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A rereading of Benjamin: Part 2: transvestites

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  • Harry Benjamin. The Transsexual Phenomenon. Julian Press, 1966. Warner Books Edition 1977, with a bibliography and appendix by Richard Green.  PDF (with different pagination).  Page references eg p32/13 mean p32 in the 1977 Warner edition and p13 in the PDF. 
Part I:  intro and the Scale
Part II:  transvestites
Part III: trans women
Part IV: photos, legal, trans men, conclusions

Chapter 2: Transvestism, Transsexualism, and Homosexuality.


Virginia Prince, writing as C.V. Prince, with a preamble by Harry Benjamin, had published. “Homosexuality, Transvestism and Transsexuality: Reflections on Their Etiology and Differentiations” in The American Journal of Psychotherapy, 11, 1957.   Prince proposes that there are three kinds of ‘males’ who dress as women. Benjamin seems to have taken this as a starting point.

The first sentence is more carefully phrased than many later writers' claims: "Transvestism (TVism) as a medical diagnosiswas probably used for the first time by the German sexologist, Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, about forty years ago when he published his book, Die Transvestiten". p24/10  

Actually Die Transvestiten was published in 1910, which was 56 years, not forty, before 1966. 

Benjamin continues to use TV and TS as abbreviations throughout the book. In Transvestia 12 (December 1961) Prince credited herself as having coined the term TV, although as usual she did not say where. As it is the obvious abbreviation, it is more than likely that other people had used it without waiting for her to coin it. Furthermore, she said, she therefore had a right to "pronouncea death sentence", and urged that all would use FP (=femme personator) instead. (Robert S. Hill. ‘As a man I exist; as a woman I live’: Heterosexual Transvestism and the Contours of Gender and Sexuality in Postwar America. PhD Dissertation. University of Michigan. 2007:62)    Five years later, Benjamin's usage of TVism implicitly denied her claim to coinage, and her admonition that it not be used.

Benjamin writes: “Most writers on the subject refer to transvestism as a sexual deviation, sometimes as a perversion. It is not necessarily either one. It also can be a result of ‘gender discomfort’ and provide a purely emotional relief and enjoyment without conscious sexual stimulation, this usually occurring only in later life.” p24/10

But shortly afterwards he writes: “Because of the much more permissive fashions among women, and for other reasons, the problem of transvestism almost exclusively concerns men in whom the desire to cross-dress is often combined with other deviations, particularly with fetishism, narcissism, and the desire to be tied up (bondage) or somehow humiliated (masochism).” p25/10 , and then “The majority of transvestites are overtly heterosexual, but many may be latent bisexuals. They 'feel' as men and know that they are men, marry, and often raise families. A few of them, however, especially when they are 'dressed,' can as part of their female role react homosexually to the attentions of an unsuspecting normal man. The transvestite’s marriage is frequently endangered as only relatively few wives can tolerate seeing their husbands in female attire. The average heterosexual woman wants a man for a husband, not someone who looks like a woman; but mutual concessions have often enough preserved such marriages, mostly for the sake of children.” p26/11

Virginia Prince writing in Transvestia, and speaking in public played down the erotic and/or fetishistic aspects of cross-dressing. On the other hand, in her meetings with psychiatrist Robert Stoller, she affirmed at least the erotic aspects. While she denied finding men attractive, she did enjoy being attractive to and flirting with men.She had a cross-dresser friend who was willing to play the male role and took her for lunch and drinks. Afterward they did mutual masturbation. She found kissing, hugging and affection from a man to be sexually rewarding. (Richard F Docter. From Man to Woman: The Transgender Journey of Virginia Prince. Docter Press, 2004: 66-7). One wonders, in the paragraph by Benjamin, if Prince had discussed the same eroticism with Benjamin. In either case Benjamin had certainly encountered it in discussions with other patients.

Benjamin contrasts TVs and TSs: “The transsexual (TS) male or female is deeply unhappy as a member of the sex (or gender) to which he or she was assigned by the anatomical structure of the body, particularly the genitals. To avoid misunderstanding: this has nothing to do with hermaphroditism. The transsexual is physically normal (although occasionally underdeveloped). These persons can somewhat appease their unhappiness by dressing in the clothes of the opposite sex, that is to say, by cross-dressing, and they are, therefore, transvestites too. But while ‘dressing’ would satisfy the true transvestite (who is content with his morphological sex), it is only incidental and not more than a partial or temporary help to the transsexual. True transsexuals feel that they belong to the other sex, they want to be and function as members of the opposite sex, not only to appear as such. For them, their sex organs, the primary (testes) as well as the secondary (penis and others) are disgusting deformities that must be changed by the surgeon’s knife. This attitude appears to be the chief differential diagnostic point between the two syndromes (sets of symptoms) - that is, those of transvestism and transsexualism.” p27/11

Benjamin gives a brief account of Christine Jorgensen, and in a footnote: “A few daring surgeons performed 'conversion operations' thirty or forty years ago but with very doubtful if not unfavorable results. In most cases, they castrated or removed the penis only, without attempting to create a vagina (see case of Lilly Elbe).” footnote, p28/18. He seems to be unaware of Hirschfeld’s patients Toni Ebel, Dörchen Richter and (suppposedly) his own patient whom he sent on to Berlin, Carla van Crist. One also wants to ask if KurtWenekros’ patient Lili Elvenes (Elbe) underwent only a penectomy, why is she said to have died after a uterus transplant.

Bemjamin then asks whether “transvestites with their more or less pronounced sex and gender indecision may actually all be transsexuals, but in varying degrees of intensity”. p35/14 “A low degree of largely unconscious transsexualism can be appeased through cross-dressing and demands no other therapy for emotional comfort. These are transvestites…It must be left to further observations and investigations in greater depth to decide whether or not transvestitic desires may really be transsexual in nature and origin. Many probably are, but the frequent fetishistic transvestites may have to be excluded.” So much for HBS and other transsexuals who claim to cite Benjamin that transvestites are a different something (but see otherwise in Part III).

He continues: “If these attempts to define and classify the transvestite and the transsexual appear vague and unsatisfactory, it is because a sharp and scientific separation of the two syndromes is not possible. We have as yet no objective diagnostic methods at our disposal to differentiate between the two. We - often - have to take the statement of an emotionally disturbed individual, whose attitude may change like a mood or who is inclined to tell the doctor what he believes the doctor wants to hear. Furthermore, nature does not abide by rigid systems. The vicissitudes of life and love cause ebbs and flows in the emotions so that fixed boundaries cannot be drawn. It is true that the request for a conversion operation is typical only for the transsexual and can actually serve as definition. It is also true that the transvestite looks at his sex organ as an organ of pleasure, while the transsexual turns from it in disgust. Yet, even this is not clearly defined in every instance and no two cases are ever alike. An overlapping and blurring of types or groups is certainly frequent.” p35/15

Chapter 3: The Transvestite in Older and Newer Aspects


Nonaffective dressing: a cis person who cross-dresses to cross a border, rob a bank, get into an all-male or all-female place, even to attend one's own funeral. Those female impersonators who are not transvestites or transsexuals. Gay men in drag for a competition, to seduce straight men. This is covered in two short paragraphs, and certainly does not consider such gays as then progress on the road the womanhood. This is Type 0 (what today we might call Cis Cross-dressing). There are of course thousands of books and films that use these events as plot devices – a phenomenon of both high culture (Benjamin the opera buff would have been very aware of Marriage of Figaro and Der Rosenkavalier) and the cinema (Some Like it Hotand Thunderball are prominent examples from the early to mid 1960s).

“Their actions usually have nothing to do with transvestism either, the female attire being incidental, nonaffective, and without eroticism. ... In transvestism proper, the emotions are always involved, tinged more or less with eroticism, sexual stimulation, - and often masturbatory satisfaction.” p46/20. In Chapter 2, Benjamin had argued that transvestism was not a sexual deviation. Now he seems to be backtracking.

Type I Pseudo Transvestite. Again a very short section. His main example, p46/21, is a man, 60, previously a Kinsey 3 and married to a woman, who when younger had often cross-dressed. Now, since his wife’s death, he is a Kinsey 5 and never cross-dresses. I have a Label Youthful Phase in my encyclopedia. Are persons who cross-dress when young, but then desist not to be regarded as transvestites? This would result in us losing Kim Christy, John Herbert, Herbert Beeson,Boy George from our history. But more importantly I have never regarded ‘lifelong’ as an essential word in the definition of ‘tranvestism’, nor have I seen other definitions include it.

Then there is a throwaway paragraph at the end of the section. “Another, probably very small group of men may belong to the same category. They do not ever "dress" overtly, out of fear or shame, but greatly enjoy transvestitic fantasies and literature. It is probably immaterial whether to classify them as pseudo or not at all.” p47/21 It would not be until over 45 years later that the concept of Cross Dreamer would be articulated.

Pseudo-Transvestite is marked Kinsey 0-6 in Benjamin’s Scale. This is all sexual orientations. The next two Transvestite types are marked 0-2 only. And thus gay transvestites are erased, unlike in Benjamin’s previous book Prostitution and Morality. Let us mention Patricia Morgan who was a patient of Benjamin in the late 1950s. She started as a male prostitute, became a transvestite prostitute, had surgery from Elmer Belt in 1961, and continued as a female prostitute. Perhaps Benjamin should have listened more attentively to what Morgan had to say. In her very being she refutes the distinction between the homosexual, presumed to be a pseudo transvestite who will discontinue, and the transsexual.

Type III True Transvestite.
“A large group of male transvestites (TVs) can be called "true" because cross-dressing is the principal if not the only symptom of their deviation. They dress out of a strong, sometimes overwhelming, emotional urge that – to say the least - contains unmistakable sexual overtones. Some of them can resemble addicts, the need for ‘dressing’ increasing with increasing indulgences.“ p47/21 and continues: “Sexual reasons for male transvestism are especially evident in the early stages of a transvestitic career. No experienced clinician can doubt the sexual roots in the large majority of transvestites. In most of the medical literature it is, therefore, perhaps not too fortunately, referred to as a sexual deviation or perversion. The often admitted masturbatory activities during or after a transvestite spree confirm this view. The frequently reported guilt feelings and disgust that are followed, with purges, that is to say, getting rid of all female attire, likewise point to the, - basically - sexual nature of transvestism (‘Post coitum omne animal triste?’).” p48/22 Then Benjamin talks about the ‘transvestite with a latent transsexual trend’: “The sexual element in transvestism seemed to me always more manifest in the fetishistic than in the latent transsexual type where (as in true TSism) a low sex drive and gender dissatisfaction frequently predominated.“ p53/24

What about female transvestites? “The facts may apply to the female as well as to the male, but this chapter will be devoted to the male only. Female transvestism seems to be rare and of somewhat doubtful reality. Women's fashions are such as to allow a female transvestite to indulge her wish to wear male attire without being too conspicuous. Her deviation has been considered merely arrogant while male transvestism is to many objectionable because, in their opinion, it humiliates.” p47/21 This again is a repetition of what Virginia Prince said. And the claim is offensive in that many female cross-dressers were in fact arrested – especially if they were anywhere near a lesbian bar. The Los Angeles police actually had a special section, the Daddy Tank, to imprison female cross-dressers. Louis Sullivan and Patrick Califia would later mock this attempted erasure of female cross-dressers, but that was still in the future. Here is a quote from Califia. Sex Changes: The Politics of Transgenderism  Cleis Press, 1997: 201.  “A whole book could probably be written about the misogyny and homophobia that has led sexologists and other 'experts' to frequently state, as Prince does, that women can wear men's clothes without being punished, so they have no need to become transvestites. This is patently false. … As any stone butch or passing woman can tell you, the general public continues to be deeply disturbed by a biological female who appears in public in men's clothing. There is no difference between the discrimination, condemnation, and violence that is routinely inflected upon male and female cross-dressers, if they are exposed as such."

On p49/22 we are formally introduced to “Charles Prince, Ph.D., who himself is a transvestite” and “Emphatic among present-day writers as to a supposedly nonsexual nature of transvestism”. Note the ‘supposedly’. Charles is of course Virginia. The PhD was earned by Virginia’s male persona Arnold Lowman in pharmacology, which led to his two successful books Chemistry in Your Beauty Shop, 1955 and Survey of Chemistry for Cosmetologists, 1959 – none of this mentioned. There has obviously been some sort of dialectic between Prince and Benjamin, who had known each other at least ten years by this time. Prince seems to have pushed Benjamin further in erasing gay transvestites and female transvestites, but Benjamin has resisted Prince’s position that transvestism is non-sexual. It is a shame that this was not documented.

Benjamin does not introduce us to Taylor Buckner, a future sociologist at Sir George Williams University, Montréal (and in fact mispells his name as Buchner), but does cite his master’s thesis on subscribers to Prince’s Transvestia magazine several times.

Type II Fetishistic Transsexual. Benjamin gives two examples p51/23.
 a) “a man in his late sixties, was accustomed to this form of transvestism when he went out. Only at home did he "dress" completely. Once he was in a street accident and was taken unconscious to a hospital. When the female undergarments were discovered, the examining physician, completely unacquainted with transvestism, wrote the fact into the hospital record (where I saw it), together with the diagnosis of ‘concussion’ and ‘patient evidently a degenerate’." p51/29 Footnote 7 tells us that his case was fully described by Dr Talmey, and thus we identify Otto Spengler.
b) “a nearly sixty-year-old, largely heterosexual pharmacist, who looks little more than forty, combines his fetishistic ‘dressing’ with a strong fetish for youthful apparel (civistism). He gets an even greater ‘sexual glow’ (as he describes it) from dressing like a very young boy than as a woman”.

There is also a short section at the end of the chapter, Concomitant deviations, where Benjamin mentions bondage, flagellation, and auto-asphyxiation with its risk of suicide. However he goes on: “Fetishism (S.O.S. II) complicates other TVs' sex lives. At the same time, it puts an additional strain on married life. There are those who like furs or leather. They buy jackets, coats, and entire outfits at considerable expense so that the wife has a just grievance, if she cannot afford anything like it for her own wardrobe.”p63/28

Now this was 1966, seven years before Richard O’Brien’s Rocky Horror Show; four years before Jayne County incorporated fetish themes into her act; 10 years before Punk, and well before the fetish club scene. Psycho-analysts had been ignorantly writing for decades that transvestism was a type of fetish. On the other hand there was a publisher in New York, Leonard Burtman  who had been putting out real fetish titles since the late 1950s, and around this time became a mentor of Kim Christy. It is very difficult from our 21st century perspective to give any credence to what either the psychoanalysts or Benjamin wrote about fetishism. They just don’t know what they are talking about.  A small number of transvestites were and are fetishists, but the examples cited by Benjamin hardly count.  ‘Fetish’, much like the word ‘autogynephile’ in later years became a general insult term to throw at a trans person whom you dislike. The HBSpeople put down Prince’s femmiphilics as fetishists, while FPE was actually obsessed with not being fetishistic. Two years after Benjamin’s book, Transvestia columnist Sheila Niles popularized the concept ‘whole girl fetishist (WGF)’ for FPE members who did not pass well enough, particularly if it were for lack of trying. Over the next few years it came to be that those who failed or didn’t bother to fashion themselves as truly feminine were "fetishistic".Susanna Valenti even estimated that the majority of members were WGFs.

What about real fetishistic transvestites? One was certainly known to Benjamin. Two years earlier in 1964, Leonard Wheeler had published Sex Life of a Transvestite. He revealed Connie, his female self as an erotic transvestite who was also into bondage, with cruel sadistic fantasies about women. His book contained an introduction by Benjamin’s colleague Albert Ellis, and was featured in Taylor Buckner’s 1969 paper “The Transvestic Career Path” - in fact it was the only autobiography that Buckner referred to. However there is no mention of Leonard Wheeler in Benjamin’s book.

Transvestite Publications.  Again Virginia Prince is mentioned, and her magazine Transvestiaand her denial of a sexual component. And then: “The de-sexing attempt is merely one example of the frequent lack of realism among transvestites and their ever-present capacity for illusion and self-deception. The inability of many of them to look at themselves objectively is their great handicap. It explains that all too often they do not look like women at all when ‘dressed,’ but like men dressed up as women. They do not see it and that is why some of them are arrested. One only has to look at some of the photos published in Transvestiaand Turnaboutto recognize the truth of this observation. While unfortunate, the self-deception is understandable if we think of the wish being the ever-present motivating force.” p54/24

Benjamin is more positive about Turnabout: “A seemingly more objective approach to the problem can be found in the pages of Turnabout, another more recent magazine of transvestism. Its competent editor, Fred Shaw [Siobhan Fredericks], writing under different pseudonyms, with several qualified collaborators, likewise provides self-expression for their readers through letters and photographs, but they provide, at the same time, education and information through scientific debates, giving expression to diversified views. They disagree with ‘Virginia Prince’ and her principal theory that ‘the girl within’ prompts transvestites to be what they are and to act as they do. Yet - as we have seen - such theory does contain a grain of truth, namely, the biological fact that in every male there is an element of the female, and vice versa. Our culture and upbringing, however, lead to the practical demands (for males and females), for masculinity and femininity as such, and allow no ‘girls within’ men. It does exist only under just such abnormal conditions as transvestism, transsexualism and certain cases of homosexuality with effeminacy. All this, however, permits no generalization.” p55/25

Benjamin says nothing about Female Mimics, which had been available since 1963. While it was more oriented to female impersonation, many of the same people read both Turnabout and Female Mimics.

Transvestites’ wives. Prince had published The Transvestite and His Wife in 1962, which Benjamin does not mention. He does say: “The wives of transvestites constitute a psychological problem by themselves. I have spoken to at least a dozen. Most of them put up a brave front, claiming to be unaffected in their love for their husbands, but admitting they are certainly not happy about the TVism, even suffering acutely at times. Few, but very few, say they enjoy helping their husbands to "dress" and "make up" and actually like him in his female as much as his male role.” p61/27

Clara Miller (1899 - ?) fur merchant, office worker

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Ralph was born in London, the 11th of 13 children to Jewish parents, The father was a fur merchant of varying success, and also a Yiddish language novelist and playwright, although without any success.

At age five, Ralph contracted diphtheria, and for nine weeks was on the verge of death. From then on an older sister encouraged him to wear girls’ clothes and took him for walks so dressed. Even dressed as a boy he was regarded as effeminate, and would be beaten up by the boys at school.

The father refused a bar mitzvah for Ralph because of his effeminacy. At 15 he was taken from school and went to work for a friend of the father. One night, working late, he was raped by two co-workers, a boy and a girl. He told his father, who called the police and both assailants were sentenced to five years in prison. The girl died there.

Ralph, as Clara, went out at night, and found a sweetheart who kissed and held hands. However Clara finally had to tell the truth and the relationship ended. At 16 Clara asked the family doctor that her male organs be removed. The doctor called in the parents, and the father gave Ralph a good beating.

At 17 he was sent to New York to help a brother run the business. The brother let Ralph be Clara and even took her to parties. In 1918 Ralph enlisted in the US Army to make a man of himself. However he could not take it and deserted.

In 1921 he returned to London, as his father was dying. With his mother he took over the business, but the stress made him ill-tempered and he flew into rages. Despite this the business prospered. Clara met another who also aspired to become a woman. In 1923 Ralph met May, a young woman, 17. Under pressure from his mother, Ralph and May became engaged and then married. He could perform sexually, only underneath and when wearing something feminine. They managed to have a son and a daughter in the first three years, and then discontinued sexual activity.

They returned to New York, where Ralph became an office worker. He wore female clothing at home, and sometimes went out so dressed, against May’s objections, and later the children’s strong objections.

Ralph served in the US Army in the Second World War in North Africa, and admitted his earlier desertion. Early in 1945 he found work at the Veterans Administration as a clerk. He was also elected president of his local Veterans of Foreign Wars branch.

At the end of 1944, his daughter Barby and her husband set up a small business, and moved in with Ralph and May to save expenses. Barby nagged him constantly that he was not to be seen in female clothing. This got worse after the birth of a grandchild.

In spring 1947, after a late-night scene with Barby, Ralph dressed quickly and went out. He encountered a rookie policemen keen to make an arrest, and was charged with male prostitution. He was lucky to get a considerate judge, who required only a psychiatric report, after which he was released.

The fights with Barby got worse, and Ralph made a suicide attempt. Shortly afterwards, Barby, her husband and child moved to California. Ralph was able to be Clara more often.

She she became a patient of Harry Benjamin, and had surgery in 1957. Three years later she started living with a man, fifteen years younger, who was separated but could not obtain a divorce because he was Catholic.

Clara reports that they have excellent sex, and that the man has no idea about her earlier life. For a while she had associated with two other trans women, but broke away in case they gave away her secret. She reported being happier and better adjusted than before, and has no regrets about transition.
  • Harry Benjamin. The Transsexual Phenomenon. Julian Press, 1966. Warner Books Edition 1977: 256-272, 289-298. PDF: 118-128, 136-8.

A rereading of Benjamin: Part 3: trans women

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  • Harry Benjamin. The Transsexual Phenomenon. Julian Press, 1966. Warner Books Edition 1977, with a bibliography and appendix by Richard Green.  PDF (with different pagination).  Page references eg p32/13 mean p32 in the 1977 Warner edition and p13 in the PDF. 
Part I:  intro and the Scale
Betty (?1938 - ?) female impersonator, salesgirl, model. --- 2nd entry, Appendix D, autobiographies
Part II:  transvestites
Clara Miller (1899 - ?) fur merchant, office worker ---  3rd entry, Appendix D, autobiographies
Part III: trans women
Joe (1920 - ?) cattle breader, art dealer ---  4th entry, Appendix D, autobiographies
Part IV: photos, legal, trans men, conclusions

4. The Male Transsexual

The first problem is of course the title. In the 1960s all doctors referred to trans women as ‘male transsexuals’. Ray Blanchard still does. It does grate.

The quotes that one finds from Benjamin that are positive about trans persons are taken from later chapters. What is a surprise is how negative this one chapter is.

From the first four paragraphs:
Readers of the foregoing chapters already should be fairly well acquainted with the (transsexual) man who wants not only to appear as a woman by dressing as one, but who actually wants to be a woman in appearance as well as function and wants medical science to make him such as far as that is possible. In other words, it is the man who suffers from a reversed gender role and false gender orientation. He wants to change sex. As we have seen, these persons, in a strictly scientific sense, fool themselves. No actual change of sex is ever possible. … If a chromosomal study should be made, however, the true (chromosomal) sex would be discovered and this remains true no matter how long the person may have lived as a member of the opposite sex or what operations or hormone treatments may have been applied.” p65-6/30

A trans woman is a “man who suffers from a reversed gender role and false gender orientation ...these persons ... fool themselves. No actual change of sex is ever possible”.

Remember that this is our premier advocate. It is also the same doctor who wrote Chapter 1, wherein he explained that chromosomes alone do not constitute sex. It is also in contradiction with the subtitle on the cover of the Warner paperback: “All the facts about changing of sex through hormones and surgery.” If Benjamin actually thinks that “No actual change of sex is ever possible” Then what is this book?

In the dedication, Benjamin thanked Brooking Tatum for editing the book. Perhaps Tatum should have pointed out these contradictions.

The transsexual in life and love. “There is hardly a person so constantly unhappy (before sex change) as the transsexual. Only for short periods of his (or her) life, such as those rare moments of hope when a conversion operation seems attainable or when, successfully assuming the identity of a woman in name, dress, and social acceptance, is he able to forget his misery. It is not always the frustrated, passionate sexuality, but more so the heart-breaking anguish of the transsexual's gender disharmony that makes him forever a candidate for self-mutilation, suicide, or its attempt. The false relief obtained from alcohol and drugs is not an infrequent complication.” p66/30

There is actually much in this chapter that would be of use to anyone writing a rant against transsexuals. It is noteworthy that Janice Raymond did not actually use this material.

Benjamin then discusses a small number of his patients who resorted to self-mutilation, and then a patient, Juana, who committed suicide at age 30 in 1963.

Psychological state and sex life in transsexuals. Benjamin discusses the rationalizations of transsexuals who still have sex with their wives. He then discusses those who have a boyfriend/husband. “The ‘husband’ in such a union offers an interesting psychological study. Are there actual or latent homosexual inclinations in him so that he can be attracted to a transsexual man? Naturally, the attraction is to the ‘woman’ in this man, but could completely normal, heterosexual men be able to forget the presence of male sex organs, or, if an operation has been performed, even their former existence?” p70/32 More recent studies have established quite well that the husbands (no quotes) of trans women are in fact mainly heterosexual. They may appreciate some extra aspect of their wife, but they are not interested in men. However this was not understood in 1966.

He then discusses those transsexuals, before and after the ‘conversion operation’ who make a living as a prostitute – the topic of his 1964 book – although only briefly, and with no mention of those like Patricia Morgan who did so successfully.

And then, this paragraph, which many would read as a gratuitous calumny against his clientele:

It has happened in a few cases that all of a sudden, money became available to go abroad (and come back a broad, as somebody quipped) without any evident source. Being aware of the overwhelming, desperate urge of the transsexual to be made ‘female,’ doubts have sometimes crept into my mind whether funds were not acquired illegally, other than by prostitution. A parallel to the crimes committed by equally desperate drug addicts readily comes to one's mind.” p71/32

If one is to make comments like this about a group of people, it is a reasonable rejoinder that one should either put up or shut up. How about some examples where this has actually happened. A short paragraph like this without details is gossip at best and should not be in a serious book. This is not to deny that a small percentage of trans women are criminals – about the same percentage as the general population.

And then a quote from Dr Ira S Pauly: “"Because of his isolation, the transsexual has not developed interpersonal skills, and frequently presents the picture of a schizoid or inadequate personality.” p71-2/33

Bemjamin then finishes the section by reassuring us: “Improvement of the mental condition occurred under estrogen treatment as well as after the corrective surgery, but by no means in all cases. Much is yet to be observed and studied along these lines. As a general rule, however, transsexuals are nonpsychotic.” p72/33 Just as well that he says that, for I was beginning to worry about transsexuals.

The physical state of male transsexuals. “The physical examination of transsexual patients usually reveals nothing remarkable. …. Among my patients I discovered no so-called Klinefelter syndrome ..., although such combination of transsexualism and Klinefelter syndrome has been observed and reported in the medical literature. Otherwise the transsexual male and female are genetically normal.” p72/33

This is still so. Every now and then a biological marker of transsexualism is claimed – H-Y antigen, BSTc size, etc – but in the longer run, replication tests fail, and the claim is dropped.

Benjmain’s hope of a future (post 1966) development was with hypogonadism: “Such more or less distinct underdevelopment, known as hypogonadism, but rarely to the point of eunuchoidism, was found in 61 cases out of a total of 152 male transsexuals, approximately 40 per cent. These findings may eventually prove to have significance as far as the underlying causes of transsexualism are concerned.” p73/33

The transsexual’s plight. This section is mainly about the lack of access to transgender surgery in the US. I took this to refer to the period between 1962 when Elmer Belt ceased operating, and 1966 when operations started at John Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. In this period, and also before, most US transsexuals who did obtain surgery had to go to Europe or Africa to get it. In particular, many went to Dr Burou in Casablanca.

The greatest plight of any true male transsexual is the problem of where to turn to have the conversion operation performed. Even if they find a surgeon who is willing and competent to do the operation (and there are undoubtedly many urological surgeons in this category in the United States), the problem is by no means solved. A hospital is needed for this operation and hospitals have their boards. These boards are partly composed of laymen; among them may be priests, ministers, and rabbis. Without the board's permission, the operation could not be performed in that particular hospital.” p74/34

Six pages are then devoted to a reprint from Sex & Censorship Magazine, 1, 2, apparently 1958, but Benjamin does not say. So this is actually referring to the late 1950s. The article, “The Unfree’ is by William J O’Connell, apparently the previous male name of a trans woman: “The happiness I chose to pursue - had to pursue, more precisely - was simply and shockingly, an operation to change my ostensible sex; for I am a person, physically male, whose mind and heart are feminine. … My decision was made in the clear perception that my life was quite intolerable in its falseness. After some hard, realistic thinking, I went to a sexologist, a man wise in the ways of glands and their secretions. He received me with kindness and understanding, and sent me to a psychiatrist who confirmed his judgment that I was of sound mind and quite competent to decide where my happiness lay. Then he carefully began the process of feminization by the administration of estrogen and other female hormones.” A surgeon was found in the US. “The surgeon, skilled and courteous, was not to be rushed; it was necessary that he be certain in his own conscience that what he was doing was best for me. I could not doubt that this great gentleman, like the sexologist, truly intended, in the words of Hippocrates, to govern his treatment by the needs of the sufferer. To make assurance doubly sure, he sent me to another psychiatrist who, in turn, convened a panel of his brethren. After many hours of discussion and questioning and study, these three psychiatrists unanimously recommended the operation, adding that they were powerless to alter my feminine psyche and that the surgeon would be doing me a great service by operating. Even then the surgeon was not wholly convinced and there were further discussions with him before he at length consented.” O’Connell was admitted to the hospital, but days go by. “Finally a member of the all-important Tissue Committee appeared: the Committee, because of protest from the ‘religious elements’ of the hospital, were to review my case. But my visitor, although he was perhaps to present my side of the matter to his colleagues, seemed much more interested in talking than in listening; I think his mind was made up, and I think that neither justice nor ‘the needs of the sufferer’ found any room there. The Tissue Committee refused to permit the operation. They did not ask me to present my case; indeed, it was quite obvious (as I was told by one of the doctors) that they did not consider me at all but only considered placating the ‘religious elements’." p74-80/34-6

However: “For all that, they did not hesitate to charge me two hundred of the dollars I had so laboriously saved for the operation - two hundred dollars for discomfort and profound disrespect. No other hospital, now, would accept me after this one had turned me out; in any case, my short vacation was gone for another year.”  According to this Inflation Calculator, $200 in 1964 would be $1,540 in 2016.

Benjamin adds a note that “this patient, after another year or so, did find a skillful surgeon abroad. The operation was successful as I was able to convince myself. This is a more contented person now.” p81/37  However he never gives us a female name by which to refer to her.


Three different types of transsexuals.

Type IV Nonsurgical. Benjamin’s associate Virginia Prince would declare herself in 1968 to be living full-time as female, in effect a non-surgical transsexual, but apparently never accepted this label. However this was after Benjamin’s book came out and thus is not mentioned. The androphilic non-surgical trans women whom I mentioned in Part I of this rereading such as Holly Woodlawn were not yet famous in 1966. However Benjamin’s associate Louise Lawrence who educated Benjamin about much of the trans scene is an obvious person to mention here. That is what I assumed Type IV Nonsurgical to be.

However Benjamin’s actual description is: “’Dresses’ as often as possible with insufficient relief of his gender discomfort. May live as a man or a woman; sometimes alternating.” Let us look again at Benjamin’s description of Type III True Transvestite: “’Dresses’ constantly or as often as possible. May live and be accepted as woman. May ‘dress’ underneath male clothes, if no other chance.” This difference is subtle rather than definite. Surely Type IIIs are sometimes taken to be Type IVs, and vice versa. And the difference of Type IV from Type V and Type VI is not simply surgical, despite the name.

The only example that Benjamin gives is
 “Peter A. (who, however, much prefers to be called Irene). He is a rather well-known musician from Oregon, married for twenty-five years, with a grown-up daughter who knows nothing of her father's hobby. The wife knows and makes the best of it, but does not want to see him ‘dressed,’ except perhaps on occasion of a masquerade ball.” p81/37 Benjamin estimates Irene to be a Kinsey 2 or 3. She has not gone full-time nor committed to surgery “But as things are, he would harm too many people, could not continue in his profession, or preserve his present standard of living.” Apparently, Irene never did transition, or we would be celebrating her as one of the very first trans musicians, earlier than Wendy Carlos or Canary Conn.

Given that Peter/Irene matches Benjamin’s Type IV, where do the full time non-op trans women go?  Benjamin later (see below p115/53) does tell us that he knows a dozen who are living, illegally,as women, although unable to obtain the operation.

Like gay and female transvestites and gynephilic Type VI s they have been erased from Benjamin’s schema.

Type V Moderate Intensity. Ricky V, late fifties, had lived and worked as a woman in a business office for seven years. Ricky had previous married and had two children, by then grown up. Ricky was anxious to have TS surgery but was unable to afford it. Benjamin estimates her to have been a Kinsey 3, but she currently had no sex life. [Remember that Benjamin’s scale decrees that Type V are Kinsey 4-6.]

Type VI High Intensity. Harriet [called Ava in the biographical appendix to the book] was 28 in 1964. Raised in foster homes, he married at 19. “With the help of fantasies, he succeeded in fathering three children”. He twice attempted suicide. Benjamin put Harriet on estrogen, and she stayed in her male job until she had enough money for the operation. Attempts to have the operation in the US failed, and in 1965 she had the operation in Europe. Later she found an older man and became his wife. Benjamin regards Harriet as a Kinsey 4, when a father, and later a 6. [Remember that Benjamin’s scale decrees that Type VI are Kinsey 6 – and some would say that a true Kinsey 6 would never actually be able to father children, no matter what fantasies he invoked.] p83-5/38-9

In the biographical appendix is the story of Betty, a Kinsey 6 from childhood, a female impersonator who was in the US Navy, and had corrective surgery at age 24. I don’t know why she is not mentioned here.

Further handicaps of transsexuals. Benjamin discusses unsympathetic doctors. “But, alas, the failure of psychotherapy to achieve any change in the patient's attitude is fully acknowledged by those who have had any pertinent experience. With a rather unprofessional antagonism, some physicians are known to have hurt these patients psychologically.” And then: “Cross-dressing is a help, but not always and not enough. The law forbids them to ‘dress’ and hold a job as a woman. Yet this would be the most effective form of therapy (together with estrogen) until an operation can be had, provided the demand for it persists.” p86/39   The antagonism to his patients expressed at the beginning of the chapter seems to have been forgotten.

Benjamin tells how he started providing his patients with a letter that could be produced if the patient were arrested – as Hirschfeld had arranged in Berlin in the 1920s. It was rarely required. However one policeman tore it up and threw it in the patient’s face. In other cases it had the hoped-for result. However in one case the patient was convicted for ‘impersonating’ by a District Attorney who then complained to the County Medical Society, who passed it to the Division of Professional Conduct, and Benjamin was politely but firmly asked not to write any such certificates again. p87-8/40 Benjamin does not say what year this happened, but it was probably shorty afterwards that the Johns Hopkins Gender Clinic started issuing identity cards with the Johns Hopkins phone number.

Then Benjamin returns, as at the beginning of the chapter, to negative aspects of transsexuals: “Another handicap for many transsexuals is their character and their behavior. From a so-called ‘character neurosis’ to outspoken hostile, paranoic demands for help from the doctor, all kinds of objectionable traits may exist. Unreliability, deceitfulness, ingratitude, together with an annoying but understandable impatience, have probably ruined their chances for help in more than a few instances. Many transsexuals are utterly self-centered, concerned with their own problems only and unable to consider those of anyone else. A surgeon wrote once to me: ‘Our experience is growing in regard to the fact that most of them (transsexual patients) are willing to do anything on earth before operation, but nothing at all afterwards’." p89/40

But balances this with: “On the other hand, there are also those patients who are touchingly appreciative, grateful, and eager to cooperate. They compensate the doctor for many of his disappointments. Alas, they seem to be in the minority.” p89/40

He gives the tragic case history of Joan. “She was twenty-six when I met her and that was just after she had her conversion operation as well as plastic breast surgery. She was then a strikingly attractive redhead, vivacious, possibly somewhat reckless, making her living as a call girl and cocktail waitress. I lost sight of her for several years. When I saw her again, I was hardly able to recognize her. Her attractiveness was all but gone. She had lost much weight, had aged considerably, and looked sick. She had become a ‘goof ball’ addict and was still in the 'racket.’ One day, she was found dead in her furnished room. There was a vague rumor of suicide but no evidence. The medical examiner's office listed her death as ‘narcotic.’ In all probability, she died from an overdose accidentally administered when she experimented for the first time with an injection.” p90/41

The great majority of transsexuals, let it not be forgotten, are merely utterly unhappy individuals. Some of them have become misfits through their gender disorientation that neither society, nor the law, nor the medical profession at present understands and acknowledges as an undeserved misfortune.” p90/41

5. The Etiology of Transsexualism

Benjamin considers various explanations: genetic, endocrine, imprinting and childhood conditioning, but finds none of them convincing. He concludes:

"Our genetic and endocrine equipment constitutes either an unresponsive, sterile, or a more or less responsive, that is to say, fertile soil on which the wrong conditioning and a psychic trauma can grow and develop into such a basic conflict that subsequently a deviation like transsexualism can result." p108/50

6. Nonsurgical Management of Transsexualism

The chapter opens with “The management of transsexualism is, in the majority of cases, radically different from that of transvestism. Although this volume does not deal with transvestism specifically, a few remarks as to the therapy of this less serious deviation, in comparison with TSism, may be in order.” p110/51

How can he say that after spending two full chapters on transvestism? Possibly this was written before it was decided to include the transvestism chapters. It would seem that Brooking Tatum in his role as editor has failed again.

Therapy in transvestism. “The true transvestite as a rule does not want any treatment. … There are instances, however, when transvestism may be a great handicap for the patient and he would then be ready to undergo treatment with the hope of being cured of his strange and embarrassing compulsion.“ p110/51 On the next page Benjamin describes [remember that this is 1966] a “new and rather outlandish form of therapy”, that is behavior or aversion therapy whereby a subject is given emetics or electric shocks.

(Anticipation of 21st century trans politics)
The next section. which is easily missed as it is the conclusion to Therapy in Transvestism is quite interesting in that it anticipates how trans politics will evolve in the next half-century. While Benjamin’s scale presents TV-TS as a continuum, this section contains the roots of opinions expressed by Kay Brown or Charlotte Goiar, that there is difference between the ‘addicted’ transvestite who needs bigger fixes, and a true transsexual who is indifferent to the clothes.

The transvestitic urge (fetishistic or transsexual) contains an element of addiction. Larger "doses" may be required for certain individuals as time goes on. Therein may lie a ‘progressive’ nature of TVism in some instances. If untreated and uncontrolled, ‘dressing’ may be desired more and more frequently and even the idea of physical changes through hormone treatment or through an operation may be gaining ground, particularly in unfavorable - that is to say, constantly stimulating - surroundings. Here psychotherapy and proper guidance at the right time may help, provided a transsexual tendency is not too deep-seated. Such seemingly progressive aggravation of transvestism was rarely noticed under treatment, although it did apparently occur in a few cases. However, later on, these patients proved to be initially unrecognized transsexuals. The opposite was more frequently observed: under estrogen medication, the desire to ‘dress’ became often less demanding and less sexual and the inability to indulge grew somewhat less frustrating. The explanation probably is that the libido was reduced in its intensity through estrogen and since the transvestitic urge is part of the libido, it was likewise lowered. But I am anticipating a later discussion. The foregoing ... (if repetition may be permitted) apply chiefly to that form of transvestism that is its own purpose, which is to say that it is not the chief symptom of transsexualism. As soon as physical changes are desired, it ceases to be true transvestism, and inclines toward transsexualism (Type IV). The full and complete transsexual (S.O.S. V and VI) finds only temporary and partial relief through ‘dressing.’ I have even met transsexuals who would not ‘dress’ at all.” What good is it?" they said; "it does not make me a woman. I am not interested in her clothes; I am only interested in being a woman." That is the true transsexual sentiment.” p113-4/52-3

Psychological guidance in transsexualism. This section is Benjamin’s classic call for tolerance.

Two years running I posted this quote on IDAHOT. RadicalBitch/Cathryn Platine criticized me for doing so.

Too many individuals are that way; what they do not like must be forbidden and punished. Then they are satisfied. I have even met transvestites who dislike (or pretend to dislike) transsexualism so much that they are against estrogen treatment and operation (for reasons of self protection?). There are also transsexuals who dislike transvestites as well as homosexuals. Intolerance can be found in strange quarters.” p114-5/53.

Benjamin quotes journalist Walter Alvarez (who did put trans persons in contact with Benjamin, and wrote the introduction to Benjamin & Masters Prostitution and Morality, 1964) in the New York Herald-Tribune, July 1, 1957 as writing in sympathy, although times have so changed that many now would see his words as both patronizing and casually racist: “We must all learn to have sympathy for these persons who were so badly gypped by Nature. But for the grace of God, we too might be caught in the same cruel trap. “ p115/53

Benjamin continues: “Living completely as a woman (though illegally) can actually be a life-saving measure for those transsexuals who find an operation unattainable. I know at least a dozen who are in this situation right now. They work as women in offices, factories, beauty salons, as nurses, domestics, and some, alas, as prostitutes, all quite unknown to their employers, associates, or clients. They would best have psychological as well as medical help in addition to living in their female gender identity; but very few actually have such help. Merely the opportunity to talk to somebody about their problems has its therapeutic value. To find some understanding from a doctor instead of coldness, rejection, or ridicule goes a long way toward easing their burden.” p115/53

See my comments above on who is or is not a Type IV Nonsurgical Transsexual.

Psychotherapy in transsexualism.

Psychotherapy with the aim of curing transsexualism, so that the patient will accept himself as a man, it must be repeated here, is a useless undertaking with present available methods. The mind of the transsexual cannot be changed in its false gender orientation. All attempts to this effect have failed. … Since it is evident, therefore, that the mind of the transsexual cannot be adjusted to the body, it is logical and justifiable to attempt the opposite, to adjust the body to the mind. If such a thought is rejected, we would be faced with a therapeutic nihilism to which I could never subscribe in view of the experiences I have had with patients who have undoubtedly been salvaged or at least distinctly helped by their conversion. This help has been given by two therapeutic measures aside from psychological guidance and living as a woman: first, estrogen medication and second, surgery. Most of the time, both.” p116/53

There are still psychotherapists who do not accept this. However 50 years later they have still not divised a better psychotherapy that actually does 'cure’ trans persons. The quote that I have just given still stands as the classic rational for transition.

Estrogen therapy. Benjamin discusses in detail the how and why of estrogen therapy. I assume that most readers of this encyclopedia are well acquainted with this topic, and there is no need for a summary.

7. Conversion Operation

Benjamin discusses in detail the conversion operation. I assume that most readers of this encyclopedia are well acquainted with this topic, and there is no need for a summary.

Bemjamin includes the text of an article he wrote for Sexology Magazine, December 1963, wherein he advises: “Furthermore, the operation, even if successful, does not change you into a woman. Your inborn (genetic) sex will remain male. You must be aware of this fact, although it may have no practical meaning for your later life as a woman. If the surgeon castrates you as part of the operation, you would be, technically and from the glandular point of view, neither male nor female. You would be a ‘neuter.’ Only your psychological sex is female. (Otherwise you would not have wanted the operation in the first place.) If the surgeon merely places your testicles in the abdomen to make them invisible, you would have to be considered a male, from a glandular viewpoint as well as legally. Yet, it is true, you could look like a woman in the genital region and function as one after the operation. Even a climax (orgasm) during sex relations has been reported by most such patients. But remember, a time may come when sex is no longer important. Would you still want to be a woman then?” p134/ 62 Again he defies the subtitle of the book!

He lists four motives for the conversion operation (p140-2/65-6):
  1. Sexual. “It concerns particularly the younger transsexuals. Their sex drive is not that of a homosexual man but that of a woman who is strongly attracted to normal heterosexual men.”
  2. Gender. “Especially for the older transsexuals, the urgent need to relieve their gender unhappiness can be powerful and impressive”.
  3. Legal. “The constant fear of discovery, arrest, and prosecution when "dressing" or living as women is a nightmare for many. They want to be women legitimately and have a legal change of their sex status.”
  4. Social. “applies only if the transsexual patient happens to have a conspicuous feminine physique, appearance, and manners” [while still presenting as male]

8.   51 Male Transsexuals and the Results of Their Operations

Benjamin summarizes:

"By the end of 1964, a total of 249 male transvestites were observed in my offices, either in New York or in San Francisco. Of these, 152 were diagnosed as transsexuals. This figure, however, may actually be higher as some transvestites do not reveal their true intentions during the first few interviews. In some others, an apparent transvestism may gradually seem to progress into transsexualism with or (more likely) without any treatment and patients originally diagnosed as transvestites (of the II or III type in the S.O.S.) are actually transsexuals (V or VI on the S.O.S.). A few of them are among the 51 cases operated upon.

These patients were, in the earlier years, mostly operated upon in Denmark, Holland, or Sweden, and a few in Mexico. Then, Dr. Elmer Belt in California performed a series of such operations. In approximately half of them I could observe the results. Dr. Belt discontinued this type of surgery a few years ago, largely for personal reasons. During the last three or four years, most conversion operations among patients I know were done in Casablanca, Morocco, by a French surgeon, Dr. Georges Burou. Reports have reached me of operations being done occasionally, rather secretly, in the United States, rather freely in Japan, occasionally in Mexico,and a few in Italy.“ p146/68

The technique employed by the different surgeons undoubtedly varied from time to time and according to the patient, particularly concerning the formation of the vagina. In the majority of the 51 cases of operation in this country, the vaginal canal was lined with skin taken from the thigh, while in all those operated upon in Casablanca the inverted skin of the penis was utilized. In two patients that I know of, a short piece of gut (ileal loop) was removed and used to form the vagina. This technique naturally constitutes a more extensive operation as it involves the opening of the abdominal cavity. In four of my 51 patients, the technique is unknown.” p147/68

So up to this time, it was mainly those operated on in Casablanca by Dr Burou who had the penile inversion method.   Dr Edgerton at Johns Hopkins then adopted and adapted this method.  When he was contacted by Dr Stanly Biber in 1968, this was the method that was recommended.

The fees reported to me by patients ranged in the majority from $2,000 to $4,000, usually including a three- to four-week stay in the hospital. It was disheartening to some patients to be prepared to pay the reported fee of $2,000 or even $3,000 to a particular surgeon, only to find out when they tried to make a definite appointment that the price had gone up $5oo to $1,ooo in only a few months' time. The surgeon, however, is said to have operated anyhow, allowing the patient credit for the balance of the fee.” p148/69 According to this Inflation Calculator, $2000 in 1964 would be $15,400 in 2016.

Here is the age distribution:
23 in their 20's
14 in their 30's
11 in their 40's
3 in their 50's
p148/69

and occupations:
Office work 10
Salesperson 3
Musician 1
Store proprietor 3
Hairdresser 6
Housewife 5
Stockbroker 1
Show business (acting) 10
Domestic 1
Office manager 1
Prostitute 3
Teaching 2
Practical nurse or companion 2
Photography 1
Retired 1
Unknown 1
p148-9/69

So show business/acting and office work are the most common. Show business would include female impersonation. The later trans stereotype of computer work was of course very rare in 1964. But where are the military? Study after study has shown that trans women are over-represented there, usually as an attempt to deny their destiny. The reprint of Benjamin’s 1953 paper "Transsexualism and transvestism as psychosomatic and somatopsychic syndromes" had been in particular demand by army doctors.

Post-operative follow-ups, at an average of 5-6 years, rated the conversion as follows:
Good 17
Satisfactory 27
Doubtful 5
Unsatisfactory 1
Unknown 1

Considered unsatisfactory was the case of a "woman" now sixty-four years old, of Latin extraction, operated upon in Europe in 1955 without my consent. She was the only one who expressed regret over the decision to be sex changed. The operation, incidentally, did not include the formation of a vagina. This patient, in his former male role, was reasonably prosperous, having always held a well-paying position in the business world. As a woman, he was never able to make a satisfactory living and was always in financial difficulties, although fully acceptable as a women in appearance and manner. She had insisted on conducting her own mail-order business in which she had no experience. Her command of the Spanish language was hoped to be a great asset. Alas, it did not prove to be so. Her general health had also failed, perhaps owing to psychosomatic influences (lack of a sex life?) and a return to the male status is now being considered and most likely advisable. In this case, the sex motive had probably played an equal part with the gender and legal motives when the operation was decided upon at the age of fifty-six. Emotional frustration, however, compounded by economic failure and the aging process, probably led to the present unsatisfactory state which, as may be hoped, can be improved under a new life pattern. Here, the outcome of his venture into the female world was considered unsatisfactory by the patient himself. Such self assessment, I feel, is necessary to justify an unfavorable diagnosis. I found no other similar example among the 51 patients.“ p151-2/71

Three of the 51 had already died by 1964.
  • One was successfully married as a woman for six years, a house wife and clubwoman, a charming, intelligent lady who succumbed to a fatal heart attack at the age of 50.” p152/71
  • Joan, mentioned above, who died a narcotic death.
  • The third died in her 51st year. Her "sex change" dated back to 1954 when she was operated upon in Holland but without the formation of a vagina. This was first attempted later in the same year in the United States, but unsuccessfully. The vagina was reconstructed in the United States in 1958 but a vaginorectal fistula developed. It was repaired successfully the following year. In the meantime, the patient had lived in reasonable comfort as a woman, held a clerical position with a large business concern for ten years, and was fully accepted as a woman. She enjoyed several "sex affairs" after the final operation on her vagina. The patient died late in 1964 of a complication of illnesses requiring repeated operations. Several large liver cysts were removed. (There was a history of hepatitis in the late forties.) Part of a benign pancreatic tumor was excised. Later a "dormant" carcinoma of the pancreas was discovered. She was also operated upon for stomach ulcers, developed diabetes and hypertension, but the immediate cause of death was a pulmonary embolism.” p151-2/71
An example of success.

Jonathan, usually called Johnny, was twenty-four years old when I saw him first. He was a miserable, unhappy young man of rather short stature, slightly overweight and moderately underdeveloped sexually, a transsexual of the VI type in the S.O.S. He worked in a restaurant as a checker. One of the headwaiters was homosexual and gave our patient a bad time with his unwanted propositions. While Johnny was attracted to men, he disliked homosexuals. ‘They want another man,’ he said, ‘but I feel I am a girl.’ Finally Johnny had saved enough money, his family was understanding, and a psychiatrist to whom I had sent him definitely recommended surgery. One year later, he went to Europe (in 1955) and, in those earlier years, had only a castration and penectomy done. An American surgeon, two years later, fashioned a well-functioning vagina. Then Johnny (now Joanna), met a man a few years older than he (now she) when she was working as a receptionist in a dentist's office. He was and still is a reasonably successful salesman. He fell in love with Joanna and married her. He knows only that Joanna as a child had to undergo an operation which prevented her from ever menstruating or having children. They have had a distinctly happy marriage now for seven years. Joanna no longer works but keeps house and they lead the lives of normal, middleclass people. To compare the Johnny I knew with Joanna of today is like comparing a dreary day of rain and mist with a beautiful spring morning or a funeral march with a victory song. The old life in the original (male) sex is all but forgotten and is actually unpleasant to be recalled.” p153/72

The male transsexual's life after conversion.
The sex life is less essential or altogether immaterial if the gender motive was the driving force for the operation. Of these 51 patients, twelve married as women. Also, twelve were married previously as men. Five have experienced married life from both sex angles (as a male, unsuccessful, some not even consummated); five were divorced [3] as females and three remarried one or more times. Of the 39 unmarried, twenty-three reported sex relations. Of these, nine are part or full-time prostitutes, at least at this time of writing. The unfortunate fact that a number of patients went into prostitutional activities right after their operations has turned some doctors against its acceptance as a legitimate therapy.” p159/74

The medical literature on the conversion operation.

This section includes two pages by Leo Wollman which we have already quoted. And also quotes from Ira Pauly and Per Anchersen, that support what Benjamin has been saying in this chapter. Anchersen was a Norwegian doctor well known for his work with transsexuals in the 1960s, but now almost completely forgotten. He has no entry in Wikipedia ar all, not even in NO.Wikipedia.

Conclusions: “My observations have forced upon me the conclusion that most patients operated upon, no matter how disturbed they still may be, are better off afterward than they were before: some subjectively, some objectively, some both ways. I have become convi nced from what I have seen that a miserable, unhappy male transsexual can, with the help of surgery and endocrinology, attain a happier future as a woman. In this way, the individual as well as society can be served. The rejection of the operation and/or treatment as a matter of principle is therefore not justified.” p164-5/77

Joe (1920 - ?) cattle breader, art dealer

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Jo was one of four daughters raised in New England. Father, a salesman was frequently away. Jo dressed as a boy except for school, preferred boys toys and activities, and was interested in animals, despite father’s aversion to them.

Jo was sent to a private co-ed school at nine, and a private girls’ school at fourteen, and a girls boarding school at seventeen. The school uniform made it impossible to be taken as a boy, but did provide opportunities for sexual relationships. Jo barely graduated.

Father berated Jo for lack of achievement and so Jo married a male friend to get away from home. Jo permitted intercourse only twice, but became pregnant anyway. However she miscarried in the third month, and they separated. Jo fell in with a fast crowd, and one morning awoke in a man’s bed. Again she was pregnant, they married, and again she miscarried.

Only when she was 26 did Jo meet any lesbians: “however, I never felt that I was in quite the same category”. Jo moved to the US Southwest and started raising pure-bred cattle.

For several years Jo’s companion was Barbara who drank heavily and beat Jo. Jo attempted suicide, and underwent two years of psychiatric treatment, that did nothing at all to deal with her feelings that she should be a man.

Joe had met Helen, a friend of Barbara, and started corresponding with her, but it was some time before they were both free of other involvements. They were very compatible.

In 1956 Joe wrote:
 “In my case, there is the embarrassment of being in public places and not quite knowing what rest-room facilities to make use of.... Yet, on the rare occasions when I wear female attire because of absolute necessity, I feel inwardly that I am masquerading as a woman. I never have this feeling of impersonation when I am dressed as a man. Rather, I feel comfortable and as if living in tune with what has been part and parcel of me all my life and has been so accepted by my family and is now accepted by most of my friends and acquaintances. … I feel I have never dressed as a man just to flaunt my deviation or for any other reason except that to dress and behave as a man is natural for me while to try to live any other way gives me always the feeling of being an impostor.”
Joe met a trans woman, June, who introduced him to Dr Benjamin. He was put on a course of male hormones, his already small breasts were reduced to resemble those of a male, and some years later he had a hysterectomy. He started shaving regularly.

This while living in a small, semi-rural community in Texas. Helen joined him there, and after his birth certificate was re-issued, they married. All members of both families were quite accepting.

Joe and Helen moved to a city, and Joe became an art dealer.
  • Harry Benjamin. The Transsexual Phenomenon. Julian Press, 1966. Warner Books Edition 1977: 190, 272-288. PDF: 158, 128-135.

A rereading of Benjamin: Part 4: photos, legal, trans men, conclusion

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  • Harry Benjamin. The Transsexual Phenomenon. Julian Press, 1966. Warner Books Edition 1977, with a bibliography and appendix by Richard Green.  PDF (with different pagination).  Page references eg p32/13 mean p32 in the 1977 Warner edition and p13 in the PDF. 
Part I:  intro and the Scale
Betty (?1938 - ?) female impersonator, salesgirl, model. --- 2nd entry, Appendix D, autobiographies
Part II:  transvestites
Clara Miller (1899 - ?) fur merchant, office worker ---  3rd entry, Appendix D, autobiographies
Part III: trans women
Joe (1920 - ?) cattle breader, art dealer ---  4th entry, Appendix D, autobiographies
Part IV: photos, legal, trans men, conclusions
Comments

Photographs

In the center of the Warner edition are 23 pages of photographs: some before and after contrasts, and then close-ups of surgical results. The photographs are not identified in any way, not by a letter, not by a number, not by a pseudonym. Thus it is difficult to refer to any specific photograph. In the PDF of the book, only a few of the photographs are included.

The 6th and 7th pages (not in the PDF) are the before and after of an actor, both in a stereotyped pose more typical of silent films, than of the 1960s. This actor has never been named. How an actor can transition in stealth and keep working is intriguing. The US trans actors of the 1960s were non-op e.g. Candy Darling (however, of course, several of the stars of Le Carrousel in Paris were in films in the 1960s). The first US trans actor known to have surgically transitioned was Ajita Wilson who did so in the mid-1970s. The unnamed actor in the photograph is the true pioneer in her field, and we know nothing of her.







Pages 22-4, the last 3 pages, of the photographs (not in the PDF) are of a tattooed woman who had conversion surgery in 1953 at age 45. Benjamin discusses her on p137/63: “One patient who is now, several years after the operation, a decidedly masculine-looking ‘woman,’ with tattoos all over her body, is getting along well in an active business and is unrecognized as a former male. She is merely considered eccentric by her associates. Under no circumstances, she assured me repeatedly, would she ever go back to living as a man. ‘This way I am at least myself and can relax,’ were her own words. A couple of times she was arrested under the suspicion of ‘impersonating.’ When she was taken to a police station, examined and declared to be a woman, the arresting officers apologized and in one instance, bought her a dinner.






9. Legal Aspects in Transvestism and Transsexualism

There is actually no law anywhere that expressly forbids a man to dress as a woman; but the New York State Code of Criminal Procedure, Section 887, Subdivision 7, is being used against transvestites, and other states have similar statutes. This law says that a person (designated as a 'vagrant') must not appear with 'a face painted, discolored, or covered or concealed or being otherwise disguised in a manner calculated to prevent his being identified.' This applies to persons 'on a road or public highway, or in a field, lot, wood or enclosure.' This law had been passed more than one hundred years ago for an entirely different purpose. It was directed against farmers who disguised themselves as Indians and sometimes attacked law officers when they tried to enforce an unpopular rent law.” p167/78

Benjamin, advised by attorney Richard Levidow, was right about New York State, but municipalities across the US had passed laws against cross-dressing. See here.

The first case discussed is “A middle-aged man, an airline pilot for many years, of high standing in the community, a recent widower and a father, whom I knew well and for whom I have the highest regard, was arrested last year in the street near his home, wearing a wig, female clothing, and so on.” Readers of this encyclopedia will immediately recognize Felicity Chandelle.

The second case is of a woman, “Back from abroad after the conversion operation, and no longer a male anatomically” who was arrested for impersonation. An examination at the police station told the detectives that they had made a mistake, but unlike what had happened to the woman with tattoos, they changed the charge to ‘soliciting’. Fortunately she drew a sensible judge who dismissed the case.

E, a transvestite who for years had lived as a woman and whom I knew through frequent contacts to be a respected and responsible person, wanted to travel in Europe as a woman although the birth certificate and the given name were that of a man. I wrote the Passport Bureau, State Department, Washington, presenting fully all the facts in support of E's application for a passport to be issued in her female name and identity. Without comment, E's request was granted and she received the desired passport. Someone in the respective department was big enough to override technicalities and, in this instance, common sense won out over possible ‘rules and regulations’." p169/79 This could well be Virginia Prince who somehow managed to get a passport as a woman, and in the late 1960s visited the UK and Australia.

An ancient law threatens surgeons. This is of course the concept of Mayhem, originally a crime against the king in that it rendered a man less able to fight, but by the 20th century it had become a crime of removing a functioning body part. Because of this almost no US doctor was willing to do conversion surgery. Benjamin seems to regard Mayhem as a residual piece of English law in US law codes, but no US surgeon was ever charged, unlike Argentina where Ricardo San Martin was charged in 1961, and Francisco Sefazio in 1969.

After Benjamin’s book was published, Mauricio Archibald was on his way home in April 1967 from a masquerade party when he also was arrested and convicted under Section 887, Subdivision 7. Unlike Felicity, he appealed, but Per Curium the conviction stood as “the wording of subdivision 7 does not require that the State must establish either a lack of means of support or an intention to commit an illegal act”. However Section 887 was repealed that year, but with the caveat that the “newly enacted sections were not to apply or govern the prosecution for any offense committed prior to the effective date of the act".


10. The Female Transsexual

As we said re the title of Chapter 4, the usage, referring to trans men as ‘female transsexuals’ does grate.

Frequency of female transsexualism.
It is probably very unfair to devote only one chapter in this volume to the female transsexual: unfair because her emotional problem is in every way as serious as that of her male counterpart. However, the frequency of female transsexualism is considerably less than that of the male. While the clinical experiences described in the preceding pages are based on 152 cases of male transsexualism, the female transsexuals here reported number only twenty (by the end of 1964). Even so, sometime in the future she may merit a book devoted to her alone.” p178/84

Such a book never did emerge.

If a female transsexual, after having been changed into a male, should receive the same publicity as Christine Jorgensen, it is possible that a greater number of female patients might apply for treatment. How many of them might do so merely as a passing mood, and would then not be acceptable for treatment, is conjectural.” p179/84

There was a press brou-ha-ha when Michael Dillon was outed in 1958, but he disappeared to India rather than stay around and continue the attention.

Why the second sentence? Why suppose that trans men are more likely to apply for treatment “merely as a passing mood”. This phenomenon was not discussed for trans women.

It is interesting to mention in this connection that in our culture about twelve times more women would have liked to have been born as men than vice-versa. They said so when they were questioned in a Gallup-type poll.” p179/84

This was so in the 1960s and earlier. Benjamin’s explanation is: “The more intimate, maternal relationship, however (with its exposure to the mother's female hormones during the nine months of gestation), may offer a possible explanation.” p180/85 Personally I would suggest the strong social restrictions applied to women before second-wave feminism began to gain ground. Far fewer women in the 21st century say that they would have preferred to have been men. Of course today those, that say that they would rather be a man, are likely to be advised that they can indeed change.

Symptomology.

The female transsexual has many symptoms in common with the male and much that was said in the previous chapters could apply equally to her. The female transsexual's conviction that she ‘was meant to be a man’ is as strong as the reverse is in our male patients. She resents her female form, especially the bulging breasts, and frequently binds them with adhesive tape until a plastic surgeon can be found who would reduce the breasts to masculine proportions. Transsexual women fall deeply in love with normal or homosexual girls, often those of a soft, feminine type. Besides wanting to be lovers, they want to be husbands and fathers.” p180/85

Before Louis Sullivan in the 1980s, the trans man who wanted to be a gay male, was pretty much invisible. Ray Blanchard kept on maintaining that such trans men did not exist even despite communications from Sullivan.

Benjamin gives a case study but without his usual empathy:

One of my patients so much desired to be a father that she allowed one particular man to have sex relations with her until he could impregnate her, but this man then had to relinquish all claims on her and on the child. She reared the child, a boy, as a father would and wanted him to consider her his father, although the child, when old enough, was informed of the fact that 'father' was really his mother, but his 'natural parent.' The psychological impact on the child's mind of this confusing situation is worth studying. The persistent demand of this patient to be treated, operated upon, and 'made' a man, and her hostile reactions to the refusals by doctors, have brought her several times into mental institutions with the diagnosis of schizophrenic reaction. For patients of this type, Pauly coined the term 'paranoia transsexualis,' an apt label but naturally only a label. Whether the patient 'reacted' with a psychosis to her transsexual problem with its frustrations, or whether the TS problem should be considered part of her psychosis, is still an unsolved question. This patient, in spite of a short course of androgen treatment, is still in and out of hospitals, and the question whether to allow her (him?) custody of the child is undecided at this writing. Further studies of her case may deserve publication at some later date.” p180-1/85

Benjamin concludes this section with: “Menstruation constitutes a psychological trauma to the female TS. Its suppression under androgen therapy affords enormous emotional relief. Interests, attitudes, and fantasies take a masculine direction. Typically masculine occupations such as those of soldier, policeman, truck driver, would be their ideal, but only too often they have to be practical and settle for office work. Just like some of their male counterparts, they frequently show much ability in their work, can be highly successful in business or profession, profiting perhaps by the combination of male and female traits in their constitutional makeup and in their psychological development.” p181/85

Sex Life.

Sexually, female transsexuals can be ardent lovers, wooing their women as men do, but not as lesbians, whom they often dislike intensely. They long for a penis, yet mostly understand realistically that the plastic operation of creating a useful organ would be a complicated, difficult, highly uncertain, and most expensive procedure.” p181-2/85

However only one of Benjamin’s patients had had phalloplasty at that time. “ the operation performed in several stages, but the final result is still questionable. The first surgical attempt, as his doctor explained to me, was ruined because the patient went horseback riding too soon!” p182/86

I have had extensive correspondence with another intelligent female transsexual whom I never met personally. He described 33 plastic operations, but the male organ, although serviceable, still does not seem fully satisfactory. The technique of creating a penis varies greatly with the various surgeons who have attempted it. The textbook by Gillies and Millard goes into considerable detail. The Russians are said to have more extensive experience with this type of operation than anybody else.“ p182/86

Of the twenty patients, five had been married as women before I ever saw them. These marriages were entered into either in the hope that it might reverse the psychological trend, or under pressure from the family, or to escape family supervision. All these marriages failed, ending in annulment or divorce, or, in one instance, in a reversal of roles with the wife becoming the husband and the former husband becoming the wife. Some were never consummated and were highly unpleasant experiences, probably for both partners. There were four pregnancies in three patients with one abortion, one miscarriage, and one ending in normal birth twice. This person, living as a male (whether married as a male is unknown) now has two children to which ‘he’ is the mother.” p182/86

Etiology.
 
Much that has been said on etiological speculation for the male transsexual applies equally to the female, especially as far as conditioning is concerned. Definite conditioning could be proved in only two cases, and not at all in eleven. The remaining seven were considered doubtful.” p183/86

Again no theory of etiology is convincing.

Physical Data.

“The physical examination of the female transsexual usually reveals a normal girl except that, as in the male, hypogonadism seems to be more frequent than one would expect. Among my twenty patients, it was more or less distinctly evident in nine. There was no sign of hypogonadism in ten, and in one case it is unknown.”

One case was that of a female pseudo-hermaphrodite who underwent corrective surgery late in life and had been happily married as a man for five years when he was widowed.” p184/87

Social Position.
Artist 2
Entertainer 1
Librarian 1
Engineer 2
Selling 1
Ranching, farming 3
Office work 6
Factory work 2
Restaurant 2
p185/87

Surgery.

A total hysterectomy, including the removal of the ovaries, is often as ardently desired by the female transsexual as the male desires his conversion operation. It is almost as difficult to obtain because surgeons, quite naturally, are reluctant to remove healthy organs. After a more or less extended period of androgen treatment, a physical state resembling pseudohermaphroditism (enlarged clitoris, body hair, etc.) develops, so that some surgeons at times felt justified in operating, especially if the social status (male) of the patient is already well established. In several instances, the patient was not fortunate enough to find a surgeon in the United States and had to go abroad or to Mexico for the operation. Of the twenty female transsexuals here reported, nine had a hysterectomy performed. In eight it was total and in one the ovaries were retained. The average age of the nine patients at the time of the operation was 35.5. Four patients were in their twenties, two in their thirties, two in their forties and one in the fifties, at the time of operation. The corresponding average age in male patients was 33.2.” p187-8/89

Results of therapy.

Psychotherapy with the purpose of having the patient accept herself as a woman is as useless in female transsexualism as it is in male. Psychotherapy can be helpful only as guidance and to relieve tension, provided there is a permissive attitude on the part of the doctor regarding masculinization. If the patient is of age, not acutely psychotic, and reasonably intelligent, the doctor might best say: ‘as to masculinization and your future life, you have to make your own decision’." p189 /89

With one doubtful exception (to be mentioned later), all patients under my observation (and I know the fates of fifteen of the twenty fairly well) were benefited. They still have problems. There still can be spells of depression (mostly reactive) and more or less distinct neurotic or psychoneurotic traits. They were unhappy, disturbed persons before any treatment and they are not boundlessly happy and free of disturbance afterward. Who is? But they are better off; better able to find a satisfactory niche in life, perhaps in a job or profession as a bachelor or as a married man.” p189/89-90

Some examples:

The aforementioned young lady, a student and musician, who seems to have had a doubtful result from her treatment and operations (hysterectomy with the ovaries retained, and mastectomy), was seen about ten years ago. She had been married and divorced, had several years of psychoanalysis, but still wanted to change. After the operation she tried living as a man, then changed her mind and returned to her female role. She even had the shape of her breasts restored by plastic surgery. But she is not unhappy and has no regrets. Her ‘double sex’ may give her a feeling of satisfaction.  Unfortunately I have had no opportunity to see her in recent years, but I know from correspondence and from her physician that she feels her therapeutic attempts ‘basically have worked’." p190/90

One twenty-six-year-old, disturbed, unhappy girl is now, four years later, a busy, handsome, bearded young man, proud husband of a beautiful wife and father of two legally adopted children.” p190/90

One confused, unhappy girl, after two disastrous marriages, an attempted suicide, years of futile psychoanalysis is now, seven years later, a man in his early forties, of some importance in the art world, married to a highly intelligent woman and living in an environment where very few of the numerous friends of this couple have any idea of the husband's past.” p190/90  [This is Joe in Appendix D]

Bobby, formerly Mary ... When first seen ten years ago at the age of thirty-seven, he was living and working as a man. He had been successful in obtaining a complete hysterectomy as well as a mastectomy and his greatest problem was a legal change of sex status. Red tape offered formidable obstacles. After waiting several years, and with the help of various medical certificates, a new birth certificate was finally issued with strikingly good results on the emotional life and his job prospects. Bobby is now reasonably successful as an architect, gets along with people much better than in years past, and his only regret is that his aged mother never became reconciled to the change, although an older sister had readily done so. Bobby has some flair for writing. He is doing his autobiography now, the first one written by a female transsexual for possible publication as a book.” p191/90”

More cases could be related, almost equally satisfying. There are those for whom an operation is not yet attainable, but androgen treatment is at least a partial substitute. A great and deeply disturbing handicap for some is their inability to secure for themselves the legal change of sex status.” p192/91


Appendix A: Concluding Remarks and Outlook

(December 15, 1965)

Benjamin updates his statistics: “The collection of statistical data in the preceding pages was closed at the end of 1964. Toward the end of 1965, a total Of 307 cases of the transvestite-transsexual phenomenon were observed. Among them were 193 males (S.O.S. IV, V, and VI); 62 of them were operated upon. Besides, there were 27 female transsexuals; 11 of them had either hysterectomies or mastectomies or both performed. The rest of the males were transvestites.” p195/92

He looks to the future: “The etiology of the transsexual state is still largely obscure, but a light seems to blink here and there in publications from the laboratories of brain physiologists.” p195/92 He considers possible future developments in conditioning and imprinting, in genetics, in psychology and in endocrinology.

From the therapeutic end, it cannot be doubted or denied that surgery and hormone treatment can change a miserable and maladjusted person of one sex into a happier and more adequate, although by no means neurosis-free, personality of the opposite sex. The degree of such a change depends upon constitutional factors, as well as upon the environment in which the individual's new life pattern will develop.” p196-7/92

He is most pessimistic about legal changes of identity: “As far as the legal change of sex after a conversion operation is concerned, the respective patient in the United States in 1965 has to be lucky. He has to have been born in a state that proceeds from good will, cuts through red tape, and issues a new birth certificate on application accompanied by medical testimony. If he is not lucky and has been born. in a state like the one mentioned above, he has to have money, swallow his sugar-coated pill of disappointment, entrust his fate to a judge, and hope for the best.” p199/93


Appendix B: Complementarity of Human Sexes by Gobind Behari Lal

The Science Editor Emeritus of the Hearst newspapers combines science and religion, regrets the difference between the sexes, and concludes: “The less we think of the 'opposite sexes,' of the 'war of sexes,' and the more we think of 'human beings – with dual sexes, in varying proportions,' the greater might be the hope of success of a more acceptable civilization than that of today. Not ashamed of their 'female nature,' men of power might become tamed down, so that the nuclear weapons will not go off, as the guns went off in August, 1914, starting the First World War, the epoch of horrors still not past.”


Appendix C: Transsexualism: Mythological, Historical, and Cross-Cultural Aspects by Richard Green

Richard Green repeats the common tales found in Bulliet’s Venus Castina and Gilbert’s
Men in Women’s Guise, plus an early account of gender variance among the North American aboriginals.


Appendix D: Transsexual´s Lives by R. E. L. Masters

R. E. L. Masters was Benjamin’s co-author of Prostitution and Morality, of two years earlier, 1964.

As Masters writes: “As a research worker and author in the field of sexology I have had occasion to come to know a great many sex deviates and other persons whose sexual behavior sets them at odds with society.” One suspects that he had not read the earlier parts of the book.  He also refers to trans women as 'he' even after surgery.

This Appendix consists of four selections from unpublished autobiographies, by Ava, Betty, Clara and Joe, and three clinical profiles, C, H and K presumably written by Masters.

Ava is also Harriet, whom Benjamin had discussed as his example of a Type VI High Intensity. p83-5/38-9

Betty is also K.

Clara is also C.

Joe was discussed by Benjamin p190/90.

H was discussed by Benjamin p106-7/49, was Benjamin's first transsexual patient, and is known as Sally Barry.


Bibliography by Richard Green

This bibliography contains the complete publications of Richard Green up to 1965. It contains many books and articles never mentioned by Benjamin. It does not contain some publications mentioned by Benjamin.

Benjamin’s TS Phenomenon – comments

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Harry Benjamin's book is now 50 years old.
  • Harry Benjamin. The Transsexual Phenomenon. Julian Press, 1966. Warner Books Edition 1977, with a bibliography and appendix by Richard Green.  PDF (with different pagination). 
Part I:  intro and the Scale
Betty (?1938 - ?) female impersonator, salesgirl, model. --- 2nd entry, Appendix D, autobiographies
Part II:  transvestites
Clara Miller (1899 - ?) fur merchant, office worker ---  3rd entry, Appendix D, autobiographies
Part III: trans women
Joe (1920 - ?) cattle breader, art dealer ---  4th entry, Appendix D, autobiographies
Part IV: photos, legal, trans men, conclusions
Comments


See also my biography of Harry Benjamin:
Part 1 - beginings
Part 2 - rejuvenation.
Part 3 - transsexualism to 1966.
Part 4 - transsexualism since 1966
Harry Benjamin's other books
The other Harry Benjamin

 
 
When I wrote my 4-part biography of Harry Benjamin in October 2012, I had intended to finish with a review of his major book. However it turned out to be a bigger task than I had realized, and I put it aside until now. As this year is the 50th anniversary of the book's publication, this is certainly a good time to reread it.

A close reading reveals that the book is composed of segments that were written at different times. Sometimes this is openly admitted. Such that chapter 1 was published in Sexology in 1961, and part of chapter 7 in Sexology in 1963. Sometimes this is deduced such as at the beginning of chapter 6 where Benjamin writes: “Although this volume does not deal with transvestism specifically, a few remarks as to the therapy of this less serious deviation, in comparison with TSism, may be in order” as if chapters 2 and 3 do not exist. The grumpy bits at the beginning and end of chapter 4 were probably written at a different time from the rest of the book, including the middle parts of the same chapter.

Textual analysis, a tool well developed in literature and Bible studies (e.g. we know the text of TS Eliot’s Waste Land before Ezra Pound edited it, and gave us the version that is best known; The Epistle to the Philippians contains a kenotic hymn at 2:5-11 whose theology is quite at odds with the rest of the document). The tool is only just beginning to be used in transgender studies. The obvious document for such analysis is Neils Hoyer’s autobiography of Lili Elvenes (Elbe), where Sabine Meyer has made a good start.

The Harry Benjamin Archives at the Kinsey Institute, Indiana (a US State where trans persons are not allowed to use the toilets) is quite vast. Does it contain the initial drafts that became The Transsexual Phenomenon? A comparison with the published version would be a useful PhD thesis for somebody to write.

________________________

Some parts of the book do not seem to know about Benjamin’s Scale, suggesting that it was developed after the book was partly written. The big problem in the scale is the assignment of Kinsey Scale numbers which led inevitably to erasures, of gay transvestites and gynephilic transsexuals. In a couple of cases Benjamin attempts to get around this by declaring a person to be a Kinsey 3 or 4 while being a husband and father, but a 6 after deciding to transition. As Kinsey and his team based positions on the scale on a person’s sexual history this would be an innovation by Benjamin.  In Kinsey's usage a person who was 3 or 4, and then became exclusively androphilic, would have become a 5, not a 6.   Your previous history becomes part of your current history. 

_______________________

Other problems with the scale are the lack of real difference between Type III and Type IV and the lack of a type for full-time non-ops. This would seem to have grown out of Benjamin’s previous three-part typology 1) those who merely want to ‘dress’ and be accepted as women. 2) those who waver, who want breast development but shy away from surgery. 3) ‘fully developed’ transsexuals. Hence he mainly sees a Type IV more as wavering, rather than choosing to live without surgery (despite the name).

Type I (pseudo-transvestites) is not really thought through. Three subtypes are quickly mentioned:
  1. “Nonaffective dressing” is Type 0 (cis) doing drag for non-existential ends.
  2. Those who cross-dress when young and then desist.
  3. Those who never actually cross-dress, but enjoy transvestic films and literature.
_______________________
    Type II is quite muddied by being labeled ‘fetishistic’ while not understanding fetishism, a practice performed by a few transvestites, a few transsexuals, and mainly cis persons. Type III is ‘true transvestite’, implying that type II is sort of ‘false transvestite’. In what way false? This is not addressed, other than talking about ‘fetishism’. Some trans women who are into fetishism, or go through a period of fetishism, appear otherwise to be true transvestites (Johnny Science, Kim Christy),  and some complete the transsexual journey (Lana Wachowski). In this, as in much else, Benjamin paid too much attention to Virginia Prince who was obsessed that her femmephilics not be regarded as fetishistic.

    As I wrote: “Two years after Benjamin’s book, Transvestia columnist Sheila Niles popularized the concept ‘whole girl fetishist (WGF)’ for FPE members who did not pass well enough, particularly if it were for lack of trying. Over the next few years it came to be that those who failed or didn’t bother to fashion themselves as truly feminine were ‘fetishistic’.Susanna Valenti even estimated that the majority of members were WGFs”. I think that here we have the key to what Type II should have been: those who don’t attempt to pass, especially those who get off on being read. Those who want to pass are often uncomfortable around those who don’t care to. This division, into true=wants to pass and false=doesn’t want to pass, can also be applied to female impersonators, as they were then called - as long as we do not insist that they are Kinsey 0-2.  Some female impersonators were women offstage (the pre-op Coccinelle, April Ashley etc) but others were definitely men offstage.

    Those who relish attention, on or off stage, are sometimes called drag queens (of whatever sexual orientation) or attention whores. But only a small percentage of them may reasonably be called ‘fetishistic’. So would genderqueer and non-binary be false transvestites in this meaning? Mixing up 1960s questions and ways of thinking with 21st century concepts is an interesting game, but of limited validity.   Nobody in 1966 was  genderqueer or non-binary, and so we need not pursue the question. Today very few people want to declare any one group ‘true’, and another ‘false’. That does not get us anywhere.

    ________________________

    The HBS crowd made a big deal of being followers of Benjamin while execrating Virginia Prince. This is intellectually nonviable as Prince and Benjamin were long time associates and Prince is repeatedly mentioned in The Transsexual Phenomenon. She is mentioned 5 times in the first three chapters, and in addition Benjamin also repeats opinions that we know had earlier been expressed by Prince. From chapter 4 onwards, transvestism has been left behind, and perhaps you hope that Prince is also left behind. However she is mentioned another three times.

    Prince also deformed the work of Richard Docter and Vern Bullough. I certainly think that Benjamin should have been advised to pay her less attention, and more attention to Louise Lawrence and Patricia Morgan. He should perhaps have also paid more attention to those trans women who could not afford his fees and went to Leo Wollman, Benito Rish or David Wesser instead.

    _________________

    So is a change of sex possible? The Warner Books cover promises: “All the facts about the changing of sex”. Chapter 1 (written 1961) affirms that chromosomes are only one of seven aspects of what is sex. I think that most of us go with this. It is really disconcerting that Benjamin reneges in chapter 3 and declares that “No actual change of sex is ever possible”. And then again in chapter 7 (written 1963): “Furthermore, the operation, even if successful, does not change you into a woman”.

    Editor Brooking Tatum did not feel that this inconsistency was something that should be resolved.

    _______________________

    Benjamin lists four motives for the conversion operation (p140-2/65-6):
    1. Sexual. “It concerns particularly the younger transsexuals. Their sex drive is not that of a homosexual man but that of a woman who is strongly attracted to normal heterosexual men.”
    2. Gender. “Especially for the older transsexuals, the urgent need to relieve their gender unhappiness can be powerful and impressive”.
    3. Legal. “The constant fear of discovery, arrest, and prosecution when ‘dressing’ or living as women is a nightmare for many. They want to be women legitimately and have a legal change of their sex status.”
    4. Social. “applies only if the transsexual patient happens to have a conspicuous feminine physique, appearance, and manners” [while still presenting as male] 
    I will leave (2) until last.
      1. This became a standard criticism that androphilic trans women were really gay men in denial.  This, of course, is not so, not only because many 'gay transsexuals' first explored the gay scene, but found that they were something different from gay men.  

      Furthermore there are  men who do want to have sex as a woman, but without being a woman, who seek to acquire a vagina, but otherwise continue living as men. They are rarely discussed. They are not what Benjamin meant here.
      3. Fortunately – in most of Europe and North America – it is no longer a crime to dress or live as a woman without surgery. However in many parts of Asia, Africa and South America it still is. And in many of these countries, a conversion operation is not recognised. However even where such legal hassles are present, is the fear of discovery really a greater motivator than the desire to be fully a woman?
      4. As it happened there were three outstanding transsexuals in the 1960s who were frequently taken to be women even when dressing as male: Coccinelle, April Ashley, Rachel Harlow. Most of us are not so beautiful. However surely all three became women because they wanted to be women, not that they became women involuntarily to avoid hassles. In the 1990s we had the example of Jaye Davidson who was cast as Dil in The Crying Game because of his beauty. However he is not transsexual, and continued living as a man.
      2. “Especially for the older transsexuals, the urgent need to relieve their gender unhappiness can be powerful and impressive”. This sounds like Anne Vitale’s G3 with Gender Deprivation Anxiety Disorder (GEDAD). Should we assume that Vitale’s G1 has been split between 1 and 4?

      What is missing is that persons want the conversion operation for existential reasons, in that they want to be women, have always felt that they are women, being a woman is what feels right, being a woman is who they are. There are other ways of saying it. But the overwhelmingly dominant reason for wanting a conversion operation is not mentioned by Benjamin.

      One could use this section on the four reasons to argue that Benjamin did not understand at all why trans women asked for and sometimes got the conversion operation.   You could otherwise argue that his support and empathy showed that he did understand, or at least sympathised.   Speaking as a writer I know that sometimes I write something that seems quite dumb on rereading.    A good writer does reread and takes out what jars with the overall theme of the book.   This was not done re the four reasons, but should have been.

      ___________________

      Benjamin states clearly that, except for the frequency of hypogonadism, pre-op, pre-hormone trans women are physiologically indistinguishable from cis males - except for their assertion that they are/want to be women.   And likewise for trans men and cis females.    But what about intersex persons who likewise seek a sex/gender change? 

      Benjamin worked with John Money and must have been aware of the work that he was involved in with those who at that time were referred to as 'hermaphrodites'.   He would have been aware that most intersex stick with the gender of rearing, but that a few do not.  And some transsexuals discover that they have xxy or mosaic DNA and then announce that they are not therefore transsexual, even though e.g. the vast majority of xxy boys grow up to be xxy men. 

      It is perhaps a pity that Benjamin did not comment on this.

      ___________________

      Female-to-male persons get pretty short shrift. Not only are trans men confined to one chapter, but female transvestites, and implicitly female fetishists, are erased.

      There are four autobiographical accounts in Appendix D. Only the first Ava/Harriet is properly discussed in Benjamin’s text, there is also a very quick mention of the fourth, Joe.

      Ontario drivers' licences and gender neutrality

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      It was announced this last week that Ontarians will have a choice of gender neutrality on a driving licence; that X may be chosen instead of F or M for sex.

      Here is a sample report.

      The problem is that gender is present on Ontario driving licences in two places, and no report that I have seen even mentions the other one.

      We need an image at this point:






      You may not realize it immediately but John Doe's birth date is on this licence.   He was born 05 September 1966.

      Can you spot it?   

      It is the last 6 digits of the licence number.

      As a retired IT consultant, I am appalled at the inclusion of other data in the id number.   That is not good practice.

      However it gets worse.

      If Doe were female, the Ontario Ministry of Transport would add 5000 to the six digits, and the licence number would end with 665905.    Hence, if the fourth digit from the end is a 5 or a 6, we know that the person is female, even if Sex=X.

      There is no statement of this hidden sex code in either the news articles or from the Ministry.

      What are they going to do with Sex=X;

      1. include the true birthday, and therefore imply that the person is male
      2. add not 5000, but a different value, eg 3000
      3. stop adding 5000 to female birthdates, and reissue all female licences.
      It has not been stated.



      Two California pioneers

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      Carla Sawyer (192? - ?)

      In 1949, Carla was arrested in Los Angeles under the 1922 municipal anti-masquerading law. This was a year before two lesbians, in separate cases, challenged the Los Angeles anti-masquerading law, and in both cases the courts declared that cross-dressing alone did not constitute guilt under the ordinance unless there was further intent to conceal one's identity. However the police force and the local politicians simply ignored these two rulings.

      Carla later wrote “I didn’t think there were any other transvestites in the world, until after my arrest”. Because of publicity in the press she received letters from and met others. From these she learned of the possibility of changing sex.

      A few years later Louise Lawrence encouraged her to write to Harry Benjamin.

      This led to her being involved in a study of transsexuals by Federick G Worden & James T Marsh. In 1954 Carla participated hoping that it would lead to approval for her surgery. However they interviewed her without bothering to read the six-page letter she had provided, and did not provide the desired approval.

      Carla then had an encounter with Robert Stoller, then new to the field, who attempted to reverse her ‘sexual tendencies’.

      Finally Benjamin helped her obtain surgery in Mexico.
      • Federick G Worden & James T Marsh. “Psychological Factors in Men Seeking Sex Transformation: A Preliminary Report”. Journal of the American Medical Association, 157, 15, April 9 1955: 1292-8.
      • Joanne Meyerowitz. How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States. Cambridge, Ma, London: Harvard University Press, 2002: 156, 157, 163, 187.
      __________________

      On p187 Meyerowitz says that Sawyer had surgery in Mexico, but on p163 she talks of the difficulty of her surgery with Elmer Belt.
      _________________________________________

       

      Caren Ecker (1905? - ?)

      Caren first lived as a woman in Mexico City, until one night a drunk touched her in just the wrong place.

      In the late 1940s, Caren gave her life story to Alfred Kinsey, “in hopes that any information … may in its small way eventually be of help to others of my kind”.

      At the age of 43, then living in northern California, using a local anesthetic, and succeeded in removing her testicles. Dr Karl Bowman, at San Francisco’s Langley Porter Clinic, then recommended further surgery to remove the penis - this was done late 1953 at the University of California in San Francisco. While recovering she gave offprints of Harry Benjamin’s "Transsexualism and transvestism as psychosomatic and somatopsychic syndromes".

      She worked with Louise Lawrence, and was involved in the study of transsexuals by Federick G Worden & James T Marsh, in a vain attempt to show “the true idea that I’m happy with my new life, and that for suitable subjects it is right to make these changes”.

      She pursued a career in nursing.

      • Joanne Meyerowitz. How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States. Cambridge, Ma, London: Harvard University Press, 2002: 143, 145, 155, 165, 167.

      BBC: Trans persons in sports - 10/07/16

      6 Trans persons with a more famous kin.

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      Shaun Woodward, who had married an heiress to the Sainsbury Supermarket fortune, was a front-bench Conservative MP in 1999, when he refused to agree with the Conservative Opposition’s continuing support for Thatcher’s Section 28 which prohibited any discussion of LGBT topics in schools, which the Labour Government was proposing to repeal. He was sacked from the Front-Bench, and then he crossed the floor to join the Labour Party. It was an open secret that his sibling, Lesley, had become a woman seven years earlier, and the Conservative press then outed her with front-page stories, waiting on her doorstep to take photographs. GuardianBBCNew Statesman Shaun Woodward was later given the safe Labour seat of St Helens South, and held several Cabinet positions. The Conservative safe seat that he had previous held, was taken by a young David Cameron. Mr & Mrs Woodward separated in 2015 after 28 years and four children. Shaun was then reported to be in a relationship with Luke Redgrave, grandson of actor Michael Redgrave. Daily Mail






      The lover of New York rock singer/composer Lou Reedin the mid-1970s was the half-Mexican-native Rachel who had been a regular at Max’s Kansas City and the 82 Club. Rachel appears on the inner sleeve of Sally Can’t Dance,1974, and the title track of Coney Island Babe, 1976 is dedicated to her. The cover of Walk on the Wild Side: The Best of Lou Reed, 1977 is of photographs of the two of them. The title track of Street Hassle, 1978 is about her.














      Susan Faludi, journalist and author of Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Manand TheTerror Dream.    Her father was born István Friedman in Hungary, survived the Holocaust, moved to New York as Steven Faludi where he worked as a photographer. At age 76, after moving back to Hungary and after a forced-femininity phase, Faludi Sr became Stefánie Faludi and had surgery in Thailand with Dr Kunaporn. Susan wrote about this from her perspective. Kay Brown, New Statesman, WSJ, Amazon.














      Molly Haskell, film critic, author of From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies, Love and Other Infectious Diseases, Holding My Own in No Man's Land: Women and Men and Film and Feminists. Her brother, a married financial advisor, transitioned at age 59 as Hellen. Molly wrote about it from her perspective. NYMag, NYTimes, Amazon














      Helen Boyd, wrote two books, My Husband Betty: Love, Sex, and Life with a Crossdresser and She's Not the Man I Married: My Life with a Transgender Husband and a chapter in Crossing Sexual Boundaries about her spouse, Betty. Blog, Amazon

















      John Wojtowicz attempted to rob a bank in Brooklyn in August 1972, and gave his reason as paying for surgery for his lover, Liz Eden. This was filmed as Dog Day Afternoon, 1975, with the lover called Leon, and presented as a mid-70s gay stereotype, who has been informed by the shrinks that he is a woman trapped in man's body. Wojtowicz sold his story to Warner Bros. for $7,500 and 1% of the net profit. He had to sue (from prison) to get it. He gave Liz $2,500 for the operation, which she had in 1973. Liz also sued Warner Brothers for libel.    








      See also trans persons with a famous father.

      Terri Williams Moore (1941 – 1976) dancer, wife, murdered

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      Frank Felice, from Detroit, moved to Lansing, Michigan in 1972, where she became Terri Williams.

      She first came to police attention when a murder investigation led to a gay bar and she was able to be a witness. In 1974 Williams told the police about a man who had stayed in her apartment and spoke of a triple murder in Florida as part of a jewel robbery. Williams, in his male persona, was flown to Florida to testify, and a conviction and death penalty followed.

      However by that time, Terri was ready for surgery and had a series of transgender operations 1974-5 in Lansing, Michigan performed by a professor at Michigan State University. Terri was then outed by a local television reporter under the impression that penile inversion was a new development. A Michigan state legislator brought up the issue and questioned the use of public funds for such procedures. This became a furore when the appropriations bill for the state medical school came up.

      The same reporter later found her engaged to be married, but this broke up and Terri moved to Denver late 1975 to start over.

      She had few job prospects and became a topless dancer. While working at that job she met Richard Moore, and they were married May 14, 1976. Apparently Terri did not discuss her history with Richard, but Mr and Mrs Moore briefly visited Lansing, and met Terri’s friends.

      It was noted that Richard’s mood changed rapidly, and he even spoke of killing his wife. Mr and Mrs Moore left early to return to Denver.

      Terri’s body was found on June 1 close to Interstate 80 outside Newton, Iowa with her two dogs, only one of them alive. Terri had been shot. In her purse they found her marriage license, and her note book listed friends in Lansing and in Denver, and the make, red Mercury, and license number of Richard’s car.

      The police quickly put the story together and watched for the car to turn up at Richard’s address in Denver. He was arrested and charged with murder. During jury selection he suddenly attempted to confess and plead guilty. A competency proceeding was conducted and he was found competent to stand trial.

      At the trial, Richard Moore denied that his wife was transsexual, but said that she had had her tubes tied. He also said that he was the country singer, Johnny Cash, that the police had bugged his car, and that the key policemen were imposters. His father testified that Richard had become mentally ill years before, and had spent two months in a mental hospital in Pueblo, Colorado.

      He was found guilty of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. He appealed on the grounds that his removal from the courtroom after several verbal outbursts violated his constitutional right of confrontation. He also claims trial court abused its discretion in admitting murder scene and autopsy photographs and should have instructed, on its own motion, on diminished capacity. The appeal court affirmed the original conviction.

      Nobody claimed Terri’s body, and so she was buried in Newton.
      Transas City
      __________________________

      The surgery at Michigan State was pioneering, and Terri was one of the first transsexuals in Michigan. I do not understand why she is not included in this LGBT Heritage Timeline for the state, especially as it is hosted by Lynn Conway’s university.

      Penile inversion was new in Michigan in 1975, but had been developed by Georges Burou 20 years earlier, and Stanley Biber in Trinidad, Colorado had been doing such operations since 1968.

      Article 0

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      Announcement

      At the end of each year from 2008 to 2015 I did a year-end review of trans persons and events around the world.   Each year it became bigger, and it has really become too big a task for one person.   I hereby give notice that I will not be doing such a year-end review this year, or in future.

      I will do some bits, especially the list of new books, but not the comprehensive survey that I have previously done.
       

      Ira B Pauly (1930–) psychiatrist, sex-change doctor

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      (All quotations from Anderson 2015, unless otherwise specified).

      Ira’s father was a successful bookmaker who raised his three sons and a daughter in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles. Ira was the youngest, and the first in the family to go to university. He graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1953. He was a noted rugby and US football player. In the latter, he was on the UCLA winning team of 1953, and Pauly was the B’nai B’rith 1953 Los Angeles Jewish Collegiate Athlete of the Year.
       “I applied to medical school. And even though my, I had a pretty good GPA, probably 3.4, 3.5. But the guys that were getting in had 3.8 and 4.0s. But you know, because by then I had become known as a football player, I was the first one to get accepted at UCLA, I was told. So that didn’t hurt. They were looking for people who were so-called well-rounded.“ (p2)
      He graduated from the UCLA School of Medicine in 1958. After doing a surgical internship at UCLA, he was accepted for a psychiatric residency at Cornell Medical Center in New York. He married in 1960, and he and his wife had four sons.

      In 1961 he was doing a rotation in the consultation service when he was called to urology to counsel a trans man who was in for a hysterectomy. He attempted research in the hospital library but found material on transsexualism only in French and German. He had patients who were willing to do longhand translations for him.

      He then discovered a paper by Cauldwell.
      “And then there was a brief article by someone named Harry Benjamin. And in those days, it was in a somewhat obscure journal. I don’t quite remember which journal it was. But it had his address. And it was an address that was about five blocks away from the hospital that I was working at. So I looked up his name in the phone book and told him that I was a psychiatry resident, and I had a little experience with a transgender, transsexual patient. And was there any way I could come over and talk to him, because I had read—he was an endocrinologist. And a lot of these folks, the first step in the physical transition is taking the contrary hormone.” (p6)
      For much of that year, he attended Benjamin's Wednesday afternoon clinic.
       “So every Wednesday afternoon, through the generosity and mentorship of Harry Benjamin, I was able to see probably more transsexual patients than any psychiatrist in North America. … As I got to know the patients, they uniformly described being happier into the gender role that they felt they were in from the very beginning. And that the only thing that needed to be done as far as treatment was concerned was to get the body on board with the gender of their choice.“ (p6)
      Pauly set out to aggregate 100 cases from the literature and from among Benjamin’s patients.

      He had been in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) at UCLA and would normally have done military service at the end of his education, but he had developed glaucoma, and the army no longer wanted him. In 1962 he obtained a position at the University of Oregon Medical School.

      He completed "Male Psychosexual Inversion: Transsexualism. A Review of 100 Cases" in 1963, but it was not published until 1965. He concluded that that gender surgery had positive results and that trans patients should be supported by medical professionals in their quest to live as the gender of their identity. He then received a thousand requests from doctors around the world for offprints of his article. It also resulted in a job interview at Johns Hopkins, but Oregon doubled his salary to keep him.

      However, Harry Benjamin, in his 1966 The Transsexual Phenomenon, quotes Pauly as saying:
      “Because of his isolation, the transsexual has not developed interpersonal skills, and frequently presents the picture of a schizoid or inadequate personality.” (p71-2/33).
      Speaking to the American Psychiatric Association in May 1964, Pauly said:
      “The transsexual attempts to deny and reverse his biological sex and pass into and maintain the opposite gender role identification. Claims of organic or genetic etiology have not been substantiated. … Although psychosis is not frequent in the schizophrenic sense, in its most extreme form, transsexualism can be interpreted as an unusual paranoid state, characterized by a well-circumscribed delusional system in which the individual attempts to deny the physical reality of his body. The term Paranoia Transsexualis has been suggested as an appropriate descriptive term for this syndrome. Psychosexual inversion is seen as a spectrum of disorders, from mild effeminacy to homosexuality, transvestism, and finally transsexualism, each representing a more extreme form, and often including the previous manifestation.” (quoted in Benjamin, 162-3/76)
      He proposed the term ‘pseudotranssexual’ for those who sought transition to justify their
      homosexuality.

      He was one of the first doctors to point out that transsexuals tell the doctor what he wants to hear. He called them “unreliable historians”. (Benjamin, 164/76)

      Pauly also saw private patients.
      “But these folks were, among other things, very grateful because they had great difficulty getting a physician to empathize with their situation, let alone treat them. And prescribe hormones and refer them to the surgeon for surgery. So the word got around. So I probably treated everybody in the Portland area on a one-to-one basis.” (p12)
      Oregon had no surgeon performing transgender surgery, so at first patients were referred to San Francisco, and then to Dr Biber in Trinidad, Colorado. Pauly did his own endocrinology prescriptions. In that period he also attempted to treat gay persons wishing to become heterosexual.
      “And there was the occasional transgender person that wanted to go back to accept himself in the gender role that was consistent with what his body said. And some of us tried to help out in that regard. But I personally tried to do that with a couple of patients. And the only thing I really accomplished was to kind of push them into a psychosis. So that, by trial and error, I learned that I certainly didn’t have the ability to help them with that problem.” (p19)
      In 1969 he contributed two papers to Green & Money’s Transsexualism and Sex-Reassignment, one on trans women, one on trans men; each includes four case studies, and an overview.

      Paul McHugh, who would close down the gender identity clinic at Johns Hopkins after 1975, was dean of the University of Oregon Medical School until 1975.

      In 1975 Pauly’s student Thomas Lindgren, wanting something more objective than a patient’s self-history, developed a body-image scale where patient’s rated how they felt about different parts of their body. Not surprisingly pre-op transsexuals rated their genitals worse than their arms or legs. However it was also used for anorexia and other conditions, including those wanting homeogender surgery.

      In 1978 Pauly became chair of the University of Nevada Medical School. He was a founding member of the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association, (now WPATH) in 1979, and served as president of the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association from 1985 to 1987.

      In the late 1980s, Louis Sullivan was lobbying the American Psychiatric Association and the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association and the gender identity clinics to recognize the existence of gay trans men. Pauly was one of the few psychiatrists to respond, and made a three-hour video interview with him.

      Pauly retired in 1995, did sabbatical work in New Zealand, and returned to work in the state hospital in Reno, Nevada and became medical director for the Northern Nevada Adult Mental Health Service.

      In 2004, Pauly was inducted into the Southern California Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.

      He retired again in 2010.
      • Ira B Pauly. "Female Psychosexual Inversion: Transsexualism. Read before the American Psychiatric Ass., St. Louis, May 1963.
      • Ira B Pauly. "Male Psychosexual Inversion: Transsexualism. A Review of 100 Cases". Archives of General Psychology, 13, 1965:172-181.
      • Ira B Pauly. “The current status of the change of sex operation”. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, Nov;147, 5, 1968:460-71.
      • Ira B Pauly. “Female Transsexualism”. Archives of Sexual Behavior,3, 1974:487-526.
      • Harry Benjamin. The Transsexual Phenomenon. Julian Press, 1966. Warner Books Edition 1977, with a bibliography and appendix by Richard Green.  PDF (with different pagination): 71-2/33, 162-3/76, 164/76, 179/84, 181/84.
      • Ira B Pauly. “Adult Manifestations of Male Transsexualism” and “Adult Manifestations of Female Transsexualism”. In Richard Green & John Money (ed). Transsexualism and Sex-Reassignment. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1969: 37-87.
      • Joanne Meyerowitz. How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States. Cambridge, Ma, London: Harvard University Press, 2002: 123, 124, 125, 174.
      • Amy Bloom. Normal: Transsexual CEO's, Cross-Dressing Cops, Hermaphrodites with Attitude, and More. Vintage, 2014: 18-22.
      • Maija Anderson. Interview with Ira B. Pauly, MD. Oregon Health & Science University, Oral History program, Februray 18, 2015. Online
      TSRoadmap
      ______________________

      For some reason Harry Benjamin calls Pauly “Ira S Pauly”. 

      The EN.Wikipedia article is almost the same as the TSRoadmap article.

      At the end of Maija Anderson’s interview, Pauly is asked what he thinks about Alan Hart, the famous trans doctor from Portland, Oregon, who transitioned in 1917. Despite having lived in Portland for 16 years where Hart is remembered, he replies: “No. I wish I had seen that. Where was it published again”, and then “And as far as I knew, the first published female to male, as we referred to it, was the patient I described in the New York Hospital”. Obviously he does not spend much time reading trans history.

      Kay Kwarta (1928 – 1999) engineer, salesman, monkey keeper

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      Casimir Kwarta, a first-generation Polish-American, trained as an engineer. In 1960 he met Ursula, a recent immigrant from Poland, although by origin a Berliner whose first husband had been the Polish artist, Ryszard Kryszczuk, whom she had hidden to protect from enlistment in the German army in the Nazi period. Casimir and Ursula married in 1963.

      They felt pity for monkeys, then frequently found in pet stores, and bought several. Word got out and individuals, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and zoos asked them to take more. They became a chapter of the National Simian Society. Ursula’s favorites were woolly monkeys from Brazil and capuchins. They renovated the garage with large cages, but a few lived in their house in St James, Long Island.

      The monkeys could cause chaos by opening jars, and hanging jewelry and even car keys in the trees. Each monkey had a name that s/he responded to. In the wild wooly monkeys live 40 years or so, but in the northern climate only 20. The Kwartas and their monkeys were featured in an article in the New York Times in November 1978.

      Casimir, who had become a sales representative with an electronics company subsidized the sanctuary which barely broke even. Ursula worked around the clock looking after the monkeys.

      Casimir was trans, and Ursula gave full support. They ran a trans social group from 1980-1988 that was listed in TVTS Tapestry and elsewhere. Casimir, as Kay, was on hormones prescribed by Dr David Wesser.

      In 1982, budding journalist James Boylan (the future Jennifer Boylan) had become friends with a trans woman photographer she refers to as ‘Casey’ - although she did not then realize that Casey was trans. They visited the Kwartas for an article for American Bystander, and Casey realized that Kwarta was trans, especially when she discovered the hormones in the bathroom.

      In 1989, Casimir retired and they desired somewhere warmer. They eventually found a place in South Carolina with privacy and room for lots of animals. In addition to the monkeys, they had dogs, horses, chickens and a parrot.

      Casimir died in 1999 at age 71 from a brain tumor. Ursula died in 2008.
      ______________

      The Kwartas are not listed among the notable residents of St James in Wikipedia.

      A note re the anecdote in Jennifer Boylan’s autobiography. She renames the Kwarta’s as D’Angelo, and relocates them to Philadelphia. She also claims to have read Kay and claims it was she who spotted the hormones in the bathroom cabinet.

      Channel 4 News on Dr Helen Webberley and her Online Gender Clinic


      Parinya Charoenphon ปริญญา เจริญผล (1981–) boxer, actress, singer.

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      Parinya Charoenphol was born into a family of nomads who settled in Chang Mai province, Thailand. When he was eight, his parents worked looking after an orchard, not knowing that the owners were involved in illegal logging and smuggling. When caught the owners bribed the police to blame Charoenphol’s mother. After three-months imprisonment, the mother was released, and Charoenphol, as is normal for a boy of that age entered a Buddhist monastery. He was expelled at age 12 for being absent attempting to raise money for his family.

      At a temple fair, goaded by a competitor, Parinya entered a Muay Thai (kick-boxing) match and won 500 baht. Charoenphol then trained for the sport, where women are not permitted, using the name Nong Tum น้องตุ้ม. The instructor’s wife noticed Tum’s femininity and bought makeup for him, and took him shopping. Tum then was able able to come out to the co-students, and was allowed to wear make-up while fighting. Tum was also attracted to the side of Muay Thai not usually featured in martial arts films: the ancient ritualistic dance moves.

      Tum was openly a kathoey and wore makeup for her first victory at Bangkok’s Lumpini Stadium in 1998, and went on to win 22 fights. After each fight she kissed her opponent to show no ill feelings. Although the Thai government had previously banned kathoey athletes from the national volleyball team, the Muay Thai officials welcomed Nong Tum. The Thai tourist industry used her in their advertising.
      “I don't equate femininity with weakness. I also knew that I had to be strong, and to protect myself and the people I loved. I was born into poverty and there weren't many ways I could earn a lot of money. I don't think about gender. I think about winning.” (Hodgkinson)
      In 1998 Nong Tum was invited to Tokyo to fight Kyoko Inoue, Japan’s top female wrestler, in a higher weight category, and who, like Nong Tum, had defeated male opponents. Both used the movements of their respective traditions. Charoenphol won. After the match, a young Thai woman approached Charoenphol and slapped her for the gender insult to Muay Thai.

      In 1999, after a one-year professional career, Parinya announced her retirement from Muay Thai, her new career as a singer, and her intended surgery. She appeared in several music videos. She was initially declined by some of the Thai surgeons, but surgery was performed at Yanhee Hospital, Bangkok in late 1999 when she was 18.

      She then found work as a cabaret performer, and continued to support her family. Her life was documented in the film Beautiful Boxer, 2003 (she was portrayed by a male Muay Thai fighter, with Kyoko Inoue as herself and Parinya in a small part as a masseuse under the name of Parinya Kiatbusaba) and Hidden Genders, 2003.

      In 2004 she opened a Muay Thai camp for children, and continued to do special fights. As a kickboxer she has fought exhibition matches, and appeared in the film Mercury Man, 2006, as the hero’s transgender sibling, again using the name of Parinya Kiatbusaba.

      She runs a chain of beauty parlors, and adopted a daughter, the child of a teenager who was arrested for drug offences.
      “I have witnessed the terrible effects social pressure can have on younger ladyboys. I think that some of them just haven’t received any guidance in life so they choose to express themselves negatively as a form of rebellion. Many of them turn into screaming, promiscuous attention-seeking drug addicts who have lost touch with the world around them. I was also surprised to find that a lot of ladyboys don’t like women, and call them chanis (screaming monkeys). I think this dislaike is a result of their own insecurities. I have always felt a deep connection with women, even when I was still living as a man.” (Aldous & Sereemongkonpol: 251)
      • Ekachai Uekrongtham (dir). Beautiful Boxer. Scr: Desmond Sim & Ekachai Uekrongtham, with Asanee Suwan as Nong Tum, Kyoko Inoue as herself and Nong Tum as a masseuse. Thailand 118 mins 2003. Best Actor Award at the Supannahongsa Film Awards.
      • Eric Lim, Suresh Menon & Ajay Singh (dir). Hidden Genders. Scr: Adrian Ong, with Nong Tum and others. Singapore National Geographic TV 47 mins 2003.
      • Laura Green. “Thai "Ladyboy" Kickboxer Is Gender-Bending Knockout”. National Geographic. March 25, 2004. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/03/0325_040325_TVthirdsex.html.
      • Will Hodgkinson. "I don't think about gender. I think about winning". The Guardian, 19 August 2005. www.theguardian.com/film/2005/aug/19/2
      • Somporn Suphop. “Sex-change boxer back in the ring: The world of muay Thai is agog. Transsexual boxer Parinya Kiartbussaba, better known as Nong Tum, is making a comeback”. The Nation, February 23, 2006. www.nationmultimedia.com/2006/02/22/headlines/headlines_20001353.php.
      • LeeRay M. Costa & Andrew Matzner. Male Bodies, Women's Souls: Personal Narratives of Thailand's Transgendered Youth. Haworth Press, 2007: 17, 27-8.
      • Susan Aldous & Pornchai Sereemongkonpol. Ladyboys: The Secret World of Thailand's Third Gender. Dunboyne: Maverick House, 2008: 225-255.
      AsianWiki    OwnRules     EN.Wikipedia      TH.Wikipedia    IMDB(Tum)    IMDB(Kiatbusaba)


      The actual fight with Kyoko Inoue


      The movie version

      Alice Lyman Miller (1944 - ) intelligence analyst, academic

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      Harold Lyman Miller grew up in rural western New York state, where as a young teenager he would take a dress when fossil hunting in the wild.

      Then he put away childish things and set out to prove his manliness. He played high-school basketball, chased girls, did a BA in Oriental Studies, 1966 at the then all-male Princeton University, and a PhD in history at George Washington University, DC, 1974, and married.

      A fluent Mandarin speaker, Miller worked as an analyst of Chinese foreign policy at the Central Intelligence Agency 1974-1990. His second wife was also a CIA analyst. They had a son and a daughter.

      From 1990-2000 he worked as professor of China studies and for most of that period, director of the China Studies Program at the School for Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University (which, unlike the rest of Johns Hopkins, is located in Washington, DC).

      Not until he was 52 did Miller catch an episode of the Phil Donahue show on TV about transsexuals and realize that was what he was. He also discovered the book True Selves: Understanding Transsexualism by Mildred Brown. Miller discussed his feelings with his second wife, and started wearing female clothes.

      Approaching 60, Miller got a new position as a visiting fellow at the conservative think tank, the Hoover Institute at Stanford University, Palo Alto, California, and also as senior lecturer at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California.

      At the urging of the wife, Miller consulted local gender counselor Judy Van Maasdam, the co-ordinator at Stanford’s Gender Dysphoria Clinic. Alice, as Miller became, underwent 250 hours of electrolyis and in total spent over $100,000 transitioning. She was able to transition on the job in both positions. Both institutions had had previous employees transition.

      Alice had surgery at the Sequoia Hospital in Redwood City, California in August 2007.

      In May 2015, Alice gave a talk on transition at the TEDx event at Stanford University.

      *not Alice Miller the child psychologist
      • Harold Lyman Miller. Factional Conflict and the Integration of Ch'ing Politics, 1661-1690. Phd thesis, George Washington University,1974.
      • H. Lyman Miller. Science and Dissent in Post-Mao China: The Politics of Knowledge. University of Washington Press, 1996.
      • Alice Lyman Miller. "Some Things We Used to Know About China's Past and Present (But Now, Not So Much)". Journal of American-East Asian Relations. 16, 1, 2009: 41-68.
      • Alice Lyman Miller & Richard Wich. Becoming Asia: Change and Continuity in Asian International Relations Since World War II. Stanford University Press, 2011.
      • Tracie White. “Transition Point: The Unmet Medicak Needs of Transgender people”. Stanford Medicine, Spring 2012. http://sm.stanford.edu/archive/stanmed/2012spring/article7.html.
      • Stacy Trevenon. “The importance of being Alice: Moss Beach woman embraces transition”. Half Moon Bay Review, June 24, 2015. www.hmbreview.com/community/the-importance-of-being-alice/article_2a66a04c-1aa9-11e5-af30-af09569bfe4b.html.
      EN.Wikipedia     HooverInstitute   
      _____________________________

      The EN.Wikipedia article on Alice has no mention at all of her gender change despite the fact that she is quite open about it. Nor does it list her first two books.  The page was written by the now blocked author Occultzone

      Amazon has H Lymon Miller and Alice Miller as two separate authors.

      It is ironic that Miller spent 10 years at Johns Hopkins University without being aware of its pioneering gender clinic.


      as if the last several decades had never happened

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      In May 2011, I wrote about Albert Cashier, a trans man combatant in the US Civil War.   

      That war has become noted for the large number of born-female persons who served as men on both sides.  The same phenomenon has not been as documented for the Franco-Prussian War or the Crimean War, both also in the mid-nineteenth century.    It is generally assumed that such cross-dressing was not possible in the Great War, 1914-18, and later, as medical inspections of new recruits became common (however see Julie Wheelwright's Amazons and Military Maids: Women who dressed as men in pursuit of life, liberty and happiness for several who did so anyway).

      Most such persons were temporary transvestites, who, if they survived, reverted to living as women after the war.   There has been some debate about how many should be considered transgender, but there is considerable agreement that Albert Cashier is the strongest candidate in that he never reverted, never used his girl name again, and was outed only at the age of 70 in 1914 when he was taken into the State Hospital and coerced into female clothing.   He died a few months later.

      Albert Cashier is frequently mentioned as a trans man pioneer, and is featured in Wheelwright's book, in Richard Hall's Patriots in Disguise: Women Warriors of the Civil War, and has a book-length biography, Lon P. Dawson's Also Known As Albert D.J. Cashier.    

      Cashier's girl name was Jennie Hodgers.

       
      So it was with some surprise that I, this week, received an email from one Elizabeth Martins advertising a US Civil War novel by a John William Huelskamp. She writes:
      "I’d like to introduce you to Jennie Hodgers, one of the few known women to dress as a man and fight in battle during the Civil War. It was only later on in life that Jennie’s true identity was discovered (otherwise, she would have been dismissed from battle). This begs the question: how many more women fought in battle that have gone unrecognized?"
      I have bolded 6 errors in this introductory paragraph.  Martins continues her misgendering, and insists again that Cashier's "true identity" was as a woman.
      "Jennie’s story is a classic Civil War story. Move over Scarlett O’Hara – this story is true." 
      For some reason I have never though of Scarlett O'Hara as a trans man!!


      Obviously Martins never read my article on Mr Albert Cashier.   She does include a passing reference to the LGBTQ community - which again she obviously does not understand.   

      She also says that Huelskamp is "fighting to erect a memorial in her [that is Jennie Hodgers, Cashier's girl name] honor in Chicago". While a memorial to Albert Cashier would be quite welcome, one to Jennie Hodgers would be divisive and create a lot of conflict. Remember the 10-year struggle in Portland, Oregon, to get Alan Hart honoured as Alan and not by his girlname.

      In previous decades books such as this that ignore the trans identity of historical persons were quite common.   It is very disappointing that it is still going on.   Whether one regards it as impertinent, arrogant, naive or willful ignorance.

      Audrey Tang 唐鳳 (1981 - ) Perl programmer.

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      ++ original October 2010; revised August 2016.

      Táng Zōnghàn 唐宗漢,  who later took the English name Autrijus Tang, was born in Taiwan, learnt the Perl programming language at 12, dropped out of school at 14, founded a business at age 16 and by the age of 19 had worked in California as a software entrepreneur. 

      In 2005 she transitioned and changed her Chinese name to Táng Fèng 唐鳳 and her English name to Audrey Tang.  Her parents backed her unconditionally. 

      She has done pioneering work especially in Perl, Haskell and open source programming. She has translated related textbooks into Chinese. She is a proponent of autodidactism and individualist anarchism.

      In 2014, Tang announced her retirement as an entrepreneur, and devoted her time to internet public welfare projects in Taiwan such as g0v.tw and the vTaiwan platform, as well as working on a contract for Apple.  

      In August 2016 Audrey was named a minister without portfolio to mange digital information for the Taiwanese government.

      *Not the Malaysian jazz musician

        EN.Wikipedia      pugs.

      Nochmen Tenenbaum (1911–?) army sergeant

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      Nochmen Tenenbaum served with distinction in the Polish Army in the early 1930s. He earned medals after saving several persons from drowning, and was promoted to sergeant.

      A year later in 1936, after physical and psychological changes, and leaving the army, Tenenbaum, still in male clothing, arrived at a maternity home in Warsaw and requested a room, stating that he was about to give birth. A 4 kg child was born. The father was an artist.
      • “Nine-Pound Child Born to Ex-Soldier A Year after “he” Changed “his” Sex”. Daily Mail, 7 August 1936. Reprinted in George Ives (ed Paul Sieveking). Man Bites Man: The Scrapbook of an Edwardian Eccentric. Penguin Books, 1981: 41.
      • “Soldier Shocks Doctors, As He Becomes Mother”. Daily Mirror, 10 August 1936. Online.
      ------
      The anti-sodomy laws in Poland had not been enforced since independence in 1918. They were officially repealed in 1932.

      The Daily Mirror story contains the comment: “Although there are many authentic cases of sex changes on record, this is believed to be the first time in the history of medical science that the metamorphosis was so complete that reproduction was possible”.   This in 1936!

      Most likely, Tenenbaum was female-born, had transitioned (without hormones, which was the only option at the time) in order to serve in the army, but had been sexually compromised and become pregnant. We know nothing of him after 1936.
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