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Melanie Anne Phillips (1956 - ) film-maker, story-software designer.

October 14, 2013, 7:21 pm
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After a degree at the School of Cinema and Television at the University of Southern California,  directing two feature films before the age of 30: Brothers of the Wilderness, 1984, and The Strangeness, 1985, recording many hours of music, marrying as a man and fathering two children,  Melanie became involved with the International Foundation for Gender Education and worked with them to produce a VHS Tape on developing a female voice which focuses on voice resonance rather than pitch.

In 1991, Melanie took a break from film-making and, with her long-time writing partner Chris Huntley, developed the Dramatica Theory of Story, for which they had first laid the foundations while still at college together.


She also began her three-year transition that concluded with surgery with Dr Biber in Trinidad, Colorado. She kept a daily journal during transition which is available online. In 1994 she set up the first online transgender support site, and became one of the most cited advisors on developing a female voice.

After three years of full-time effort, the first version of Dramatica (Amazon reviews, WIKIPEDIA) was released. It is one of the most sophisticated software packages for fiction writers, which included a long manual, and supporting videos. Melanie also teaches courses in Dramatica theory through UCLA.

In October 2006 in an essay on her Heartcorps site, and reprinted on Gender Life Forum, she wrote:
"I've unintentionally perpetrated a great disservice.  I've given the impression the anyone can learn to sound completely female in voice as I have.  That's why I created the voice video I've been selling for about ten years.  Now, I'm not so sure. And in my diary, without ever considering an alternative, I've presented myself as just another transsexual and documented my story in the hope it might smooth the way for others.  But now I wonder if it doesn't really foster false hope. … out of all those who have sex reassignment surgery, only a very few have female minds.  All the rest, no matter how feminine they have become, have male minds - they don't just think like men, then think as men. ... After all, those who speak in a female voice are as rare as those with female minds, in my experience.  Sure, anyone can learn to be more feminine in their speaking, but to actually alter the timber of the voice so it is rich and full but female in resonance, that may be beyond the ability of the rank and file transsexual."
However she does insist:
"Now, granted, a woman born into a male body is no more entitled to sex change surgery than any man who wanted it.  And the standards that they use to determine if you can receive surgery are ignorant, outdated, and laughable, if they weren't so cruel. Honestly, SRS should be available to anyone who wants it, as long as they are certified sane.  No RLT should be required.  I don't know of a single individual (though there must be some) who determined to have the surgery and then changed their mind because of problems with RLT.  And I don't know of anyone who had the grit to go through with the surgery who didn't have what it needs to get through RLT. … Again, there is nothing better or worse about having SRS if you are of male or female mind.  And the achievements of anyone from that community who has a female mind and a collection of female physical traits may not be as heroic or laudable as it first appears.  They simply may have had more to start with and an easier path because there was less to alter. Ultimately, I think of female minded post-ops as intersexed women rather than transsexual.  In some, they are close enough to the range of normal male physical form with fully functioning testicles and no ovaries that no medical professional would class them as hermaphrodites.  And yet, possessing many of the traits above, they are truly intersexed in all ways except the reproductive organs."
On her web site Melanie describes herself as "parent of two, still married to my spouse of thirty years but living with another woman, my soul mate, for the last eight years".

Andrea James' TS Roadmap is dedicated to Melanie for her inspiration.


*Not Melanie Phillips the Daily Mail journalist who was nominated bigot of the year.
*There is no connection between Dramatica and the rude and satirical Encyclopedia Dramatica.
IMDBAMAZONWORLDCATLINKEDIN


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WorldCat dates the IFGE tape to 1980 which cannot be right as IFGE was not founded until some years later.

Melanie in 2006 seems to be proposing 2 types of transsexuals like either HSTS/Autogynephilia or HBS. However I could not find any discussion of her proposal compared to HSTS/Autogynephilia or HBS.
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Le Monocle, Paris 1932

October 17, 2013, 7:30 am
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Le Monocle was one of the first Parisian nightclubs for lesbians, located on Edgar-Quinet Boulevard in Montparnasse. The club was open from the 1920s and closed during the German occupation. Especially in its early days it attracted women who preferred male hairstyles and male clothing, some in suits and some in tuxedos. The initial owner who used the name Lulu, had the same taste.

The male photographer, Brassaï, came in 1932 and was permitted to take photographs.  Without his work we would not know about the club.

The name of the club came from the fact that a monocle had become a signifier of lesbianism in the preceding years.


Lulu on the left

It is apparent that many of the habitués of the club were what later generations would think of as trans men. Remember that they were doing this without male hormones which would not become available for another generation.
  • Marjorie Garber. "Le Monocle de me Tante" in Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing & Cultural Anxiety. New York: Routledge, 1992: 152-5.
  • Brassaï translated into English by Richard Miller. "Le Monocle". In The Secret Paris of the 30s. London: Thames & Hudson, 2001.
  • Florence Tamagne. A History of Homosexuality in Europe: Berlin, London, Paris, 1919-1939. New York: Algora, 2006:50.
  • "Le Monocle". Lost Womyn's Space, July 12, 2011. http://lostwomynsspace.blogspot.ca/2011/07/le-monocle.html.
  • "Le Monocle". The Puritan Influence, 6.06.2010. http://thepuritanimpulse.blogspot.ca/2010/06/le-monocle.html.
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Garrett Oppenheim (1911 - 1995) writer, hypnotist, counselor, sexologist

October 19, 2013, 6:30 am
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Garrett or James Jr was the son of James Oppenheimmore (1882 – 1932) poet, novelist and Jungian.

Garrett, a polio survivor, was a poet associated with the surrealist school in the 1930s and a short-story writer from the 1930s-50s. He married in 1947 and became a journalist for the New York Herald-Tribune, which led to him becoming acquainted with Dr Leo Wollman.

The Herald-Tribune ceased publication in 1966. Oppenheim became a hypnotist and sex counselor, operating from his home in Tappan, New York. For a while he was the associate editor of Venture, a slick travel magazine. He was then employed by Medical Economics Magazine in New Jersey to help develop a cassette tape program for medical professionals on such subjects as malpractice and office management.

Oppenheim and his second wife Fae Robin founded an organization called “Confide Consulting Service” - later "Confide Personal Counseling Services, Inc". Clients would phone their recording machine to recite their problems for up to 20 minutes, or send in a cassette tape, and get back a six or seven page reply suggesting a solution. The price was $25 ($119 in today's money). Confide became known as specializing in transvestites and put out a 54-minute cassette on the subject giving advice on hormones, make up and much else ($12=$57 in today's money). They had sold 100 by August 1974 "half of them have been to doctors and therapists". The tape concludes: "Our most valuable piece of advice for transvestites is enjoy!" Confide also published a newsletter, Transition, specifically for transvestites and transsexuals.


In 1974 Garrett told the Village Voice:
"My father was a psychoanalyst, and I've spent most of my life writing about doctor-patient relationships. In the course of my research, wandering around hospitals and talking with people in the profession, I discovered that I have a knack for counseling. Maybe it's because I had polio, but people always tended to open up to me. … There's one index to our effectiveness. We've advised more than 500 cases, and only one person asked for his fee to be returned. As it turned out, he sent back our check a week later. … Fifteen to 20 per cent of our cases were transvestites. And what they told us didn't match what the textbooks told us. We subsequently found that many TVs simply don't go to doctors."
Charles Ihlenfeld arranged for Oppenheim to have an interview with then 89-year old Harry Benjamin, who took a shine to Oppenheim and agreed (as he did for many transsexual and transvestite groups) to be listed on it’s board of directors. Oppenheim was then able to get Richard Green, John Money and Charles Ihlenfield to likewise agree.

Lynda Frank, a devout Princian ("In 2002, I escorted her [Virginia Prince] for three days at the IFGE Convention in Philadelphia and was overwhelmed with her enthusiasm, intelligence and willingness to help anyone who sought her out"), discovered Lee Brewster's Mardi Gras Emporium via an advertisement in the Village Voice, and purchased Prince's The Transvestite and His Wife. Frank's wife, who worked at a crisis hotline discovered Leo Wollman. Later Frank visited Wollman, was diagnosed as a transvestite and referred to Oppenheim's group. Eventually Frank joined the group which consisted of "transsexuals, male-to-females and female-to-males, and a few transvestites, one was Roger Peo … We were with this group about two years. For the first six months I attended by myself, during which time Garrett's wife, Fay, took me into New York City to Muriel Olive's Boutique to buy a padded girdle and a bra".

Around 1980 Oppenheim declared himself to be a psychotherapist with a PhD from the then new Columbia Pacific University, an unaccredited distance learning school in California (which was closed by court order in 2000 and it is misdemeanor in some US States to cite its degrees on a resume.) He opened an office in Hartsdale, NY. Dr Oppenheim referred trans persons to Leo Wollman, Diane Miller, MD, and endocrinologist Walter Futterweit, MD, both working on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.


In 1985, Dick Teresi & Kathleen McAuliffe wrote an article for Omni magazine on the topic of male pregnancy:
"Garrett Oppenheim, a psychotherapist in Tappan, New York, says male pregnancy 'would be the most magnificent breakthrough since the sex-change program came into effect'. As director of Confide-personal Counseling Services, Inc., Oppenheim evaluates and counsels those who apply for a sex change, to help them decide whether they should undergo the necessary hormonal treatment and surgery. There are approximately 20,000 transsexuals in the world today. 'And most transsexuals want to experience womanhood in all its facets', Oppenheim says." (Teresi p181).
In 1986 Oppenheim published a paper, "The snowball effect of the 'real-life test' for sex reassignment" in which he argued against the assumption that a real-life test gives an opportunity for reversal. Rather it confirms the patient on her way.

Oppenheim was also active in past life regressions, and his prime case, mentioned in many books, is that in 1986, a woman known by the pseudonym "Monica" was regressed by Oppenheim. Monica discovered a previous existence as a man named John Ralph Wainwright who lived in the southwestern U.S. She knew that John grew up in Wisconsin, Arizona and had vague memories of brothers and sisters. As a young man he became a deputy sheriff and married the daughter of a bank president. According the Monica's "memory," John was killed in the line of duty - shot by three men he had once sent to jail - and died on July 7, 1907.

Oppenheim also used his hypnosis abilities in working with polio patients.

Garrett Oppenheim died in New Jersey at age 83.

*Not the Seattle lawyer

Oppenheim's publications not including his poetry or his journalism:
  • Image and Dust. New York: Priv. printed by the International Press, 1932.
  • "Queen for a Night". All-Story Love Stories, May 16 1936.
  • "The Goodly Portion". The Educational Portion, 2,1, 1937. "If we were once convinced of that truth, we might acquire more respect for the writers and thinkers of the past and less tendency to ridicule them shamefully for occupying a small place in our curriculum alongside of modern textbook makers who depend upon those same writers and thinkers ..."
  • "Old Style"All-Story Love Stories, Sep 5 1936.
  • "Reunion"All-Story Love Stories, Sep 12 1936.
  • "The Message"All-Story Love Stories, Jun 26 1937.
  • "The Punishing of Eddie Jungle-Spit"Liberty, May 1950, reprinted in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, August 1951.
  • "How to Make a Decision"Bluebook, Oct 1955.
  • "What Youth Can Do When Grownups Help,"Parents Magazine 34, March 1959: 88-89, 125;
  • "Teen-age Drinking Can Spell Disaster". Parents' Magazine, 1961.
  • With Fae Robin. The Male Transvestite-a Confide Cassette. N.Y.,Personal Counseling Services, 1974.
  • (ed) Transition. Tappan NY: Confide – Personal Counseling Services, 1978.
  • "The snowball effect of the 'real-life test' for sex reassignment". Journal of Sex Education & Therapy, 12,2, 1986:12-14.
  • "Foreword" to Sister Mary Elizabeth. Legal Aspects of Transsexualism. J2CP Information Service, 1988. Online at: www.transgendercare.com/guidance/resources/legal_aspects_ts.htm. And at: http://heartcorps.com/journeys/everything/legal.htm.
  • "Memorial for Harry Benjamin". Archives of Sexual Behavior, 17,1,1988: 6-9.
  • "For whom regression therapy is not suitable". Tasso International. www.tassointernational.com/for-whom-regression-therapy-is-not-suitable.
  • Who Were You Before You Were You?: The Casebook of a Past-Life Therapist. New York: Carlton Press, 1990.
  • "What do I do now?"Journal of Hypnotism, 9,1, 1994.
  • With Gwen Oppenheim. The Golden Handicap: A Spiritual Quest : a Polio Victim Asks, "Why?" and Turns His Life Around. Virginia Beach, Va: A.R.E. Press, 1993.
Other sources:
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(auto)biographies that are almost unobtainable

October 23, 2013, 3:09 am
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There are of course hundreds, probably thousands, of trans autobiographies that have never been published.   This article is limited to those that appear to have been published, at least once, but then disappeared.

  • Angela Douglas.   Triple Jeopardy: The Autobiography of Angela Lynn Douglas.  Sneeds, Floria: Angela Lynn Douglas, 1983.
Joanne Meyerowitz claims to have a copy, and Susan Stryker says that she has seen it.   However the book is not in WorldCat, nor in Amazon nor Abe Books, unlike Angela's second book, Hollywood Obsession.  Apparently it was self-published in the true sense and sold by Angela herself by mail.  There don't seem to be copies available any more.
  • Candace Watkins writing as Carnal Candy. In the Closet with Eddie Murphy. 1997. eBook.
Lots of gossip about Eddie Murphy tricking with trans women.  Published online 1997, removed shortly after, and never seen again.
 Jamie Lee Hamilton.
  • Barbara Daniel. She’s No Lady: The Story of Jamie Lee Hamilton. Toronto: Cormorant Books Inc 300 pp 2005.
Not in Worldcat, Amazon or Abe Books - but this site says that it exists.

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Femke Olyslager (1966 - 2009) professor of engineering.

October 26, 2013, 7:00 am
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Frank Olyslager was born near Antwerp, and became a shy boy who escaped into science. After a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering 1993 at Ghent University, Olyslager became a Full Professor in Electrical Engineering and Applied Physics also at Ghent and wrote outstanding books in the field of electrical engineering. By this time he was married to a woman and they had two children. At age 28 Olyslager became a laureate of the Royal Academy of Sciences, Literature and Fine Arts of Belgium, and at age 38 a laureate of the Royal Flemish Academy.

Olyslager discovered Lynn Conway’s web site and was directed to the Ghent University hospital, where as Femke she was able to transition.


Femke worked with Lynn Conway on a report on the prevalence of transsexuality that argues rigourously that the 1 in 30,000 occurrence  for trans women so frequently cited cannot possibly be correct, and that the real world occurrence is probably 1-2 per 1,000.

Femke died at the age of 43 from a long-standing illness.

Olyslager has authored over 150 publications in electrical engineering.

Microsoft Academic Search(Frank)    Microsoft Academic Search(Femke)  WORLDCAT (Frank)  WORLDCAT(Femke)    Google Scholar(Frank)  Google Scholar(Femke)

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It is rather shabby that Microsoft Academic, Worldcat and Google Scholar return significantly different lists for Olyslager's life work depending on whether one puts her boy name or her real name.  Do these databases do as poorly when an academic changes her name for marriage or religious reasons?
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9 trans persons in the Netherlands/Flanders who changed things by example and/or achievement.

October 29, 2013, 6:29 am
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  1. Machiel Van Antwerpen (1719 – 1781) from Breda, soldier. GVWW    EN.WIKIPEDIA
  2. Colette Berends (1934 – 2012) from Zwolle, performer, beautician, fabric artist. GVWW

  3. Daniel van Oosterwijck (1944 - ) Brussels. Lawyer, appealed to European Court of Human Rights to change his ID. GVWW.
  4. Vanessa van Durme (1948 - ) From Ghent, actress. GVWW    FR.WIKIPEDIA.

  5. Max Drenth (1963 ) novelist, philosopher, lecturer at Tilburg and Radboud Universities. GVWW

  6. Veronique Renard (1965 - ) from Utrecht, writer, Buddhist, activist. GVWW   EN.WIKIPEDIA

  7. Femka Olyslager (1966 – 2009) Antwerp. Professor of Electrical Engineering. GVWW

  8. Kelly van der Veer (1980 - ) from Hilversun. Singer NL.WIKIPEDIA

  9. Valentijn Hingh (1990 - ) Amsterdam model. Vogue.IT

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Georgie Jessup (196? - ) musician.

November 1, 2013, 4:30 am
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Baltimore resident, Georgie, is a three-time Washington Area Music Award (Wammie) winner.

Although not born Lakota, she identifies as Winkte. Her first album, American Holocaust 1996, was deemed to be too controversial, and was banned by many radio stations without being heard.

She was featured in the 2006 film, Almost Myself, about Josef Kirchner's reversal of his gender change.

Her fourth album, Woman in a Man’s Suit 2006, has photos of her in both men’s and women’s clothing.
IMDB


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Jan Morris (1926 - ) Part 1: youth and journalism

November 3, 2013, 3:34 pm
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Part 1: youth and journalism.
Part 2: transition and empire.
Part 3: travel writer.

James Humphrey Morris was born in Clevedon, Somerset, the youngest son of a Welsh father and an English mother. His prep school education was at Christ Church Cathedral School in Oxford, during which time his father died.

In 1939 he attended Lancing College, which is in Sussex, but after the War started was moved to Ludlow in Shropshire. He participated in the standard homosexual play in public schools, mainly in that he was treated as a girl by older boys. Morris left at 16 and worked unpaid for six months for the Western Daily Press in Bristol.

In 1942 he then volunteered for the army and with his class background was sent for officer training at the Royal Military College at Sandhurst. Despite being only 16, he was assigned to the 9th Queen's Royal Lancers (founded 1715) as a subaltern, which took him to Italy, Egypt and in Palestine he was the regimental intelligence officer.
"In the Army as at Lancing, I was never short of protectors. … Such kindnesses were seldom exactly homosexual. I still did not look effeminate, and certainly did not feel myself to be homosexual. … It was a harmless quixotry, part of a game, part I suppose a compensation, and if it ever went beyond the platonic I never experienced it myself."
He was demobbed in 1947 and in London met Elizabeth Tuckniss, the daughter of a Ceylon tea planter. They married in 1949. After a short period of employment with the Arab News Agency in Cairo, Morris went up to Christ College, Oxford to read English. He graduated with a BA, second class after two years, and with an introduction to the editor of The Times.

For five years he worked at The Times, going from trainee sub-editor to correspondent. He made his name attached to the 1953 British Mount Everest expedition, when his coded message to The Times enabled the story of the successful ascent by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay to be announced on the morning of the Coronation. This despite opposition by the expedition leader, John Hunt, who thought him unsuitable.

By 1956 Morris was working for The Guardian, and as their war correspondent during the Suez crisis he provided the first evidence that Anglo-French forces were in collusion with the Israelis. He reported on the Adolf Eichman trial in Israel in 1960 and the Gary Powers trial in Moscow also in 1960.

James and Elizabeth had five children, one of whom died in infancy.

In 1960 Morris won the George Polk Memorial Award for Journalism.
 
In 1962 he resigned from The Guardian and became a freelance writer.
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Jan Morris (1926 - ) Part 2: transition and empire

November 5, 2013, 3:00 pm
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Part 1: youth and journalism.
Part 2: transition and empire.
Part 3: travel writer.

Morris investigated transsexualism. One winter evening in Ludlow he found a half-price copy of Lile Elbe's Man into Woman, and "with what agonies of embarrassment" bought it. Morris also read Robert Stoller, an unspecified account of Charlotte D'Eon and one transsexual novel: Geoff Brown's I Want What I Want.
"I trod the long well-beaten, expensive and fruitless path of the Harley Street psychiatrists and sexologists, one after the other, getting their names from their published works, or being passed from one to the other. None of them in those days, I now realize, knew anything about the matter at all, though none of them admitted it."
Morris was one of thirty cases featured in Georgina Turtle's Over the Sex Border, 1963. In 1964 Morris was in New York and visited Harry Benjamin, who advised him that a change of body must be a last resort, and that he should try working life as a man. Shortly afterwards Morris obtained an appointment with a London endocrinologist who said:
"What it would do to your personality or your talent, we cannot say. It is a grave decision to take, but it must be your own. You do know what you are doing?"
Morris returned to Venice with a box of oestrogen tablets, but considered the advice of both men and flushed them down a lavatory. However a subsequent prescription from Dr Benjamin he did take.

During this time Mottis was preparing a Empire trilogy, Pax Britannica.

With the support of Elizabeth, Morris lived as a woman in Oxford, but travelled the British Empire androgynously, sometimes being taken as male, and sometimes as female. Jan was issued a new passport 'without any indication of sex at all'.

Word of course got around. Morris' old tutor at Christ Church College had heard from a colleague at Harvard before being told directly. Some in London knew of Jan but others only of James. Private Eye magazine jested that if Morris were invited to a function 'dressed informally', it was Jan who was expected. At their other home in Pwllheli, Gwynedd in North Wales, Jan and Elizabeth presented as sisters-in-law to explain why two women had the same surname.

The first volume of James' trilogy, The Climax of Empire, was published in 1968 to mixed reviews but commercial success. In 1971 Morris was invited to write a short book on the Cascade Mountains and she and Elizabeth travelled by boat and car along the range being accepted as two women.

However "The book was still-born, all the same, for in Chapter Three the publishers discovered my unquenchable antipathy to the Douglas Fir".

Jan had been accepted in the program at Charing Cross Hospital Gender Clinic, but it was insisted that Jan and Elizabeth be divorced before surgery.
"I saw his point, for he could not know the nature of the relationship between us. And indeed I recognized that we must be divorced in the end. But after a lifetime of fighting my own battles I did not feel in a mood to offer my destiny like a sacrifice upon the benches of Her Majesty's judges. Who knew what degradations we might both endure? What business was it of theirs, anyway?"
Jan completed transitioned to Jan in 1972 at age 46, with two weeks in the clinic of Dr Georges Borou in Casablanca. She was in his clinic the same time as Carol Riddell.
"Dr B--'s craftmanship, though aesthetically brilliant, was functionally incomplete, and I underwent two further sessions of surgery in an English nursing home."
She commented on being a woman:
"I don't feel it incumbent on me to read Kate Millet and Germaine Greer. I like being a woman. But I mean a woman! I like having my suitcase carried. I like gossiping with the lady upstairs. If Elizabeth would let me, I'd be wildly extravagant about clothes, though I must say I'm not much interested in cooking. Never was. And yes, I like to be liked by men."










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Morris' comment that she needed further surgery on return to the UK is very imprecise. Does it mean that Burou's technique was not as good as we are told in other autobiographies?

The statement that Jan was issued a new passport 'without any indication of sex at all' means less than it appears.  I was granted the same privilege 16 years later.   The old pre-European-Union UK passports had no 'sex' box to be filed with either 'F' or 'M'.  Sex, or gender as we would now say, was merely implicit from the person's honorific: Lord, Lady, Sir, Dame, Mr, Mrs, Miss.   Despite the ruling in Corbett v. Corbett, the UK Passport Office dealt with transsexuals by simply not putting a honorific.   Incidentally doctors (PhD or MD) were issued passports that said Dr and were therefore gender neutral if the person's name and photograph permitted.  This is a much better solution that the new fashion in the 2010s of issuing a passport with gender=X.
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Jan Morris (1926 - ) Part 3: travel writer.

November 7, 2013, 2:14 pm
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Part 1: youth and journalism.
Part 2: transition and empire.
Part 3: travel writer.

Jan resigned from the all-male Travellers' Club, gave away James' dinner jacket and wrote to Who's Who to change her entry. At her own pace she changed her public identity.
"Presently I took to signing articles and reviews as Jan: also letters to The Times, whose letters editor imperturbably printed them, through the sequence of male to female, without comment."
She commented:
"Few people understood it. I did not expect them to understand the cause, since it was a mystery even to me, but I had supposed more people might understand the compulsion. I had once surmised that it might be an impulse common to all male persons, and though friends of both sexes vehemently deny it, it still seems to me only common sense to wish to be a woman rather than a man – or if not common sense, at least good taste."
The second volume of Pax Britannica, Heaven's Command: An Imperial Progress, came out in 1973, with James' name on the title page.

Morris' colleague, David Holden, wrote an essay, "James & Jan", on his experience of Jan's transition and it appeared in The Sunday Times, 10 March 1974.  Jan's account of her transition, Conundrum, was serialized for four weeks in the same newspaper in April, and then published as a book. As she was a well-regarded and famous journalist, her autobiography was much reviewed, although the reviews were uncomprehending at best, and some were vituperative.

The review in The Times Literary Supplement by Russell Davies was particularly cutting: He asked
"Is it not just a token immersion in what may always have been a shallow, impressionistically received idea of womanhood?"
and cites her anecdotes of gossiping at the shops as having nothing to do with womanliness. Jan was sufficiently hurt that she wrote to the editor to specify that Davies' review was just one in a wide range of "love and bitterness, hope and sorrow".

Rebeccca West wrote for The New York Times and said:
"She sounds not like a woman, but like a man's idea of a woman, and curiously enough, a man not nearly so intelligent as James Morris used to be.”
V.S. Prichett in The New Statesman wrote:
"A woman? The handbag swings and the muscles are softening. Women's chats, a woman's interest in clothes, finding men attractive, pleasure in the fact of being socially cosseted, are coming on. But essentially, Jan is an invented woman, for she has not been formed by the psychic-physical fate and surprise of menstruation or the power-giving possibility of child-bearing".
Nora Ephron was appalled by Morris' notion of what it is to be a woman:
"I always wanted to be a girl, too. I, too, felt that I was born into the wrong body, a body that refused, in spite of every imprecation and exercise I could manage, to become anything but the boyish, lean thing it was... I wanted more than anything to be something I will never be – Feminine and feminine in the worst way. Submissive. Dependent. Soft-spoken. Coquettish. I was no good at all at any of it, no good at being a girl; on the other hand I am not half bad at being a woman. In contrast Jan Morris is perfectly awful at being a woman; what she has become instead is precisely what James Morris wanted to become all those years ago. A girl. And worse, a forty-seven-year-old girl. And worst of all, a forty-seven-year-old Cosmopolitan girl."
Despite these reviews Conundrum became one of the best selling and most discussed transsexual autobiographies. Jan and Elizabeth did later divorce, but keep on living together as a couple.

The third volume of Pax Britannica, Farewell the Trumpets: An Imperial Retreat, came out in 1978, again with 'James Morris' on the title page for consistency.

Janice Raymond published her The Transsexual Empire in 1979. She was delighted to find examples of a transsexual embracing the gender stereotypes that feminism was rejecting. However the only negative review that she quoted was that by Rebecca West.

Jan and Elizabeth live mainly in Wales.

Jan was shortlisted for the Booker Prize with her first novel, Last Letters from Hav in 1985.

She returned to autobiography with Pleasures of a Tangled Life, 1989, which is a collection of her essays. Only in the essay "As to Sex" does she discuss how she is famous to people who never read her books.


She was elected to the Welsh Gorsedd of Bards in 1993.

She was offered a CBE in 1999, and despite being a Welsh republican she accepted it.

Jan and Elizabeth were formally re-joined in a civil union in 2008, after living together for nearly 60 years.

She is a noted travel writer, and the author of over 40 books.
  • James Morris. Coronation Everest. Faber and Faber, 1963.
  • James Morris. Pax Britannica: The Climax of Empire. Faber and Faber, 1968.
  • James Morris. Heaven's Command: An Imperial Progress. Faber and Faber, 1973
  • David Holden. "James & Jan". The Sunday Times, 10 March 1974. Reprinted: The New York Times, March 17, 1974. http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/11/23/home/morris-interview.html.
  • Jan Morris. Conundrum. London: Faber and Faber. xi, 148 pp.1974. New York: Harcourt Barce Jovanovich 1974. London: Coronet Books 1975. New York New American Library 1975. Harmondsworth: Penguin 1987.
  • Rebecca West. "Male and Female He Made Them". Review of Conundrum by Jan Morris. New York Times Book Review, April 14, 1974: 5.
  • Russell R. Davies. "Mr Morris Changes Trains". Review of Conundrum, The Times Literary Supplement, 26 April 1974, 431.
  • V.S. Pritchard. "Clouded Conundrum". New Statesman, 26 April 1974: 596.
  • Nora Ephron. "Conundrum", Esquire, 1975 reprinted in Crazy Salad & Scribble Scribble: Some Things About Women & Notes on the Media. 2012: 242-8.
  • James Morris. Farewell the Trumpets: An Imperial Retreat. Faber and Faber, 1978.
  • Janice G. Raymond The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-male. Boston: Beacon Press. 1979: 78,83, 86-90, 126, 143, 166, 184.
  • Mark Morris. 'My Father's Life: that my father is now a woman is besides the point'Esquire November1984.
  • Jan Morris. Pleasures of a Tangled Life. London: Barrie & Jenkins. 209 pp1989. New York: Random House 1989. New York: Vintage Books 1990.
  • Kevin Allman. "Jan Morris Finds Peace in 'Pleasures'". Los Angeles Times, October 20, 1989. http://articles.latimes.com/1989-10-20/news/vw-210_1_james-morris/2.
  • Sandy Stone. “The Empire Strikes Back: A Post-transsexual Manifesto”. In. Straub, K. and Epstein, J. (eds), Body Guards: The Cultural Politics of Gender Ambiguity. Routledge. 1991. Also online at http://sandystone.com/empire-strikes-back.
  • Bernice L.Hausman. Changing Sex: Transsexualism, Technology, and the Idea of Gender. Durham: Duke University Press, 1995: 142, 162-4, 166, 235n95.
  • Pat Califia. Sex changes: the politics of transgenderism. San Francisco: Cleis Press 1997. Second edition by Patrick Califia 2003: 7, 29-37, 48, 163, 196, 198.
  • Jay Prosser. Second Skins: The Body Narratives of Transsexuality. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998: 68, 99-100, 116-8, 124, 130-1, 245n2.
  • Don George. “Writers we love: Jan Morris”. Salon.com. 1999. www.salon.com/travel/bag/1999/08/18/morris.
  • Dr Georgina Somerset. "Re: Saddest part of the syndrome". Letter to the Daily Telegraph, 23 Nov 2003. Online at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TNUKdigest/message/7388.
  • Paul Clements. Jan Morris: around the world in 80 years. Writers of Wales. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 175 pp1998. Seren Books 2006.
  • Alan Rusridger. "Courage under fire". The Guardian, 10 July 2006. www.theguardian.com/media/2006/jul/10/pressandpublishing.egypt.
  • Daniel J. O'Connor. Sex Signs: Transsexuality, Autobiogrpahy, and the Languages of Sexual Difference in the United Kingdom and United States of America, 1950-2000. History PhD Thesis, University of Warwick, 2006: 1, 6, 15, 2-5, 27, 28, 30, 33, 35, 39, 45-51, 54, 58, 67, 76, 92-4, 96, 106, 117-120, 127-130, 138-9, 141-171, 253-4 .
  • Andy McSmith. “Love story: Divorce, the death of a child and a sex change... but still together”. The Independent. 4 June 2008. www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/love-story-divorce-the-death-of-a-child-and-a-sex-change-but-still-together-839602.html.
  • Gillian Fenwick. Traveling Genius: The Writing Life of Jan Morris. Columbia: University of South Carolina press, 2008.
  • Mike Conefrey. Everest 1953: The Epic Story of the First Ascent of Everest. Oneworld Publications, 2013: 223-4230, 239, 251, 272, 283, 291, 300.

    WORLDCAT  AMAZON  EN.WIKIPEDIA
____________________________________________________________

Raymond quotes Rebecca West but does not say where she got the quote from.  She certainly does not quote the male reviewers.  She could have made a much better job making her point - this  illustrates well that even if you were to agree with her position, she is still not a good scholar.

Patrick Califia follows Morris in referring to Dr B-- and does not identify him as Georges Burou.

I have listed only the most relevant of Morris' books above. See Worldcat or Amazon for a fuller list.

Unlike for Femke Olyslager, the editors at Worldcat have revised James Morris' books to be by Jan, even when the edition is question was issued as by James.

David Holden was a colleague of Morris whose article "James and Jan" preceded the serialization of Conundrum in The Sunday Times. He was working for the newspaper in Cairo three years later when he was killed execution-style. Sunday Times editor Harold Evans used three of his top journalists to investigate but no group ever claimed responsibility and the murder remains unsolved.

It seems that Jan never did engage with the dialectic of feminism beyond the facile dismissal quoted in part 2.

The Traveller's Club is still a 'gentlemen's club': that is no female members.  Unlike say Stephanie Anne Booth who used her legal masculinity to attend the Lancashire Cricket Club AGM, Jan made no attempt to open up The Traveller's Club to female travellers.

Neither does she discuss her class entitlements beyond mentioning them as natural.  She does not tell us what her father did, but implicitly he was so so placed and had the financial means to send James and his brothers to Public School (that is: expensive private schools).  Today 7% of the UK has been educated in Public Schools, so I will assume the same percentage in the 1940s.   James left Lancing after only three years which should not have enabled him to get into any university, let alone Oxford.  When he volunteed to join the army he was sent to officer school.  My fathers and my uncles volunteered in the same war with no such offer, but then they were in the bottom 93%.  The two-year degree at Oxford was intended for veterans, but only for those with the right background.   The degree at Oxford led to an introduction to the editor of The Times: a foot in the door that most of us never get.   Morris was initially resented by the Everest climbing team, but managed to overcome that resentment - which is to his credit.  He "trod the long well-beaten, expensive and fruitless path of the Harley Street psychiatrists and sexologists".   That is, he did not use the NHS like the rest of us, although he did end up at the same Charing Cross gender clinic, and the same clinic in Casablanca that many transsexuals of limited means were able to save up and access.


















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Holly Ahlberg (1934–) photographer, artist.

November 11, 2013, 7:11 am
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Ahlberg was born in Riga. The family lived in German-occupied Poland 1939-45, and then in West Germany until 1952.

After emigration to the US Ahlberg served in the US Army, and lived in New York and Los Angeles, married and became an advertizing photographer.

In the early 1970s, Ahlberg became Holly, divorced, and was accepted at the Stanford University Gender Clinic. However she chose not to have the operation. In 1975 she informed her clients of her change, and lost only a few of them.

She retired in 1985 and has become an artist. In 2013, using Google Earth, she found a previously unknown archaeological site in the Atacama Desert, which has provisionally been named Nuevo Albergis.
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Nadia Almada (1977–) performer.

November 14, 2013, 1:16 am
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Jorge Leodoro was born in Madeira. As a teenager, he lived in South Africa with his parents and five younger brothers 1989-1992. Mother and the boys returned to Madeira, leaving the father in South Africa.

At age 19, Leodoro, then thinking of himself as a gay man, moved to Woking, England with some friends, and worked in retailing and as a bank teller. As Nadia she completed transition in 2003.

In 2004, only a few months later, Nadia competed in Channel 4’s reality show Big Brother 5. Her fellow contestants were not aware of her gender history, but viewers were informed. £4.9 million was traded on Nadia alone by bookmakers. Her personality charmed viewers and after 71 days, she placed first, with 78% of the vote, and won £63,500. She was then on cover of Heat, the "self-appointed Big Brother magazine" four times in a row. The Sun newspaper tracked down her father in South Africa to inform him that he had a daughter – he had always wanted a daughter, he said.  Later that year she released a single, which charted at number 27 in the UK.

She has since appeared in other reality shows and television shows. In Ultimate Big Brother, in August 2010, another contestant was removed after making transphobic comment, none of which were broadcast, but Nadia also was evicted after conflicts with others. She objected that the transphobic remarks were not broadcast, and chose not to attend the final with all the other contestants.

EN.WIKIPEDIA   IMDB 
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Charles L. Ihlenfeld (1937 – ) sexologist, psychiatrist

November 16, 2013, 11:08 am
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Charles Ihlenfeld came from West Virginia, where his father was a prominent attorney and then mayor.  He graduated from the New York School of Medicine, and was working in 1969 as an internist with an interest in endocrinology when a friend arranged an introduction to the then 84-year-old Dr Harry Benjamin who asked him to cover the office during the summer while Benjamin was in San Francisco. Ihlenfeld learned on the job, and stayed on.
"I was awed by the courage of people who were willing to risk losing everything to gain the truth of their own lives".
 He came out as gay in 1973. Benjamin was surprised but then became supportive.

1975 was Benjamin's last summer in San Francisco. He developed facial herpes, and was hospitalized for a few days with what was probably mild encephalitis. Ihlenfeld continued the practice after Benjamin's retirement for another year, until 1976 when he took a psychiatric residency in the Bronx, and Jeanne Hoff took over the practice. This disappointed Benjamin who had considered Ihlenfeld to be his successor. Benjamin, who had learned to be wary of psychoanalysts, was further concerned in that Ihlenfeld had chosen a program with a strong analytic tradition, and old-fashioned ideas about homosexuality. Ihlenfeld told his Director of Residency Training that he was gay and the other was somewhat puzzled and replied: "You mean that there are gay psychiatrists?"

That same year Ihlenfeld was interviewed in The National Observer. He spoke of how working with Benjamin's patients had helped him come to terms with his own sexuality. And how he felt the need to understand more about his patients. He spoke of how he no longer considered the idea of a female mind in a male body to be a satisfactory explanation, and that there were psychologic issues that hormones and surgery did not reach, which might resurface in later years. The newspaper article came with a sidebar which ended with:
“Whatever surgery did, it did not fulfill a basic yearning for something that is difficult to define. This goes along with the idea that we are trying to treat superficially something that is much deeper."
This was quoted twice in Janice Raymond's Transsexual Empire, 1979, and has been often copied in feminist criticism. She hailed his leaving as "a significant defection from the transsexual empire".

The same year as Raymond's book, Ihlenfeld spoke to Garrett Oppenheim's Confide group:
"Should every patient who comes in asking for hormone therapy receive it? I used to feel that most of them should, but now I look at this request a bit more critically. … Perhaps my psychiatric training has made me more conservative. ... 80 percent of the patients who want to change their sex shouldn't do it. ... There is too much unhappiness among people who have had the surgery. ... Too many of them end as suicides. ... The transsexual candidate has been described as the only patient who diagnoses himself and prescribes his own treatment".
Ihlenfeld settled on the North Fork of Long Island with his lover, also a psychiatrist. He continued to see transsexuals for evaluation and counseling, and continued to prescribe hormones and surgery when they seemed appropriate.
"Cross gender feelings strong enough to bring a person to reassignment are probably fixed in personality far too early and far too firmly to reconcile any other way."

Ihlenfeld and his lover were married in Massachusetts in 2008 after several decades together, when the law was changed.

His patients have included Rupert Raj, M.T. Diane Kearny, Renee Richards, Ron Rigsbee. He appeared in court to support the law cases of M.T. and Paula Grossman.

*Not the Ohio prosecuting attorney.
  • Charles L. Ihlenfeld. "When a woman becomes a man."Sexology, 1972.
  • Harry Benjamin & Charles L. Ihlenfeld, “Transsexualism". American Journal of Nursing, 73, March 1973: 460.
  • Charles L. Ihlenfeld. "Thoughts on the treatment of transsexuals."Journal of Contemporary Psychotherapy 6.1, 1973: 63-69.
  • D. Greene interviews Charles L, Ihlenfeld. "A Doctor Tells Why He'll no Longer Treat Transsexuals". TheNational Observer, October 16, 1976: 14.
  • Janice G. Raymond The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-male. Boston: Beacon Press. 1979: 184, 208n33, 212n4.
  • Garrett Oppenheim. "Ihlenfeld Cautions on Hormones". Transition, 1979. Online at: http://lvtgw.jadephoenix.org/Info_htm/Herbal_G/ginko_b2.htm.
  • Charles Ihlenfeld. "A Memorial for Harry Benjamin." Archives of Sexual Behavior 17.1, Feb. 1988: 1-33.
  • Joanne Meyerowitz. How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States. Cambridge, Ma, London: Harvard University Press. 363 pp 2002: 214, 217, 249, 251, 267.
  • Charles L. Ihlenfeld, MD. "Harry Benjamin and Psychiatrists".  Journal of Gay & Lesbian Psychotherapy 8.1-2, 2004: 147-151. Reprinted in Ubaldo Leli & Jack Drescher. Transgender Subjectivities: A Clinician's Guide. Binghamton, NY: Haworth Medical Press, 2004: 147-152.
KINSEY INSTITUTE    NYU
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Sulka (1962–) porn star

November 19, 2013, 5:39 am
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Sulka from Dallas met Kim Christy in 1979 when she was in the audience at an event in Los Angeles and he was doing the photography.

Sulka was then featured on the cover of New Female Mimics, where he was the new editor, and did some work in the office. She had had various silicone injections and feminization surgeries, and looked rather artificial, but did make an impact. She was promoted by both Kim Kristy and by Jennifer Jordan, owner of New Female Mimics.


Her first film appearance was  as secondary role in Dream Lovers in 1980, directed by Kristy. This was supplemented by the magazine Sensuous Sulka and others which also emphasized her pre-op status.

Unlike other such porn actors Sulka had transgender surgery – which was actually featured in her next film The Transformation of Sulka, 1981. Her post-op extravaganza, Sulka's Wedding, 1983, features other trans porn stars and Paul Barresi (who later turned up in the Eddie Murphy transsexual scandal) and incidentally shows the success of her operation.

The cliché is that post-op porn stars are no longer in demand, but Sulka was a legend from being the first and went on to make Sulka and Candy (1982), Divine Atrocities (1983), Sulka's Daughter (1984) – where it is implied that the operation was so successful that Sulka has a daughter of her body.

She continued living in the Hollywood area, but became reclusive. At one time she was advertising in underground Hollywood papers that she did transvestite makeovers at $100 a go. It was reported a few times that she had been seen at Peanuts bar when they had a "queens' nite".

There are several Sulka look-alikes.

*Not the Finnish photographer, nor the New York haberdasher.
IAFD   IMDB
_________________________________________________________

IMDB tends not to have its usual reliability with regard to porn films, so I may not have the full list of her films.

The Transformation of Sulka is featured on many of the sites that give basic details of films, but for some reason none of them give a summary of the plot.  The best evasion is found here at SynopsiTV:  “This is probably about something. It is probably very interesting, with great character development, plot buildup, and a nail-biting climax with a twist that will blow your mind. We just don’t have the details.”
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23 trans persons in Brazil/Angola/Portugal who changed things by example or achievement

November 22, 2013, 6:34 am
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  • Nzinga Mbandi (1583 – 1663) ruler of the Ndongo who allied with the Dutch against the Portuguese. Nzinga wore male clothing and kept a group of men in female clothing. GVWWEN.WIKIPEDIA 


  • Domingos Rodrigues (1595 – 1621) Lisbon, slave dancer, executed on orders from the Inquisition. GVWW
  • Madame Satã (1900 – 1976) Rio de Janeiro drag performer, who served 27 years in prison. GVWW     PT.WIKIPEDIA

  • Tito Anibal da Paixao Gomes (1933 – 2007) from Madeira but lived in Lisbon,  fraudster. GVWW 


  • Laura de Vison (1939 – 2007) Rio de Janeiro teacher, transformista. GVWW   PT.WIKIPEDIA

  • Rogéria (1943 - ) Rio de Janeiro performer. GVWW


  • Jacqueline Galiaci (194? - ) 1st Brazilian to have gender surgery. GVWW     EN.WIKIPEDIA
  • Yeda Brown (194? - ) performer from Rio Grande Do Sul, muse of Salvador Dali. GVWW

  • Brenda Lee (1948 – 1996) from Pernambuco, but mainly in São Paulo. Sex worker, business woman, Aids activist. Human rights award named for her. GVWW    PT.WIKIPEDIA

  • Andréia de Maio (1950 – 2000) club owner, activist in São Paulo. GVWW   PT.WIKIPEDIA

  • Waleria Torres/ Martha C. Freitas (1950 - ) São Paulo, chemical engineer, sexologist. GVWW    PT.WIKIPEDIA

  • João W Nery (1950 - ) São Paulo, diving champion, psychologist, writer. GVWWPT.WIKIPEDIA 


  • Claudia Wonder (1954 – 2010) São Paulo activist, performer, writer. GVWW    PT.WIKIPEDIA

  • Katielly Lanzini (1961 - ) from Rio Grande Do Sul, sculptress, journalist, polital candidate. GVWW
  • Eric Barreto (1962 – 1996) Carmen Miranda impersonator. GVWW
  • Anderson Bigode Herzer (1962 – 1982) poet from Parana. His life was filmed as Vera, 1987. GVWW     EN.WIKIPEDIA

  • Roberta Close (1964 - ) Rio de Janeiro model and actress. GVWW    PT.WIKIPEDIA

  • Nadia Almada (1977 - ) From Madeira. Winner of UK Big Brother in 2004. EN.WIKIPEDIA 
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Yasmene Jabar (1956 - ) artist, activist, comedienne.

November 28, 2013, 2:20 pm
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Diana was raised in Noxubee County, Mississippi and then on a farm near Salisbury, North Carolina. She found out about transsexuality by buying Harry Benjamin’s book and the Erickson Foundation pamphlets by mail order from Michael Salem who had an ad in Playboy.
"By the time I got my license to drive a car, I was going out dressed as a girl-- just going shopping, to the movies or out to eat. Sometimes I would talk a cousin into going with me so I would not be alone, at first it was scary but I got used to it quickly and to the fact that I passed as female better than I did as male."
She transitioned socially in 1974 taking hormones purchased at a black-market pharmacy. Diana worked at an impersonator club, Orleans, in Charlotte, N.C.
"The club was run by an older woman named Olean who always wore a long blonde wig, and false eyelashes and lots of makeup, who looked more like a drag queen than the real drag queen".
Diana also worked stealth in a massage parlor to save for her operation. She had surgery from Dr Stanley Biber, 1976, at the age of 20.

She married a Syrian man she met at college and became Diana Salameh. They were together seven years, and he gave her the name Yasmene which means ‘desert flower’. However she finally divorced him for philandering. By this time Yasmene had become a Muslimah.

She returned to Macon, Mississippi to take care of her handicapped mother. She was then an artist making dolls and Santas with a studio in Macon, where she was declared Business Person of the Year 1994.

Her second husband was a Jordanian living in Germany whom she met on the internet. They had a traditional Muslim wedding in Jordan and lived there for many years.

Yasmene set up the web sites Cafe Trans Arabi and the International Transsexual Sisterhood, thefirst to help trans women in the middle east, and then expanded to help trans women wherever they are. In 2005 she was involved in the Trans Eastern Conference (TEC) in Istanbul.

Personal problems resulted in Yasmene's web sites being discontinued at the end of 2006.

She has returned to living in the US, and has been working a a stand-up comedienne.

She was an early proponents of the concept of Harry Benjamin Syndrome (Yasmene's take) but did not stay with the HBS groups.
 __________________________________________________________________________

For some reason Yamene has become part of a miscellaneous group of trans women who are reprinted with their before and after images in several dumb sites professing a false shock that transsexuality exists. 

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    2013 and other stuff

    December 9, 2013, 7:11 am
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    And again things trans are so many that it is impossible to mention them all.   In addition my husband and I have been moving which has taken much of my time.  Therefore there are probably more gaps in my year-end report compared to previous years.   Feel free as usual to add what I have missed.

    I think that the major trend of this last year is the news of our losing several of the outstanding pioneers:  Betty Cowell, José Sarria, Georgina Somerset, Yvonne Sinclair.  All of these remarkable women were over 85 years old.

    As more of us age, the question of seniors’ residences will come up.   Some of us hope that we pass well enough that we can go into a general population seniors’ home, but not all do pass that well.   It is a small surprise that one of the first places to have a specialist senior’s home for trans women is Jakarta.

    The biggest surprise of the year was Nikki Sinclaire’s self-outing after being a UK Independence Party Member of the European Parliament since 2009 until she resigned the whip the next year, and since then she has sat as an independent.  This means that – albeit in stealth – she has been a parliamentarian longer than Vladimir Luxuria ( 2 years) and Anna Grodzka ( 2 years so far), and is thus the longest serving trans parliamentarian in Europe.

    Another surprise was the testimony of Luciano Lucia, at the Amanda Knox/ Raffaele Sollecito retrial that in fact it was her brother Antonio Aviello who killed Meredith Kercher.  However it seems that this testimony is being ignored.

    The saddest story of the year was that of Nathan Verhelst, who used the Belgian euthanasia service to die after post-operative dissatisfaction.

    It is a shame that Gwyneth Paltrow thinks that herself dressing up as a woman with lots of makeup makes her a transvestite, as if the word meant something like excessive femininity.  Paltrow of course was a transvestite when in Shakespeare In Love she dressed as a man.   The term ‘homeovestite’ – which is the term that she wanted – is not catching on very well.  The same can be said about Cyndi Lauper’s claim to be a drag queen.

    The Wikipedia page on Walter L Williams, which is written in its style for criminals and does not discuss his academic career at all, and especially not his pioneering – although flawed – work on North American Two-Spirit persons, must be one of their most insensitive pages.   He has now been held without bail in Los Angeles for six months although not charged with any crime committed in the US.

    Probably the most expected self-outing of 2013 was that of Chelsea Manning, the brave whistleblower, who did so just after being sentenced to 35 years in a US military prison.  While most trans persons supported Chelsea, some decided that they had a stronger allegiance to the surveillance state than to other transsexuals: Kristin Beck, Diane Kearny, Autumn Sandeen. However 95,000+ nominated her for the Nobel Peace Prize and she was nominated as marshal at SF Pride.  A dramatic fight developed at Wikipedia re what name to use for Manning.

    In a year when Hollywood gave us yellow-face performances in Cloud Atlas, red-face in The Lone Ranger, and gay-face in Behind the Candelabra, Daytona Bitch, a Toronto drag queen was fired for a homage to a US psychic performer.

    The biggest brouhaha was Suzanne Moore’s excellent essay in The New Statesman which made a lot of valid feminist points. She included the sentences: "The cliché is that female anger is always turned inwards rather than outwards into despair. We are angry with ourselves for not being happier, not being loved properly and not having the ideal body shape – that of a Brazilian transsexual. " She did not mention the high murder rate of Brazilian transsexuals , although the sentences can be reread with a slightly different meaning bearing that in mind. A subset of trans women cut her no slack at all and some used crude misogynist language which drove Moore to close her Twitter account.    On the other hand this essay by David Lister comparing the members room at Tate Britain to the Black Hole of Calcutta without mentioning the deaths received no vituperation at all.   Nor is the current advertizing campaign, for a hotel chain that uses elephants to say that the rooms are big, being condemned for ignoring the fact that at the current rate of slaughter there will be no elephants at all in 10 years time.
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    Some Events of the year 2013: Part 1: Organizations & Activists, Equal marriage, Other Legislation

    December 10, 2013, 8:44 am
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    Some events of 2012,  2011, 2010, 2009, 2008.

    This is just some of what happened in 2013.

    Part 1: Organizations & Activists, Equal marriage, Other Legislation.
    Part 2: Persons.
    Part 3: Spouses, lovers and Family, Trans Kids.
    Part 4: Political, Celebrities, Sports.
    Part 5: Schools, Universities & Colleges, Imprisonment,Nemeses, Internet.
    Part 6: Doctors & Sexologists, Medicine, Genetics, Legal, Obituaries
    Part 7: Dress Reform, Cis Surgeries, Fashion, Beauty Pageants, Performance,
    Part 8: Art, Television & Radio, Adverts, Theatre, Cinema
    Part 9: Jargon, News Media, Theses & Studies,
    Part 10: Bookshops, Archives, Books.
      Organizations & Activists
        International:

        Amnesty International published a Report on transphobic and homophobic Hate Crimes in Europe.

        International Classification of Diseases met in San Francisco, February, advised by WPATH, Christine Burns and other trans persons and clinicians.

        ProTrans is a project of Transgender Europe and aims to better protect trans people and their communities in Eastern and Southeastern Europe against violence and impunity.

        Stop Trans Pathologization: Reflections from STP regarding the ICD revision process and publication of the DSM-5.

        Transgender Europe met the EU Agency for Gender Equality.

        Transgender Europe met in Berlin with ILGA-Europe at a roundtable on legal Gender Recognition ways forward.

        Americas:

        Asistencia Legal para la Diversidad Sexual de El Salvador organized a conference Felicidad y Diversidad Sexual como Derechos Humanos (Happiness and Sexual Diversity as Human Rights) 14-15 March at the University of Central America campus, a Jesuit school. Trans and intersex issues were a major part of the agenda.

        Chicago House,1st transgender housing project, opened by Lana Wachowski, Mara Keising

        Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation has shortened its name to GLAAD and vowed to prioritize trans issues. Jennifer Boylan became the first trans co-chair of GLAAD.

        J-FLAG, included Whitney and Tiana in its We are Jamaicans video campaign.

        Kathy Padilla and other advocated for Philadelphia to pass LGBT Equality Bill.

        New York and elsewhere: The Name Change Project.

        Outserve-SLDN director Allyson Robinson fired and then reinstated, and then stepped down.

        San Francisco Pride: Bradley Manning was nominated by former Grand Marshalls to be honoured, but current Pride committee quickly rescinded the nomination.

        Susan Gapka, Toronto activist.

        Texas Two Spirit Society already has 150 members.

        Toronto Pride again shut out the world's largest trans march.

        Transgender Advocates of the Capital Region, Albany, New York.

        Transgender Health Empowerment, Washington. DC, filed for bankruptcy.

        TransSask in Regina.

        T-Girls, Portland, Oregan, sued a bar that banned them, and were awarded $400,000.

        Asia:
        Bindiya Rana, president of Gender Interactive Alliance, Pakistan.

        Jakarta: first seniors' home for waria, organized by Mami Yuli.

        Kalki Subramaniam, of the Sahodari Foundation, worked with K Mahadevan of One Indian Road Safety Organization to recruit trans women to direct traffic.

        Joanne Leung, chair of Hong Kong's Transgender Resource Centre.

        Rina Natan (1923 - ?) Israel's 1st known transsexual, researched by Dr. Iris Rachamimov, a historian at Tel Aviv University, and discussed as part of Gay Pride Week.

        Europe:

        New support group in East Lancashire.

        Masha Bast, chairwoman for the Association of Russian Lawyers for Human Rights.

        Charlotte Goiar, Galacia, again won a ruling that she should have surgery, and again the province did nothing.

        Karen Richards adviser to Board of Manchester Pride.

        National Transgender Memorial, Sackville Gardens, Manchester. Dedicated volunteers had put hours of work into the garden, which is believed to be the only memorial to victims of transphobic hate crime in the world. It was unveiled as part of the Sparkle weekend. It was later vandalized.

        Protest Transphobia demonstrated against the Guardian and the Telegraph following Julie Burchill's article, and then outside Charing Cross Police Station after Jose Dos Santos was abused in Soho.

        Greek Transgender Support Association (GTSA) has condemned a series of violent attacks and murders against transgender women in Turkey and has called on the Turkish Government to respond.

        Greek Transgender Support Association met with mayor of Thessalonika and he promised to talk to the police chief.

        Transgender Equality Network Ireland met with President Higgins, started Talk Trans Tuesdays in order to push forward gender recognition legislation.

        Trans-Fuzja co-organized an international conference in Warsaw re a future Polish Gender Recognition Law.

        Intersex UK featured in The Independent.

        Oceania:

        Shelley Argent of PFLAG made a donation to that Brisbane can continue to have a transgender clinic.
        Meetings in Brisbane to form an Australian trans health group, organized by Melody Moore.

        Michelle Diamond is working with change.org to remove transexualism from the ICD.

          Equal marriage & civil unions


            A gala year for equal marriage legislation

              Americas:

                Brazil– the Federal Court denied notaries of states who do not recognise same-sex marriage the right to refuse to perform same-sex marriages. Marriages began in May. Alagoas, Bahia, Ceará, Espírito Santo, Federal District, Mato Grosso do Sul, Paraíba, Paraná, Piauí, Rondônia, Santa Catarina, Santa Rita do Sapucaí (MG), São Paulo, and Sergipe permitted equal marriages at an earlier date.

                California– US Supreme Court rejected petition by backers of Proposition 8 to prevent state-wide marriages.

                Delaware– passed by the Legislature.

                Illinois– passed by both houses of the Legislature. Also permits opposite-sex civil unions, and recognizes out-of-state marriages and civil unions.

                Hawai'i - passed by State Legislature.

                Maryland– passed 2012, in effect 1/1/2013.

                Minnesota– after state voters rejected a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, the Legislature passed a bill to allow equal marrieages.

                New Jersey– court ruling that equal marriage required by State Constitution.

                New Mexico– no state laws explicitly permit or prohibit same-sex marriage. 8 counties started issuing licences.

                Rhode Island– passed by the Legislature.

                Uruguay– passed by Parliament.

                US: Defense of Marriage Act declared unconstitutional.

                Aboriginal areas in the US:
                Ceará & Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians (Michigan),
                Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians (Michigan),
                Santa Ysabel Tribe (California),
                Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation (Washington).

                Asia:

                Hong Kong, in the case of W, Hong Kong' top court granted her the right to marry her boyfriend – a right that has existed in the rest of China since 2003.

                Abbygail Wu and Jiyi Wu of Taiwan, both trans women, had their marriage revoked when the second registered her gender as female, but then the authorities decided that the marriage would stand.
                  Europe:
                    Croatia will amend constitution to ban gay marriage.

                    France– passed by the National Assembly.

                    Ireland– a referendum has been announced.

                    England & Wales - an act was passed by Parliament permitting same-sex marriage but under different rules from those applying to heterosexual marriage. Peter Tatchell on the differences. Married trans persons will need spouse's permission before gender change. Opinion by Stephen Whittle. First wedding will not happen until March 2014.

                    Malta: government announced that it was dropping its objection to Joanne Cassar's marrying, and would amend the Marriage Act so that transsexuals may marry partners of their choice according to their acquired gender. Then appointed gay and trans members on council to advise re civil partnerships.

                    Scotland– passed second reading.
                      Oceania:
                        New Zealand– passed by Parliament.

                        Australian Capital Territory - passed but the Commonwealth is challenging the law.

                          Other Legislation, Litigation, other government and corporate actions, etc
                            International: 

                            UN ministerial meeting warned that countries must protect LGBT citizens from violence or discrimination or they are breaking international law.

                            European Parliament asked the European Commission to step up its work against discrimination faced by transgender people when purchasing or accessing goods and services.

                            Council of Europe addressed for the first time bodily integrity of intersex children by adopting the Resolution on Children's Right to Physical Integrity. It also heard about and addressed transgender rights violations. The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) called in a Resolution on June 26 for equal access to health care for transgender persons. “The Assembly notes that inequalities in access to care, including mental health care, particularly affect vulnerable groups, including…transgender persons.”

                            The Fundamental Rights Agency published an opinion on the situation of equality in the European Union. The publication also explores the state of affairs for trans people under EU Equality and show for example that trans people in general are not aware of available discrimination protection.
                              Americas:
                                Arizona: restroom restrictions protect business owners who bar trans persons from using their facilities, and Thomas Beatie lost his request for a divorce.

                                Boston police have issued new guidelines: police officers are to address transgender people by their preferred name, whether or not it is their legal name.

                                Mr & Mrs Crawford of South Carolina are suing over the damage caused by 'irreversible and medically unnecessary' surgery done on their child at age 16 months before they adopted him.

                                Canada: bill to add Gender Identity and Gender Expression to the Human Rights Code yet again passed the House of Commons, yet again stalled in the Senate – although got to third reading - and then died with all other pending bills when Prime Minister Harper prorogued Parliament.

                                California tg rights act; directed Insurance companies to provide transgender health coverage; name changes streamlined, students to use restrooms and be in sports teams according to their gender identity. Various right wing groups attempted to collect enough signatures to force a ballot initiative to reverse it.

                                Three transgender women of El Salvador shared their testimonies in the InterAmerican Commission on Human Rights of the OAS (Washington), and in front of the Salvadoran government officials, about hate attacks they and their families suffered. The women were later received by a reception co-hosted by the Human Rights Campaign.

                                Guyana: Chief Justice Ian Chang said people cannot be found in violation of the law if they are cross-dressing “for the purpose of expressing or accentuating his or her personal sexual orientation in public.” He said police failed to inform the litigants the reasons for their arrests and awarded them compensation. The law survived constitutional reforms in 1966 and 1980, so Mr Chang argued that changes must come from the legislature rather than the judiciary.

                                Oregon directed Insurance companies to provide transgender health coverage.

                                Pinellas County, Florida added 'gender identity' to its human rights ordinance.

                                Macy in Maryland won a ruling that her civil rights under Title VII of the 1964 US Civil Rights act had been violated.

                                Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education issued guidelines re trans students.

                                Saskatchewan will not include include gender identity in its human rights code.

                                Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority discontinued gender-marker stickers on weekly and monthly passes.

                                San Antonio, Texas, approved a law providing nondiscrimination protections against gay and transgender residents.

                                Washington, DC, dropped ban on trans women in its shelters for homeless women, and made it easier to get birth certificate re-issued.

                                US Social Security Administration has now made it easier to change gender in their records.

                                US Senate passed a trans-inclusive ENDA (Employment Non-Discrimination Act).

                                US AFL-CIO labor federation amended its constitution Monday to add a provision banning discrimination based on gender identity or gender expression.
                                  Asia:
                                    ++ India: Supreme Court reversed decrimalization of anti-gay laws.

                                    South Korea: 5 trans men won court case that they can get gender change without genital surgery.

                                    Gulf countries announced medical tests to detect and ban gay and trans persons.

                                    Europe: 
                                        Stephen Whittle discusses the disturbing implication of the conviction of Chris Wilson for not revealing his gender history.

                                        Albania. Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Thomas Hammarberg (Albanian) issued a paper Të Drejtat e Njeriut dhe Identiteti Gjinor(Human Rights and Gender Identity). http://tgeu.org/sites/default/files/Albania_Hammaberg_Issue_Paper.pdf.

                                        Bosnia i Herzegovina: House of Representatives recently adopted hate crime legislation that is inclusive of gender identity and sexual orientation.

                                        The European Parliament also called on the European Commission, in line with Court of Justice, to fully include discrimination on grounds of gender identity in future policy and legislation in the field of equality between women and men.

                                        Germany– 3rd indeterminate gender designation on birth certificates.

                                        Greece. Without legislative change, police – particularly in Thessalonika and Athens – began systematically harassing trans women. They were charged with being sex workers, but the courts cleared them of all charges. A lawyer defending them was also arrested. This was justified by the Minister of Citizen Protection as to "improve the image" of the city.

                                        Ireland launched new measures to protect gay and trans in school from bullying, and Gender Recognition Law promised for 2014.

                                        Lithuania proposed a law to ban all transgender therapy and surgery, and to legalize hate speech.

                                        Liverpool Community Health NHS Trust has launched a new Trans Support Service.

                                        Paris Police regulations against women wearing trousers finally repealed. History.

                                        Sweden– 142 transgender people who were forced to accept sterilisation, for legal recognition of their gender identity, under a now defunct law, have launched a lawsuit against the state.

                                        UK. Passport Service rejected request for non-gender-specific passports. (this despite the fact that such did exist prior to joining the EU)
                                          Oceania:
                                            Australian Capital Territory: changed tabled for Births Deaths and Marriages Registration Act so that surgery no longer required before changing a birth certificate, and easier for intersex tochange their legal gender.

                                            Tasmania's Anti-Discrimination Amendment Bill 2012, extended legal protections on the grounds of gender identity and intersex status for the first time.

                                            New Zealand Ministry of Corrections announced that the New Zealand Cabinet is to change the corrections rules in order to allow prisoners to be placed in a prison which matches the gender they identify with, rather than their birth gender.
                                            ↧

                                            Some Events of the year 2013: Part 2: Persons.

                                            December 12, 2013, 5:36 am
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                                            0
                                            0
                                            Some events of 2012,  2011, 2010, 2009, 2008.

                                            This is just some of what happened in 2013.

                                            Part 1: Organizations & Activists, Equal marriage, Other Legislation.
                                            Part 2: Persons,
                                            Part 3: Spouses, lovers and Family, Trans Kids.
                                            Part 4: Political, Celebrities, Sports.
                                            Part 5: Schools, Universities & Colleges, Imprisonment,Nemeses, Internet.
                                            Part 6: Doctors & Sexologists, Medicine, Genetics, Legal, Obituaries
                                            Part 7: Dress Reform, Cis Surgeries, Fashion, Beauty Pageants, Performance,
                                            Part 8: Art, Television & Radio, Adverts, Theatre, Cinema
                                            Part 9: Jargon, News Media, Theses & Studies,
                                            Part 10: Bookshops, Archives, Books.


                                              Persons
                                                This is a general persons section. In additional there are sections below on transkids, trans and families, celebrities, show biz, political, sports, inmates, schools and universities, doctors, etc.
                                                  Africa:
                                                    Audrey Mbugua has been to court seeking to get the Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC) to issue her with a KCSE certificate that reads Audrey and not Andrew.

                                                    Ngungu Nthungi– a Justice ruled that Nthungi's rights were violated when the police stripped her naked to ascertain her sex.

                                                    TDOR Zimbabwe remembered Naomi, AIDS activist who died in 2006.
                                                      Americas:
                                                        Aiden Kaplan documented transition on Facebook.

                                                        Armani Nicole Davenport, Dallas, a performer known for giving silicone injections turned herself in Wednesday after one of her clients landed in the hospital.

                                                        Charlotte, US Army, not transitioning, outed by a colleague, NCO ignores fact as long as gender normative.

                                                        Christine Hayworth, Stonewall Veteran, destitute in Puerto Rico and taken to a shelter by anti-gay preacher.

                                                        Daytona Bitch fired as TD Canada Trust Pride drag queen after a 'blackface' performance.

                                                        Del is a student at Harvard Business School.

                                                        Denise Brogan-Kator, Michigan Lawyer.

                                                        Devon appeared on Katie show after being Homecoming Queen.

                                                        Domaine Javier suing California Baptist University after expulsion.

                                                        Donnie Collins– fraternity raised money for his top surgery

                                                        Elizabeth Tremblay, Maine, arrested for deserting US Marines in 1980. Then received discharge papers in female name.

                                                        Enza Anderson ridiculed at Toronto Airport.

                                                        Erika Falls & Liz Kandziolka featured in Idaho Statesman.

                                                        Jennifer Blair sued for right to free breast cancer screenings.

                                                        Jennifer Pritzker, Illinois, military and scion of wealth, announced transition.

                                                        Jodie Jones, Iowa City, won a civil rights complaint against sheriff's deputy who ordered her to leave women's restroom. More.

                                                        Kadin Henningsen, Jesse Krikorian, Duncan McCullough and Leiah Moser converted to Judaism while transitioning.

                                                        Kelly Hamilton, co-editor of Alive magazine, featured in St Louis Beacon.

                                                        Kristen Beck, ex-US Navy Seals, came out as trans, published an autobiography, was filmed wearing CND/peace/antiwar earrings, and badmouthed Chelsea Manning.

                                                        Lynn Conway. “Reminiscences of the VLSI Revolution: How a series of failures triggered a paradigm shift in digital design.” IEEE Solid-State Circuits,4,4, 2012. http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/Memoirs/VLSI/Lynn_Conway_VLSI_Reminiscences.pdf; "The Many Shaded of Out". Huffington Post, 07/14/2013. www.huffingtonpost.com/lynn-conway/the-many-shades-of-out_b_3591764.html. Also met Christine Burns, attended a White House reception and was featured in Windy City Times.

                                                        Mark Anderson/Sybil Barrington/Queen of Bermuda survived a car collision.

                                                        MoHagani Magnetek, Anchorage, ejected from bar after using ladies' room. Bar later apologized.

                                                        Morgan Wade, US navy diver, attempted to re-enlist without success.

                                                        Nikki Araguz married her second husband in Texas.

                                                        Nina Arsenault & Lexi Sanfino stripped on board a plane after inappropriate questions suggesting that they had been men.

                                                        Ophelia De’Lonta, serving a 73-year sentence in Virginia, won ruling that she should be assessed for gender change.

                                                        Rachel, Lou Reed's muse in the 1970s, is remembered.

                                                        Rohit Singh, Saskatoon, refused service at a bridal shop, which was later demonstrated against.

                                                        Rosie del Mar, 72, featured in The Advocate.

                                                        Sasha Fleishman was set on fire while sleeping on a bus in Oakland, California.

                                                        Savanna DeLong was dropped as a massage therapist at The Capital Club, Columbus, Ohio. The club pled no contest and paid a $1,000 fine.

                                                        Shannon Kearns ordained by Old Catholic Church.

                                                        Silas Hansen and his new name.

                                                        Sissy Goodwin, out transvestite in Dougals Wyoming.

                                                        Victoria Beltran, NY, arrested for phoning death threats to husband's mistress.

                                                        Vivian Diego, Hollywood, assaulted by 4 men who put her in hospital for a week. Two men later arrested.

                                                        Zoey Tur, Los Angeles helicopter-pilot-reporter, started transition.


                                                        US Changebacks:

                                                        Don Ennis, newsreader at ABC, announced start of transition in May, and in August, after a period of amnesia where he thought that it was 1999, no longer wanted to transition.

                                                        Philip Porter reverted after 32 years as a cheerleader and as a topless dancer.

                                                        Michael Wallent, Windows executive, after 6 years.
                                                          Asia:
                                                            Arizona, in Israel, married a man who had left his previous wife and 3 children to be with her.

                                                            Israeli robber had his sentence reduced from 15 to 10 months because he needs to be kept in solitary confinement.

                                                            Joanne Leung, Hong Kong, now has a computing degree.

                                                            Lakshmi Tripathi met the Indian Women and Child Development Minister in January and demanded policies for the inclusion of transgender and gender nonconforming people, as discrimination against them encouraged atrocities on the community.

                                                            Marina, Israeli highschool teacher fired for talking about herself.

                                                            Maryani, Yogyakarta, performed the female Haj.

                                                            Mathira and her sibling Bakhsh, Rajgarh, Punjab, being denied their inheritance.

                                                            Pham Le Quynh Tram, Binh Phuoc, has had her female gender revoked for no good reason.

                                                            Sameer Neelam, fled from Hyderabad when outed as a trans man. Now in Bradford, UK.

                                                            Sanam Fakir, social worker in Sukkur,

                                                            Srinidhi, Madurai, Tamil Nadu, who has an MA in Business Administration, has opened a garment shop.

                                                            66-year-old Hong Kong man told by doctors that he is a woman. Actually he has Turner syndrome and congenital adrenal Hyperplasia.

                                                            24-year-old trans woman in Kolkata refused medical treatment.

                                                            W, Hong Kong, who completed surgery in 2008, granted right to marry her boyfriend, but they will still have to wait an extra year.

                                                            Yuval Topper-Erez, the first Israeli transgender man to get pregnant, now legally recognized as the baby's father.
                                                              Europe:
                                                                Alexis, microbiology student at Leeds University, was shouted at and shoved in Student Union toilets. Security was called and supported Alexis.

                                                                Becci Allen, Exeter, 36, ex-football-hooligan, started transition.

                                                                Ben Smith wrote about transition in the Independent.

                                                                Bobby Barnes, Worcester, marrying his ex-babysitter.

                                                                Chris Wilson, Edinburgh, convicted of ‘obtaining sexual intimacy by fraud’, is now on the sex offenders register and facing jail time. Legal Opinion by Stephen Whittle.

                                                                Emma Chapman, Essex police, suing her force after having to come out because had male voice.

                                                                Fernanda Milan granted asylum in Denmark.

                                                                Helen and Felix Fenlon, a couple from Hull, together for 6 years, married and both transitioned.

                                                                Hinoi Tonkin, Middlesborough, lost 12 stone and is awaiting surgery.

                                                                Jamie Eagle and Louis Davies, students, South Wales, both transitioning.

                                                                Jenny Bowman sold her Cambridgeshire home to pay for facial feminization.

                                                                Joanne Cassar, Malta, finally allowed to marry.

                                                                Katelyn Findlay, 18, convicted of robbery and assault.

                                                                Kirone McCaffrey's girlfiend paid for his breast reduction.

                                                                Katrina Harte, North Tyneside, phone payment of fine refused because she sounded like a man.

                                                                Kristina, from Lithuania, now in Germany, gave up her Lithuanian citizenship as there is no legal context in Lithuania to permit transition.

                                                                Lady Jane/Robert Clothier caught in a pedophile sting, sentenced to 26 months.

                                                                Laura Kate Dale was mocked and humiliated at an Xbox One Event in London.

                                                                Lewis Hancox, from My Transsexual Summer, reflects on the time since.

                                                                Luciano Lucia, Naples, testified at the Amanda Knox/ Raffaele Sollecito retrial that in fact it was her brother Antonio Aviello who killed Meredith Kercher.

                                                                Lucy Vallender, Wiltshire, ex-Army, now married Muslima.

                                                                Martina Castellana invested with a Cross of Malta.

                                                                Masha Bast, human rights lawyer, Moscow, made a public announcement that she is trans.

                                                                Nadine Williams, Neath, accused of rape.

                                                                Nathan Verhelst, used the Belgian euthanasia service to die after post-operative dissatisfaction.

                                                                Nemo remembers the 1960s.

                                                                Pammy Rose, finalist in Sunderland Echo Face of 2013.

                                                                Paris Lees, featured in Hate Debate on BBC Radio 1, number 1 in IOS Pink List and 1st trans panellist on BBC Question Time.

                                                                River Song barred from womens' toilets in St James shopping centre, Edinburgh. The same happened to Hannah Leith at the Paisley Centre.

                                                                Roman Sorokin, from Russia, sought political Asylum in France,

                                                                Sarah Baker, in Elmley prison, transitioned.

                                                                Scott McNally, London, accused of rape.

                                                                Stephanie Lowther, Middlesbrough, asked to be rehoused because of neighbours and told being trans is a lifestyle choice. However after a complaint the housing association organized diversity training and Stephanie was part of the program.

                                                                Stephanie Smyth, accused of being a witch and forced to leave Johnstone, Renfrewshire.

                                                                Treva Askey, after 23 years in army, transitioned and stayed with wife.

                                                                Vanessa Lacey, health and education officer for Transgender Equality Network Ireland.
                                                                  Oceania:
                                                                    Ashley Tonga success on X Factor New Zealand.

                                                                    Julie, Samoan fa'afafine with world-famous rugby-playing brother.

                                                                    Stephanie Dixon, beauty therapist, Christchurch, NZ, was losing clients as rumours of her past circulated, but after an article in The Press in April, her business went up.
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