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Mirha-Soleil Ross (1969–) sex-worker, activist, performer, filmmaker, broadcaster

September 24, 2014, 7:02 pm
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Ross was raised in a poor francophone family on the south shore of Montréal with lots of cats and dogs, an illiterate but resourceful father in construction work and a Métis mother.
"In the mid '80s, when I was about 16 years old, I watched a TV documentary about fur that included footage of animals caught in snares and leg-hold traps. It changed my life forever. I was so traumatized by what I witnessed that the next day I ran to an anti-fur protest. That's when I met a whole bunch of animal rights activists. I had lots of questions; they had good answers and by 6pm that same night, I had stopped eating meat, stopped wearing leather, and was eager to learn and do a whole lot more."
She settled in Toronto, and made a living as a sex worker.
"...from the early to mid-1990s, there were a bunch of us who had visions of transsexual and transgender spaces – of a parallel trans culture – operating independently of the queer community. … I was hoping that we, as a community, could develop a sense of ourselves that wouldn't be narrowly framed through a queer lens or bogged down in lesbian cultural references. … But unfortunately, this has been a complete failure. Those trans cultural spaces we attempted to create throughout the 1990s have all either disappeared or been absorbed by the lesbian-transgender community."
"But my main request is for transgender activists to stop their sinister appropriation of the abuse and violence that transsexual and transvestite prostitutes endure on every continent. … Trans activists use their deaths as fuel in their crusade for 'transgender rights'. Their campaigns have everything to do with supporting their own political agendas … but absolutely nothing to do with improving the the working conditions or lives of transsexual and transgender prostitutes. The most shameful of this type of political appropriation is the 'Transgender Day of Remembrance'."
From 1993-5 Mirha-Soleil worked with Xanthra Mackay to publish GenderTrash, a political and arts magazine for trans people. From 1995 and for five years, she conducted educational workshops for Toronto social service and health care agencies, and served as a consultant for researchers into trans experience.

In 1996 and for four years she hosted a weekly animal rights radio show on CUIT FM, and was also involved in other radio shows on topics such as lesbian sexuality and disability, AIDS, and transsexuals and immigration.

In 1997 she took up with and became the life partner of film-maker and animal-rights activist, Mark Karbusicky.

Also that year and for three years she, Mark, Xanthra and others ran Counting Past 2, a trans arts festival. And she developed the first publicly funded social services program for low-income and street trans people, Meal-Trans, which included a weekly vegan meal drop-in. She was appalled when, after she left, Meal-Trans started serving meat.

Mirha-Soleil has worked to raise consciousness of animals’ rights in the queer communities, and of prostitutes' rights in the animal rights community.

In 2000 Mirha-Soleil and Mark made a film G-SprOuT (not in IMDB) about love between vegans contrasted with factory farming which has been shown at over 25 queer and other film festivals.
Mirha-Soleil was Grand Marshall of the 2001 Toronto Pride Parade, and was able to place animal liberation activists at the front of the parade.

In 2001 Mirha-Soleil developed her performance piece, Yapping Out Loud: Contagious Thought from an Unrepentant Whore,which drew parallels between animal rights and prostitutes' rights. Later it was presented at the first Transgender Theater Festival in New York. 

Mark unexpectedly committed suicide in 2007, and was later memorialised in a documentary by Mike Hoolboom.

Mirha-Soleil continues to agitate on behalf of sex workers, transsexuals, non-human animals, Canada’s missing and murdered aboriginal women, and much more.
  • Viviane K. Namaste. Invisible Lives: The Erasure of Transsexual and Transgendered People. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000: 41-2, 44-6, 57, 58, 62, 66, 178-9, 239, 274n2, 280n33, 285.
  • Mirha-Soleil Ross interviewed by Heze. "No White Gloves on Mirha-Soleil Ross". Trade: Queer Things. Autumn 2003. www.kersplebedeb.com/mystuff/video/msr/msr.html.
  • Mirha-Soleil Ross interviewed by Claudette Vaughan. Satya Oct 2003. www.satyamag.com/oct03/ross.html.
  • Viviane K. Namaste. "Interview with Mirha-Soleil Ross". Chp 7 in Sex Change, Social Change: 86-102.
  • Viviane K. Namaste. Sex Change, Social Change: Reflections on Identity, Institutions, and Imperialism. Women's Press, 2005: 44, 53, 54-7, 82-5, 86-102.
  • Thomas Waugh. The Romance of Transgression: Queer Sexualities, Nations, Cinéma. Carleton University Press, 2006: 159, 330, 343, 345, 353, 394.
  • Mike Hoolboom (dir). Mark. With Mark Karbusicky & Mirha-Soleil Ross. Canada 70 mins 2009.
  • Chaos McKenzie. "Mark, Mike Hoolboom's difficult documentary". Xtra, Apr 21, 2010. http://dailyxtra.com/toronto/arts-and-entertainment/mark-mike-hoolbooms-difficult-documentary.
  • Darryl B. Hill. Trans Toronto: An Oral History. NY: William Rodney Press, 2012: 28, 35, 151, 169.
  • Mirha-Soleil Ross interviewed by Claudette Vaughan. "Queer Rights/Animal Rights. Straight talking". Animal Liberation Front, no date. http://www.animalliberationfront.com/ALFront/Interviews/Queer%20Rights-Animal%20Rights_%20Straight%20talking%20with%20Mirha-Soleil%20Ross.htm.
  • Mirha-Soleil Ross. Gut-Busting Ass-Erupting and Immoderately Whorish Compilation Tape. VHS.
  • Dan Irving & Rupert Raj (eds). Trans Activism in Canada: A Reader. Women's Press, 2014: 108.
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Martine Cuypers (1970–) lecturer.

September 27, 2014, 6:30 pm
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Cuypers studied Classics at Leiden University and gained a PhD there in 1997, and then worked as a lecturer and research fellow in Hamburg, Leiden, Groningen, Chicago and Washington D.C. before joining Trinity College, Dublin in 2005 as lecturer in Greek.

She was Chair of Transgender Equality Network Ireland (TENI) from 2010.

In February 2011 the Irish Sun featured the "world exclusive" revelation of Dr Cuypers gender history on its front page, "Trinity's Sex Swap Prof" as if it were news.
  • Annette Harder & Martine Cuypers. Beginning from Apollo: studies in Apollonius Rhodius and the Argonautic tradition. Leuven, Belgium: Peeters, 2005.
  • James Joseph Clauss & Martine Cuypers. A Companion to Hellenistic Literature. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.
  • "Trinity's Sex Swap Prof". The Irish Sun, 2 February 2011.
  • "Irish Tabloid outs trans woman", Biggaycloset.com, February 3rd, 2011. http://biggaycloset.com/2011/02/03/irish-tabloid-outs-trans-woman.
  • Dr Martine Cuypers. "TENI wins Parade Award at Dublin Pride". Transgender Equality Network Ireland, 02 Jul 2012. http://www.teni.ie/news-post.aspx?contentid=610.
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Charl Marais (1958 - 2013) teacher, bookkeeper, activist.

October 1, 2014, 9:28 am
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Marais was born and raised in Cape Town, in a religious family. As both parents worked, the child lived, until the age of ten, with other family members, and was sexually abused by an uncle.
"I knew that I was a girl because I looked like all the other girls, but why did that make me sad? … The most permanent thought and feeling in me almost all of my life was this feeling of just going though the motions. Medication was the only thing that could bring me out of this feeling of wanting to die and possibly commit suicide."
When in hospital having the appendix removed, a friend suggested that to Marais that she was a lesbian. She knew that she had had crushes on girls but thought that "this was wrong as it's not Christian". At this time, 'lesbian' was the only concept that she had encountered that approximated her feelings.

Marais qualified as a teacher, but did not feel suited to the profession,  and was admitted to a psychiatric hospital in 1978. The uncle who had abused her came to visit and Mrs Marais applied for a court order to keep him away. The lawyer who was assisting met Marais, and straight-away asked: "Have you ever considered having a sex change?". This set her thinking.

Marais obtained a teacher's post in a small school of 50 children in Port St Johns in the Eastern Cape.
"I met a girl there, and it was like an instant attraction for both of us. The sex-change thing didn't yet sit well with me because it was impossible, So we went with the lesbian thing."
In 1981 Marais moved back to Cape Town and found work at a newspaper. When the girlfriend arrived she was pregnant, which led to their breaking up.

In the mid-1980s Charl Marais discovered the Cape Town group, Phoenix, which was a Virginia Prince type group of mainly married cross-dressers. Charl was welcomed to their meetings and parties, and made a fuss of as he was their only female-to-male member, and also their only coloured member (this was still the apartheid era). One of the members was transsexual and told Charl about gender surgeries, and that operations were being done in Durban by Dr Derk Crichton.

In 1992 Charl had a hysterectomy and an ovarectomy, and was able to change the name on his ID card (but not the gender code embedded in the ID number).

One girlfriend left because he didn't have phalloplasty, even though he couldn't afford it. Another committed suicide.

From 2002 Charl worked as a bookkeeper.

After the Alteration of Sex Description and Sex Status Act 2003, he applied again to change his ID number but each person he saw demanded different documentation. In 2009 he tried again armed with letters from a psychiatrist, psychologist and two GPs, and the Department of Home Affairs lost his application form. He tried again in June 2010, and this time was successful.

He became involved with Gender DynamiX, South Africa's major transgender organization, and for some years was their bookkeeper and newsletter editor. In 2010 he was a co-editor and contributor to Trans: Transgender Life Stories from South Africa.

He died at age 55 after a period of illness.
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Grayce Baxter (1966 – 1992) sex worker, murdered.

October 4, 2014, 5:17 am
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Grayce Baxter from British Columbia completed transition in 1985 at a clinic in the US. Her parents had understood her gender dyssonance, and helped with the arrangements.

Grayce moved to Toronto in 1988, nominally to find a computer job, but known to many as Candace, she soon became a successful call girl with a roster of 100 clients. She specialized as a dominatrix. She acquired an expensive lake-front condo filled with fine antiques, a BMW, and designer clothing, and told her parents that she had become an executive in computing. However she always carried a stun gun and a can of mace when working. In December 1992 she had sent plane tickets to her parents to arrive for Christmas.

On 7 December Grayce worked a stag party with another prostitute and left after midnight. At 2 am she received a call at the number in her advertisement in Now weekly. The caller was 23-year-old Patrick Johnson, from Abbotsford, BC, a weightlifter and a part-time guard at Toronto's Don Jail. They agreed $200 for a 45-minute encounter. However Johnson had difficulty performing, and when his time was up, be became enraged. Grayce attempted to spray him with mace, but he overwhelmed her and choked her to death. He then cut her body into pieces, put them into garbage bags and dumped then in the apartment garbage bins.

Two days later Baxter's BMW was found. Mr & Mrs Baxter arrived in Toronto to meet a double shock of finding out how their daughter made her living combined with the fact that she was missing. Johnson pawned her diamond ring and Rolex on Dec. 21 for $1,650. The police tracked him from his cellphone records.

After it was mentioned in the press that Baxter had been born male, Johnson wrote a six-page letter to the Toronto Sun in which he admitted having seen Baxter on the night in question. He described himself as a “big, tough weightlifter, the womanizer, the loudmouth and joker” and insisted: : “I want to let the guys at the Don know I never knew she was once a he ... so quit the jokes”.  Charged with first-degree murder, Johnson opted to plead guilty to second degree on the eve of his trial. He was sentenced to life imprisonment, but could apply for parole after a decade.

After nine years in a BC prison, he was granted day parole on condition that he stay away from sex workers. However he did not, and was returned to prison. In 2004 he had another chance, but was seen by the police as a prostitute entered his car. A third attempt at parole lasted two and a half years, but ended in June 2013 when a girlfriend reported him for alcohol abuse and attending to sex workers. However he took full responsibility for Baxter's murder, and has found Aboriginal spirituality. In 2014 he was released on parole a fourth time.

No trace of Grayce's body was ever found.
Mirha-Soleil Ross takes issue with the fact that the Transgender Day of Remembrance includes Graycein that she was a passing woman and murdered by a john who did not know that she was trans.
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    Kerstin Thieme (1909 – 2001) composer. music teacher

    October 7, 2014, 5:35 am
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    Karl Thieme was born and raised in the Erzgebirge, on the border between Saxony and Czechoslovakia. He studied music and composition at the Hochschule für Musik in Leipzig with Hermann Grabner. He became a music teacher in Leipzig. His first major success was Variations on a Theme by Hindemith for large orchestra, 1934.

    During the Second World War he was conscripted into the German army and became a prisoner of war in Italy.

    From 1946-8 Thieme worked at Leipziger Rundfunk, but then decided to relocate himself outside the Soviet zone of occupation.

    In 1950 he found work teaching music at a Nuremberg secondary school, and later taught at the Nuremberg Conservatory and then the Friedrich-Alexander Universität. He composed for the Nuremberg International Organ Week. An important work was Canticum Hope for soprano solo and mixed choir, 1973.

    Thieme retired in 1974, and as Kerstin completed transitioned two years later. Kerstin kept Fanny Mendelssohn competition. Her Requiem was premiered in 1998.
    composing. In 1989 she was awarded the composition prize at the

    Kerstin died at age 92 in Stuttgart.
    • www.kompositionen-thieme.de
    • Antje Olivier & Sevgi Braun: Komponistinnen aus 800 Jahren. [800 years of women composers] Sequentia, Kamen 1996: 412.
    DE.WIKIPEDIA    List of works
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    Anderson Toone (1958–) drag king, performer, musician.

    October 10, 2014, 5:24 am
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    Annie Toone ran away at 16 and played drums and harmonica in New York, and then at 19 in San Francisco for blues legend Mike Bloomfield and beat poet Bob Kaufman.

    At 21, she moved to New York, and in partnership with Jordy Mark performed the review Sex & Drag & Rock n Role at the 1stWomen's One World (WOW) Festival. They sang as both men and women, switching gender onstage. This led to meetings with Adele Bertei and Kathy Rey and the founding of postpunk group The Bloods, an all-butch cross-dressed band. The Bloods, along with Jayne County and Phranc, were the only out queer acts in New York at that time. Adele and Toone, as men in tuxedos, performed as dancers at CBGBs and other New York clubs. They opened for The Clash, and played with Richard Hell and most of the 1980s New Wave musicians. After a European tour, they played at the 2nd WOW Festival. In 1982 The Bloods fell apart while in Amsterdam.

    Toone formed Idiotsavant with German drummer Leroi Pink who also passed as a man, and they were much featured in the European press for their gender play. The Dutch magazine Homologie ran a comic strip for two years based on Toone in real life. In 1985 Toone moved to London and was in Chain Reaction with Della Disgrace, Sophie Moorcock and Billy Goodfellow. They mainly performed genderfuck for lesbian audiences. Toone was then in the Well-Oiled Sisters. In 1990 Toone was featured in The Observer, and described as a cross-dressing gender bender, trans and a top.

    By 1992 Toone was in San Francisco, with a band called The Bucktooth Varmints, and singing dyke-a-billy songs from a passing perspective. In late 1993 Toone and Elvis Herselvis (Leigh Crow) began working together. In 1995 he was featured in a SF Weekly cover story on drag kings, and produced an all-drag Queer Ole Opry. Leigh Crow and Toone were the first drag kings to appear at Wigstock and Trannyshack, and also at the first FTM Conference of the Americas. In 1996 the all-drag musical Hillbillies on the Moon, starring Toone and Leigh Crow, opened in San Francisco, and was featured on the cover of the San Francisco Bay Times.

    In 1996 Toone taught himself web coding and created the Toone in Space, and later Madkats, "where drag is king". The Drag King Book, 1998, acknowledged Toone as a founding father, but does not otherwise feature him.

    In 2001 he created the trans-art website, and the first version of The Drag King Timeline. He acted as Drag Dad to Carlos & Ken Las Vegas who invited him into the Las Vegas chapter of the Imperial Court. He wrote for and was features editor of Kingdom magazine, where he notably wrote a profile of singer Gladys Bentley, and later an overview of what he dubbed the SF dragcore. In 2002 he gave the keynote address at the International Drag King Extravaganza (IDKE) conference.

    In 2003 Toone, after years of contemplation, decided to medically transition. His first name Anderson contains the German 'anders' for different, and is the Swedish form of Andrew which means manly.

    In New York in 2004 Anderson performed as the Very Reverend Buck Shot, store-front preacher of the Gospel of Transensual Love. In 2007 he was featured in the film Riot Acts, a documentary about trans music, and presented and performed at the Southern Comfort Conference in Atlanta.
    • Yvonne Roberts. "A whip away from plain old vanilla". The Observer, 5 August 1990.
    • Amy Linn. "Drag King: Sometimes girls will be boys". SF Weekly, 27 September 1995.
    • Del Lagrace Volcano & Judith Halberstam. The Drag King Book. London: Serpent's Tail, 1999: 7, 22.
    • Jacob Anderson Minahull. "Genre Fluid Performer Marches To Own Toone". San Francisco Bay Times, July 12, 2007.
    • www.andersontoone.com.
    • Diane Torr & Stephen J. Bottoms. Sex, Drag, and Male Roles: Investigating Gender As Performance. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010: 27, 66, 67, 129.
    • Kate Davy. Lady Dicks and Lesbian Brothers: Staging the Unimaginable at the WOW Café Theatre. University of Michigan Press, 2011: viii, 17, 18, 27, 35, 52, 61, 66, 67, 71, 178, 185, 187, 204, 210.
    IMDB   SoundCloud   QueerMusicHeritage
    ___________________________________________________________

    The IMDB entry for Anderson Toone is dreadfully deficient.  In addition to appearing in Riot Acts, Toone:
    • did part of the soundtrack for Lizzie Borden’s Born in Flames, 1983
    • did the soundtrack for Michelle Baughan’s Jake’s Progress, 1987
    • with the Well-Oiled Sisters appeared in Channel Four’s Stand on your Man, 1990 (on women in country music)
    • The Sisters performed music for and appeared in the BBC comedy Came Out, It Rained, Went Back In Again, also 1990.
    • contributed to the soundtrack of Channel Four’s Somewhere Over the Rainbow, 1994 (the 25th anniversary of Stonewall).
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    Toni F. (190? - ?)

    October 15, 2014, 8:33 am
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    An early German trans woman who is unrecorded except for her attempt in the late 1920’s to change a birth certificate from male to female. Toni's application was denied on the grounds she was biologically male although she wore female clothing, looked completely female and thought of herself as female.
    • A. Marcus & E Webers (eds). Zeitschrift fűr sexual Wissenschaft. XVI (1929-30): 45.  Cited in Vern L. Bullough & Bonnie Bullough. Cross Dressing, Sex, and Gender. University of Philadelphia Press 1993: 275n7.
    ___________________________________________________________

    Bullough gives Toni’s name as “Toni Claus Hans F. Den Antrag”  which seems to be a conflation of her female name, her male name and the German word ‘Antrag’ which means 'application'.  DE.Wikipedia does not feature any persons at all with the surname Den Antrag. 
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    Erika Ervin (1977–) paralegal, personal trainer, model, actress

    October 17, 2014, 12:22 pm
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    Ervin was raised in California by a tall family of Dutch-German descent. By age 14 Ervin was 5"9'/1.75m, and finally grew to 6"8'/2.03m. Ervin's mother was a nurse who died from AIDS after an accidental needle-prick.

    After working in a law office for six years, Ervin transitioned as Erika in 2004, but was rejected by her family. Erika's first boyfriend introduced her to fitness training and she studied with the National Academy of Sports Medicine to become a personal trainer. She also did session wrestling with men.
    Erika appeared in the documentary Trans/Formed in 2007, and therefore technically outed herself.

    A fitness client introduced her to the world of Amazons, and this led to international tours as Amazon Eve. In Australia in 2009 she was discovered by the magazine Zoo Weekly, and featured in the November edition. In Japan she became known as Babezilla. This resulted in modeling work for Harper's Bazaar and in fashion shows in Milan, and in 2011 Amazon Eve became the Guinness World Record World's Tallest Professional Model.

    She started acting, but mainly was offered parts as aliens or monsters because of her size. There were rumors about her gender, and she was fired from a television show. However the Daily Mail ran an article on Amazon Eve merely about the difficulties that tall women have finding men, and how she had finally found a 6"4'/1.93m boyfriend.

    Amazon Eve had a small part in the pilot of the sitcom Family Tools (the remake of White Van Man), and a regular part in the supernatural drama Hemlock Grove, where the cast found out that she was trans. Swedish actor Bill Skarsgård was very supportive and encouraged her to come out, which she did on Sweden's TV3 in 2013.

    The producers of American Horror Story: Freak Show thought that it would be too difficult to find a 7 foot/2 meter woman so they posted a casting notice for a male actor. “I auditioned for the part as a guy. ... I slicked back my hair, no makeup, flannel shirt, bound my breasts, dropped my voice, and walked in — and nailed it.” The producers were delighted when they found that indeed they had a woman for the role, and renamed the character to Erika's performance name: Amazon Eve.

    Ericka campaigns to end child abuse, and for LGBT rights and for those who suffer from AIDS.
    IMDB   EN.WIKIPEDIA   Website   Guinness



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    Karine Espineira (1967 - ) activist, author.

    October 20, 2014, 1:32 pm
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    Espineira was born in Santiago, Chile, with a Chilean father and a French mother. After the US-backed Pinochet coup in September 1973, they fled to France.

    In 1987 Espineira was involved in a serious road accident and expected to die, and ended up needing over 30 operations over several years.

    From 1988 to 1992 Espineira did a degree at the University of Grenoble in letters and communication, and started a doctorate at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, but dropped out to deal with personal issues.

    As Karine she went to Paris and became involved with the Association du Syndrome de Benjamin that had just been founded by Tom Reucher, Diane Potiron, Hugues Cariou and others. Another participant was Maud-Yeuse Thomas who became Karine's life partner. Karine started psychiatric interviews as part of the official French transition protocol, but as Tom Reucher as done earlier, she was repelled by the excessive pathologization, and by the surgical failures. She did keep seeing a psychiatrist on the official team, but negotiated hormones, and in 1998 has surgery with Dr Michel Seghers in Brussels. She was able to obtain a changed Chilean birth certificate.

    Karine and Maud-Yeuse joined the anti-essentialist, anti-psychiatry, queer-theory group organized by University of Lille sociologist, Marie-Hélène Bourcier, and also LesboTrans.

    In 2001 Karine and Maud-Yeuse moved to Marseille and became a social activist. In 2008 Karine published La transidentité: de l'espace médiatique à l'espace public. In 2012 Karine, Maud-Yeuse and Arnaud Alessandrin published La Transyclopedie: Tout Savoir Sur Les Transidentites, a history-cum-encyclopedia of transgender in France. In 2014 Karine obtained a PhD at the University of Nice – Sophia Antipolis in Information Science and Communication.
    Blog    Amazon.FR     WorldCat


     
    Présentation de la transyclopédie : extraitby QueerDays
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    Pequeña P. (1982 – 2009) performer.

    October 23, 2014, 12:15 pm
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    Juan Atum from Gualeguaychú, Entre Rios, descended from a family of clowns, became famous on Argentinian television as Pequeña P. She competed with Florencia de la Vega for boyfriends, appeared in the show at El Angel, and had a small part in the film Fantasma de Buenos Aires. 

    From 2003 she lived with Miguel, a taxi-driver, and was also having an affair with a policeman.

    At the age of 27 her body was found hanging by her boyfriend. He was initially charged but the case was dismissed for a lack of evidence, and Pequeña was ruled to be a suicide who should be interred without an autopsy. However Juan's mother did not accept this verdict, and registered a complaint.

    This resulted in a forensic investigation which found that Juan had been struck in the face and stomach before death, and that neither the electrical cord nor the scarf that it was proposed that she had used to hang herself would have borne her weight. There were also calls on her phone after she had been found dead, one to a nephew of a former president.

    A few weeks later the Gualeguaychú police found the decomposed remains of Ramón "Rony" Galante who also was a travestie using the name Gisela, and also cleaned house for Atum.

    Three years later when her sister and mother attempted to retrieve her body from the Gualeguaychú Judicial Morgue, it was found to be missing. The sister Alejandra Atum was threatened by phone several times for persisting in her inquiries.
    Blog    CineNacional



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    As with International Chrysis and Sir Lady Java, we have a male name and a performance name but not a female name.   This could be a defect of reporting, although I consulted more than the 5 articles listed above.   It could be that Pequeña P. thought of herself mare as gay than as female, as was common until fairly recently.
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    24 trans persons from Wales/Ireland/Scotland who changed things by example and/or achievement.

    October 26, 2014, 1:56 pm
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    1. Christian Davies (1667 – 1739) soldier from Dublin. EN.WIKIPEDIA
    2. Anne Bonny (1698 – 1782 ) Irish cross-dressing pirate. EN.WIKIPEDIA

    3. Lavinia Edwards (1809 – 1833) Irish actress in London. GVWW
    4. Edward de Lacy Evans (1830 – 1901) from Waterford, labourer and husband in Melbourne. GVWW

    5. John Coulter (1834 – 1884) labourer at Belfast Harbour. GVWW
    6. Murray Hall (1841 – 1901) from Govan, Glasgow. Businessman, Tammany Hall politician in New York. GVWWEN.WIKIPEDIA

    7. Albert Cashier (1844 – 1915) from Clogherhead, County Louth, fought in US Civil War, then labourer in Illinois. GVWWEN.WIKIPEDIA

    8. Raymond Browne-Lecky (1881 – 1961) Warrenpoint, County Down, aristocratic thespian GVWW

    9. Ewan Forbes (1912 – 1991) Aberdeenshire doctor, Baronet and landowner. GWVVEN.WIKIPEDIA
    10. Jan Morris (1926 - ) Pwllheli, Gwynedd journalist, travel writer and historian. GVWWEN.WIKIPEDIA

    11. Alga Campbell (192? - ) from Dublin, co-founder of the Beaumont Society and the one who suggested the name.
    12. Stephanie Anne Booth (1946 - ) She and her husband own Transformation shops, a chain of hotels in North Wales. Stephanie was leader of Llangollen Chamber of Trade and Tourism. Featured on BBC Wales. GVWWEN.WIKIPEDIA

    13. Jo Clifford (1949 - ) major Scottish playwright. GVVV.
    14. Nicole Dolder (195? - ) Edinburgh software engineer, actor, director GVWW.
    15. Rebecca De Havalland (1958 - ) Dublin celebrity hair dresser, model. AMAZONnewsarticle

    16. Lydia Foy (1947 - ) dentist in County Kildair, appealed to Supreme Court. GVWWEN.WIKIPEDIA

    17. Louise Hannon (1961 - ) Dublin business development manager awarded more than €35,000 after employment discrimination. Vice-Chair of Transgender Equality Network Ireland. GVWW

    18. Sarah Stafford (1968 - ) farmer in Donegal. GVWW
    19. Martine Cuypers (1970 - ) Chair of Transgender Equality Network Ireland. Also Classics professor at Trinity College, Dublin. GVWW
    20. Orlaith O'Sullivan (197? - ) Dublin editor, writer, Campaigns and Advocacy Manager for Transgender Equality Network Ireland. GVWW

    21. Panti Bliss (197? - ) from County Mayo, major Dublin drag queen who regularly hosts Dublin Pride and whose January 2014 comments on Irish homophobia went viral. EN.WIKIPEDIA.
    22. Jasmine Goode (1976 - ) burglar from Rhyl, Denbighshire. GVWW

    23. Lauren Harries (1978 - ) from Cardiff, antiques retailer, television personality. GVWWEN.WIKIPEDIA

    24. Broden Giambrone (1982 - ) from Toronto, Chief Executive of Transgender Equality Network Ireland. GVWW

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    Black Parrot Tea Shoppe Hobo-Hemia, raided 1923

    October 28, 2014, 11:35 am
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    In February 1923 the Charles Street Police Station in Manhattan was paying special attention to Greenwich Village. Deputy Inspector Joseph A. Howard and Captain Edward J. Dempsey of the Charles Street Station, and a party of ten detectives visited each tearoom and cabaret.

    Detectives Joseph Massie and Dewey Hughes of the Special Service Squad were assigned to the Black Parrot Tea Shoppe Hobo-Hemia, 46 Charles Street, to witness what they had been informed would be a “circus", and arrested five women and eight men.

    However on closer inspection, Ruby Bernhammer 21 from West Hoboken, New Jersey, did not meet their definition of a woman. Bernhammer was charged with disorderly conduct for giving an indecent dance, and they gave her name as 'Harry'.

    Another arrested was Arthur C. Budd also 21 who worked as a female impersonator in “The Lady in Ermine” at The Century Theater under the name Rosebud.

    The next day the local magistrate dismissed charges against all but the proprietors of the Black Parrot. Rosebud lost his job at The Century Theatre, but was working again the next year.
    • "Village Raid Nets 4 Women and 9 Men: Detectives Thought They Had Five Females, but Misjudged One Person by Clothing”. New York Times, February 5, 1923: 17.
    • "Board Ship to Get Big Liquor Agent". New York Times, February 6, 1923: 23.
    • "Cabaret" column. Variety, February 15, 1923: 30.
    • Chad Heap Slumming Sexual and Racial Encounters in American Nightlife, 1885-1940. University of Chicago Press,2009: 353.
    • "Mae West: Rosebud". Mae West, July 26, 2008. http://maewest.blogspot.ca/2008/07/mae-west-rosebud.html.
    IBDB(Arthur C Budd)  
      ____________________________________________________________

      In contradiction to the New York Times, Variety claimed that the one “togged up in complete female attire” was Rosebud.
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      Deborah Bershel (1954–) doctor.

      October 31, 2014, 5:33 am
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      Roy Shelton grew up Jewish in Flushing, New York. He trained as s doctor at the Georgetown University School of Medicine on a US Army scholarship. He married Alison Berkowitz in 1981 and changed his name to Roy Berkowitz-Shelton. He served with the US Army in Germany until 1987, and he told Alison about his desire to crossdress, but he repressed it.

      They had a son in 1985, and a daughter in 1988. Bershel opened a general medical practice in Newton, Boston, and Alison became his office manager.

      Not until 2004 did Bershel tell Alison that he felt that he was a woman, Deborah. Bershel started visiting a gender therapist who suggested that it be Deborah who attended the sessions. Bershel read and identified with She’s Not There by Jennifer Finney Boylan. Alison went with Deborah as female for a cross-dressers' weekend on Rhode Island.

      Deborah started laser hair-removal and voice training. In 2006 she had facial surgery, sent letters to the patients, and set up a website. Most of the patients stayed, and the synagogue was accepting. Her parents were accepting, but Alison, after living with Deborah for a few months asked Deborah to move out. Their daughter stopped speaking to Deborah.

      Deborah met and formed a new life partnership with Berni, lesbian and a psychiatric social worker. Deborah had genital surgery with Dr Pierre Brassard in Montréal in 2007, and Berni accompanied her. At that time she had three trans patients. That number later grew to about 50. Dr Bershel attended the WPATH meeting in Oslo in 2009, had testified at the Massachusetts State House re discrimination suffered by transsexuals, and in 2010 gave a presentation at the First Event Transgender Conference.
      www.deborahbershel.com




      ____________________________________________________________

      Margaret Wente used Deborah’s story to align herself with the Blanchardian-dichotomy school.
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      Laxmi Narayan Tripathi लक्ष्मी नारायण त्रिपाठी (1979–) dancer, activist.

      November 3, 2014, 2:01 pm
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      Laxmi was born in Thane, Maharashtra, the eldest child of seven of Brahmins from Uttar Pradesh. Laxmi was a sickly child suffering from double pneumonia, typhoid and asthma, was taunted at school for being feminine, and was sexually abused by a relative.

      By the second standard Tripathi was fascinated by the Bharatanatyam dance, its costumes, jewellery and make-up. She also became with a hijra artist, Shabina Frances. Unusually her family supported her study of dance and theatre, and Laxmi took an arts degree at Mumbai's Mithibai College and a post-graduate degree in Bharatnatyam. She drew comments on the street:
      "I was comfortable with myself; so what others said never bothered me. That was the time when I was a queen, an epitome of sexuality, and I had many boyfriends. All this while I found I was very feminine".
      She became a celebrated dancer, and also worked for LGBT causes:
      "There were many hijras who died on my lap in the hospital because they didn't get medical attention on time".
      In 2002 Laxmi became a founding member of the Dai Welfare Society, which works for hijra and other trans persons. In 2008 Tripathi was voted to represent the Asia Pacific Sex Workers Network and in this capacity spoke at the UN Civil Society Task Force at the UN General Assembly. In 2010 she launched the Indian Super Queen beauty pageant.

      Laxmi has starred in several television shows including the reality show Bigg Boss, and in three documentary films. She has adopted two children.

      She was one of those who had petitioned for India to recognize a third gender, which was achieved in April 2014 by the Supreme Court, which was in time to permit trans persons to vote in the 2014 national elections. The court also ordered that employment and education quotas be established for trans as for other minorities.
      IMDB   EN.WIKIPEDIA   HI.WIKIPEDIA   ProjectBolo   UNP


      ____________________________________________________________

      Laxmi is the name of the goddess of beauty and fortune who is also the wife of Vishnu.  However the name was decided by the Vaishnavist family before Laxmi was born and thus is not a name taken at transition.
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      Carol Marra (1992 - ) model, actress

      November 8, 2014, 7:47 am
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      Marra was raised in Belo Horizonte, and was an androgynous child often taken for a girl. She moved to Rio de Janeiro where her parents paid for her to take a degree in journalism.

      After working for TV Globo, Marra found work in fashion on the production side, still dressing androgynously. A photographer whom she had been working with approached her and asked to do a photo-shoot. He showed the photos to a lot of people, and Carol, by now dressing as female, was invited to participate in the Minas Trend Preview, a fashion show that happens right before Fashion Rio and São Paulo Fashion Week.

      This led to more work, including in Paris. She also acted in a production of Jean Genet's play The Maids. She has been in two television mini-series and was the first transsexual featured in Revista Trip magazine.

      She has recently been seen in the company of a parliamentary advisor, who has endured the ribaldry of his colleagues, and has a supporting mother. Carol has been postponing transgender surgery because because of her busy schedule, but has met with Dr. Marcio Littleton in Rio, and had counselling.
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      IOS Rainbow List 2014

      November 8, 2014, 9:30 pm
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      The 2014 Independent on Sunday Rainbow List (previously Pink List) of 101 LGBT persons who made a difference is just published.

      One of the good things about this list is that most people on have not yet been featured in either GVWW or Wikipedia.   I, of course, certainly disagree with who is on the list, who is not and the rankings - but lets put that aside.  





      2013 list.

      Trans persons included:

       2 Paris Lees, journalist

       13 Kate Stone, scientist.  GVWW 

      18 Rebecca Root, actress

      24 James Morton of the Scottish Transgender Alliance

      36 Natacha Kennedy,  Lecturer, Goldsmiths College, co-chair of Camden LGBT Forum, sits on LGBT Labour’s national committee and is a founder member of London Trans Diversity and the Trans Teachers’ Association.

      47 Isabella Segal, accountant.

      58 Jane Fae, journalist GVWW 

      65 Jay Stewart, Co-founder of Gendered Intelligence

      68 Jess Key, head of UK Trans Info

      74  Juliet Jacques,  columnist and blogger,  blog longlisted for the 2011 Orwell prize.  WIKIPEDIA

      86 Asif Quaraishi, the UK’s first Muslim drag queen.

      87 Juno Roche, primary schoolteacher

      89 Cat Burton, British Airways pilot

      92 CN Lester, musician, writer, activist.

      93 Ayla Holdom, RAF pilot

      94 Antonia Belcher, building consultant

      96  Sarah Brown, previously Cambridge Councillor.   WIKIPEDIA  

      98 Stephanie Hirst, radio presenter


      Supplementary lists.
      National Treasures

      April Ashley         GVWW        WIKIPEDIA

      Stephen Whittle                       WIKIPEDIA

      Paul O'Grady/Lily Savage     GVWW      WIKIPEDIA

      George O'Dowd     GVWW     WIKIPEDIA

      Alice Purnell          GVWW

      Roz Kaveney          GVWW 


      Ones to Watch

      Kellie Maloney, boxing promoter, UKIP candidate    WIKIPEDIA 

      Michelle Ross, CliniQ for trans sexual health.

      Naith Payton, first-person piece in The Sun   

      Sophie Green, artist & illustrator  

      Nicole Gibson, model   












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      Rafalala (1982–) artist, activist

      November 13, 2014, 1:26 pm
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      Rafalala, from Siedlce, has become one of Poland's most famous transsexuals, appearing in her own theatre revue and writing a popular blog. Her name is "Rafal", her official name and 'lala'='dolly.

      In 2007 she was featured in the documentary film, I bóg stworzył transwestytę. During the elections that year, she arrived at the polling station, accompanied by German and Polish camera crews, but because of the male-looking photograph on her identity documents, she was not allowed to vote. This led to a debate in the Polish media on identity and sex.

      Later she was featured in the media when she met with a letting agent to complete a pre-arranged lease, and he refused to let her have the apartment.

      In August 2014, she was invited on Polsat news along with Artur Zawisza, the leader of the right-wing Ruch Narodowy (National Movement). Zawisza referred to her as 'it', 'that thing' and 'male whore'. Rafalala retorted with “You, sir, are a stupid man who lies on the air”, and finally, as he would not stop his insults, poured water on him, after which he left the studio.
      Homopedia   Website   Blog   Filmweb   IMDB

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      Maria Clara Spinelli (1985 - ) civil servant, actress.

      November 16, 2014, 7:36 am
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      Spinelli was raised Assis in São Paulo province, and as an adult became a public servant.

      After some theatre work Maria Spinelli was cast as a transsexual lawyer in Quanto Dura o Amor?, 2009 (known as Paulista outside Brazil), and won the Best Actress award at the local Paulinia Film Festival, and again at the Hollywood Brazilian Film Festival and the Monaco Charity Film Festival.

      She has since been in several episodes of the Salve Jorge telenovela, again playing a transsexual.


      PT.WIKIPEDIA    IMDB

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      Barneys New York - Brothers, Sisters, Sons, & Daughters: The Film

      November 18, 2014, 2:24 pm
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      I missed this when it came out in February, but it is certainly worth watching.

      Directed by Bruce Weber

      With Candy Darling,   Flawless Sabrina
       
      and

      Arin Andrews
      Edie Charles
      Valentijn de Hingh
      Ashley de la Cruz
      Sawyer Devuyst
      Peche Di
      Dezjorn Gauthier
      Trevon Haynes
      Katie Hill
      Eve Lindley
      Niki M’nray
      Ryley Pogensky
      Ines Rau
      May Simon
      Ahya Taylor
      Maxie Neu
      Gisele Xtravaganza

      The individual portraits start at 10.00 minutes in.

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      Laura de Costa Teixeira (1980–) police

      November 22, 2014, 9:47 am
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      Thiago de Castro Teixeira is a Brazilian policeman who until recently was in charge of the anti-drugs squad in the north-east city of Goiana, Pernambuco. Teixeira was previously married with two children, although some of his colleagues regarded him as gay.

      In late 2013 Teixeira took three months leave and after surgery in Thailand returned as Laura. She arranged to be transferred to a police unit that specializes in countering crimes against women.

      "I feel that as a woman now I can make a difference investigating and helping transgender victims in particular who suffer abuse and violence because of who they choose to be".


      *Not the boxer Thiago Teixeira.
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