender Variance Who’s Who 22 May 2023. Online.

Tom Buckley (1928 - 2015)

New York City born and raised, Buckley served twice in the US Army: just after WWII, and again in the Korean War. He became a New York Times correspondent, and 1966-8 he was mainly based in Saigon to report on the Vietnamese War, although when back in New York, he became involved with reporting on transsexuals.

Oct 4, 1966 a gossip column in the New York Daily News carried the item: “Making the rounds of the Manhattan clubs these nights is a stunning girl who admits she was male less than a year ago and that she underwent a sex change operation at, of all places, Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore”. This caused Dr Edgerton to get a phone call from Dr Russell Nelson, president of Johns Hopkins Hospital, to find out if the story were true. Edgerton made a tactical decision and gave an exclusive to The New York Times. Tom Buckley had already contacted Harry Benjamin about doing an article on transsexuals, and he was given the story, which ran on the front page on Nov 21, 1966. A press conference was called on the same day, where Edgerton and several colleagues announced at a press conference the establishment of the Johns Hopkins Gender Identity Clinic.

Buckley continued with his project based on four patients of Harry Benjamin, and it was published in Esquire in April 1967 with a photograph of Clara Miller, but without naming her. He estimated that at that time there were 1500 persons in the world who had undergone sex-reassignment surgery, 400 in the US. He also gave a summary of the positions of Benjamin and Robert Stoller, and details about the opening of the Johns Hopkins Clinic.

In 1975 for Harry Benjamin’s 90th birthday, Buckley wrote a profile of the doctor.

Thomas Buckley. “Johns Hopkins Begins Sex Change Surgery”. The New York Times, Nov 21, 1966.
Tom Buckley. "The Transsexual Operation". Esquire. April 1967.
Tom Buckley. “Transsexuality Expert, 90, Recalls ‘Maverick’ Career”. The New York Times, Jan 11, 1975.
“Tom Buckley, Versatile and Colorful Times Reporter, Dies at 87”. The New York Times, Nov 20, 2015. Online.

DE.Wikipedia(Tom Buckley (journalist)) Muck Rack

Toward a TS Dictionary - the letter Ii

2026-08-25T14:39:16.351-04:00

BOLD=cross reference, see item when appropriate letter posted

Iatrogenic, Iatropic

A condition, resulting from medical examination or treatment, that would not otherwise exist. This is an acknowledged problem in medicine and doctors seek to minimise it. At its worst it is Grooming. However, the concept is abused by some who use it to attack conditions that they find upsetting. Critics of Transsexualism such as Janice Raymond and Paul McHugh maintain that transsexualism in general is Iatrogenic. Other conditions such as Multiple Personality and Recovered Memories are also said by some to be Iatrogenic. See also Pseudo-Pathologies.

Identidad de Género, Ley de (2012) Argentina

Argentina became the first country in Latin America to have a Gender Identity Law. Passed 55-0 by the Senate. Personal data in the National Registry, particularly name and gender to be modified, and personal documents changed accordingly. In addition, all medical treatments (hormones and surgery) for Transitioning to be included in the Compulsory Medical Program, which guarantees coverage by practices throughout the health system, both public and private. Approvals of neither doctor nor judge, nor surgery are required for a gender change. Legal guardians cannot deny a change for those under 18. President Christina Fernández personally delivered the first batch of new identity cards.

Identidad de Género, Ley de (2018) Chile

The law, introduced in 2013 was enacted after five years, established a legal procedure that allows the change of name and registered sex in all official documents. For unmarried persons over 18 years of age, the change is requested by submitting a request to the Civil Registry and Identification Service, without being required to prove hormone replacement therapy or having undergone sex reassignment surgery

Identidade de Género, Lei da (2011) Portugal

This law allowed changes of name and legal gender, In 2016 a second law was passed allowing legal gender changes based solely on self-determination.

Identidad de Género, Ley de (2007) Spain

In 2004, Spain’s Socialist Party, the PSOE, was returned to power, and quickly implemented an equal marriage law, but kept delaying the promised Ley de Identidad de Género until prominent trans woman and PSOE activist Carla Antonelli threatened a hunger strike and this attracted international press attention. Finally the Ley de Identidad de Género (which Antonelli had helped draft) was passed three years later. Antonelli was the first in the Madrid area to change her legal identity.

Identity Erasure

The systemic denial, removal and invalidation of what is existentially essential for queer, racial and gender minorities. This was common until the later 20^th century, and right-wing and some religious groups seek to re-introduce it. See Queer Erasure.

Identity Politics

Political movements based on group membership, such as nationality, religion, tribe or sports teams. More recently there have been movements based on gender and sexuality.

Iel

A gender-neutral French pronoun, from combining Il and Elle.

Ikwekaazo (= "one who endeavors to be like a woman")

Two-spirit among the Ojibwe. They dressed as female and married men but their husbands were not thereby considered Ikwekaazo. They were considered to be strong spiritually, and they were always honoured, especially during ceremonies. See also Ininiikaazo, Niizh manitoag.

Illusionist

A female impersonator who combines glamour with being fully passable.

Imatatore

Italian for a stage Female impersonator.

Imbricated

Overlapping, intertwined, as are gay and trans histories. A term taken from roof tiles or fish scales.

Imperial Court System

An LGBT charitable organization founded in San Francisco in 1965 by drag performer José Sarria which has spread across North America. Participants adopt mock-monarchy and nobility titles, and cross-dressing is welcome at their social events.

Impersonator

One who impersonates: a) celebrities as entertainment b) ordinary persons for purposes of fraud , that is: identity theft c) politicians, that is they be political decoys d) the other gender.

The most popular target for Celebrity impersonators is Elvis Presley who is impersonated by both men and women.

Gender impersonation is done for a variety of reasons:

To express and maybe resolve the performer’s issues with both genders.
A safe place for a trans person to experiment before going on the street.
A way for trans persons to make a living.
To satirise or deconstruct the gender stereotypes that oppress both genders.
To ridicule women – see Cod Drag.

Leslie Feinberg: “I've heard women criticize drag queens for 'mocking women's oppression' by imitating femininity to an extreme, just as I've been told that I am imitating men. Feminists are justifiably angry at women's oppression – so am I! I believe, however, that those who denounce drag queens aim their criticism at the wrong people. This misunderstanding doesn't take gender oppression into account. … There is a difference between the drag population and masculine men doing cruel female impersonations. The Bohemian Grove, for example, is an elite United States club for wealthy powerful men that features comedy cross-dressing performances. Many times the burlesque comedy of cross-dressed masculine men is as anti-drag as it is anti-woman. In fact it's really only drag performance when it's transgender people who are facing the footlights. Many times drag performance calls for skilled impersonations of a famous individual like Diana Ross or Judy Garland, but the essence of drag performance is not impersonation of the opposite sex. It is the cultural presentation of an oppressed gender expression.”

Implants

See Top Surgery, Breast Implants

Importuning

Persistent, repeatedly requesting to the point of annoyance.
To request money for sexual activity
A false charge brought by British police against those who are victims of entrapment, against gay men cruising each other, and against those Walking While Trans.

See also Disturbing the Peace and Gross Indecency which are also ill-defined laws that the police have used to harass gay and trans persons.

Imposter syndrome

A feeling that one is inadequate or fraudulent even if one is actually quite successful. Many trans persons experience this in their birth gender even if others see them as successful in family and job. Such a feeling may contribute to the decision to Transition. However, cis persons can equally feel such. Research shows that ethnic women in particular, suffering both racism and sexism are afflicted.

A small number of post-transition persons suffer from Imposter Syndrome in their target gender. This can contribute to Detransition.

See Masquerade, Maskenfreiheit.

Incels

An abbreviation for Involuntary Celibates, mainly Heterosexual men who blame women and society for their sexual frustrations, while alienating women with their opinions and attitudes. There is discussion on Incel sites about Incel Cis men who Transition to female to escape being Incel. See Trannymaxxing, Transcel, Trans-Vestigiality.

Incorrect Gender Assignment

Gender assigned by medical professionals without consulting the person involved. This is particularly relevant to Intersex persons who may be subjected to supposedly “corrective” surgery before they are old enough to understand the issue.

Indicatrons

John Money: “In recognition of the fact that psychology’s units of raw data all serve to indicate something or other to the psychologist or scientist, they can all be categorised as indicatrons”.

Indigender

Culture-specific gender identities that are often seriously and even violently misunderstood by Colonialism.

Infibulate

Females: the ritual removal of the external female genitalia and the suturing of the vulva, female genital mutilation. See also Clitorectomy. Males: placing a clasp through the foreskin.

Informed Consent

An adult and sane person can give Informed Consent to legal gender changes, medical care and transgender medical support without the permission of a Psychiatrist.

Ingersoll Gender Center

A support group in Seattle founded in 1977 by Marsha Botzer. It became known for its guides regarding doctors who offered gender surgery. It is still active after more then 40 years.

Ingle, Ningle

A Renaissance term for being queer. The verb form, ‘to Ingle’ usually means to have anal sex with an Ingle, or for an Ingle to have sex. Some Ingles transvested.

It is also a surname. Lady Bunny, the organizer of Wigstock, was born into the Ingle family. See also Catamite, Ganymede.

Ininiikaazo ("one who endeavors to be like a man”)

Two-spirit among the Ojibwe. They dressed as male and married women but their wives were not thereby considered Ininiikaazo. They were considered to be strong spiritually, and they were always honoured, especially during ceremonies. See also Ikwekaazo, Niizh manitoag.

Innie and Outie

Terms originally applied to belly buttons, and then later to genitals.

Inner Closet

The outer Closet is an attempt to fool other people; the Inner Closet is an attempt to fool oneself.

Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (Institute for Sexual Science), Berlin

Under the aegis of Magnus Hirschfeld, a few surgical operations for trans women were performed, using a technique of non-genital skin grafts, The operations were mainly done by Drs Erwin Gohrbandt, Felix Abraham and Ludwig L. Lenz. Dörchen Richter was operated on in 1922 and 1931; Charlotte Charlaque in 1929-1930; Toni Ebel 1930-1931. Abraham published a paper giving the details of the operations on Richter and Ebel in Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft und Sexualpolitik in 1931. The Institute was destroyed after the Nazi takeover in 1933.

Intergender

Between male and female. Some restrict the word to Intersex persons only; others use it as a synonym for trans or androgynous.

Intermediate Sex

A term used by Edward Carpenter and Magnus Hirschfeld in the early 20^th century to categorize gays and trans persons.

Internalised Transphobia

The negative belief that being Trans is inferior to being Cis or Normal, that has been internalised by a Trans person.

International Bill of Gender Rights

A Bill drafted and adopted by the International Conference on Transgender Law and Employment Policy in 1993, and was revisited and revised in 1994, 1995 and 1996. While it has no force of law absent its adoption by legislative bodies and recognition of its principles by courts of law, it acts as an ideal to strive towards. It has ten principles:

1) The Right To Define Gender Identity 2) The Right To Free Expression Of Gender Identity 3) The Right To Secure And Retain Employment and to Receive Just Compensation 4) The Right Of Access To Gendered Space And Participation In Gendered Activity 5) The Right To Control And Change One’s Own Body 6) The Right To Competent Medical And Professional Care 7) The Right To Freedom From Psychiatric Diagnosis Or Treatment 8) The Right To Sexual Expression 9) The Right To Form Committed, Loving Relationships And Enter Into Marital Contracts 10) The Right To Conceive, Bear, Or Adopt Children; The Right To Nurture And Have Custody Of Children And To Exercise Parental Capacity.

International Classification of Diseases (ICD)

The globally used diagnostic tool for epidemiology, health management and clinical purposes. The ICD is maintained by the World Health Organization (WHO), which is the directing and coordinating authority for health within the United Nations System.

The ICD listed homosexuality in ICD-9 in 1977, removed it from ICD-10 in 1990.

In ICD -10 transsexualism was located within Gender identity disorders, F64 in ICD-10 Chapter V: Mental and behavioural disorders under the heading "Disorders of adult personality and behaviour".

ICD-11 in 2018 abolished codes F64 Gender identity disorders and F65.1 Fetishistic Transvestism, among other sexual practices, that used to be referred to as paraphilias. The above codes have been replaced in part by code HA60 Gender incongruence of adolescence or adulthood, which refers to the three conditions that classify the condition of gender dysphoria. The last sentence from code HA60: "Gender variant behaviour and preferences alone are not a basis for assigning the diagnosis."

See also Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM).

International Conference on Transgender Law and Employment Policy (ICTLEP)

Conferences organized by Phyllis Frye and held in Houston, Texas 1992-7.

International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia (IDAHOTB)

The date, 17 May, was chosen to commemorate the World Health Organization’s decision in 1990 to declassify homosexuality as a mental disorder. The Founder was Louis-Georges Tin – he acted as Chairman until 2013. At first, in 2005, it was just IDAHO. The T for Transphobia was added in 2009. The B for Biphobia was added in 2015. France became the first country in the world to officially remove transgender issues from its list of mental illnesses in 2009 as announced on the eve of 17 May. In France same-sex marriage was legal from 18 May 2013. Same-sex marriage in Taiwan was passed in Parliament on 17 May 2019. 132 countries around the world commemorate IDAHOTB

International Foundation for Gender Education (IFGE)

The International Foundation for Gender Education was founded by Merrisa Sherrill Lynn in 1986, initially as an outgrowth from Boston's Tiffany Club. Although proclaimed as a group for both transsexuals and transvestites, they built in a heterosexual transvestite bias by creating a Virginia Prince Award, despite Prince’s anti-transsexual and anti-transgender obsession. The first award went to Prince herself. The next two went to IFGE organizers Merrisa Sherrill Lynn and Ariadne Kane. The IFGE took-over and published the TV-TS Tapestry Journal, which was originally a Tiffany Club publication. Later in 1992 it was renamed Transgender Tapestry. Despite the ‘International’ in the name, only once was the IFGE conference held outside the US: in Toronto in 1998. At its height IFGE had an annual budget of $325,000, a headquarters in suburban Boston, a bookstore, a perfect-bound four-color magazine, an annual conference, and an endowment worth some $100,000. The conferences ceased after heavy financial losses in 2010. The last Transgender Tapestry appeared in 2009.

International Gender Transient Affinity (IGTA)

The first world-wide trans organization. This was done by mail in the days before the Internet, corresponding with others in many countries and issuing reports on transgender human rights. Organised by Phaedra Kelly, and an outgrowth of the Transconscient Art Movement.

International Journal of Transgenderism

The journal of the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association (HBIGDA), The first 6 volumes, 1997 - 2002, were, and are, available to the public. Subsequent volumes went behind a pay wall. web.archive.org/web/20070505034642/http://www.symposion.com/ijt/index.htm

International Transsexual Sisterhood

A group set up by Yasmene Jabar to help trans women in the middle east. It was active late 1990s, early 2000s. See also Cafe Trans Arabi and Trans Eastern Conference.

Intersex (IS)

Intersex is an Umbrella term for 40+ conditions whereby the genotype is not fully concordant with the male/female binary. The term was first coined in Germany in 1915.

Intersex is differentiated from transsexual in that:

Intersex conditions can be detected at birth if the doctors look and do the tests.
Most Intersex activism has been directed at getting doctors to not change them until they are old enough to consent, and to establish that many Intersex conditions are not pathological.

There has been a push, mainly from the trans side, to establish Transsexuality and perhaps Transgender also as a type of Intersex. To some extent this is a matter of definition. However, simple courtesy says that it is the Intersex activists, not the trans activists, who will continue to decide whether or not trans comes under the Intersex umbrella.

While most Intersex persons stay with the gender of rearing, some do switch - that is, some are both Intersex and Trans.

Intersex Genital Mutilation (IGM), Intersex Medical Interventions.

Surgical, hormonal and other medical interventions performed to modify or reduce atypical or ambiguous genitalia and other sex characteristics, primarily for the purpose of making a person's appearance more ‘normal’. Such surgery can compromise sexual function and sensation, and create lifelong health issues. Interventions on intersex infants and children are increasingly recognized as human rights issues. Intersex organizations, and human rights institutions increasingly question the basis and necessity of such interventions. In 2011, Christiane Völling in Germany won the first successful case brought against a surgeon for non-consensual surgical intervention. In 2015, the Council of Europe recognized, for the first time, a right for intersex persons to not undergo sex assignment treatment and Malta became the first country to prohibit involuntary or coerced modifications to sex characteristics.

Intersex Society of North America (ISNA)

ISNA, founded in 1993, was the first North American organization to advocate for the rights of people born with Intersex conditions, and for more honest, less invasive medical treatment of intersex children. It published the journal Hermaphrodites With Attitude 1994-2005, although it also struggled to eliminate the use of the word ‘hermaphrodite’ for Intersex persons. It advocated a Patient-centred Model wherein an Intersex person is not to be subjected to treatments until old enough to consent.

ISNA closed in June 2008. Cheryl Chase and some others moved to the Accord Alliance.

Intersex and Variations of Sex Characteristics (IVSC)

A term introduced to replace the tendentious Disorders of Sex Development (DSD)

Intersex, Sex and/or Gender Diverse (ISGD)

An Umbrella term for transgender, intersex and/or gender diverse persons promoted by Tracie O’Keefe. It is another attempt to redefine trans as a type of Intersex, and has not been taken up on the Intersex side.

Intersex UK (iUK)

A support and activist group for UK and Irish Intersex persons.

Intersex Wannabe

A significant number of trans persons maintain that either they personally or all trans persons are a type of Intersex. Most Intersex activists do not agree, and some are quite annoyed at constant applications from trans persons. These trans persons seem to think that it is more legitimate to be intersexed in that such a condition is no way chosen.

Intersectionality

A term first coined in the late 1980s by the academic and civil rights advocate Kimberlé Crenshaw; the idea is that we have many different identities – such as gender, race and faith – which are all interconnected.

Interzone

The Tangier International Zone 1923-1956 was known for diversity, tolerance and bohemianism. Several novelists and gay men lived there openly, including William Burroughs
A book of short stories by Burroughs, written 1953-8, published 1989.
A Science Fiction magazine since 1982.
In the 1920s US cities pushed ‘vice’ out of white and into black neighbourhoods, where interracial and queer lifestyles thrived. These areas became hospitable for drag and other gender crossing. Kevin Mumford proposed the term ‘Interzones’ for these areas.

Intrasex

Not Intersex.

Introjection

A term that has been used by Psycho-analysts and Gestalt therapists, but Sanda Davis puts her own spin on it. She proposes that most men have Introjections of their mothers, sisters, girls at school, wives etc, but in a male with GID these female introjections coalesce and become dominant. This composite introjection comes to think of itself as the true person in the body, and then starts wearing female clothing and proclaiming herself to be woman. Well-meaning friends and relatives make the situation worse by accepting the claim. Davis says that she can cure any case of GID by getting the female introjection to admit that she is not the true personality of the body.

Intromissive

The insertion or introduction of one part into another. In sexual activity the opposite of Submissive.

Introspective

The inward observation of self, the opposite to Extrospective. In Money’s “gender identity/role (G_I/R)” the two complement each other. It is by Introspection that a person knows that he/she is trans.

Introitus Contracture

A tightening of the entrance to the Vagina.

Invert, Inversion

A term used by sexologists in the 19^th century and the early 20^th century whereby gays, lesbians and trans persons were all regarded as Inverts: male inverts were, to a greater or lesser degree, inclined to traditionally female pursuits, dress and sexual attraction and vice versa. Richard von Krafft-Ebing popularised the term based on proposals by Karl Ulrichs. Havelock Ellis titled Volume II of his Studies in the Psychology of Sex as Sexual Inversion. John Radclyffe-Hall repeatedly referred to the protagonist of The Well of Loneliness as an Invert – never as a Lesbian. Harry Benjamin, in his scale used ‘Trapped in a male body’ to describe Type V Moderate Intensity and ‘Total Psycho-Sexual Inversion’ for Type VI High Intensity. Ira Pauly in his two pioneering papers on “female” and “male” transsexualism, used the term “Psychosexual Inversion”.

From Magnus Hirschfeld in the 1910s onwards it was realised that homosexuals and trans people are conceptually quite distinct.

See Trapped Soul, anima muliebris in corpore virili inclusa.

Involuntary Transition

Transition that is not consented to. This happens mainly to Intersex persons who are surgically altered when too young to either consent or understand. It happened to adult Intersex persons in the 19^th century when doctors deemed Gonads to be the ultimate determinant of sex, and some who were examined were then compelled by Church and State authorities to switch. There have been more recent examples where a family would rather have a Trans daughter than a Gay Son. See also Cross Rearing.

Ipsogender

Mainly used for an Intersex person who has accepted the medically assigned gender that resulted from non-consensual surgeries at an early age. It also applies to involuntary sex and gender changes resulting from family pressures and/or decisions made by doctors, priests etc.

Irrumatio

Fellatio where the movement is on the Penis side. If involuntary, it is oral rape.

isiNgqumo

A Gay Speak used in the South African Black townships. It is influenced by Sesotho, Ng uni, isiZulu and other Bantu languages.

Isiaah/ Yĕsha‘ăyāhû (יְשַׁעְיָהוּ) 56:4-5

"For thus saith the LORD unto the Eunuchs that keep my sabbaths, and choose the things that please me, and take hold of my covenant; Even unto them will I give in mine house and within my walls a place and a name better than of sons and of daughters: I will give them an everlasting name, that shall not be cut off." (KJB translation)

The First Drafts of Trans Histories Part I: 1900-1950

2026-08-14T11:16:58.942-04:00

Part I: 1900-1950

Part II: 1950-1969

Part III: 1970 onwards

Mowry Saben (1870-1950)

Saben, privately educated and fluent in Latin, French and German, and an alumnus of Harvard, started writing articles and essays for various newspapers and magazines in the 1900s, and became an established speaker travelling across the country giving lectures on Emmerson, Whitman, Goethe, Shakespeare and Francis Bacon, Havelock Ellis, Krafft-Ebing, religion and freedom.

In the early 1890s Saben, on the down low, had spent time in the Bowery and elsewhere in New York City, transvesting as a fairie or female-impersonator using the name Jennie June, and saying that her male name was Ralph Werther - and later that it was Earl Lind. She socialised at Paresis Hall, was abused by rough young men and contracted venereal diseases.

But Jennie June was, of course, also Mowry Saben, and contributed several essays about transvesting to the American Journal of Urology and Sexology, 1918-20. These essays were expanded into two books: Autobiography of an Androgyne, 1918 and The Female Impersonators, 1922 which have become the major books about gay/trans life in 1890s New York.

Earl Lind (“Ralph Werther” – “Jennie June”) Autobiography of an Androgyne. Ed., with an Introduction by Alfred W Herzog. The Medico-Legal Journal, 1918. Reprinted Arno Press, 1975. Digital Transgender Archive. Wikisource.
Ralph Werther-Jennie June (“Earl Lind”). The Female Impersonators; a sequel to the Autobiography of an androgyne and an account of some of the author's experiences during his six years' career as instinctive female-impersonator in New York's underworld. Ed., with an introduction, by Alfred W. Herzog. The Medico-Legal Journal. 1922. Reprinted Arno Press, 1975. Digital Transgender Archive. Wikisource.
Zagria “Mowry Saben/Ralph Werther/Earl Lind/Jennie June (1870 - 1950) journalist, female impersonator”, Gender Variance Who’s Who April 2024. Online.

Louise (Loulou) Lassen (1876-1947)

Lassen was for many years the only female journalist at Copenhagen’s Politiken, and also wrote for the sister publication Ekstra Bladet. She was a foreign correspondent and also wrote about medical issues.

In October 1930, rumours circulated in Copenhagen about the non-appearance of Einar Wegener, to the extent that sales were not happening at Gerda Gottlieb's exhibition of paintings. Lassen had interviewed Gerda in 1927, and was now able to interview Lili Elvenes (the name that Wegener had now taken after gender surgery) and produced a short series of articles for Politiken and Ekstra Bladet. It was Loulou who proposed that Lili Elvenes be known as Lili Elbe. The first article was by Loulou about Lili and Gerda. In her write-up Loulou stressed that there was nothing homosexual in the lives of Lili and Gerda. The marriage had not been sexual, Lili had been a woman's spirit in a man's body since childhood, and more than that, that Einar and Lili were two different identities.

The second article was a transcript of a telephone call between Copenhagen's Dr Rank and Dr Kurt Warnekros, who was referred to as von Warnekros. Warnekros boasted that he had performed an unprecedented operation that the top French doctors were incapable of. There was no mention of the other trans women who had been operated on under the aegis of Magnus Hirschfeld.

Loulou Lassen. “Et Liv gennem to Tilværelser. En Fortid som Mand og en Fremtid som Kvinde. Lili Elbe fortæller om Maleren Einar Wegener og om sig selv.” Politiken, 28 February 1931: 5–6. Online.
Loulou Lassen. “En tragisk Livsskæbne afsluttedes i Gaar.” Politiken, 14 September 1931: 5. Online.
Jette Drachmann Sollinge. “Loulou Lassen” Dansk Kvindebiografisk Leksikon / Pressefolk. Online.
Zagria. “Lili Elbe, media construct” Gender Variance Who’s Who, 13 January 2015. Online.

Niels Hoyer (1884-1969)

Ernst Harthern, born Ernst Ludwig Harthern Jacobson, wrote several books under the pen-name of Neils Hoyer. He was raised in Stade, Lower Saxony, and was of Jewish descent. His father abandoned him, and his mother died when he was nine. Despite difficulties he did finally become a journalist and covered Scandinavia for German newspapers until the Nazi takeover in 1933 when his writings were banned. He escaped the German occupation of Denmark by moving to Sweden, and in 1943 was part of the team that helped the majority of Danish Jews to escape to Sweden.

Lili Elvenes had worked on an autobiography aided by her former wife, Gerda, and the journalist Loulou Lassen. In December 1930, however, an ill-intentioned article in the Danish tabloid Sandheden (‘Truth’) characterized the planned publication as a ‘scandalous book’ (‘Skandalebogen’), leading the Danish publisher to drop the book option. Elevenes then approached Harthern, who was based in Copenhagen. Using the unfinished manuscript, Harthern rewrote a new version in German. Elevenes died before it was finished. Translated into Danish and edited, this became most of Fra Mand til Kvinde: Lili Elbes Bekendelser, 1931. The German edition Ein Mensch wechselt sein Geschlecht, 1932 was not a translation from the Danish edition, but a re-editing of Harthern’s manuscript. The 1933 English Man into Woman, is a translation of the German edition.

Lili Elbe. Fra mand til kvinde: Lili Elbes bekendelser. Hage & Clausen, 1931
Niels Hoyer. “Ein Mensch wechselt sein Geschlecht.” Scherl Magazin, 7 May 1931: 439-446. Online.
Lili Elbe, edited by Niels Hoyer, Ein Mensch wechselt sein Geschlecht ; Eine Lebensbeichte ; Aus hinterlassenen Papieren. Reissner, Dresden 1932.
Neils Hoyer (ed) translated H.J. Stenning; introd. by Norman Haire. Man into woman: an authentic record of a change of sex, London: Jarrold Publishers, 1933.
DE.Wikipedia (Ernst Harthern)
Pamela L Caughie. “Transgressing Translation/Translating Transgression: The Lili Elbe Digital Archive and the Modalities of Translation”, Translation and Literature, 32, 3, November 2023. Online.

Arthur Koestler (1905-1983)

Born with the Hungarian name of Kösztler Artúr, he later anglicised it to Arthur Koestler.

Before Koestler became a well-known writer in the 1940s, he worked as a journalist. In 1927 he became the Middle East correspondent based in Jerusalem for the Berlin-based Ullstein-Verlag group of newspapers. In 1929 he lobbied for a transfer and was sent to Paris, and in 1931 to Berlin, where he worked in a building next to Hirschfeld’s Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, and he spent time in the Institute. After Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, Koestler, being Jewish, could no longer return to Germany. He returned to Paris, was active in anti-fascist movements, and later reported from both sides in the Spanish Civil War.

His cousin, Ferenc Aldor, had started a mail-order business selling sex manuals. In 1933 Aldor wanted an Encyclopedia of Sex, and needed a skilled journalist to compile it. Koestler was offered 3,000 francs but no royalties. Drawing on his knowledge of Freud, Jung, Adler, and Stekel and his reading of Paolo Mantegazza’s Die Hygiene der Liebe, Koestler buckled down and finished his part of the book in an astonishing two months. Dr Levy-Lenz from Hirschfeld’s Institute contributed two chapters, and Aldor’s brother Willy Aldor compiled two appendices. It was published in late 1933 as L’Encyclopédie de la vie sexuelle. The 1938 English edition contained material by Dr Norman Haire.

In 1935 Koestler was living in Zurich when Willy Aldor came and offered the same payment for a book on Sexual Anomalies and Perversions, which Koestler wrote in a Budapest hotel room based on the writings of Magnus Hirschfeld - a mixture of translation and precis. Geoffrey Marx claims that Koestler’s major source was Pierre Vachet’s Les Perversions Sexuelles which in turn was based on the works of Magnus Hirschfeld and Felix Abraham.

The 1936 English edition edited by Norman Haire appears to include parts of Haire’s translations of a section of Hirschfeld’s Sexualpathologie: Ein Lehrbuch für Ärzte und Studierende - which has never been published in English. Haire wrote that he had revised Koestler’s text: “amended the language and punctuation where necessary, deleted some passages, inserted some, corrected some statements, and brought the text up-to-date”.

Until 1991 when Michael Lombardi-Nash published his English translation of Hirschfeld’s Die Transvestiten, this was the only work in English that sexologists could consult.

Magnus Hirschfeld. Sexualpathologie. Ein Lehrbuch für Ärzte und Studierend. A Marcus & E Webers Verlag, 1918.
Pierre Vachet. Perversions sexuelles, d’après l’enseignement du docteur Magnus Hirschfeld, par son premier assistant le docteur Félix Abraham. Paris: François Aldor, 1931.
Magnus Hirschfeld. Sexual Anomalies and Perversions: Physical and Psychological Development and Treatment : a Summary of the Works of the Late Magnus Hirschfeld. London: Francis Aldor, 1936.
Magnus Hirschfeld. Geschlechtsanomalien und Perversionen : Ein Studienbuch für Ärzte, Juristen, Seelsorger und Pädagogen. Paris: Aldor, Villefranche-Niche, 1938.
Michael Scammell. Koestler: The Literary and Political Odyssey of a Twentieth-Century Skeptic. Random House, 2009 p176-7.
Diana Wyndham. Norman Haire and the Study of Sex. Sydney: Sydney University Press, 2012 p394-5.
Zagria “Who wrote Hirschfeld’s "Sexual Anomalies and Perversions"?”. Gender Variance Who’s Who, 28 February 2013. Online.
Zagria, “Felix Abraham. Part II: Les Perversions Sexuelles”, Gender Variance Who’s Who, 25 September 2022. Online
Geoffrey Marx. “36. Felix Abraham II”. Online
EN.Wikipedia(Arthur Koestler)

Two books impossible to find

2026-08-06T10:02:17.486-04:00

Akhter Hussain Balou. A study of sociology of trans-sexuals of Sindh. 2010. This book is not offered in Amazon, not even Amazon.IN, not in AbeBooks, not in Anna's Archive.

From Imtiaz Ali's review, the year of publication:

Tracing history of trans-sexuals based on different published sources, Balouch said that one of the tragic aspects of conquering of the countries by kings was that “beautiful boys” used to be “gifted”’ in the past. Trans-sexuals gained prominence during the Mughal era, especially during rule of Mohammed Shah Rangeela, and Alauddin Khilji.Khilji appointed a trans-sexual, Malik Kafur as chief of the army and ordered him to conquer Deccan in 1307 with 100,000 troops under his leadership.
Talking about emergence of this genetic breed in Sindh, the book points out that “Ganga Ram” was first known trans-sexual who migrated from the present-day India to Sindh. ‘Her’ supporters termed themselves ‘Suhagi Faqir’ and they did not like begging.

Banikar was first trans-sexual who established a ‘Dera or Murhi’ in Hyderabad around 300 years ago. Transvestites gained prominence during the rule of Talpurs in Sindh.

Akhter Balouch referred a tragic incident in his study that occurred in May 1929 in Jacobabad city. A famous local personality, Pir Abul Hasan had developed an extraordinary interest in a Hindu trans-sexual, ‘Sago’ who used to act in stage dramas as a girl.

One day, Pir died mysteriously while watching the drama. It triggered Hindu-Muslim riots, in which around 10 Hindus were killed.

The British rulers ordered an inquiry into the incident led by a Parsi, Sukhia (in order to ensure impartiality in the Hindi-Muslim clashes, the British rulers used to appoint Parsis). Sukhia in his inquiry report, unearthed a ‘conspiracy’ allegedly hatched by big feudal lords and religious leaders.

Barbara Daniel. She’s No Lady: The Story of Jamie Lee Hamilton. Toronto: Cormorant Books Inc 300 pp 2005. Amazon.

Several booksellers actually list this book, but nobody has a copy. I once tried and failed to get it through interlibrary loan. As it was published in Canada, there should be a copy in the National Library of Canada, but there is not.

My account of Jamie Lee Hamilton (1955-2019) Sex worker, activist, political candidate.

Barbara de Lamere (1940 - ) proof-reader, magazine editor

2026-07-28T21:50:29.407-04:00

Most of the trans women in New York in the 1970s who are written about did not get as far as completion surgery. One who did so was Barbara de Lamere who transitioned at work in the late 1970s, and had surgery in 1982. She retained her job at Kaye Scholer law firm. She became active in The Gay Veterans Association and the Irish and Lesbian Gay Organization.

Enid & Barbara

She had been born as Eddie Dame and mainly raised in New York City. Eddie was in the US Air Force (1959-63) where he found a male lover, Larry. They continued as a gay couple after leaving the Air Force, until Larry married a woman in 1967 saying that he wanted children. However, they continued to meet for sex until Eddie became Barbara in 1982. Eddie had been transvesting since the age of 3, and continued even though Larry was uncomfortable with it.

In 1967 Eddie joined Charles Ludlam's Ridiculous Theatrical Company and was given the stage name of Bunny Eisenhower. The same year he met Enid Jacobs who accepted Eddie’s cross-dressing. Eddie gave up acting. In 1970 Eddie and Enid were married. The same year Eddie was a co-founder with Lee Brewster, Bebe Scarpinato (a teacher), Vicky West (artist) and Chris Moore (a Jewel Box Revue performer) of the Queens' Liberation Front, where he used his stage name, and photographs of Bunny are in Drag magazine 1,1. His affair with Larry continued. The QLF agitated and several New York ordinances that constricted transvesting were removed.

Enid and Eddie were divorced in 1977. Enid kept Eddie’s surname, even after she remarried.

Eddie started social transition. In 1982 Eddie took the name Barbara de Lamere and had completion surgery. The sexual affair with Larry ended.

Enid gained a PhD in English from Rutgers University in 1983, and taught there and at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. She became known as a poet, and with her new husband Donald Lev edited Home Planet News, a literary review. Enid and Barbara remained good friends and Barbara was well-known to Enid’s family. Barbara was Associate Editor at the Home Planet News using the name Careufel de Lamiere.

Arthur David Kahn (1920-2009) was a communist author and politician, journalist, classics scholar and professor, and gay rights activist. He had been an officer in the OSS, and was a war interrogator in Germany from 1945. Back in the US he was involved in the Communist Party and the Progressive Party and blacklisted. In the 1960s he did a PhD in Philosophy, and then taught English and comparative literature at the State University of New York at Buffalo. Later Kahn helped found and later chair the Classics department at the new Brock University in Ontario. (Books by Kahn)

In the early 1990s after interviews and the subsequent book Aids, The Winter War: A Testing of America, published 1993, his interest turned to gay activists in New York City. One of the interviewees was Barbara de Lamere. The resulting book was The Many Faces of Gay: Activists Who Are Changing the Nation, 1997. As a courtesy to protect Enid’s privacy, he gave her name as Esther.

Enid died in 2003, and The Academy of American Poets each year bestows the Enid Dame Memorial Poetry Prize for the best poem by an undergraduate. Tributes.

Barbara/Careufel then became Executive Editor along with Donald Lev.

Susan Stryker’s Transgender History came out in 2008. Presumably she had not read Kahn’s book. She simply wrote: “More significant was the Queens’ Liberation Front (QLF), founded by drag queen Lee Brewster and heterosexual transvestite Bunny Eisenhower”. That is it. Stryker gave only Barbara’s short lived stage name, and a very incorrect and unneeded sexual orientation.

In 2015 I wrote up and published an account mainly based on Kahn’s book.

The second edition of Stryker’s book came out in 2017, with the QLF sentence unchanged.

In March 2021, Enid’s brother commented on my account, mainly to criticize that I had Barbara’s wife’s name wrong - that she was Enid not Esther. That enabled me to google Enid Dame and I found an interesting poet.

DeDe Jacobs-Komisar, Enid’s niece then posted and gave interesting information about how Barbara was welcomed by the Jacobs family even after transition.

The third edition of Styker’s book came out in 2026. Again the with the QLF sentence unchanged, and no other mention of Barbara.

“Drag Queens Demonstrate”. Drag: a magazine about the transvestite, 1,1: 1970: 6-7. 3 photographs of Bunny.
Arthur David Kahn. The Many Faces of Gay: Activists Who Are Changing the Nation. Westport, Conn: Praeger, 1997: 3, 15-20, 266-9.
Barbara writing as Careufel de Lamiere. “Remembering Enid”. Home Planet News, 10 March 2003. Online.
Susan Stryker. Transgender History. Seal Press, 2008: 87. 2nd edition, 2017:111. 3rd edition, 2026: 74.
Zagria. “Susan Stryker: Transgender History – a review”. April 2010. Online.
Madeline Tiger & DeDe Jacobs-Komisar. “How Enid Dame led us beyond paradigms”. Bridges, 16,1, Spring 2011.
Zagria. “Barbara de Lamere previously known as Bunny Eisenhower”. September 2015, revised March 2021. Online.
DeDe Jacobs-Komisar. Comment online.

On page ix-x in the Preface, Kahn wrote: “ three interviewees asked to be identified solely by their first names; others are represented under first-name pseudonyms”. So is Barbara de Lamere a pseudonym? Well, we know that she wrote under the name Careufel de Lamiere. However DeDe Jacobs-Komisar’s comment clarifies that she was indeed known as Barbara de Lamere.

The Autogynephilia Project

2026-07-25T09:43:19.130-04:00

Thomas Hubbard (Wikipedia) was previously a classicist at the University of Texas-Austin who wrote/edited several important books on sex in ancient Greece and Rome, until some students took his discussions of ancient man-boy sexuality as a defence of modern pederasty and vandalised his house. This led to his retirement. He is now President and Executive Director of the William A Percy Foundation for Social and Historical Studies.

William A Percy (Wikipedia) is best known for The Age of Marriage in Ancient Rome (2003) and was a co-editor of the Encyclopedia of Homosexuality (1990). The articles in the Encyclopedia on ‘Transvestism (Cross-dressing)’ and ‘Transsexualism’ were pretty bad generally, totally ignoring writings by trans persons, and also admiring the pioneering transphobe Janice Raymond - but they were written by the other two co-editors, not by Percy. See my “More on Wayne Dynes”. I did meet Percy in person. He asked me various questions re trans matters, but showed no conscious interest in autogynephilia as such - although he did offer to sponsor me to go to Fantasia Fair (which I declined).

Percy, before his death in 2022, maintained an extensive web site williamapercy.com but the Foundation set up in his name has allowed it to die.

The Foundation web page lists 14 projects, almost all related to male homosexuality. The odd one out is The Autogynephilia Project.

Let us start with the image on the Autogynephila Project page:

This is a 1841 painting of a cis woman admiring herself in a mirror by the Danish painter Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg.

Now the point of Autogynephilia is that it is a diagnosis of a type of boy or man who is sexually aroused by the idea of himself as female. Autoandrophilia is a girl or woman who likewise is sexually aroused by the idea of herself as male. One of the criticisms of the idea of Autogynephilia is that if there is actually such a thing, its most common occurrence is in post-pubertal teenage cis girls who are delighted by the changes in their maturing bodies. Some cis women continue to be autogynephilic well into maturity, as some cis men do continue to be autoandrophilic. If so, autogynephilia is a normal variation, not a mental illness. It occurs in mature trans women to the extent that transition is a sort of second puberty.

Very little research has been done on cis female autogynephilia, and thus there is no baseline against which to measure trans female autogynephilia.

However the Blanchard-Bailey-Zucker clique do not go with this interpretation.

The picture is definitely not an image of an autogynephilic trans girl.

So why this image? Does it imply that Hubbard etc do not understand what autogynephilia is supposed to be? Or is it a sly subversion of their own project?

What is Autogynephilia (AGP)?

Prior to 1910 the words ‘transvestite’ and ‘tranvestism’ had been used without specific reference to sexual arousal or orientation. The Paris police had been issuing permissions de travestissement since 1800 mainly to female-born persons living and/or working as male without reference to sexuality. In 1910 Magnus Hirschfeld published his Die Transvestiten: Eine Untersuchung über den erotischen Verkleidungstrieb,(Transvestites: The Erotic Drive to Cross-Dress) and two years later a pictorial supplement, Der erotische Verkleidungstrieb (Erotic crossdressing).

The inclusion of “erotischen Verkleidungstrieb” in the title misled later writers although we may note that many of the actual case studies in the former book do not report anything sexual as such. Due to criticisms that he had conflated homosexuality and transvestism in earlier writings, Hirschfeld had overcompensated, and for the 17 case studies that comprise Part 1, he systematically excluded androphilic transvestites. Eight years later in his Sexualpathologie he reversed this and reported that about 35 per cent of transvestites are heterosexual and an equal percentage homosexual, while about 15 per cent are bisexual. The remaining 15 per cent are mostly what he called automonosexual, but also include a small proportion of asexuals. Hirschfeld also arranged police permissions, translating the French permissions de travestissement as Transvestitenscheinen, and, as in Paris, the document was with reference to work, not to sexuality.

Various psychiatrists, notably Emil Gutheil and Wilhelm Stekel, mainly working as Freudian psychoanalysts, picked up on the erotic slant, and analysed their trans patients as needing to be cured. (Stekel apparently coined the term ‘paraphilia’.)

Kurt Freund, in Toronto in the 1980s was a pioneer in the application of penile plethysmography. This tool claimed to measure penile arousal when a ‘man’ was shown various pictures of adults and children or listened to descriptions of such. The results of this research were such that Freund was never able to identify anyone as bisexual, and so, rather than see this as a defect in his methodology, he claimed that there are no bisexuals. Despite this deficiency, he used penile plethysmography, to divide trans women into two groups whom he designated as ‘homosexual’ and ‘non-homosexual’. For both types, the term ‘homosexual’ for heterosexual trans women denies that we are women.

Ray Blanchard, who replaced Freund at Toronto’s Clarke Institute (now CAMH=Centre for Addiction and Mental Health) coined the term ‘autogynephilia’ for the ‘non-homosexual’ group. In his “Origins of the Concept of Autogynephilia” he defines it as “a male’s propensity to be erotically aroused by the thought or image of himself as a woman”. Blanchard was criticised for dismissing exceptions to his model as either misreportings or even lies.

Other approaches

Of course the word “autogynephilia” is simply “love of oneself as a woman” using Greek roots. Apparently most of the cross-dressers and gynephilic trans women who do use the term “autogynephilic” for themselves use it in this sense without the baggage of fetish or erotic arousal. Indeed an actual erotic arousal while out shopping or on public transport is very likely to be problematic.

Anne Vitale proposed a 3-type division: G1 the high intensity trans person who often starts to transition in childhood; G2 persons who spend some years as a lesbian or gay man before transition; G3 persons who conform to society’s gender expectations, often marry and have children - they typically suffer increasingly painful and chronic gender dysphoria and live secretive lives. G1 and G2 transition without trauma, requiring medical assistance only for hormone prescriptions and gender surgery. G3 need help dealing with what she calls Gender Deprivation Anxiety Disorder (GEDAD) which seems to be similar to AGP but offers a healthier solution.

There is a cultural problem in that AGPs seem to be found only in North America and Europe. Rod Fleming claims to identify AGPs in the Philippines and wrote about his affair with Samantha whom he presents as AGP. He sees Filipino AGPs as not androphilic, but like androphilic trans women they transition before maturity although after puberty. In which case they do not go through the fetishistic (GEDAD) phase - and therefore do not meet Blanchard's definition.

Charlotte Goiar proposed the concept of Harry Benjamin Syndrome (HBS) as opposed to autogynephiles. To many, HBS and Blanchard’s Homosexual Transsexual (HSTS) appear to be almost the same, but HBS and Blanchardianism are two solitudes not talking to each other.

Jack Molay took what is useful in the concept of autogynephila and came up with Crossdreamer - ‘transvalued’ as he says. “The act of dreaming about being one’s target sex or getting aroused by the idea of being one’s target sex. Crossdreamer is a subcategory under the wider umbrella term ‘transgender’ … Crossdreamers may be assigned male or female at birth. Their sexual orientation varies. There is no clear and distinct boundary between crossdreamers and other transgender people.” Crossdreamer is not a synonym for autogynephilia in that it does not require erotic arousal.

The anti-trans people, TERFs, Trump’s Maga people, and various religious groups, are delighted by the concept of Autogynephilia. They see all transsexuality as inauthentic, and a mental condition to be cured. Blanchardism feeds their prejudices and they see even HSTS as autogynephilic. “Autogynephilia” has become a strong insult term applied without discrimination.

Meanwhile out in the trenches of living as AGP, Rosey Bloomflower, a self described autogynephilic wrote comments on my encyclopedia two years ago: “Interestingly, the majority of the soi-disant autogynephiles in my generation (bear in mind I am quite young, going on 20 right now) seem to be exclusively attracted to other trans women. I have a boyfriend at the moment, but sometimes a relationship with a non-op trans woman does seem appealing. I am not attracted to genetic females or anyone with a vagina even if surgically constructed”. This is way beyond Blanchard. “It is my belief that the majority of "AGP" trans women are primarily attracted to other trans women, and only force themselves to sexually interact with cis women out of heteronormativity and internalized homophobia. You can see many cases where they divorce their cis wives if they had one, and partner with another trans woman after transitioning.”

I commented in reply: “Two trans women attracted to each other is a type of homosexuality. 'homo' = 'same' not 'male'. If they also self-id as AGP then they are homosexual AGPs, but Blanchard's definition of AGP (bi, hetero and asexual) is that AGPs are non-homosexual. So here we have an interesting contradiction of terms. Blanchard is a closeted gay man who has made comments outside his theoretical works that are even more anti-trans. His whole schema is a cisplaining using insulting terms/exonyms derived from the dubious concept of 'fetishism', and he has even refused to restate it in more polite terms.”

Recently, psychologist James Morandini has proposed that as many as 1 in 3 bisexual men may be autogynephilic. So much for Freund’s erasure of bisexuality.

Conclusion

Of course the problem with any Typology is human beings are idiosyncratic, they are human. Some appear to fit into one of the boxes of the Typology; others are re-interpreted until they appear to fit; others read the Typology as an instruction manual; and many just do not fit in any way at all. See my The Game of Typology. Blanchard proposed only two types of trans woman; Vitale proposed three; Harry Benjamin proposed six (and, as has been noted, he erased gay transvestites and gynephilic ‘true transsexuals’ ); in my expansion of Benjamin’s scale I propose nine. One could easily come up with many more - especially when indigenous and Asian variations are considered.

Hubbard writes: “The Percy Foundation is funding further study of this marginalized identity by an international team of prominent sexual scientists, led by Prof. J. Michael Bailey of Northwestern, and including Blanchard, Ken Zucker … and the evolutionary psychologist Paul Vasey, as well as several others.”

This team can hardly be objective in that Bailey, Blanchard and Zucker have built careers by assuming that AGP is a real thing. For them to find that AGP is a valid diagnosis is like a defence lawyer also being the judge and jury.

Hubbard shows no discomfort at the misuse of the word “homosexual” for heterosexual trans women, as if we were still in the 1980s. It is long past the time when Blanchardians should have proposed a less contentious terminology. Alice Novic proposed the terms Love-to-be-femme and Act-femme. Phil Illy has proposed AutoHeterosexual. Neither of these have been accepted. The only alternate term that has gained traction is Cross Dreamer with its significant revision of what AGP is.

It may not be a real thing, but in the last 40 years, different writers have taken different approaches to the conceptual nexus that encompasses AGP, GEDAD and cross dreaming. There is no indication that The Androphilia Project will absorb any of that, or even discuss the absence of AGP in Africa and Asia, or in previous centuries. The sociology or social psychology of identity formation is not even mentioned.

The Androphilia Project needs a rethink, and should be done by other more neutral people, not those who invented the concept and built their careers on taking it as fact.

Magnus Hirschfeld. Die Transvestiten: Eine Untersuchung über den erotischen Verkleidungstrieb, mit umfangreichem kasuistischem und historischem Material. Verlag Alfred Pulvermacher, 1910.
Magnus Hirschfeld & Max Tilke. Der erotische Verkleidungstrieb: Die Transvestiten. Verlag von Alfred Pulvermacher & Co., 1912.
Magnus Hirschfeld. Sexualpathologie. Ein Lehrbuch für Ärzte und Studierende. 1918. Volume II: Sexuelle Zwischenstufen. Das Mannlicher Weib und der Weiblicher Mann. (5 Sections: Hermaproditismus, Androgynie, Transvestitismus, Homosexualität, Metatropismus).
Wilhelm Stekel. Der Fetischismus, vol. 7, Störungen des Trieb- und Affektlebens. Urban & Schwarzenberg, 1923. Translated by S Parker: Sexual Aberrations: The Phenomena of Fetishism in Relation to Sex. John Lane The Bodley Head Ltd, 1930.
Kurt Freund, Betty Steiner & Samuel Chan. “Two types of cross-gender identity”. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 11, 1982.
Kurt Freund. “Cross-Gender Identity on a Broader Context”. Chp 9 in Betty Steiner. Gender Dysphoria: Development, Research, Management. Plenum Press, 1985.
Ray Blanchard, J G Racansky & Betty Steiner. “Phallometric Detection of Fetishistic Arousal in Heterosexual Male Cross-Dressers”. The Journal of Sex Research, 22, 4, November 1986.
Ray Blanchard. “Origins of the Concept of Autogynephilia”. Feb 2004. Previously online at www.autogynephilia.org/origins.htm.
Anne M. Vitale. Gendered Self: Further Commentary on the Transsexual Phenomenon. Flyfisher Press/Lulu, 2010.
Jack Molay. A Creative Crossdreamer Vocabulary: Reflections on Transgender. Amazon Digital & Blurb, 2015.
Charlotte Goiar. The Original Harry Benjamin Syndrome Book. Self published, 2021.
Phil Illy. AutoHeterosexual: Attracted to being the other sex. Houndstooth, 2023.
“The Autogynephilia Project”. William A Percy Foundation for Social and Historical Studies. Online.
Andrea James. “Thomas K. Hubbard vs. transgender people”. Transgender Map, November 3, 2025. Online.
James Morandini. “One in Three Bisexual Men May Be Autogynephilic. Understanding Their Experience Matters”. QueerMajority, November 18, 2025. Online.

Shadows in the Irish Independent

2026-07-13T14:56:44.048-04:00

This image accompanied an article on trans persons in the Irish Independent, 26 September 1987. Readers of this encyclopedia will of course recognise the anguish of being trapped in the wrong gender.

Anyway I put the picture into Google App to see if the picture had been used elsewhere.

Google App totally failed to get it: -

"This puzzle requires matching the visual elements of the long shadow in the foreground to the correct person standing in the background.
The shadow belongs to the second woman from the left (the one wearing the sleeveless V-neck dress and a headband).
Visual Evidence Breakdown
The Hair: The shadow shows long, wavy hair flowing backward with a distinct thick headband across the top of the head. Only the second woman is wearing a headband.
The Dress/Sleeves: The shadow features sleeveless, bare arms connecting directly to the shoulder line. The woman on the far left has puffy short sleeves, and the woman on the right has long sleeves with a high collar.
The Hands: The shadow's hands are clasped together tightly right in front of the waist. This matches the exact posture and hand placement of the second woman.
If you enjoy visual brainteasers, I can provide more puzzles. Would you prefer a logic grid puzzle, a lateral thinking riddle, or another spot-the-difference challenge?"

The Global Christines: surgical transition in the 1950s

2026-06-29T15:11:08.942-04:00

The term is Howard Chiang’s and refers to the sequence of publicised transgender surgeries in the first half of the 1950s when Christine Jorgensen became the most publicised, and some of the other pioneers, especially in Mexico and Taiwan, were referred to as ‘Christines’.

The trans women in this period were usually regarded as the ‘first’. Claims in any field to be ‘first’ are often contentious, and act as a kind of rhetoric that brings out competing claims.

As readers of this encyclopedia know well, the surgical transitions in the early 1950s were not at all the first - although they were the first after hormonal therapy became available. Earlier, there had been: patients of Dr Il’ia Golianitski in Moscow in 1926; several of Magnus Hirschfeld’s patients in the late 1920s/early 1930s (Toni Ebel, Charlotte Charlaque, Dorchen Ritcher, Hertha Wind etc); Kurt Warnekros’ patient, Lili Elvenes; the patients of Charles Wolf in Switzerland in the 1940s.

Xie Jianshun was genuinely intersex, unlike Roberta Betty Cowell and some others who dubiously claimed to be intersex. Correction surgery on intersex adults, of course, dates back to the 19th century. In this article I will not distinguish between actual intersex, pretend intersex and straight-forward transsexuality.

This is a chronology, or, if you like, a time-entanglement, of the Global Christines. It is basically the Trans women who were featured in the press 1950-7 for having what was in those days called a ‘sex-change’. The stories of these women are continued as they publish autobiographies etc, and their deaths are mentioned when known. Georges Burou in Casablanca started doing ‘sex-change’ operations in 1956, and a new era developed. The first few of Burou’s patients are mentioned.

To simplify somewhat, I use the persons’ final names (or best known pseudonym where actual name is not publicly known). Note that Roberta Elizabeth Marshall Cowell, put her name as Roberta Cowell on her 1954 book, but to her acquaintances she was Betty. Georgina Turtle became Georgina Somerset by marriage.

Note on Mayhem: The common law crime of mayhem was committed by inflicting a wound that reduced a man's ability to fight. The crime was committed against the king also in that he required the use of fighting men. While implicitly the crime of Mayhem as threatened against trans women and their surgeons in the 1950s meant that a lack of a penis would prevent a soldier from raping women, in practice in the doctors were persuaded by the Mayhem law from orchiectomies only. If a trans woman did her own auto-orchiectomy, or obtained one in another country, the surgeons were then quite willing to to perform a penectomy and a vaginoplasty - these by twisted logic were not considered ‘mayhem’.

1937

Dr Stanley, Chief Surgeon of the California State Prison, St. Quentin, while examining an apparently male prisoner, discovered that the prisoner had been surgically transformed into a woman.

1941

Barbara Wilcox, Los Angeles, who had gained access to female hormones, was featured in the press as she petitioned the Superior Court of California to change her name and to become legally a woman. Her story was that two years earlier changes to feminine had occurred spontaneously, that she was a hermaphrodite. An endocrinologist, Marcus Graham, presented her case at a medical conference, attributing the change to an hormonal imbalance resulting from a childhood illness.

Betty Cowell, as a man, married, and they had daughters in 1942 and 1944.

1942

US citizen Charlotte Charlaque, Magnus Hirschfeld’s translator, who had had surgery in Berlin in 1929-30 from Erwin Gohrbandt, was deported from the Third Reich via Lisbon to New York.

1943

A 13-year-old boy, an inmate in the Auschwitz concentration camp, was subjected involuntarily, by doctors under the command of Josef Mengele, to a series of operations that turned him into a woman.

1944

Cowell, by then an RAF pilot, was shot down over Germany, and spent the rest of the war as a prisoner-of-war in Stalag Luft 1.

1945

November - there were rumours that an unnamed serving Sergeant (a full-time soldier and not a conscript) assigned to Hamburg was allowed to travel to Denmark for male-to-female surgery, after extensive medical evaluation by the Medical Officer and a psychologist.

Another rumor was that Pussy Katt, performer at Finnochio’s in San Francisco was taken up by Howard Hughes, and flown to Mexico City for castration/sex change. She was paid $50,000.

1948

Sally Barry, 22, Wisconsin, had been accepted for surgery, but the state attorney general’s office vetoed the decision as constituting mayhem.

Cowell separated from wife, and later secured a consultation with a Harley Street sexologist who gave a reference to a woman endocrinologist, who prescribed oestrogens.

Christine Jorgensen met with endocrinologist Harold Grayson in New Haven, Connecticut, but he merely sent her to a psychiatrist.

Charlotte Charlaque, made a living coaching young actors in “English diction”, and she also acted in several Off-Broadway productions. She met and corresponded with Harry Benjamin.

Alfred Kinsey, WB Pomeroy and C E Martin Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, W.B. Saunders, 1948, uses the word ‘transsexual’ for a kind of homosexual considered as an intermediate sex.

1949

Sally Barry met and was interviewed by Alfred Kinsey in San Francisco as part of his research on sexual variance. Kinsey referred her to Harry Benjamin, who was staying in the same hotel, for help – this was Benjamin’s first transsexual patient - and he prescribed female hormones, x-ray castration and x-ray treatment to remove facial hair.

David O. Cauldwell. ‘Psychopathia transexualis’. Sexology, 1949. 16: 274-280. A case study of a girl who wanted to be a boy, but had not transitioned. This paper was not much noticed. Harry Benjamin later commented: "Whether I had ever read that article and the expression remained in my subconscious, frankly, I do not know". Note the one ‘S’ spelling.

1950

May - Christine Jorgensen went to Denmark.

July - Jorgensen’s first meeting with endocrinologist Christian Hamburger in Copenhagen.

Nagai Akiko, a hostess and cabaret singer in Tokyo, had surgery 1950-1 at the Nippon Medical School Hospital 日本医科大学.

John Randell was appointed Physician for Psychological Medicine at Charing Cross Hospital, and later worked with trans patients.

Trans man Michael Dillon, medical student, performed an orchidectomy on his beloved Betty Cowell.

1951

May 15 - Betty Cowell’s vaginoplasty by Harold Gillies & Ralph Millard.

September 24 - Christine Jorgensen’s first operation, an orchiectomy.

Elmer Belt and his nephew Willard Goodwin in Los Angeles had quietly started doing vaginoplasties for trans women, mainly referred by Harry Benjamin. They got around the Mayhem restrictions by preserving the testicles, pushing them into the abdomen. While Belt was associated with the UCLA School of Medicine, he did not perform his operations there. They were usually done at the Good Samaritan Hospital. He predated the team led by Ehrling Dahl-Iversen in Copenhagen, and he was doing vaginoplasty using skin grafts from the thigh, buttocks or back while the Dahl-Iversen team was doing only orchiectomy and penectomy.

1952

November - Marta Olmos suffering from chronic amoebic colitis was treated at the Mexico City clinic of Rafael Sandoval Camacho and his team. They treated the colitis, but quickly realised that there was another issue to be addressed.

Tamara Rees and a Los Angeles psychiatrist consulted Dr Frederick Hartsuiker in Haarlem in the Netherlands by mail. Rees was already on hormones and dressing as female.

November - Christine Jorgensen’s second operation, a penectomy, by surgeon Ehrling Dahl-Iversen, chief surgeon at Copenhagen’s Rigshospitalet.

December 1 - New York Daily News carried a front-page headline, “EX- GI Becomes Blonde Beauty: Operations Transform Bronx Youth”.

1953

Irmis Johnson with Christine Jorgensen. “The Story of my Life”. The American Weekly, February 1953.
Christian Hamburger, Georg K Sturup & Ehrling Dahl-Iversen. “Transvestism: Hormonal, Psychiatric, and Surgical Treatment”. The Journal of the American Medical Association, 152, 5, 1953.

February, February 13 - Return of Christine Jorgensen to New York.

Edward D Wood (dir & scr). Glen or Glenda, with Edward D Wood, Dolores Fuller, Bela Lugosi & Tommy Haynes as Alan/Anne. US 65 mins US April 1953. One segment re Alan who transitions as Anne. The first film about transsexualism, and the uses the word ‘transsexual’ before Harry Benjamin did. Jorgensen had been approached to appear in the film, but declined.

April - Charlotte Mcleod read about Christine Jorgensen and her operation in Copenhagen, and quickly took ship from New York to Denmark using a minor inheritance from a grand aunt. As a new Danish law restricted sex-changes to Danish nationals, Mcleod turned to a drugged-up renegade doctor, Dr Emil Petersen, for an orchiectomy. Then in great pain and hemorrhaging, and without her passport, she was admitted to Bispebjerg hospital. The first operation being already done, it was now legal to complete the transition. The Danish doctors led by Dr Jens Foged (1897 – 1956) agreed to do a penectomy and relocate the urethra. Christian Hamburger, who had attended to Christine Jorgensen, was the endocrinologist, and explained to Charlotte about the need for external hormones. She was unable to pay for the medical attention, and so the medical team worked free of charge.

Georgina Turtle was seeking professional help, and had mixed feelings when the Christine Jorgensen story broke:

"it immensely distressed me as I felt no one would believe that my own case had not been influenced by hers and that I might be different".

May - Marta Olmos’ first surgery, a penectomy.

The pioneering Mexican pharmaceutical company, Syntex, provided oestrogen and progesterone, and in effect Marta was a test subject for their untested product. Syntex later marketed the product as Norethisterone - which was used for birth control and menopausal therapy.

August - Claire Elgin using a local anesthetic, succeeded in an auto-orchiectomy – an operation that no doctor would consent to do. However she was unable to staunch the bleeding, and took a taxi to the hospital, where she was treated for shock and loss of blood. Dr Karl Bowman, at San Francisco’s Langley Porter Clinic, took over the case and recommended further surgery to remove the penis.

August - Xie Jian Shun was suffering recurrent abdominal pains, and went to hospital in Tainan, Taiwan. Dr. Lin Chengyi, a graduate of the Tokyo Zhaohe Hospital and the external medicine department of the Jingjing Medical School, diagnosed the case carefully and found that Xie had a mixture of male and female organs. The details were discussed in the Taiwanese newspapers. The first operation, observed by out-of-town doctors and reporters, was an exploratory laparotomy (the opening of the abdominal cavity) to detect the presence of female organs. As reported in the press, Dr Lin assumed that Xie was a biological woman trapped inside a male body, whose feminine-like features gradually revealed themselves. The press compared Xie Jianshun to Christine Jorgensen, and noted that Jorgensen strongly wanted to be a woman, while Xie wanted to remain a heterosexual man. While the doctors were quite aware that actually Xie was intersex (yinyang ren 陰陽人), they talked of the coming operations as sex-change operations.

October - Francis Marie Jefferson moved to Toronto, and was admitted to the General Hospital for a minor operation, and was diagnosed using dated jargon as a ‘pseudo-hermaphrodite’. Vaginoplasty was at the Hotel Dieu, Windsor, Ontario, by Dr Walter Percival.

November - Tamara Rees sailed on a Holland American steamship to Rotterdam. She took a train to Haarlem, and quickly had an appointment for the following Monday with Dr Hartsuiker. A second opinion was obtained from Dr Carp of the Psychiatrische Cliniek in Leiden, and one other, and then, as required by law, the opinion was submitted to a court of magistrates which reviewed the decision, decided it was correct and approval was granted.

Dorothy Medway, as no British doctor would do an orchiectomy because of the mayhem laws, had to go to the Netherlands instead, where she had successful surgery at the end of 1953.

December 18 - Harry Benjamin contributed a paper to a symposium organised by Emil Gutheil at the New York Academy of Medicine. He proposed three types of trans women: The principally psychogenic transvestite; The intermediate type; The somatopsychic transsexualist. Benjamin has now introduced the word ‘transsexual’ for doctors and sexologists.

December 30 - Claire Elgin had a penectomy at the University of California in San Francisco by Dr Frank Hinman, chief of urology services at San Francisco General Hospital – apparently this was the only such operation that Hinman ever did. One doctor was quoted as saying “A much truer case than Christine’s”. Benjamin’s second use of the word ‘transsexual’.

Annette Dolan consulted with Harry Benjamin who suggested that she go abroad for castration, after which a US surgeon would be willing to complete the operation.

1953-8 Sally Barry with encouragement from Harry Benjamin had surgeries in Sweden.

1954

January 5 - Tamara Rees’ first operation was by Dr Nauta in the Diaconessenhuis in Haarlem. Rees then rented an apartment. As required by law Tamara registered with the Aliens Police (Vreemdelingendienst) and afterwards was followed and observed. She was to wait six months for the second stage operation (penectomy). Tamara learned some Dutch, and adjusted to their then lifestyle. With the changes from the female hormones, and given that Tamara was small framed and only 5’4” (1.613m) she was able to pass. She had frequent appointments with Hartsuiker, Nauta and a study group at the University of Leiden.

Mid January - Xie transferred to hospital in Teipei. Xie had initially objected and this caused a delay re the second operation. The new surgeon Jiang Xizheng was in charge, and female hormones were prescribed.

“Ny amerikansk Chris Jørgensen skjult her I byen efter operation”. Aftenbaldet. 24 feb 1954. PDF. Text.

Bent Rosenwein. Da Karl blev Karla: En dansk læges bedrift. Self published, 1954. Re Charlotte McLeod.

March 6 - Press disclosure re Betty Cowell carried by most British papers.

March 13 - Picture Post exclusive re Betty Cowell after payment of £20,000. Continued for 7 weeks.

March - Marta Olmos’ final surgery, a vaginoplasty.

March 19 - Francis Marie Jefferson had some minor operations with Dr Stuart Wilson in Welland. He semi-outed her to the Toronto Telegraph as Josephine Jefferson and claimed that she had surgery in the US. However Ron Kenyon of that newspaper searched for the real person, found Frances Marie Jefferson and interviewed her and some members of her family.

March 20,22,23 - a 3-part series in the Toronto Telegraph by Ron Kenyon on Francis Marie Jefferson based on interviews.

April 16 - Charlotte McLeod arrived at New York’s Idlewild airport.

April - Xie Jianshun’s second operation. Male gonads removed.

May - the Marta Olmos story was in the press, at first the Mexican, and then internationally. Excélsior interviewed Marta and published restrained reports, an editorial cartoon and a letter to the editor, but the articles in its tabloid Últimas Noticias, supplement Magazine de Policía, were splashy, front-page and with lots of photos.

May 19 - Christine Jorgensen’s vaginoplasty performed in New York by Dr Joseph Angelo, with Harry Benjamin as medical advisor.

June - Tamara Rees was seriously ill, which was attributed to the hormonal regime. After recovery and several weeks of testing, the second operation was arranged. A more experienced surgeon was required, and the services of a professor of medicine who had come to Holland as a refugee from the concentration camps of the previous decade. The surgery was done in a small secluded hospital in early June, and Tamara was 15 days in the hospital afterwards.

August - Xie’s third operation: a penectomy.

November - Tamara Rees had annoyed the Dutch Aliens Police who did not know where she was. After receiving a “very disturbing letter” from her parents in November, Tamara took an overdose of sleeping pills and was unconscious for three days. The Aliens Police then arrested her as an attempted suicide, and put her on a ship for New York. Her gender history was supposed to be private, but she discovered that the ship's officers had been told, and they had passed it on to the crew.

November - Nagai Akiko, in accordance with Article 113 of the Family Register Law, had her civil status changed.

Annette Dolan did an auto-orchiectomy, and then had surgery with Elmer Belt.

Elmer Belt and Willard Goodwin were persuaded to cease doing trans vaginoplasties after a committee of doctors at UCLA, including Frederick Worden, had decided against the practice. Annette Dolan was one of the last patients.

Frederick G Worden, psychoanalyst, and James T Marsh, clinical psychologist, both at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Medical Center, interviewed three trans women of whom had already had transgender surgery, Annette Dolan, Claire Elgin and Janet Story; and two hoping for it, Carla Sawyer and Dixie MacLane.

Roberta Cowell. “Roberta Cowell’s Own Story”. Picture Post, 13 March 1954.
Roberta Cowell. Roberta Cowell's Story. British Book Centre, 1954.
Dorothy Medway. “He-She: A moving personal story to help you to understand the front page dilemma”. Sunday Pictorial, 14 March 1954: 13.

1955

Dixie MacLane had completion surgery in Mexico.

Frederick G Woden & James T Marsh. “Psychological Factors in Men Seeking Sex Transformation: A Preliminary Report”. Journal of the American Medical Association, 157, 15, April 9 1955: 1292-4, 1297-8.

Woden & Marsh wrote that the five women had “an extremely shallow, immature, and grossly distorted concept of what a woman is like socially, sexually, anatomically, and emotionally”. They depicted them as attention-seeking, and even held their co-operation with the study against them as a “need for recognition”. Harry Benjamin immediately wrote to the journal to object. Worden and Marsh had “badly misunderstood or misinterpreted” his work. Four of the five interviewees wrote to Benjamin expressing outrage.

August - Charlotte McLeod had breast implants with New York plastic surgeon, Else La Roe.

August - Xie had a third surgeon, Zhang Xianlin. A vaginoplasty was done; the Ministry of National Defense awarded Xie one thousand New Taiwan dollars to help buy feminine clothing.

Georgina Turtle was introduced to the urologist Kenneth Walker. A psychiatrist proposed that Turtle enter a mental hospital and be treated with electro-convulsive therapy. Turtle’s father strenuously objected, and an appointment was arranged with the Greek-born Professor Alexander Panagioti Cawadias, the prominent sexologist who is credited with coining the word 'intersex' (Hermaphoditus the Human Intersex, Heinemann Medical Books, 1943) who conducted a proper examination and declared Turtle to be a hermaphrodite, prescribed oestrogen and advised a change of sexual role.

Surgeon Poul Fogh-Andersen, Copenhagen, reported on a foreigner who attempted to castrate himself, forcing the surgeons to complete the orchiectomy. He further did a vaginoplasty using a full-thickness skin graft harvested from the penile skin to line the neovagina.

Tamara Rees. "Reborn": a factual life story of a transition from male to female. Irene Lipman, 1955.
Hedy Jo Star. I Changed My Sex! Allied Books, 1955. A slight exaggeration as she did not have surgery until 1962.
Poul Fogh-Andersen. “Transvestism and trans-sexualism; surgical treatment in a case of auto-castration”. Acta medicinae legalis et socialis, 9, 3, 1955.
Charlotte Charlaque writings as Carlotta Baronin von Curtius: “Reflections on the Christine Jorgenson Case”. One. The Homosexual Magazine. Band 3, Nr. 3, 1955, S. 27–28.

1956

Barbara Wilcox had vaginoplasty from Elmer Belt.

Jenny, a nightclub electrician in Nice approached several gynecologists seeking a correction of her birth sex, but with no success until she approached and pestered Dr Georges Burou in Casablanca. Burou developed a technique to create a vagina using a live graft taken from the penile skin, and was able to give Jenny what she needed. As it was the first time that he had done such an operation, it was pro bono.

Kenneth Walker arranged an appointment for Georgina Turtle with Harold Gillies, but it went badly as Turtle came directly from dental work clad in a black morning coat and pinstripe trousers. Gillies, who was already on the carpet with the General Medical Council for having operated on Michael Dillon and Betty Cowell, was dismissive: “I do not really think you look or could be made to look like a woman".

April Ashley socially transitioned.

Charlotte Mcleod. “I Changed My Sex”. Mr Annual. Winter 1956. Claimed that her condition was physically caused, and that 95% of transsexuals should have psychiatric treatment.

1957

January - Georgina Turtle had a 'corrective procedure' which was performed by Mr Patrick Clarkson, a Harley-Street consultant plastic surgeon and colleague of Harold Gillies. She had bought her first female clothes in which to leave the clinic.

X, unnamed Scots woman, having undergone surgery, petitioned in 1957 to have her sex corrected on birth certificate etc. as Ewan Forbes had done two years earlier, but was refused.

Jeannette Jiousselot, a carpenter, had surgery with Dr Burou.

Carla Sawyer had surgery in Mexico.

58-year-old Clara Miller had surgery.

Harold Gillies & D Ralph Millard, Jr. The Principles and Art of Plastic Surgery. Butterworth, 1957. Discusses the 1951 surgery on Roberta Betty Cowell.

1958

Jacqueline Dufresnoy (Coccinelle) and Barbara Buick had surgery with Dr Burou.

The trans woman we refer to as Agnes started Saturday morning interview sessions with psychiatrist Robert Stoller and sociologist Harold Garfinkle. She was accepted as having “testicular femininization”, a supposed Intersex condition.

William J O’Connell. “The Unfree”. Sex and Censorship Magazine, 1,2, 1958. An account by a trans woman who was admitted to a US hospital for sex-change surgery, which was then cancelled because of protests from ‘religious elements’. No refund. The person’s real name (female) is not given. Harry Benjamin added a note in his 1966 book that the person did successfully have surgery a few years later, but abroad.

1959

Syntex re-located to California.

Chiang Kai-shek’s wife Soong Mei-ling, and a number of celebrities visited Xie, who was working at a relief institute for women and children.

++Anna Heming, after an auto-orchiectomy, had completion surgery in Switzerland.

Agnes’ vaginoplasty was done in 1959 by a team of doctors including Elmer Belt.

John B. Randell. "Transvestitism And Trans-Sexualism: A Study Of 50 Cases". The British Medical Journal. 2, 5164, 1959: 1448-1452.

1960

Marie-Pierre Pruvot (Bambi), April Ashley and Capucine had surgery with Dr Burou.

The press discovered Georgina Turtle, her home was besieged and the phone never stopped ringing. She agreed to an 'exclusive' with The News of the World, and was paid £100. A local paper gave the name of her road and stated that she intended to start a dental practice. This led to difficulties with the General Dental Council, which in those days was very strict against advertising. Turtle threatened to sue the newspapers, apologised to the Council, and was given a reprimand.

Surgeon Harold Gillies died, age 78, of a cerebral thrombosis whilst operating.

John B. Randell. Cross Dressing and the Desire to change Sex, MD Thesis, Prifysgol Cymru/University of Wales, 1960.
Georgina Turtle. “At last I’m a woman”. The News of the World, 17, 20,27 July 1960.

1961

Patricia Morgan had surgery with Elmer Belt.

1962

Barbara Wilcox died of a coronary, age 50.

Wedding of Georgina Turtle and Christopher Somerset.

Hedy Jo Star had surgery in Memphis.

Aleshia Brevard had surgery with Elmer Belt.

Noyes Thomas and April Ashley. “The April Ashley Story”. The News of the World. May-June 1962
A.D Schwabe, David H. Solomon, Robert J. Stoller & John P. Burnham. “Pubertal Feminization in a Genetic Male with Testicular Atrophy and Normal Urinary Gonadotropin”. Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism. 22, 8 Aug 1962: 839-845. Re Agnes.

1963

October 3 - Claire Elgin was admitted to Stanford Hospital with an incarcerated hernia. Her doctor there was Donald Laub (1935-2024), then an intern but who later became known for transgender surgery. They became friends.

Georgina Turtle. Over the Sex Border. Victor Gollancz. 1963. Not an autobiography but a study based on those transsexuals who had contacted her.

1965

Hedy Jo Star. My Unique Change Chicago: Novel Books, 1965.

1966

Agnes tells Dr. Stoller that her secondary sex characteristics had been the result of her taking Stilbestrol – an estrogen replacement drug that had been prescribed to her mother.

The Johns Hopkins Gender Clinic started taking transsexual patients. Dancer Phyllis Wilson was the first to have surgery.

Harry Benjamin. The Transsexual Phenomenon. Julian Press, 1966. Popularised the term ‘transsexual’. In effect the ur-text on the subject.

1967

Christine Jorgensen with Lois Kibbee. A Personal Autobiography. Bantam Books, 1967.
Harold Garfinkel and Robert Stoller. “Passing and the managed achievement of sex status in an ‘intersexed’ person”. Studies in Ethnomethodology. Prentice Hall, Inc 1967: 117-185. Re Agnes.

1969

January - a medical article in the doctors' weekly newspaper, Pulse International, compared Georgina Turtle Somerset to Christine Jorgensen as being transsexual,

"implying that I was homosexual, would have had breast implants, electrolysis and was probably not legally married, I had no choice but to instigate libel proceedings for, indeed, all these premises were totally false" (p44).

The proceedings continued for two years, during which Justice Roger Ormrod ruled in Corbett v. Corbett against the femaleness of April Ashley. However Georgina was not deterred, and even sent a copy of her book to Justice Ormrod, and he wrote back:

"you and I have arrived independently at the same conclusions as to the legal position".

1970

Irving Rapper (dir). The Christine Jorgensen Story, with John Hanson as Christine Jorgensen. US 98 mins 1970.

1972

December 29 - Marta Olmos died, age 41.

1973

Some doctors were dissatisfied with the word 'transsexualism' because it had lost its medical connotations, and so Norman Fisk in 1973 proposed 'gender dysphoria syndrome' to remedicalize the concept.

Claire Elgin, age 71, took her life after her lung cancer metastasized to the rib.

1978

Ehrling Dahl-Iversen died, age 85.

1986

Patricia Morgan died, age 46.

1987

December - Surgeon Georges Burou, the keen water-skier, drowned under his boat at age 77.

1989

May 3 - Christine Jorgensen died, age 62.

1992

October - Christian Hamburger died, age 88.

Georgina Somerset, with a Forward by Grant Williams. A Girl Called Georgina: An Illustrated Autobiography, with Study Update. Lewes: The Book Guild, 1992. Includes a reprint of Over the Sex Border.

1995/6

Connie Christine Wheeler & Leah Cahan Schaefer “Harry Benjamin's first ten cases (1938-1953): a clinical historical note”. Archives of Sexual Behavior 24:1 Feb 1995. Online. GVWW. Revised as the Afterword to Randi Ettner. Confessions of a Gender Defender: A Psychologist's Reflections on Life Among the Transgendered. Chicago Spectrum Press, 1996. Includes Janet=Claire Elgin, Sally Barry, Carol=Barbara Anne Richards, Christine Jorgensen, Janet=Claire Elgin.

2000

Tamara Rees dies, age 76.

2007

Charlotte McLeod died, age 82.

2011

Surgeon Ralph Millard died, age 92.

Donald Laub. “The Claire Elgin Story”. Many People, Many Passports, April 11, 2011. Online.

2013

Georgina Turtle Somerset died, age 90.

Aleshia Brevard died, age 79.

2019

Donald R Laub, MD. “The Cast of Characters (and Characters in Casts)” in Second Lives, Second Chances. ECW Press, 2019: Chp 12. re Claire Elgin.

Towards a TS dictionary -- the letter Rr

2026-06-23T09:33:30.573-04:00

BOLD=cross reference, see item when appropriate letter posted

Radical Drag

a) The drag performers who emerged from the RadFems of London Gay Liberation Front, who combined gender-mix drag with radical left politics. Bloolips became the major performing troupe, taking inspiration from the New York troupe Hot Peaches, and Bette Borne the best known performer.

b) More generally, drag that mixes male and female clothing, and is often acquired in charity shops. See also Gender Fuck.

Radical Faeries

A movement founded in 1979 by Harry Hay and Don Kilhefner. A major concept was the rejection of Hetero-imitation, supplemented by the values of the 1960s counterculture and creative spiritualism. Inspiration was taken from indigenous cultures. It remained gay-centred. Trans persons were accepted in, but the movement was not a trans movement. A type of Men’s Liberation.

Radical Feminists

a) RadFems. A term for the more gender variant of males involved with London Gay Liberation Front in the early 1970s. Drag became the thing at Gay Lib dances and meetings, and then evolved into street theatre: most notable in support at the trial of women for disrupting the Miss World contest, and the disruption of the 1971 Christian Festival of Light. These Radical Feminists lived in communal squats in Brixton and Notting Hill, and wore drag all day. They aligned themselves with the lesbians in GLF, and after the women split, they came to dominate the all-London meetings. However, the movement had run its course by late 1973. As far as it is known, no Radfem from this movement ever completed a transgender Transition. See also Bethnal Rouge.

b) A branch of feminism, that arose from the second-wave feminism of the 1960s, that concentrates on the role of the Patriarchy and its rules, that Gender is a Social Construct that enables the patriarchy. Gender equality can be achieved only by toppling this Social Construct.

c) A subset of (b). The Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists (TERFs) who faced with trans people, some of whom are actually deconstructing the Gender Binary in their own lives, decided that that was not what they meant by destroying the Gender Social Construction.

Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD)

The supposed phenomena of teenagers suddenly self-identifying as Trans, probably at the same times as others in their peer group. Some regard this as a social coping mechanism for a non-discussed disorder of another kind. The paper initially proposing the concept was based on surveys of parents of transgender youth recruited from three anti-trans websites, and is not recognized as a valid mental health diagnosis by any major professional association. See Transtrender.

Reclaimed, Redeemed

Some words, previously used as slurs, have been reclaimed by the group that they refer to, and thus used as words of pride. Examples include the words Queer, Virago, Decadence, Sissy, Travesti, Baeddel, Bakla.

Read

a) To realise that someone's sex or gender is other than as presented, or was so at some time in the past. See also Parviscience.

b) To insult imaginatively - NY ball scene usage.

Read to filth, read for filth

A stronger form of Read (b). To scold, to call out, to correct.

Real, Realness

A term used by the New York Voguing Houses for those able to pass in sunshine or under bright lights.

Real Disguise

A term proposed by Roger Baker with reference to Cross-Acting on stage or film performance. A performance such that the audience accepts it as portrayed even if the off-stage gender of the actor is known to be other. Baker nominates the Boy Actresses of the Renaissance stage as a prime example. See False Disguise.

Real girl

A term for a cis woman, used by trans women in previous decades. This is an example of False Consciousness in that the trans women are downgrading their own realness,

Real-life Experience/ Test (RLE)

The requirement by gender clinics that a trans person should have lived a year or more in the target gender before Completion Surgery. Some clinics even require it before prescribing Hormones. There is merit in the practice, as opposed to the requirement, in that if the person does change their mind, Detransition is more achievable if there is no surgery to be reversed. However, for those who are quite certain of their path, this is an extra frustration. The refusal of some clinics to acknowledge Real-Life Experience before registering with the clinic is particularly exasperating. The requirement for RLE before being prescribed Hormones is counter productive is that the person may not therefore pass and thus be subjected to abuse. While many GICs require a one-year RLE before surgery, there is much evidence of trans persons who have avoided this and thrived well afterwards.

Real name

There is a persistent fallacy that one’s initial name (pre-Transition) is one’s real name. Unsympathetic interlocutors will demand of a trans person: what was your real name? This is both rude and illogical. A trans person has gone through an Ycleptance. A taking of a new name that is as psychologically intense as an Ycleptance for a woman who takes a new name at marriage, or a person who takes a new name as part of acceptance into a religion. A person’s real name is the one that he/she answers to. A new name fully taken is one’s Real Name. Also see Heteronym,.

Realignment

An ironic redrafting of Sex Reassignment Surgery is Sex Realignment Surgery. This avoids the problematic assumption that doctors and surgeons assign and reassign sex/gender.

Real Self

It is an irony of Transgender change that one must alter one’s body to manifest one’s Real Self.

Recognize Alan Hart, Ad Hoc Committee to

Portland’s The Right to Privacy Political Action Committee held a big fund-raiser each year in the 1990s using Alan Hart’s pre-Transition name. Local trans persons objected, but it took direct action interrupting the proceedings before the name was changed. In this they were supported by the Lesbian Avengers.

Rectosigmoid vaginoplasty

The construction of a Neo-Vagina using a section taken from the rectosigmoid colon of the patient. This was first done for a cis woman with Vaginal Agenesis in 1892 in Paris by Dr WF Sneguireff. Such surgery for trans women was pioneered by Dr Donald Laub at the Stanford School of Medicine in the mid 1970s.

Red Pill

A reference to the 1999 film The Matrix, in which the protagonist is offered a choice between a blue pill (and return to obliviousness) and a red pill (which reveals what is really going on). The term has been adopted by the alt-right for those who convert to their racist, misogynous, homophobic, transphobic viewpoints. The irony is that in the film, the pill is offered by a black man, and the film was directed by two trans women, and taking the red pill is also taken as an allegory for transgender hormonal therapy.

Regina v Tan, UK 1982

“It is an offence for a man knowingly to live wholly or in part on the earnings of prostitution”. By this wording only a man can commit this offence.

In 1982 Gloria Greaves of Belgravia, London and her tenant, Mrs Tan, were both arrested and convicted of keeping a disorderly house under the Disorderly Houses Act of 1751. Furthermore, Mrs Greaves was convicted under the Sexual Offences Act 1956 of living on the earnings of prostitution in that she was Tan's landlady, and her husband of living on the earnings of male prostitution (that is of his wife's). Mrs Greaves had completed surgical Transition in the early 1960s, and was recognised as female for national insurance purposes. She was sent to a women’s prison.

Re-Identify

A person who declared that they were trans, but before surgery, hormones or even cross-living, changes back and Re-Identifies as their birth gender. Not to be confused with De-Transition where more serious steps were taken. One type of Change-Back.

Rén yāo 人妖

A Chinese term for person altered from nature, a freak or person fond of dressing up and make up. Applied to trans persons in a derogatory fashion. Rén=person; yāo=want or request.

Reparative Therapy

A term proposed by Elizabeth Moberly for Homosocial Bonding to replace a failure of bonding with the same-sex parent. She sees this ‘failure’ as the primary cause of homosexuality. Where the failure of bonding is particularly severe, ‘a defensive detachment from the same sex implies disidentification: not just an absence of identification but a reaction against identification’. In other words, transsexuality is Extreme Homosexuality. Her therapy has been condemned as ineffective, and her theory was revealed as based on the reading of only three writers with no new research.

Replication

Any discovery in science should be able to be replicated by other scientists using the published description. Alleged Etiologies or causes of gender variance often fail this requirement. See BSTc, H-Y Antigen, and also Heuristic.

Retro-disguise

A person in disguise playing a role of his/her original persona. This trope was named by Victor Freeburg in his writing on Renaissance theatre. As a dramaturgical device it dates back to ancient Sanskrit drama and was quite popular in Italian and English Renaissance drama. This is not necessarily a gender trope: it can be done with racial impersonation, when characters who are technically black but able to pass as white put on black-face for narrative reasons. A variant retro-disguise uses the gender of the actor as the first gender-role. This was common in the British theatre until the Restoration when Boy-actresses played females who disguised as male. A modern version would be to cast a woman as a drag queen.

Retrojection

The use of a name acquired or chosen later in life when discussing the early life of the person. For example, the Wikipedia article on the writer Fay Weldon retrojects her name inappropriately. Weldon was born Fay Birkinshaw, and by a first marriage became Mrs Bateman. However, the Wikipedia authors refer to her as 'Weldon' in childhood and again when she was Mrs Bateman, that is before she married, or even met, her second husband Ron Weldon in 1960. A similar practice is that of referring to a person who Transitions, say at age 40, and using the post-transition name for the person’s childhood.

Reverse Discourse

The employment of the terminology of psychiatrists or other authority groups in such a way that the meaning is quite different and even counter to the original. See e.g. Collusion with Delusion where trans patients supply the contrary-to-fact expected data to psychiatrists.

Ridiculous Theatrical Company (RTC)

A Greenwich Village theatre founded by Charles Ludlam in 1967 which was part of the Theater of the Ridiculous movement. Over the next twenty years the RTC was a major part of the counter-culture in New York. The plays were often parodies or re-workings of pop culture with much Camp, Drag, kitsch, grotesque etc.

Rough Trade

A man, who affects to be thuggish, and may be involved with criminal activity or even have membership in a Mafia, who has an affair with a trans woman or a gay man. He may put the trans woman on the street to sell herself, and live off her income. It was a stereotype before Stonewall that a trans woman should have such a lover, as is depicted in Jean Genet’s Notre Dame des Fleurs. See also Trade.

Royal Vauxhall Tavern (RVT)

London’s oldest surviving gay venue. The building was built 1860-2. It first attracted a gay clientele after the Second World War. In the 1960s drag performer Chris Shaw and business partner Peter King started the drag shows that the Vauxhall became famous for. They were performed along the bar after it was cleared of drinks and glasses. Mrs Shufflewick, Hinge and Brackett, Regina Fong and Lily Savage performed there and Freddie Mercury of Queen was a frequent visitor.

Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle

Charles Armstrong, endocrinologist, specialised in intersex patients and that included transsexuals. He testified for the trans person in both the Forbes-Sempill and the Corbett v. Corbett cases. Surgery on intersex and trans persons ceased in late 1978 when the surgeon, Mr Edwards, retired and was not replaced.

Rupantarkami

A Bengali term for one who desires transformation of their form (roop). A term used of Transsexuals.

Xie Jian Shun 謝尖順 (1918 - ?) soldier

2026-06-21T13:35:32.698-04:00

Xie Jianshun 謝尖順 was born in Chaozhou, Guangdong. The family lived out in the countryside. At the age of seven, he was sick, and a doctor visit was not feasible. It was later reported that his penis was attached to a labium, and the mother simply tore them apart.

In 1934 at age 16, Xie joined the National Revolutionary Army (NRA, 國民革命軍), the military arm of the Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang) which was commanded by Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石). Xie’s mother died the next year, and his father the year after that. By the age of 20, Xie’s breasts had developed in a female fashion, but he was able to keep that hidden. A brief affair with a young woman was going well. Her father accepted that they would marry. However, Xie could not talk about his body and ran from the relationship.

Xie was with the NRA during the struggle against the Japanese invasion, and then against the Communist Party’s People's Liberation Army (PLA, 中国人民解放军). After the PLA’s victory in 1949, Chiang Kai-shek and the NRA retreated to Taiwan, and imposed themselves on the indigenous population there as a one-party dictatorship using martial law and the so-called White Terror (白色恐怖). Xie, as part of the NRA, was part of the move to Taiwan.

In August 1953, just after the end of the Korean War, Xie was suffering recurrent abdominal pains, and went to hospital in Tainan. Dr. Lin Chengyi, a graduate of the Tokyo Zhaohe Hospital and the external medicine department of the Jingjing Medical School, diagnosed the case carefully and found that Xie had a mixture of male and female organs. The details were discussed in the Taiwanese newspapers.

The first operation, observed by out-of-town doctors and reporters, was an exploratory laparotomy (the opening of the abdominal cavity) to detect the presence of ovarian tissues; labia dissection to examine the vaginal interior, determine the length of the vagina, and confirm the presence (or absence) of the hymen. As reported in the press, Dr Lin assumed that Xie was a biological woman trapped inside a male body, whose feminine-like features gradually revealed themselves under the fingertips of medical experts and in the eyes of the public. “If ovaries and vagina are found inside the womb, removing the penis can turn Xie into a woman; otherwise he becomes a man”. The press compared Xie Jianshun to Christine Jorgensen, and noted that Jorgensen strongly wanted to be a woman, while Xie wanted to remain a heterosexual man. He was quoted in the press: “If my biology does not allow me to remain a man but forces me to become a woman, what else can I do?” It was announced that a uterus and ovaries were confirmed. From this point onward the press started using the female glyph 她 for ta=he/she rather than 他, the male glyph.

Xie was not informed of the results until nine days later, because they were afraid that, given his stated desire to remain male, he might attempt suicide. However Xie did agree to cooperate in the subsequent operations, and signed a consent form. While the doctors were quite aware that actually Xie was intersex (yinyang ren 陰陽人), they talked of the coming operations as sex-change operations. As Chiang says: “the construction of Xie Jianshun’s (trans) sexual identity was driven less by his self- determination— his eventual signature on the surgical consent form notwithstanding— and more by the cultural authority of the surgeons involved and the broader impact of the mass circulation press”.

Xie’s case had come to the attention of the Kuomintang government which ordered that Xie be transferred to the capital, Taipei: “In order to ensure Xie’s safety, and in the hope that a second operation will be carried out smoothly, it has been decided that she will be relocated to Taipei. After being evaluated and operated upon by a group of notable doctors in a reputable hospital, [Xie’s sex change] will mark a great moment in history.”

Shun (to use her personal name), however, refused, writing to say that she preferred to stay in Tainan and with the same doctors. The punishment for this was that Dr Lin was denied the formal permission to proceed. Around this time Xie’s former commanding officer in the NRA came for a visit and made a financial donation.

After a few months, in November 1953, Shun finally agreed to relocate to Taipei. In early December the United Daily News announced her arrival and a small crowd gathered at the railway station to greet her, but no avail. On 9 December, she was quoted again as saying that she would not relocate. However in mid January, she quietly arrived at No. 1 General Hospital in Taipei. The new surgeon Jiang Xizheng was in charge, and female hormones were prescribed. Both Xie and the new doctors were far less co-operative with the press which was now not informed of the details of the operations. In the second operation, in April 1954, also a laparotomy, two male gonads were removed. In August 1954, there was a penectomy, and a vaginal opening was created.. The media blackout continued until January 1955 when one newspaper ran the headline: “Xie Jianshun’s Male-to-Female Transformation Nearly Complete: The Rumour of Surgical Failure Proved to Be False”, but with no further details

Shun had been developing stronger female attributes: larger breasts and regular menstruation. However she was not happy. She wrote to the President, Chiang Kai-Shek complaining about how her case was handled, and about the hospital food. This led to a visit from two representatives from the Ministry of National Defense. The doctors explained that her recurrent cramps were actual menstrual periods, and that they needed to construct a functional vagina. The Defense officials quickly persuaded Xie to agree.

By now Xie had a third surgeon, Zhang Xianlin, who had regarded the third operation as a simple reconstruction. A vaginoplasty was done in August 1955. A newspaper in Taiwan, and another in Hong Kong, published what they purported to be half-nude photos of Xie, which were quickly dismissed by the hospital as frauds. The Ministry of National Defense awarded Xie one thousand New Taiwan dollars to help buy feminine clothing.

By now the Taiwanese army had started screening new recruits for intersex conditions, and the majority of such press stories came from this source.

In October 1955, several Taiwanese newspapers ran stories on Xie’s completion and success in becoming female. The United Daily News ran a sixteen-instalment series: “The Story of Miss Xie Jianshun”.

In 1959, Chiang Kai-shek’s wife Soong Mei-ling, and a number of celebrities visited Xie, who was working at a relief institute for women and children. By then Shun had dropped the middle part of her name and was going by Xia Shun, and claimed nine, not four surgeries.

Howard Chiang. “Gender Transformations in Sinophone Taiwan”. Positions, 25,3, 2017.
Howard Chiang. “Christine Goes to China: Xie Jianshun and the Discourse of Sex Change in Cold War Taiwan” Chp 8 in Angela Ki Che Leung & Izumi Nakayama (eds) Gender, Health, and History in Modern East Asia, HKU Press, 2017.
Howard Chiang. “Transsexual Taiwan” Chp 5 in After Eunuchs: Science, Medicine, and the Transformation of Sex in Modern China. Columbia University Press, 2018.
Jason Lee. “The Rebel”, www.metastasispodcast.com. Online.

EN.Wikipedia

---------

Xie Jianshun was intersex, and therefore, despite the fuss in the Taiwanese papers, she was not a first in the sense that Jorgensen or Olmos were. Surgical correction of adult intersex persons
(hermaphrodites as they were then called) goes back to the 19^th century.

In the Chinese language (Hàn yǔ) called Mandarin in the West, ‘he’, ‘she’ and ‘it’ are all ‘tā’, and the plural , (they) is ‘tā men’. A unisex pronunciation. However the glyphs are quite different. The male ‘tā’ (he) is 他; the female ‘tā’ (she) is 她. This is the change in the newspaper reports after the first operation.

Traditionally Chinese names have three parts: family name, generational name, personal name. Xie Jianshun can also be written Xie Jian Shun. Her personal name is Shun. Some accounts say that she changed her name by 1959 to Xie Shun. This is not really a change of name, merely a dropping of the middle part.

Nagai Akiko (永井明子) (1918 or 1924 - ? ) cabaret singer

2026-06-13T16:19:47.290-04:00

In the early 1950s, the most attention went to Christine Jorgensen as being the first operated-on transsexual. However there were others around the world who were in the news before the Jorgenson story broke, and who even had surgery earlier than Jorgensen did. We know of Marta Olmos in Mexico, Marie Jefferson in Canada and Xie Jianshun in Taiwan (not to mention the sex-change surgeries in Berlin in the late 1920s - early 1930s, and in Switzerland in the early 1940s).

There was also Nagai Akiko 永井明子, a hostess and cabaret singer in Tokyo. She had surgery 1950-1 at the Nippon Medical School Hospital 日本医科大学, and in November 1954, in accordance with Article 113 of the Family Register Law, Nagai had her civil status changed.

However, unlike Jorgenson, Olmos, Jefferson and Xie, that is all that we know of her. Not even historians Mark McLelland or Howard Chiang have any more to say - nor is there agreement re her birth year,

Mark McLelland. Queer Japan from the Pacific War to the Internet Age. Lanham Md & Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield 2005: 113.
Ishida Hitishi & Murakami Takanori, translated by Win Lunsing. “The Process of Divergence between 'Men who Love Men' and 'Feminised Men' in Postwar Japanese Media”. Intersections: Gender, History and Culture in the Asian Context, 12 January 2006. p8.
Howard Chiang. “Transtopia: A Keyword for Our Century”. Cupblog.org, 2021/06/01. Online. p3-4.
Eric Seizelet. “Transidentité et droit au Japon". Revue du droit public et de la science politique en France et à l’étranger, 2023, 5, pp.4-5.

Frances Marie Jefferson (1929- ?) truck driver, domestic

2026-06-05T19:31:15.387-04:00

Jefferson was born in the village of Bridgetown, Nova Scotia, seventh in a family of 10 living children. The attending practitioner was undecided as to the child’s sex, and called in 12 other doctors for advice. They decided the child was a boy, and he was raised as such.

In the poverty of the Great Depression, the child was admitted to Children’s Aid. With puberty, Jefferson was made to go to school wearing a tight sweater. Jefferson was sent to Victoria General Hospital in Halifax for an ‘exploratory’. The doctors were almost sure that Jeffertson had both male and female organs, but advised against any operations. Soon after, when 14, Jefferson ran away, and returned to the parents who had moved to Saint John, New Brunswick. The mother advised a mastectomy – which was done in Saint John.

Being 14, Jefferson was old enough to work as an adult – and for six months worked for a construction company building a theatre until fired for not being strong enough, Jefferson then took off for Texas and worked on a ranch, herding cattle from horseback. By age 16 Jefferson was a truck driver in the Yukon. After a fight while nightclubbing, Jefferson was in the army hospital for two weeks, where his non-standard body was noticed. Moving on to Edmonton, Jefferson found work as a lumberjack until a fall from a tree led to an injured kidney and hospitalisation.

Then there was a job driving trucks between Vancouver and Calgary. Jefferson gave a ride to a young woman in need, and in Calgary they rented an apartment together. They never made love, and Jefferson could not get to telling her what the problem was. They actually arranged to get married, but Jefferson could not go through with it, and on the day flew to Regina, and sent a letter telling the truth. Jefferson saw a psychiatrist in Regina, and was advised that if he could not live as man, she should become a woman.

In October 1953, now aged 24, Jefferson moved to Toronto, and was admitted to the General Hospital for a minor operation, and was diagnosed using dated jargon as a ‘pseudo-hermaphrodite’.

Jefferson then went to Windsor, Ontario. There Frances Marie– as she was becoming - wore female clothing for the first time. As she walked down Windsor’s Ouellette Avenue she felt that all were staring at her, but it went well. She registered at the Hotel Dieu Hospital, the Catholic Hospital in Windsor, and consulted Dr Walter Percival, who had done a vaginoplasty for a cis woman. Five doctors came to Jefferson’s bedside, and made it clear that there was no going back – that if she had the operation, she would die a woman. Dr Percival created a vagina using skin from her stomach. The operation took two hours, and she was then moved to the Metropolitan Hospital for a month. Afterwards she was started on female hormones.

The Jefferson family had moved to Port Colborne, Ontario and Francis Marie joined them. She had some minor operations with Dr Stuart Wilson in nearby Welland, mainly to remove scar tissue. There had been rumours that a ‘Miss X’ had had a sex change, but she was not identified until Wilson spoke to the Toronto Telegraph – with her permission he said. He gave her name as ‘Josephine Jefferson’, falsely gave her male name as “Kenneth Jefferson”, and claimed that she had had surgery in the US, with no mention of Dr Percival or even Windsor, and that she was only 21. This version was picked up by Associated Press, and repeated in newspapers across the US and Australia. The Ottawa Journal also ran this version 20 March 1954.

However Ron Kenyon of the Toronto Telegraph, who had written up the “Josephine” version, March 19, searched for the real person, found Frances Marie Jefferson and interviewed her and some members of her family.

That story was published in three issues, on page 3 in each case, March 20, 22 and 23.

Other than that, 1954 was not a good year for Marie Jefferson:

A week after the publication, Jefferson was charged by the police after failing to stop at a stop sign and damaging the rear of a car. She was fined $24.50 and the damaged was estimated at $400 to her own car and $200 to the other.

May 24, she was arrested in Buffalo, USA, on hit-and-run and drunken-driving charges, and referred to immigration authorities. They checked their records and realised that she and her male persona were the same, and that as a man she had been deported from Detroit in 1950. She was confined in the women’s wing of Erie County Jail. She pleaded guilty, was given a two-year suspended sentence, and she was deported again.

And in August Marie, back in Canada, was robbed of $37 and attacked by two men said to be US tourists who quickly fled across the border. She was treated for cuts and bruises.

After that she managed to stay out of the press.

* Not Josephine Jefferson, the actress.

“Doctor Identifies Port Colborne Man Changed to Woman”. Associated Press, March 19, 1954.
Ron Kenyon. “Pt Colborne Man Changes His Sex”. The Toronto Telegram, March 19, 1954 p1,3.
“Ontario Man Now Woman – First Canadian Sex-Change”. The Ottawa Journal, March 20, 1954 p36.
Marie Jefferson as told to Ron Kenyon. “ “I Felt Guilty Living as a Man’ … Marie: People who think I’m Amusing Don’t know the horror …”. The Toronto Telegram, March 20, 1954p3.
Ron Kenyon. “Doctors Detail the Operations”. The Toronto Telegram, March 20, 1954p3.
Richard Hayward. “Marie was his Girl Friend, and a Truck Crash was their bond”. The Toronto Telegram, March 20, 1954p3.
Beth Balcom. “Man now Woman‚ Loved to knit” The Toronto Telegram, March 20, 1954p3.
Marie Jefferson as told to Ron Kenyon. “ ‘Now Men whistle at me …’ I like that, too – Yet I ran out on my wedding“. The Toronto Telegram, March 22, 1954 p3.
Richard Hayward. “Operations amazed her friends”. The Toronto Telegram, March 22, 1954p3.
“Liked to Knit, Sew long before Sex Change”. The Ottawa Journal, March 22, 1954 p30.
Marie Jefferson as told to Ron Kenyon. “ “Sex switch aids understanding: Has escaped depths of horrible despair: Home, family her aim”. The Toronto Telegram, March 23, 1954p3.
“Marie Jefferson in Auto Mishap”. Welland Evening Tribune, March 26, 1954 p12.
“Marie Jefferson Fined for Careless Driving”. The Hamilton Spectator, Mar 31, 1954 p31.
“Canadian woman faces jail terms if she returns”. The Buffalo News, May 29, 1954 p4.
“Woman, once deported as a man, jailed”. The Buffalo News, June 9, 1954 p9.
“Officials seek to end sex change confusion”. Buffalo Courier Express, June 23, 1954 p15.
“Marie Jefferson is Deported”. Niagara Falls Review, June 25, 1954 p16.
“Woman once Man treated here after assault: Marie Jefferson attacked in Motel”. The Hamilton Spectator, Aug 18, 1954 p18.
Maélys McArdle. “’The first trans person in Canada’”. maelys.bio, January 23, 2022. Online.

------------

Jefferson’s work history while male was very masculine. Over-compensation perhaps. However Jefferson had left school at age 14, and perhaps could not do office-style work.

Canada did not introduce a European-style health system until 1966. So who paid for the operations? Jefferson says nothing about saving up while working as a truck driver. Did the doctors work pro-bono as the case was experimental?

I have gone with the second Toronto Telegram version as it is an interview with Frances Marie herself, and not a second-hand account.

If Wilson changed her name to protect her privacy, it would have been better to change her family name. In the 1950s, the population of Port Colborne was just over 8,000. Any competent journalist would enquire after/speak to all the Jefferson families in the town and find the real person – as Ron Kenton in fact did.

Wilson also said that such an operation had been done thousands of times – but had been kept quiet before.

The Game of Typology

2026-05-31T22:00:17.498-04:00

There are Typologies of this and that. In particular there are Typologies of being Trans. Four years ago, I listed a Miscellany of Typologies.

The best known Typology of course is that proposed by Harry Benjamin. In 1954 he proposed 6 types grouped into 3 Groups:

The principally psychogenic transvestite. “He is miserable when dressed as a man and immediately comfortable and relaxed in the clothes of a female. He has become an expert in cosmetic make-up, yet is occasionally in social or legal difficulties. He assumes a female first name and wants to be referred to as 'she.' … In fighting his peculiarity he sometimes over-emphazises masculinity and becomes known as a ‘tough guy.’ ”
The intermediate type. “ .. he inclines at times toward transsexualism, but is at other times content with merely dressing and acting as a woman. He wavers between homo- and heterosexual desires usually according to chance meetings.”
The somatopsychic transsexualist. “Feminine appearance and orientation is often striking in these people but masculine features are compatible with full transsexualism. The conviction of these endocrine males that they are really females with faulty sex organs is profound and passionate.”

This he expanded in his 1966 book in what is referred to as the Benjamin Scale, which I reproduce below.

As Kris Kirk wrote in 1984:

"If there is any one lesson to be learned from studying this field it is that the individual is individual. People define themselves and the self-definition must always takes priority over the received wisdom. I have met self-defined draq queens whom others would describe as TV either because they enjoy 'passing'; or because they 'dress' so often that it could be seen as a compulsion; or because they wear lingerie, either to turn men on or to make themselves feel sensuous. I have met drag performers who have grown to dislike drag, and men who insist on being called 'cross-dressers' because they dislike what the word 'drag' stands for, and men who wear part-drag in order to create confusion and doubt amongst others, but who would never wear full drag because that would defeat their object. I know self-defined TVs who are gay or bisexual or oscillating, some of them having learned to cross this sexuality barrier through their cross-dressing. I have met TVs who dress like drag queens and drag queens who dress like TVs, and TVs whose cross-dressing has encouraged them to question their 'male role', which in turn has made them examine their idea of 'femininity'. And perhaps most important of all, I have learned how marshy a terrain is the middle ground between our earlier clear-cut distinction between transvestites and transexuals."

Anyway, as an experiment, as a game, I took the Benjamin Scale and revised it.

I added Group 0, Cis persons, and divided them into 4 kinds: Gender Play, Homeovestism, Involuntary, Narrative/Literary Transvestity.
I removed the differnt Kinsey Scale numbers. Benjamin in effect erased gynephilic “True Transsexuals” and gay Transvestites. Instead I write: “Androphilia, gynephilia and any degree of bisexuality are found with any Cis-Trans type”. I must admit however that I cannot think of any Anne Vitale G3 Gender Deprivation Anxiety Disorder (GEDAD)/Autogynephile who are androphilic - although such can be theorised.
Benjamin had three types of Transvestites: Pseudo, Fetishistic and True. I regard the Pseudo as a type of Cis. Fetishistic is a problematic term: a) various groups, including the Princian tranvestites, use it as an insult b) there is a Fetish subculture which Benjamin’s usage does not reflect at all. Instead of Fetishistic I have placed Cross-dreamer as defined by Jack Molay. I know that some regard ‘Cross-dreamer’ as merely a euphemism for either fetishistic transvestite or autogynephilic - this is polemical and unfair. I and many others do not see it that way.
Benjamin’s type IV has always been confusing. Some took it to be Nonsurgical but living as female full-time, but Benjamin’s only example in his 1966 book was a person who oscillated, sometimes presenting as male, sometimes as female.
So I have moved “Nonsurgical but living as female full-time” into Group 3 as a third type of Transsexual. I posit two types in Group 2, using Benjamin’s word ‘Wavering’: the Oscillators of course, and also the GEDAD)/Autogynephiles. Either of these two types can grow over time and become Nonsurgical or Moderate Intensity Transsexuals - but never High Intensity.
I have also added a Type which I call “Desister/Changeback”. This includes not only such as Walt Heyer, but also Jennie June who gave up transvesting and became a well-known male writer.

So as a reminder, here is the Benjamin Scale:

And here is my tentative revision. Please remember that I am doing this as a demonstration that Typologies never actually do what they claim. You, probably, will think of many trans person who just do not fit anywhere on this chart.

Towards a TS dictionary -- the letters Xx, Yy, Zz

2026-05-21T13:44:30.369-04:00

BOLD=cross reference, see item when appropriate letter posted

X

An indicator of gender inclusivity, e.g. Latinx, Mx, Womxn, etc. These terms are written but not always pronounceable. X is also the third option specified by the International Civil Aviation Organization in addition to M or F. Some countries permit this on their passports.

Xanith خنيث‎

An assigned male third gender in Oman, who are socially accepted as female e.g. at weddings. In later life some go back to living as male. Also spelt Khanith, and as such related to the word Mukhannathun.

Xenoestrogen

Estrogen Imitators including widely used industrial compounds, such as PCBs, Bisphenol A, and Phthalates, which have estrogenic effects on living organisms. In some fish species they induce sex changes. They have reduced sperm counts and induced precocious Puberty. They are certainly acting Epigenetically and are probably affecting the frequency of Transgender.

Xenovestity.

Dressing as a foreigner,

Xier/xies .. xiem/xien

A German gender neutral pronoun.

X-Jenda Xジェンダ

A Japanese term for gender queer / non-binary.

Xtravaganza, House of

An initially Latinx LGBTQ New York ballroom house founded in 1982 by Hector Valle. One of the first to join was Angie Xtravaganza, who assumed the role of house mother. It was later opened to other racial groups. Several members of the House of Xtravaganza of this period went on to become pioneers and icons within the ballroom community. The House was also known for its stable of “impossible beauties”, Trans women who reigned in the ballrooms and worked as professional models and entertainers.

XO

See Turner’s Syndrome.

XX

The designation for standard female sex chromosomes in mammals. See Homogametic.

XXY

See Klinefelter Syndrome (KS).

XY

The designation for standard male sex chromosomes in mammals. See Heterogametic.

Yard

An old term for a Penis, cf. the French Verge which if masculine, le verge, means a yard (=3 feet) and if feminine, la verge, means penis. In 18^th century usage, anal sex would be the introduction of a Yard into another’s Fundament.

Ycleptance

Naming and being named. An important process during Transition when a new name is taken and accepted by others. From the early modern verb ‘to clepe’=to name or to style. A term revived by John Money. Ycleptance can also occur in marriage and in religious conversions

Yearning

A feeling of intense longing for something. A trans woman has or had an intense yearning to be a woman. This is a philosophically neutral term that does not imply choice, social construction or biological causation.

Yimpininni

Trans and gay indigenous persons on the Tiwi Islands off the coast of Australia’s Northern Territory. They are estimated to be as many as 5% of the population. Crystal Love, the entertainer, is Yimpininni. Sometimes called Sistergirls.

Yirka'-la'ul

Yirka'-la'ul (=soft man) were assigned male shamans among the reindeer-herding Chukchi in the very far east of Siberia, who forfeited their masculinity and gained esteem. The yirka'-la'ul had a choice of the young men from whom she took a husband, a marriage that would last until the death of one of the partners.

Yogyakarta Principles

A document about human rights in the areas of sexual orientation and gender identity, published as the outcome of an international meeting of human rights groups in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, in November 2006. The Principles were supplemented in 2017, expanding to include new grounds of gender expression and sex characteristics, and a number of new principles. The Principles and the supplement contains a set of precepts intended to apply the standards of international human rights law to address the abuse of human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex persons.

Yonkers Professional Hospital, New York

Located at 27 Ludlow St, Yonkers, New York, and partly owned by Dr Benito Rish, who was also president of its board. Rish did Transgender Surgery on patients referred by Harry Benjamin and Leo Wollman. Transgender surgery was also done by Dr David Wesser, who had done 200 sex-change operations by 1980, mainly using Burou’s technique.

From 1972 Dr Rish was sued for malpractice several times. Yonkers Professional Hospital was closed down after a surprise inspection by the state in 1980, and the next year Dr Wesser was charged with negligence by a panel that was hand-picked to be partial against him.

The building stood empty for almost a decade, and was then converted into apartments.

The Yuga Ball, Metairie, New Orleans

The first gay 'krewe' – of the krewes that put on the New Orleans Mardi Gras celebrations – was the Yuga Krewe, founded in 1958. The fourth and fifth Yuga Balls were held in the New Orleans suburb of Metairie in a school that had a large dance studio, and was surrounded by a wooded area close to the lake. The second gay krewe, that of Petronius, held its first ball in 1962 at the same location. However, the Yuga Ball a week later was raided by the Parish Police. Some managed to flee, but many were arrested in what the police dubbed a ‘lewd stag party’. Those arrested had their names printed in the newspapers and thus most lost their jobs.

Yūsei Hogo Hō 優生保護法 Japanese Eugenic Protection Law 1948

While this law permitted sterilisations and abortions, even without the consent of the persons involved, it also forbade any unnecessary operations that resulted in sterilisation. This was the charge in the Buru Boi Saiban trial 1965-6 in which a sex-change doctor was found guilty of removing otherwise healthy sex organs. There were no more sex change operations in Japan until 1998.

Zee Zee

A word for Penis favoured by April Ashley.

Zenana

A term in Pakistan for a Kothi.

Zie, Hir

Gender-neutral pronouns popularised by Leslie Feinberg. As in Zie and hir friends have arrived.

Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft (=Journal of Sexology)

The first scholarly Sexology journal. It was first published in 1908 by Georg H. Wigand's Verlang, Leipzig, edited by Friedrich. Krauss & Herman Rohleder, with help from Magnus Hirschfeld. It was then merged with Hirschfeld’s Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen. It was later revived and published 1914-28 by A. Marcus & E. Webers Verlag of Bonn.

Zoovestity

Dressing as an animal.

Zwischenstufen

The term used by Magnus Hirschfeld for homosexuality, transvestism and other intermediate stages. See also Geschlechtsübergänge.

Zwittertum

A German term for Intersex is use in the early 20^th century.

ZW

The designation for standard female chromosomes in birds, fish, insects, reptiles etc. See Heterogametic.

ZZ

The designation for standard male chromosomes in birds, fish, insects, reptiles etc. See Homogametic.

Marta Olmos Romero (1931 -1972) Mexican pioneer

2026-05-17T13:46:41.445-04:00

Olmos was from Veracruz, a middle child with five siblings. Feminine even as a child, Olmos played with dolls and did female chores, and had a first sexual encounter with a man at age 13. After a denouncement from the father, Olmos moved to Mexico City and at 21 was working as a men’s fashion clerk.

In November 1952, just weeks before the Christine Jorgensen story first broke in New York, Olmos was suffering from chronic amoebic colitis. This was treated at the clinic of Rafael Sandoval Camacho and his team. They treated the colitis, but quickly realised that there was another issue to be addressed.

Sandoval, a graduate of the prestigious Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, specialised in public sanitation and school hygiene, and also practised surgery at the Sanatorio Flemming and had developed interests in treating homosexuality surgically.

Olmos was interested in medical treatments that would bring out her essential womanhood; Sandoval and his team, Antonio Mercado Montes, Carlos Dupont Bribiesca and Marco Antonio Dupont, were thinking in terms of the gender binary and how to make their patient heteronormative. They completed a clinical case study, diagnosing Olmos with an ‘intersexual syndrome’ manifesting in homosexuality and feminine mannerisms, habits and libido. They researched Olmos’ biography, noting childhood illnesses, a cousin suffering ‘oligophrenia’ (‘interrupted mental development’ associated with hysteria and homosexuality), a preference for flashy masculine attire, and desires to cross-dress. They conducted anthropometric examinations; Binet–Simon and Raven intelligence tests; Rorschach, Szondi and Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) psychodiagnostics; and blood tests.

Marta as a brunette

From preceding sexologists, Sandoval concluded that homosexuality was pathological but could be converted. However a reorienting towards heteronormativity left an irresolvable, ‘implicit antagonism between the psychic and the somatic’. In addition, too few competent analysts existed. Contrariwise Sandoval also rejected such therapy that would help such men accept themselves, adjust to societal hostility and live openly. He thought that this would leave worrisome structural and functional issues unresolved.

What the team found with Olmos was perhaps an artifact of their research tools and their presuppositions. What they did find they regarded as pathologies: sexual complexes causing insecurity and anti-societal aggression, hysteria and ‘feminine sexual tendencies accompanied by the need to constitute as a love receptacle, and an intense desire to receive tenderness, strong depressive and hysterical states’, thoughts of suicide, pubic hair with a ‘feminine’ triangle pattern. They diagnosed ‘degeneration’ and ‘passive homosexuality’.

Marta as a blonde

From this perspective, they provided Olmos, Marta as she was now addressed, with what she wanted. Over a period of 18 months, 1952-4, Marta was treated psychiatrically, hormonally and surgically. The first surgery was a penectomy in May 1953, and a final vaginoplasty in March 1954: six surgeries altogether, four in private clinics, and two at Marta’s home. The pioneering Mexican pharmaceutical company, Syntex, provided oestrogen and progesterone, and in effect Marta was a test subject for their untested product. Syntex later marketed the product as Norethisterone - used for birth control and menopausal therapy. Syntex re-located to California in 1959.

The involvement of Syntex led to support from the then president, Adolfo Ruiz Cortines (1952-8), who also extended the vote to women in October 1953, and two lawyers close to Ruiz, Manuel Rangel y Vázquez and León Méndez Berman, who provided both funding and moral support. This was expected to be Mexico’s next scientific triumph.

Sandoval’s team photographed Olmos’ body as it changed, recorded their procedures, extolled their methods, presented to the press and screened surgical films for colleagues.

The eminent criminologist Alfonso Quiroz Cuarón who regarded homosexuality as dangerous but imprisonment as ineffective, expressed interest in Sandoval’s proposal.

Some of the family objected, and even tried legal objections. However Marta’s sister Soledad was supportive, and her mother Refugio Romero relented.

In May 1954 the story was in the press, at first the Mexican, and then internationally. Excélsior interviewed Marta and published restrained reports, an editorial cartoon and a letter to the editor, but the articles in its tabloid Últimas Noticias, supplement Magazine de Policía, were splashy, front -page and with lots of photos. The modern Mexican term for gender surgery, ‘operación jarocha’ (‘Veracruz operation’) is a memory that Olmos was originally from Veracruz.

Marta and Soledad, her sister

Marta’s story was compared to that of Christine Jorgensen which had been in the press the previous year, and that of Betty Cowell which had been published just weeks before. Marta’s operation was regarded as the first of its kind to be performed in the Americas. Press accounts quoted Marta proclaiming “Now I have found myself, and I am happy”. She also said: “‘I felt feminine impulses. I liked to cook, sew, and keep house” - the kind of sentiment expected of women, trans or cis, in the 1950s. She dyed her hair blond, and spoke of marriage, and men, strangers, proposed to her. She also spoke of having children and returning to work, this time selling female attire. After the devaluation of the peso from MX$8.65 to 12.50 per US$ in April 1954, and the subsequent inflation, Marta presented herself as a bona fide Mexican woman, somewhat conservative and Catholic. She had chosen her name after praying to St Martha of Bethany (sister of Mary and Lazarus). She hoped to be re-baptised, but the Church dismissed the idea, saying that she was an unnecessarily mutilated healthy male.

Initially, some Mexican commentators and officials near the Ruiz Cortines government celebrated the operation as proof that Mexico could stand with “advanced” nations in medical science.

While initial coverage in the press was sympathetic, it changed quickly. Physicians, politicians, clerics, and cartoonists turned on the case, denouncing the surgery as a fraudulent “cure”. They wrote about her as an afeminado, a Mexican term from the 19th century for men who were not heteronormative. The coverage of Christine Jorgensen led to the term Cristinas being used, not just for trans women, but also for queer men in general. Marta was compared to the foreigners Jorgensen and Cowell.

As Ryan Jones says: “Marta’s trans womanhood was thus an ‘import’ at a time of nationalism, indigenismo, modernising patriarchy, and scepticism towards foreign ‘contamination’. She evoked earlier cases where the ‘national’ was defined against a foreign, queer, grotesque other. After initial enthusiasm, the conceptual space for considering trans(sexuality) as a Mexican state of being – and transitions as legitimate for achieving it – withered. Marta instead epitomised an afeminado/‘Cristina’ defrauding the public”

Marta had briefly made public appearances and there was even talk of potential film work. However the state was moving to maintain its moral authority against youth culture and rock ‘n’ roll, and prohibited Jorgensen from performing in Mexico. Fernández Bustamante – director of Mexico City’s Oficina de Espectáculos – banned Olmos from appearing in vaudeville revues, decreeing no ‘spectacle exploiting morbid interest’ would be tolerated. Rómulo O’Farrill’s XHTV stated its ‘Tele-Síntesis’ programme would not interview Marta. The Asociación Nacional de Actores, led by Congressman Rodolfo Landa, refused her membership; which removed all stage, radio or TV performances because she was not a ‘bona fide actor’.

Direct reporting on Marta diminished, but her case persisted in debates about homosexuality, “degeneracy” and the bounds of modern medicine in Mexico.

Her later life is not recorded.

Ryan Jones found a death certificate dated 29 December 1972 for ‘Martha Olmos Romero’, referencing her mother, Refugio, which is likely hers. If so she died age 40 from a myocardial infarction and twisted, occluded intestine. She never did marry.

“Un mexicano se convirtio en mujer y dice que tendra hijos”. Los Angeles La Opinion, May 6, 1954: 1
“Hopes to ‘Make Some Man a Good wife’: Husky Mexican clerk is transformed into woman in series of operations”. Lubbock Morning Avalanche, May 7, 1954: 39.
“La cirugia ha logrado de nuevo convertir a un hombre en mujer”. Phoenix El Sol, May 14, 1954: 3.
“El Lic. Jose Vasconcelos condena la intervencion medica en estos casos”. Phoenix El Sol, May 21, 1954: 3.
Juan Morales. "Mexico's Hush-Hush Clinic: Sex Surgery While You Wait!". Whisper Magazine, 8,6, 1955:24-5.
Rafael Sandoval Camacho, Una contribución experimental al estudio de la homosexualidad. 1957.
Emily Skidmore. “Constructing the "Good Transsexual": Christine Jorgensen, Whiteness, and Heteronormativity in the Mid-Twentieth-Century Press”. Feminist Studies, 37, June 2011,
Fabrizzo Mc Manus. “Homosexuality, Homophobia, and Biomedical Sciences in Twentieth Century Mexico”, Sexuality & Culture, 18,2, 2014.
Omar Durán-García. Aesthetic Misdiagnoses: Biomedicine, Homosexualities, and Medical Cultures in Mexico, 1953-2006, Phd thesis, Columbia University, 2021: Chp 2.
Omar Durán-García interviewed by Analia Lavin. “Mexican Homosexualities and the Distortions of the Medical Gaze”. Medical Health Humanities, July 26, 2022. Online
Ryan M Jones. “‘Now I Have Found Myself, and I Am Happy’: Marta Olmos, Sex Reassignment, the Media and Mexico on a Global Stage, 1952–7”. Journal of Latin American Studies, 55, 2023.

As is normal in hispanophonic countries, Marta had two surnames, Olmos from her father and Romero from her mother. She is sometimes referred to as Marta Olmos Ramiro, but in common usage more frequently as simply Marta Olmos. Skidmore refers to her as Romero but not as Olmos for some reason, and, strangely, Mc Manus, who argues that Olmos never properly consented to transitioning, does not give her a name at all but refers to “an unidentiﬁed 21-year-old boy from Veracruz”.

There are no EN.Wikipedia articles for Marta Olmos or for Rafael Sandoval Camacho, and more notably no ES.Wikipedia articles either.

Valérie Wilson (1953-2011) actrice, performer

2026-05-13T15:24:17.776-04:00

Valérie Wilson was an early transitioner. By her late teens she was living as female and performing at L’Alcazar, a nightclub competing with Le Carrousel.

From there she was recruited to act in the sex comedy La michetonneuse. As she was still under age, her mother had to sign the contract. La michetonneuse was filmed 1969-1970 but not released until 1972. The film follows Justine who leaves her family and university in search of freedom. She is befriended by Valérie, a trans performer at L’Alcazar (and the film includes scenes of Valérie’s actual performance at L’Alcazar).

From this, Valérie Wilson was recruited to act in what turned out to be the final film by the New Wave/existentialist director Jean-Pierre Melville. Un Flic (A Cop) starring Alain Delon and Catherine Deneuve, and Wilson was the second major female character in the film. She drives a good car and wears a fur coat, and is an informer to Delon’s cop, and is apparently cis, but after Delon’s cop fails to capture the heroin shipment, he blames the messenger and threatens her with jail for cross-dressing and uses transphobic slurs.

Wilson’s third film, Un ange au paradis, is of a married man having an affair with a trans woman. After its release, she was interviewed on the televison program Chutes en tourney. The director of the film, Jean-Pierre Blanc was also interviewed in the same program, and he labelled Valérie’s character the titular ‘angel’ of the film (reflected also in the character’s name, Marie-Ange), saying that she was the only ‘honest’ character. He also stated that he had deliberately cast a ‘real travesti’ and that being one ‘is not all bad’.

Her last film was Change pas de main, a porn film, features Valérie as a nightclub dancer in the first 20 minutes.

After that she withdrew from public life.

Francis Leroi (dir). La michetonneuse, scr : Francois Jouffa & Francis Leroi, with Christine Leuk as Justine and Valérie Wilson as Valérie. France 90 mins 1972.
Jean-Pierre Melville (dir & scr). Un Flic, with Alain Delon, Catherine Deneuve and Valérie Wilson as Gaby. France 98 mins 1972.
Jean-Pierre Blanc (dir & scr). Un ange au paradis, with Valérie Wilson as Marie-Ange Bystrzanowiez, Pascale Arcia as Le Transsexuel and Jean-Claude Dreyfus as Un travesti de la Grande Eugène. France 85 mins 1973.
Entretien avec Valérie Wilson. Chutes en tourne, 3ème chaîne, Octobre 1973.
Paul Vecchiali (dir). Change pas de main, scr: Noel Simsolo & Paul Vecchiali, with Valérie Wilson as Mylène. France 92 mins 1975.
Diana Santiago. « Valérie Wilson ». Diane et le sexe des anges. 2011. Archive.
Willow Catelyn Maclay. Musings on Transgender Cinema: "The Strange Movie within a Movie in Jean-Pierre Melville's "Un Flic"". Patreon.com, Jan 17, 2021. Online.
Christopher Wolff & Jesse Blanchard “‘They Lack Imagination…’ – Valérie Wilson and Trans Life in the Audiovisual Archive”. View: Journal of European Television History & Culture, 14,28, 2025. Online.

FR.Wikipedia IMDB Allociné Elcinema

---------

Wolf and Blanchard quote the La michetonneuse press kit that claims that Valérie was 19 when the film was made. However if she were born in 1953, she would be only 16/17 in 1969/1970.

IMDB names Wilson’s character in Un Flic as ‘Gaby’; other sources do not give her a name or list her as ‘transvestite’. She is not referred to by name in the film.

Maclay in particular reads a past affair between ‘Gaby’ and Delon’s cop based on facial expressions and intonations. Such is in the eye of the beholder.

Two books that never arrived

2026-05-07T09:06:00.000-04:00

Over the years I noticed again and again comments in various places, and particularly on maewest.blogspot.com, by R Mark Desjardins (1963-2025) that had something interesting to say about Ms West. He often mentioned that he was writing In Search of Mae West, but the book was never published.

Mark recently died. Hopefully his executor will be arranging publication.

"I've been asked many times when my manuscript "In Search of Mae West" will be available. Hopefully sharing this backstory will shed some light on my journey. Originally, my interest in Mae West was casual, and an intense dream encouraged me to delve deeper into her life. In 1994 I travelled to Los Angeles and by stroke of good luck, had the opportunity to meet several of the fellows who surrounded Mae during the last ten years of her life. Many previously unknown facts were disclosed and I was dumbfounded that these stories were finally being shared.
Returning home to Vancouver, Canada, I pondered over what I was told, and in 1996, I returned to Los Angeles and got these fellows to relate more insights on tape. When I shared my 2001 first draft of "Saint Mae Our Lady of Hips & Quips," weighing in at 350 pages, it was enthusiastically received. One very important close friend of Mae's thought my chapter on one personal assistant was overly harsh. Truth be known, communication with that individual had broken down, and information I utilized was from other members of the "inner group" who had axes to grind.
It took over a decade to mend fences and to obtain a face to face taped interview, which took place over two days, June 4 and 5th, 2013, to be fair in getting his story right. In the ensuing years, many more previously unavailable sources have become available to me to provide a much deeper examination of very important people extremely close to Mae whose voices have never been heard from before. Blending all this new material into my original work has proven to be a huge undertaking. Frankly, I may have more than one book worth of original material, but that ultimately will be the decision of a good editor.
Meanwhile, I would like to share two different cover possibilities I have entertained over the years. However, no final decision has been made. Brian J. Bradley's new book, "Outrageous Misfits" has cited my first draft, "Saint Mae Our Lady of Hips & Quips" in his bibliography. His book on the life and times of Craig Russell is a must read, and he has been very supportive of my project." Mark Desjardins on Facebook.

---------------------

Margaret Branch had a fascinating life, in the French Resistance, studied with Carl Jung, psychiatric social worker with gifted children, did liaison with trans and intersex persons at Guys Hospital, etc. In 2016 it was announced that Ed Knox, a relative of Margaret's wife, was working on a much anticipated biography of Margaret.

That was 10 years ago.

Towards a TS dictionary --- the letter Qq+

2026-04-30T18:54:00.002-04:00

BOLD=cross reference, see item when appropriate letter posted

Qa'cikicheca

Qa'cikicheca (=similar to a man) are assigned-female shamans among the reindeer-herding Chukchi in the very far east of Siberia, who took a young woman as wife with social approval.

Quariwarmi

Assigned-male shamans in female dress in the pre-colonial Inca civilisation who mediated between the symmetrically dualistic spheres of Andean cosmology and daily life.

Queen. Quean

Both words are descended from Proto-Germanic *kwenon or similar, "wife, woman"; which in turn is descended from Proto-Indo-European *gwen- "woman". In addition to meaning a woman, especially a robust or spirited one, they came to mean:

a) A ruling woman or consort of a king

b) A prostitute, an impudent or disreputable woman

c) An effeminate gay man

d) A rather camp rock group

e) A female impersonator

f) A trans woman

The Queen, 1968

A film about the Miss All-American Camp Beauty Pageant final, which went on to be a sensation at the Cannes International Film Festival, and made a star of Rachel Harlow.

Queens Liberation Front (QLF)

The major New York social and activist group for trans persons in the 1970s. It was founded in 1970 by Barbara De Lamere (using her stage name of Bunny Eisenhower – she was a a member of the Ridiculous Theatrical Company), Lee Brewster (who ran Lee’s Mardi Gras transvestite boutique), Bebe Scarpinato (a teacher), Vicky West (artist) and Chris Moore (performer). They campaigned and hired lawyers to de-criminalise cross-dressing in New York, which was achieved in 1971. Previously, under city ordinances a bar or club could be closed and patrons arrested, simply because a single person, deemed to be cross-dressed, was present. Furthermore the words "homosexuals, lesbians, or persons pretending to be ..." were also struck, thus decriminalising gay clubs and parties. In addition, the still extant 1965 Anti-Mask: New York Penal Law criminalising "the wearing of mask or disguises by three or more persons in a public place" was found inapplicable to those in drag. The QLF publication was Drag, a magazine of Transvestism.

Queer

Possibly from the Indo-European twerkw -> Latin torquere (to twist) and early English cwer (crooked, not straight).

a) 16^th century: strange or illegitimate, and in Scottish as an adjectival form of ‘query’

b) 19^th century: odd. “It was a queer sensation having a woman in the pew beside me”.

c) Late 19^th century: contrary to one’s wish

d) Early 20^th century: sick or ill. Until the 1960s the following was a perfectly innocent remark with no suggestion of sexuality: “Yesterday I felt quite queer, but after a good night’s sleep, today I am completely gay”

e) Mid 20^th century: a pejorative and offensive term for gay or trans people.

f) Late 20^th century: gay and lesbian activists reclaimed the term as an empowering self-designation.

g) Any person whose sexual orientation or gender identity is other than that of the heterosexual mainstream and/or the gender binary.

h) GLBT persons who are not Homonormative.

While many, perhaps older, persons still refuse the term Queer as they were subjected to it as a painful slur, others appreciate it as term of defiance, and also as an inclusive term whereby one need not specify oneself as gay, bi, trans, nonbinary or whatever.

It is particularly useful in distinguishing modern queer persons from Heteronormative Sodomists.

Queer as Folk; Nowt so Queer as Folk

An old English expression, usually spoken in a mock-Yorkshire accent, indicating how strange other people are—thus, until recently not a sex or gender term at all. A longer version is: “th’whole world’s queer ‘cept for me and thee, and oft I wonder about thee”.

In 1999 Russell T Davis produced a television series on Britain’s Channel 4 about life in Manchester’s gay village. He wanted to call it ‘Queer as Fuck’ but settled for the expression “Queer as Folk”. The title was retained for the US remake, set in Pittsburgh, but actually filmed in Toronto’s gay village, despite most US audiences probably not understanding the allusion.

Queerbaiting

A film or television program hints that a character is gay or trans but does not follow through, because keeping its Straight audience is more important. See Queer Coding.

Queer by Choice

A web site for gay and trans person who are not at all satisfied by the supposed Biologistic explanations of being gay or trans. http://www.queerbychoice.com. See Choice.

Queer Coding

Gay or Trans characters in a film or television program when such was illegal or forbidden by the studio bosses. Gay characters such as Disney villains or minor characters in Hitchcock films would signal by dress, comportment or facial expression such that only a minority of viewers caught on. See Queerbaiting.

Queer Heterosexuality

Heterosexuals who are non-traditional in their gender expressions, including masculine women and feminine men, and are Queer positive in their opinions. Many actual Queer people contest this usage maintaining that it is Appropriation.

Queer Music Heritage

An archive compiled by JD Doyle of queer musicians and their music. Includes both drag performers and trans musicians, as well as gay and lesbian musicians. www.queermusicheritage.com.

Queer Nation

An LGBTQ direct-action organization founded in 1990 in New York in reaction to the escalation of anti-gay violence on the streets and prejudice in the arts and media. The group was known for its confrontational tactics, its slogans, and the practice of outing. In 1993 Trangender Nation was founded after dissatisfaction re the groups attitude to trans issues.

Queerphobia

Fear and hatred of all persons whose sex and/or gender is not the standard Cis Heterosexuality.

Queer Street

Not a gender term at all. An old expression for money troubles or even bankruptcy. ‘Queer’ implies contrary to one’s wish.

In 19^th century boxing the term was also used for a boxed who was ‘out on his feet’ – that is stunned but still standing and unable to defend himself.

Some modern writers use 'queer street', ironically or otherwise, for a person's encounter with queer culture.

Queer Theory

An academic discipline that began in the 1980s influenced by philosopher Michel Foucault. Generally they study Gender and sexuality practices other than Cis Heterosexuality as social and cultural phenomena.

Queer, Transgender and Intersex People of Colour (QTIPOC)

An Umbrella term that puts transgender and intersex in focus, rather than gay and lesbian.

Questioning

A person, probably nominally straight, who is exploring and perhaps trying out different labels.

Quim (noun)

Female genitalia, the vulva. More used in the 19^th century by speakers wanting to be naughty. Connected to ‘queem’ a term used in carpentry for an exact fit. See also the cognate term Queen.

Quim (verb)

What a woman does during heterosexual genital sex. (The word ‘fuck’ is more correctly used only for what the man does). In neither standard English vocabulary of literature and science, nor the vernacular vocabulary of uncensored speech, are there other terms for this, except for Swive.

Estelle Asmodelle (1964 - 2026) dancer, activist, model, physicist, artist, musician.

2026-04-26T08:14:00.000-04:00

Original version. January 2009.

Croot was raised in small towns in New South Wales, and at 16 was seriously ill with spinal meningitis, and spent a year in hospital.

Croot transitioned to Estelle Maria Croot while at Wollongong University studying science and maths. She also started creating abstract art on large canvases, and was in a music group that played experimental and avant-garde music. Because of discrimination Estelle left university, and studied dance at Sydney Dance Company and also belly dancing with an Egyptian Dance instructor.

As Estelle Asmodelle she worked as a belly dancer in variety shows in Australia and in East Asia. She was detained in Singapore and elsewhere because her passport had an ‘M’ for gender. She, and others, lobbied the Australian and the New South Wales governments that she be allowed to amend her birth certificate. In 1987, she was the first Australian transsexual to get her birth certificate, and then her passport changed. She also lobbied for changes to the anti-discrimination laws and for research into ectopic pregnancies for transwomen. This resulted in a media storm which she was able to ride appearing in hundreds of magazine articles and frequently on Australian and Japanese television.

She took up modelling to promote her dancing, but it became her more important career. She was the first Australian transsexual to appear nude in a mainstream magazine, Australian Playgirl.

She lived in Japan 1988-1992 working as a model. She had a walk-on part in the Japanese film Ai to heisei no iro – Otoko, 1989, a transgender sexual fantasy that mainly played in art galleries. She also did some technology consulting.

In Australia she was in Secret Fantasies, 1992, and the belly-dance instructional film, The Enchanted Dance, 1994 that was controversial purely because Estelle was trans. She also made an appearance as 'girl on beach' in one episode of the television soap opera Home and Away.

In 1998 she published an autobiographical novel, An Aesthetic Dream - an autobiography. Also that year she founded the internet company Ellenet Pty. Ltd.

In 2000, Estelle lived and modelled in Los Angeles, and took acting classes at the Lena Harris Workshop.

She had continued large canvas abstract art, and was exhibited in Tokyo, Melbourne and Sydney, and Los Angeles. Her first art book was Transience, 2010.

Since 2005 Estelle has been composing electronic music, and has released 11 albums.

In 2008 she took a course in Astronomy at the University of Central Lancashire. She was interested in special and general relativity and its relationship to cosmology and time, and published papers in the Journal of the Institute of Science and Technology and the Asian Journal of Physics. In Cosmos Magazine she published "Neptune's day measured to the second", and "The Milky Way is a galactic cannibal", both June 2012. In 2013 she published Cosmology - the Ultimate Introduction. In June 2012 she became a Member of the Australian Society of Gravitation and General Relativity, and in May 2013 also became a Member of the International Society on General Relativity and Gravitation (ISGRG).

In 2016 her internet company Ellenet Pty. Ltd was sold.

In 2018 Estelle started a PhD at the Centre for Quantum Computation & Communication Technology, School of Mathematics and Physics, University of Queensland, working in the field of quantum mechanics and relativity.

Estelle died, age 62, in 2026.

Music albums:

2009 – Electronic Mischief 2010 – Transelectric 2010 – Dark Universe 2012 – Asmelectrix 2013 – Grooveatropolis Vol I 2013 – Electronic Mischief II 2014 – Near Earth Landscape 2015 – Dark Universe II 2015 – Monotonic Meditations 2015 – Improvera - Quite Moments 2016 – Grooveatropolis Vol II

Some of her newspaper and magazine articles:

Cleo (May 1987), People (Nov 1985 & 1993), Post (Dec 1988 Sep 1992), Penthouse Forum (1986 & 1991), New Idea (March 1986), She (July 1996), New Woman (June 1992 & 1998), Naughty Sydney (Cover – November 1991), Tomadachi (June 1991), Wellbeing (May 1989 & 1993), Nature & Health (November 1997).

EN.Wikipedia. www.asmodelle.com IMDB Alchetron

Wilma Creith (1933-1980) electrican, bus driver

2026-04-11T12:36:00.000-04:00

Creith, an electrician, was married and they had two children, and lived in Belfast. However Creith increasingly could not continue as a man. After Creith did some electrical work for Werner Heubeck, the German managing director of Ulsterbus, Heubeck considered her situation, and offered that she should train as a bus driver. She first drove as a man.

She was assigned to the school run for pupils of Sullivan Upper and Sacred Heart of Mary Grammar in Holywood/Ard Mhic Nasca and St Columbanus in Bangor, both in County Down.

Photo in the Sunday World

Cara-Friend had been set up in 1974 as a volunteer counselling service for GLBT persons in Ulster. In 1976, a separate transsexual support group was formed – Wilma was part of the team.

In 1977, when she socially transitioned Heubeck gave her support. He provided a specially made uniform and shoes for her, and the union and the other drivers followed his lead. In December that year the Belfast Sunday World, outed Wilma on its front page “ ‘Call me Wilma’ says bus man Bill”. Despite this only a few adults objected to her, although some of the children were rather rude.

In 1980 Heubeck gave Wilma five weeks sick pay to travel to England, to St James Hospital, Leeds for completion surgery, and to recover afterwards. The operation apparently went well – making her the first Northern Ireland trans woman to have the operation. Heubeck was the first to phone her after the operation.

But there was a minor complication, and a second operation was carried out. A few days later she died from what was determined to be a pulmonary embolism from high levels of estrogen.

---

In November 2024 theatre director Paula McFetrige put on a play loosly based on Wilma Creith in an actual Ulster Bus from the 1970s parked in the grounds of Belfast Castle.

Sean Boyne. “ ‘Call me Wilma‘ says bus man Bill”. Sunday World, December 1977.
“Ulster sex change man dies“. Belfast Telegraph, 29 August 1980.p1.
“Inquest on sex change victim“. Bradford Telgraph and Argus, 30 August 1980, p13.
Andrew McNair. “The transgender bus driver in 1970s Belfast”. BBC, 18 November 2024. Online.
Bronagh Lawson. “ARTS: All aboard for an inspirational slice of trans history”. com, November 22, 2024. Online.
Paula McFetridge (dir). Suspected Device. Raphaël Amahl Khouri (scr) with Mariah Lauca as Wilam Creith. Performed at Belfact Castle 1 November-1 December 2024.

----------------------

Heubeck was renowned for many things, including redesigning all Belfast bus routes to go in and out of the city centre, and getting Ulsterbus to turn a profit despite the Troubles. But he's best remembered for actually carrying bombs from buses during the Troubles.

In total, 17 employees from both Ulsterbus and Citybus were killed during The Troubles, with 1,484 buses in total being maliciously destroyed from 1964 to the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.

St James Hospital, Leeds later became the location for the Leeds Gender Identity Service.

When I had surgery a few years later, I was told to stop taking estrogen before and during the operation. I thought that this was standard practice after the unfortunate death of Peggy Wijnen in 1967. I found no discussion of this aspect re Wilma.

Andréa Furet (2002 - ) actrice

2026-03-19T10:27:00.001-04:00

Furet was rasied in Paris, father a communications manager, mother a journalist at the magazine Elle. Furet dreamed of acting, and at age 11 had a first film role, a small male part in La Vallée des mensonges/Meurtres à les Cevennes, which became part of the long running Meurtres à … series, each episode set in a different part of France.

At age 13 Furet was accepted at the Cours Florent drama school. Furet was in a few more films playing teenage males.

A year later Furet discovered the word ‘transidentité’ and immediately connected to it. However it was not until June 2019 when she turned 17 that she came out to her parents and other relatives – and was accepted. She chose the name ‘Andréa’ in homage to the protagonist in The Devil Wears Prada. She was able to start taking female hormones, although then still under 18. Then she did another course at Le Cours Florent, followed by threatre studies at Université Sorbonne-Nouvelle.

In 2020 Andréa was cast at the trans protagonist of Il est elle (He is she) IMDB, adapted from the graphic novel Barricades de Jaypee by Charlotte Bousquet (2018). It was first broadcast in November 2020 on Belgian television in two parts. Iin March 2021, Andréa won the best actress prize and the film script the best script prize at Luchon Television Creations Festival before the French broadcast in November 2021 as one part. The story tells of Juju in a small town whose mother moves her to another town where she is accepted – until social networking outs her.

In May 2022, Andréa Furet competed to be Miss Paris, was one of the twelve finalists, and came second (première dauphine) – the first trans woman to do so.

In 2026 Furet was again in Meurtres à …, in Meurtres en Périgord vert , this time playing the lead police investigator, who is outed as trans 30 minutes in, but continues, and solves the case.

Marie Quenet. “ ‘Il est Elle’ sur TF1 : l'artiste transgenre Andréa Furet interprète une histoire qui fait écho à la sienne”. fr, 2/11/2021. Online.

FR.Wikipedia IMDB

___________________

Meurtres à …, now in its 15^th season, is available in North America on the streaming service mhzchoice.com.

Jenny Moore (1887 - ?) keeper of a disorderly house

2026-03-11T13:08:00.002-04:00

Moore was born in the then slum area of Oakwellgate, Gateshead (just across the River Tyne from Newcastle), and raised as a boy called Robert. Moore and her siblings were raised by their mother. From an early age she had declared herself to be Jennie, a female, and attempted to live as girl. By 1901 13-year-old Robert was incarcerated at the Abbot Memorial Ragged and School, where children under 14 were sent after arrest for vagrancy, truancy and/or begging, or if vulnerable to abuse and neglect. This was an ‘industrial school’ where children were offered skill training and ‘moral education’.

By 1911, when she was 24, Jennie, listed as Robert, was living at a seaman’s boarding house in South Shields and working there as a servant, and was so recorded in the Census of that year.

Daily Mirror 1913

By 1913 Moore was living as Jennie, and was convicted of keeping a disorderly house in Hartlepool, County Durham. She was taken to Durham for trial, and a street photograph of her was published in the Daily Mirror. Many so charged would have appeared in court in male clothing to mitigate the sentence, and claimed the transvesting as a lark or fancy dress. Jennie however was now confirmed in her gender, and appeared as her true self.

Jennie and her brother Fred Coulthard were in Gateshead in 1915. They were observed by the police, and charged with “being a reputed thief he did loiter in Gateshead for the purpose of committing a felony”. Jennie was, as usual, initially taken to be a cis woman, until she was examined at the police station. She explained that she had lived as female when she could since childhood. When asked why, made no reply. A search of Jennir’s home found no male clothes at all, but did find a well-kept neat flat with a piano and a gramophone, good curtains and carpet. The police also found correspondence with a soldier serving in the already ongoing war. Jenny was committed to a men’s prison for three months, and Fred was fined £1/7/-.

In 1916 she was arrested in Liverpool charged with living an immoral life and ‘permitting a house to be used for immoral traffic’. She had been living as Mrs Jennie Gray, wife of James Gray – who was also charged with the same offence. Initially the arresting officers again accepted that she was a cis woman.

“Man who dresses like a woman”. Daily Mirror, 16 December 1913 p9.
"Man as a Woman: A Remarkable Masquerade: Gateshead Man Sent to Prison". Greenock Telegraph. 2 August 1915 p6.
"Man dressed as a Woman: Charge of Loitering at Gateshead: Strange Disclosures". Newcastle upon Tyne Journal, 2 August 1915 p8.
"Man-Woman at Gateshead: Extraordinary Case of Masquerading". The Darlington North Star, 2 August 1915 p5.
“Man in woman’s clothes: Charge of Loitering at Gateshead: Remarkable evidence at the Police Court”. Newcastle Daily Chronicle, 2 August 1915 p9.
“Man dressed as woman: Extraordinary Liverpool disclosures”. Liverpool Evening Express, 29 June 1916 p3.
“Man and ‘Wife’: Male Prisoners sent to Assizes”. Liverpool Daily Post, 30 June 1916 p3.
Nic Aaron & Jeanie Sinclair. "Remembering Jennie Moore" in Kit Heyam & Jon Ward (eds). New and Decolonial Approaches to Gender Nonconformity: Forging A Home For Ourselves. Bloombury Academic, 2025: 87-113.

Unfortunately all we have as primary sources are newspaper articles that give her male name, and treat her as a curiosity. We can however see past these and see a lone trans woman unable to get a regular job, and without information about other trans persons.

1913 was almost the last time that fashionable women wore ankle-length skirts/dresses. The changes brought about by the 1914-8 war led to more practical shorter skirts, and in the 1920s the demands of fashion took this further.

The government had passed the National Insurance Act 1911. All workers who earned under £160 a year had to pay 4 pence a week into the scheme; the employer paid 3 pence, and general taxation paid 2 pence. This provided some sick care and a small income whilst ill. This was the beginning of the welfare state, and was copied from the system that had been introduced in Germany in 1883. This was obviously a good step forward, but the associated NI cards, which were required when starting a job, would have outed Jennie and other trans persons, and thus made it very difficult to get a legal job.

The 1915 conviction re loitering would have been under the 1824 Vagrancy Act, while the 1913 and 1916 convictions of keeping a disorderly house would have been under the 1751 Disorderly Houses Act.

In January 1916, military conscription was introduced for the first time in British history, despite the previous raising of one of the largest all-volunteer armies in history for the Great War. Presumably Jennie’s male persona was called. Did her female persona result in rejection? Did she serve, voluntarily or otherwise, and die on the Western Front (as did the trans protagonist of the novel The Scarlet Pansy)? We have no record of her after 1916.

Whatever happened to her after 1916, Jennie Moore is what we might call a primary transsexual, although she would not know the term. When she was asked in court why she lived as a woman, she did not answer, probably because she had not encountered any suitable jargon even though ‘travesty’ and ‘transvest’ as a verb had been in use in England since the beginning of the 18^th century, and 'Travestiment' was being used by 1832, and 'Travestier' by 1883. It is likely that Jennie did not associate herself with those terms in that they were mainly used for cross-dressing, and she did not voluntarily cross-dress as a man.

False positives

2026-02-27T10:30:00.000-05:00

This is a partial list of persons who are sometimes are listed as trans, but closer inspection shows that they are not.

Francois-Timoléon de Choisy (cross dreamer, yes, but not the out transvestite depicted in the posthumous faux-autobiography)

Edward Hyde/Lord Cornbury Governor of New York and New Jersey (1702-1708) was defamed as cross-dressing by second-hand accounts. Patricia U. Bonomi. The Lord Cornbury Scandal The Politics of Reputation in British America, 1998, demonstrates the lack of substance in the claims.

Anne Bonny & Mary Read Pirates who switched between men’s and women’s clothes as appropriate. Wearing trousers allowed women pirates the freedom to climb, work with ropes, go up and down ladders. All the same reasons that a 21st century cis female sailor also wears trousers etc. At their trial 16 November 1720 in Jamaica, they “plead the belly”. Sentence was suspended so that their pregnancies could be verified.

Charles Edward Stuart, aka Bonnie Prince Charlie, was on the run after the failure of the Jacobite uprising and the defeat at the Battle of Culloden, 1746, the last battle fought in Britain. The rumour was put out that he passed himself as Betty Burke, an Irish maid, and a painting of a young woman was said to be of him.

John Radclyffe-Hall, nepo-baby super-rich lesbian writer and author of The Well of Loneliness, a trans fiction partially based on the life of her associate Toupie Lowther. (Laura Doan: “[Radclyffe-Hall's] haircut was thought to be the most feminine of all the short cuts popular at the time, and she had her hair done at Harrods — not a barbershop. Even Hall’s famous sartorial choices were on the feminine side of what was known as the ‘severely masculine mode’… Nor did Hall and her partner Una Troubridge dress in a bizarre manner, wearing, as some biographers have claimed, clothing from a costume shop. The couple studied fashion magazines and built their wardrobes not from men’s tailors in Savile Row, but from the most chic of London’s department stores for women. [- unlike trans man Gluck who bought suits from the expensive men’s tailors]. Hall always wore a skirt and conducted herself in a completely womanly way - in short, Hall definitely didn’t model her protagonist, Stephen Gordon, after herself.”)

Herman Göring, commander of the Nazi Luftwaffe (fond of makeup, perfumes, fancy clothes - but fancy male clothes --> a homovestite)

Ernest Hemingway(Given the mild androgyny in The Sun Also Rises, 1926, and the cross gender play with his fourth wife, Mary Welsh which he used in his posthumously published The Garden of Eden. However he grew bored of the game and desisted.)

Bobbie Kimber (did a stage act as a woman, lived as female off-stage, but the claim to have had completion surgery from Dr Burou was disproved when her body was examined at her death).

Theodore Kaczynski (Unabomber) (In 1966 when sex changes were in the news as something new, Kaczynski - and many other cis men - played with the idea of being trans for a short period. When he spoke to a psychiatrist, he spoke of depression, and never about being trans.

Hope Stansbury (based on appearance and associates taken to be trans)

Andrea Feldman (Warhol superstar taken to be trans)

Kimberley Harrison (a cis psychedelist, associate of Timothy Leary, was confused with Kimberley Elliot of Miami's TAO in Susana Pena. "Gender and Sexuality in Latina/o Miami: Documenting Latina Transsexual Activists". Gender & History, 22,3,2010: 763.)

Lanah Pelley (a gender-bender punk who played some female roles in alternative films. Pelley played the male lead in Eat the Rich, 1987, and the advertising claimed, untruthfully, that Pelley had recently transitioned)

Michelle Obama & Brigette Macron. Transvestigation defamations

Marlow Moss (1889-1958) artist

2026-01-28T14:50:00.001-05:00

We have already discussed Madeleine Pelletier and Violet Morris, who while dressing, looking, behaving like (trans) men and being taken as men, retained their female names and she/her (elle) pronouns. This was at a time when the social construction of transsexuality was still decades away in the future. Without role models, without the social construction and without external hormones, Pelletier and Morris made decisions about how to live that differ from the options available to trans men today. Likewise Marlow Moss.

Moss, born and raised in Kilburn by prosperous Jewish parents, studied piano as a child, but this was interrupted for a few years by tuberculosis and the death of the father. A new guardian offered the best teachers for dance and movement, but on the condition of remaining non-professional. This condition Moss refused, and studied at the St John’s Wood School of Art, later cutting off ties with the family to study at the Slade School of Fine Art (which was at that time opposed to any type of modern art). By then the Great War had just finished, and Moss withdrew down to Cornwall for a while.

On return to London Moss shaved the head, switched to male clothes and took the male name of Marlow. Moss read Rimbaud and Nietzsche at the British Museum Reading Room and studied the paintings of Van Gogh and Rembrandt. In 1927, age 37, Moss went to Paris and enrolled at the Académie Moderne, the free art school in Montmartre that had been founded in 1924. Moss studied under the cubist artist Fernand Léger. Moss was one of very few English artists at that time to engage with European Modernism.

Moss was impressed by the early work of the Dutch artist Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) and his non-representational art which he deemed Neoplasticism. They met in 1929 when Moss’ studio on Boulevard Raspail was only a few doors away from Mondrian’s, and there were lively discussions between them. Like Mondrian and others associated with Neoplasticism and Constructivism, Moss considered radical abstraction the ultimate art form for an increasingly fast-paced and technologically advanced society.

Moss produced a variation on Neoplasticism by using a double line, to render ‘the composition dynamic instead of static’. Despite this criticism, Mondrian incorporated the innovation two years later. He nominated Moss for founding membership of the new Association Abstraction-Création which was to foster abstract art and counter the influence of Surrealism. Mondrian was a mystic, fascinated by the occult and the Theosophist Madame Blavatsky. Moss, on the other hand, was a theoretician, organising her compositions according to a set of mathematical and geometric rules.

Also in 1929 Moss met a Dutch writer, Netty Wind (1897-1971) also known by her married and professional name as Antoinette Hendrika Nijhoff. They became lovers and had a studio at Gauciel, Normandy, a commune to the north-west of Paris where they welcomed other artists.

In 1933, the Swiss abstract artist, Max Bill, encountered Moss and Wind at an opening at a Paris gallery, pointed to a group of pictures on the wall and commented, "Thank goodness Mondrian has sent in such beautiful works!" There was a silence. Then Moss said quietly: "Those are my paintings".

Moss often wore jodhpurs (riding trousers) but sometimes a man’s suit. Many took her to be male, but others thought she was a Garçonne (many of whom wore male or near-male clothes). Despite this Netty and other close friends continued to refer to Moss as ‘elle’, and Moss accepted being addressed as ‘Mademoiselle Moss’.

In September 1938, given the changing political situation, Mondrian moved to London, and in September 1940 after Paris had fallen, he moved to New York City, where he was quite successful. He died in 1944. In recent years, his works have sold for tens of millions.

In 1939 Moss moved to the Netherlands, but when that country was invaded, Moss, being Jewish, quickly left for England, but without Netty who stayed to be with her son. Moss managed to talk her way onto a fishing trawler going to Cornwall.

During the war Moss failed to connect with the artists (some of them abstract) in St Ives. However Moss met a naval engineer, who helped train her to work in metal. Unfortunately in 1944, wartime shelling destroyed the commune in Gauciel, and much of Moss’ earlier work was lost.

After the war, Moss and Nijhoff-Wind reunited and lived alternatively in Den Haag (with Nijhoff-Wind’s husband Martinus Nijhoff) and in Cornwall where Moss had opened a studio in 1940 in the village of Lamorna, a short distance from Penzance. The marriage of Netty Wind and Martinus Nijhoff ended in 1950. He remarried to a Dutch actress, but died in 1953.

Moss’ second phase as sculpturist resulted in solo shows at the Hanover Gallery in London in 1953 and 1958, organised by the agent Erica Brausen, a lesbian: this work made no reference to Mondrian at all, although Moss did still do some Neoplasticist pieces.

Moss died in August 1958, in Penzance. Four years later Nijhoff-Wind published a book about Moss and her art. Moss's postwar work was left, at her death, to Nijhoff's son, Wouter Stefan Nijhoff, a Man Ray-trained photographer who worked under the name Stephen Storm and who died in 1986. He in turn left it to his partner, who has seldom lent or shown the work since.

Antoinette H. Nijhoff-Wind died in March 1971.

In 2014 there was tour of Moss’ work at Tate St Ives, the Leeds Art Gallery, the Jerwood Gallery in Hastings and Tate Britain in London. As a result the Dutch museum that lent two works to the first show was alerted to the fact that they owned Mosses at all. As a result, the paintings are now hanging on the museum's walls for the first time in half a century, and will not be shown at Tate Britain.

A H Nijhoff. Marlow Moss. Amsterdam: Stedelijk Museum, 1962.
Germaine Greer. The Obstacle Race: The Fortunes of Women Painters and Their Work. Farrar Straus Girouxm 1979: 103.
Randy Rosen. “Marlow Moss: Did she influence Mondrian’s work of the thirties?”. Arts Magazine, 53, 1979.
Sarah Wilson. “Marlow Moss” in Delia Gaze. Dictionary of Women Artists. Fitzroy Dearborn, 1997.
Alan Fowler. Constructivist Art in Britain 1913-2005. PhD Thesis University of Southampton, March 2006: 34-6, 37-9. Online.
Lucy Harriet Amy Howarth, Marlow Moss (1889–1958). PhD Thesis University of Plymouth, 2008. Online.
Élisabeth Lebovici translated by Lucy Pons. “Marlow Moss”. Aware Women Artists, 2013. Online.
Charles Darwent. “Marlow Moss: forgotten art maverick”. The Guardian, 25 Aug 2014, Online.
Lucy Howarth, ‘Marlow Moss: Space, Movement, Light’, in Marlow Moss, Tate Research Publication, 2014. Online.
Alex Pilcher. “Marlow Moss” A Queer Little History of Art. Tate Publishing, 2017: 66-7. Also Online.
Sabine Schaschl-Cooper. A forgotten Maverick: Marlow Moss. Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2017.
Lucy Howarth. Marlow Moss. Eiderdown Books, 2019.
Lucy Howarth. “Queering Constructivism: the legacy of Marlow Moss”. ArtUK.org, 17 Feb 2021. Online.
Gülce Özkara. “Space, Movement, and Body: Marlow Moss” Stedelijk Studies Journal. 11,2022. Online.
“Marlow Moss and the quest for ‘space, movement and light’ “. Christie’s, 13 October 2022. Online.
Nicole Lampert. “The transing of Marlow Moss: It is narcissistic to project our own ideas back through history” . co.uk, 19, May 2023. Online.
Claudio Vogt. “Notes on an Overlooked Maverick”. Vonbartha, June 7, 2024. Online.
Emily Snow. “Marlow Moss: The Queer Abstract Artist Who Influenced Mondrian”. Daily Art Magazine, 21 April 2025. Online.
Florette Dijkstra. De sprong in het licht: Marlow Moss (1889-1958). Querido, 2025.
Joanna Moorhead. “ ‘Her time has come’: did Mondrian owe his success to a cross-dressing lesbian artist who lived in a Cornish cove?”. The Guardian, 12 Jan 2026. Online.

EN.Wikipedia The Tate The Mayor Gallery Kunstmuseum den Haag

----------------------------------------------------------------

As with Madeleine Pelletier and Violet Morris, Halberstam's Female Masculinity has nothing to say about Marlow Moss.

Darwent comments:

“Moss's prewar paintings do look like Mondrians, in the way that some early Mondrians look like Derains. There is a difference between influence and imitation. Moss's take on neoplasticism is mathematically based, Mondrian's instinctual. When Moss – always ‘Miss Moss’ to Mondrian – writes to explain her theories to him, he answers, stiffly, ‘Numbers don't make any sense to me.’ Her works look like his, but they also don't.”

Germaine Greer, who does not discuss Moss’ life or gender construction, does write:

“The modern version of this calumny is the easy assumption that is made about closely related male and female painters, that the man led and the woman followed, which accords her the status of an imitator, and assumes that differences in outlook are evidence of inferiority or incompetence. A superficial judgment would place Marlow Moss as an imitator of Piet Mondrian, with whom she spent a great deal of time in Paris between 1929 and 1938, but in fact the relationship between them was one of equals, and in the case of double-line compositions, Mondrian followed the lead set by Moss. Their careers diverged when Moss began to use relief in her paintings with superimposed white slats and collage. She was, as many women have been, interested in constructivism and the boundaries of painting and moved eventually to plastic constructions. It is arguable that she had a greater influence on subsequent developments in twentieth-century painting than Mondrian did.”

Of course the Constructivist Art and Social Construction are completely different things.