Gloria Swanson (1906 - 1940) performer.

June 9, 2019, 9:33 am

≫ Next: Jessica Amanda Salmonson (1950 – ) science fiction writer and editor.

Original version: October 2010

Walter Winston was born in Atlanta, Georgia. His family, like many other African Americans, moved north to Chicago for a better life. In the 1920s Winston took the name of a Hollywood Star and as Gloria Swanson won several prizes in Chicago’s drag balls.

In 1928 the Sepia Gloria Swanson (as she was billed) was hostess at the Book Store in the city’s Bronzeville, a speakeasy with a mainly black clientele which became popular as it was known that she was a permanent fixture. Her theme song was fats Waller’s “Squeeze Me”, which she rewrote to make it raunchier. She was also known for her version of Sophie Tucker’s “Some of these days”. She moved to the nearby Pleasure Inn on East 31 St, and white thrill seekers also started to come. She then opened her own club on East 35^th St. She literally entertained all night: the audience was so enthralled that the sun was up when they left. As such she was a major figure in the new Pansy Craze. Noted in her audiences were the composer William C Handy and boxer Jack Johnson.

Swanson had already performed in New York in 1932, and in summer 1933, on the eve of the end of Prohibition, Gloria moved uptown to Harlem, and quickly became the headliner at the black-owned popular Theatrical Grill on 134th Street. She sang bawdy parodies, and danced a little, and was always well-dressed in evening gowns. She was noted for her rendition at the Harlem Opera House of “I’m a Big Fat Mama With the Meat shaking on my Bones”. A year later Swanson was starring with Gladys Bentley at the newly opened Ubangi Club. She also performed with major jazz performers such as Fletcher Henderson.

She was a creature of the night, breakfasting in the evening and dining at dawn. She wore mainly evening gowns, was rarely in street clothing, and almost never in male attire. She was plump, jolly and bawdy, and also a good cook. She was completely accepted by the underworld and bohemian types who came to her club. Apart from those in the know, many of her clients never suspected that she was not a woman.

This lasted until Fiorello La Guardia became mayor of New York in 1934 and as part of his reforms had the police stamp out the pansy subculture. One-by-one they picked off the queer nightclubs. The Ubangi, almost the last to survive, closed in April 1937.

Swanson returned briefly to Chicago in 1934, and then performed in Baltimore and Philadelphia 1935-6, and then returned to Harlem as a headline act. However she was forced into male attire offstage, and as such, Gloria's admirers failed to recognize her.

She also became ill, and had to withdraw from public life altogether. After several hospitalizations for heart conditions starting in 1936, the Sepia Gloria Swanson died in 1940 at age 33. Over 200 attended the funeral.

“ ‘Gloria Swanson’ Buried in Harlem: Entertainer Won Fame as a Female Impersonator”. Chicago Defender, May 3, 1940.
George Chauncey. Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940. Basic Books 1994: 251.
Richard Bruce Nugent edited by Thomas Wirth. Gay Rebel of the Harlem Renaissance: Selections from the Work of Richard Bruce Nugen. Duke University Press. 2002: 221-2.
Chad Heap. Slumming: Sexual and Racial Encounters in American Nightlife, 1885-1940. The University of Chicago Press, 2009: 91-4, 233, 245, 256, 266-7, 270, 324-5n70.
David Freeland. Automats, Taxi dances, and Vaudeville: Excavating Manhattan’s Lost Places of Leisure. New York University Press, 2009: 160.
St Sukie de la Croix. Chicago Whispers: A History of LGBT Chicago before Stonewall. The University of Wisconsin Press, 2012: 143-5.
Jim Elledge. The Boys of Fairy Town: Sodomites, Female Impersonators, Third Sexers, Pansies, Queers, and Sex Morons in Chicago’s First Century, Chicago Review Press, 2018: 143-4, 155.
James F Wilson. Bulldaggers, Pansies, and Chocolate Babies: Performance, Race and Sexuality in the Harlem Renaissance. University of Michigan Press, 2010: 194-5.

Queer Music Heritage.

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Jessica Amanda Salmonson (1950 – ) science fiction writer and editor.

June 13, 2019, 8:05 am

≫ Next: The four years leading to Stonewall – a New York timeline

≪ Previous: Gloria Swanson (1906 - 1940) performer.

Original version August 2010

Salmonson started life as Amos, being born in Seattle to parents on the carny circuit, father a fire eater and mother a sword swallower. Amos was seven when, with an elder sister, they were abandoned and put in the foster system.

Salmonson started submitting stories to pulp magazines from the age of 10, although without initial success. At 12 Salmonson ran away and was able to survive in the burgeoning hippy scene of the mid 1960s. Salmonson’s father was rediscovered, and his new wife, a Thai Buddhist nun, became a teacher of Buddhism to the teenager.

By the age of 22, Salmonson was able to get published. A few years later, while one of the editors of The Literary Magazine of Fantasy and Terror which served as a forum for issues of feminism, Salmonson transitioned and was able to discuss her changes in its pages.

Jessica Amanda Salmonson has specialized as a writer and anthologist in stories with female protagonists, and in feminist science fiction. She has also used the names Patrick Lean and Josiah Kerr and Paghat the Ratgirl.

She is a prolific author. For the most comprehensive list of her works see her page in the Internet Speculative Fiction Database.

Jessica Amanda Salmonson. The Encyclopedia of Amazons: Women Warriors from Antiquity to the Present Era. Paragon House, 1991;Anchor Doubleday, 1992.
Jessica Amanda Salmonson & Jules Remedios Faye. Wisewomen & boggy-boos : a dictionary of lesbian fairy lore. Banned Books. ii, 105 pp1992.
John Clute. “Salmonson, Jessica Amanda”. In John Clute and John Grant (ed) The Encyclopedia of Fantasy. Orbit. St Martin’s Press, 1997.

EN.Wikipedia Encyclopedia.com Fancyclopedia
Internet Speculative Fiction Database

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The four years leading to Stonewall – a New York timeline

June 16, 2019, 1:16 pm

≫ Next: The five years following Stonewall - a New York timeline

≪ Previous: Jessica Amanda Salmonson (1950 – ) science fiction writer and editor.

On the tops of, and around Stonewall, I have already published the following accounts
Stonewall Inn and the Riots
Three Centuries of Police Raids
                                                           Other Trans Person in New York 1969-72
Recurring Untruths: Masha P Johnson's Birthday
Where was Sylvia the night of 27/28 June 1969?
                                                           New York in the 1960s
                                                           East New Jersey in the 1960s
                                                           1969 – a Year of Much Activity

It is now 50 years since the Stonewall riots. They became a pivotal event for both trans and gays. There are a number of commemorative books out this year, but all from the gay perspective. My June 2011 account is one of only a very few from a trans perspective.

What I am doing here is putting Stonewall in context. What else what was going on in New York by and/or for trans people in the surrounding years? I start with 1966 because that is the year of Benjamin's influential book, and continue to 1973 and the contentious pride march when Sylvia Rivera was badly treated.

The four years leading to Stonewall
The four years following Stonewall
The trans geography of New York 1966-74

1966

The decision by the New York Bureau of Records to omit a sex designation from amended birth certificates for transsexuals was tested legally but unsuccessfully in Matter of Anonymous v. Weiner,

Harry Benjamin referred Phyllis Wilson to the new clinic at Johns Hopkins.

Sylvia Rivera was hustling as a woman. She used a gun on a trick who was beating her. He later had her arrested and charged. Ray appeared in court as a clean-cut young man and was acquitted.

Marsha Johnson, 22, from Hoboken and Elizabeth, New Jersey, moved to Manhattan. Sometimes she worked as a waitress, but usually she worked the streets.

Spring 1966: the new New York City mayor, John Lindsay, had announced a crackdown on pornography and prostitution. Sylvia, at her usual spot on 9th Avenue and 44th Street was one of many caught in the sweep. Sylvia was put in the gay section in Rikers Island prison. It was here that she started doing heroin. She also met Bambi L’Amour.

After release Sylvia tried female hormones for a while: then stopped.

“I don’t want to be a woman. I just want to be me. … I like pretending. I like to have the role. I like to dress up and pretend, and let the world think about what I am. Is he, or isn’t he?”

The noted photographer Walter Rutter came and took a series of photographs at Susanna Valenti's transvestite resort Casa Susanna in upstate New York.

Later that year Phyllis Wilson had become a dancer in New York. Oct 4 a gossip column in the New York Daily News carried the item about her:

“Making the rounds of the Manhattan clubs these nights is a stunning girl who admits she was male less than a year ago and that she underwent a sex change operation at, of all places, Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore”.

Johns Hopkins made a tactical decision and gave an exclusive to The New York Times, which ran the story on the front page on Nov 21. A press conference was called on the same day, where Edgerton and several colleagues announced at a press conference the establishment of the Johns Hopkins Gender Identity Clinic under the chairmanship of plastic surgeon John Hoopes. They announced that they had already operated on 10 patients, all of whom were happy with the outcome. Three were already married, and three more were engaged.

A black trans girl (born 1948) previously in the New Jersey foster care system, expressed the kinds of statement that a trans girl normally would, and for that was committed to a psychiatric institution.

Holly Woodlawn went to John Hopkins for the operation, but she was denied it in that she had not been in the program for at least a year. She went on a shopping spree instead with the money that her boyfriend had provided for the operation.

Kim Christy and her friend Billy, who was becoming known as International Chrysis and entering pageants and performing, shared a tiny apartment in the area that later became New York's SoHo. They met sex magazine pioneer and editor of Exotiquemagazine, Lenny Burtman who arranged photo-shoots and other favors. She got to know New York female impersonators such as Tammy Novak, and performed at Club 82 as a stripper and as a showgirl.

· Harry Benjamin. The Transsexual Phenomenon. Julian Press, 1966. With a bibliography and appendix by Richard Green. A close reading. The seminal work that defines the field for decades to come.

1967

The Harry Benjamin Foundation presented eight separate papers at a meeting at the prestigious New York Academy of Sciences on January 16, 1967, mainly considering etiology based on pre and post examinations of Benjamin's patients. Robert Stoller, Richard Green, Herbert Kupperman, Wardell Pomeroy, John Money, Ruth Doorbar, Leo Wollman and Henry Guze presented papers, based on their work with the HBF.

Harry Benjamin and Reed Erickson had been having disputes, sometimes quite petty, about how the money was spent. In the spring of 1967 the EEF grant to the HBF was reduced to $1,200, and in the fall – after the promised three years expired-- stopped entirely. Shortly afterwards, the Erickson Educational Foundation asked Benjamin to vacate the office that it was subsidizing.

Over 700 desperate transsexuals wrote and implored the doctors at the Johns Hopkins Clinic to help them. However the Clinic would approve for surgery only those whom they unanimously deemed to be ‘good candidates’. They often chose to err on the side of wait-and-see, recommending therapy rather than progressing a patient on to surgery.

Dr Edgerton adopted and adapted Burou's penile inversion method of vaginoplasty.

April: Mauricio Archibald, en femme, having been to a masquerade party, was on a New York subway platform waiting for a train. A police officer charged him as being a vagrant in violation of subdivision 7 of section 887 which forbids a disguise "in a manner calculated to conceal his being identified". He was tried and convicted. See also Felicity Chandelle, who had been convicted under the same law three years earlier. Neither Virginia Prince nor Siobhan Fredericks arranged help as they had done for Felicity.

September: Section 105 of chapter 681 of the Laws of 1967, which chapter repealed section 887 came into effect as of September 1, 1967, "provided that the newly enacted sections were not to apply or govern the prosecution for any offense committed prior to the effective date of the act".

One-year-old Bruce Reimer from Manitoba was brought to see Dr Money after losing his penis in a botched circumcision, and was surgically reassigned to female as Brenda, and continued annual visits for almost 10 years, until Brenda began to refuse, and started to change back to male as David.

Phyllis Wilson’s marriage in Baltimore was reported in Jet Magazine.

Ray Rivera (Sylvia) was called to the draft board. She proclaimed “I know I like men. I know I like to wear dresses. But I don’t know what any problem is”, was rejected and was still able to get a lift home.

Eddie Dame, a cross-dresser since early childhood, was best man when his lover of four years married a women (Eddie and the lover had sex the night before and continued to do so occasionally until 1982 when the lover was seriously ill). Eddie then went to New Orleans for Mardi Gras and bought a full set of female clothing. Back in New York Eddie started going out dressed female.

Flawless Sabrina/Jack Doroshow had organized 46 Nationals Pageants a year from 1959-1967, including the annual Miss Philadelphia contest held at the Hotel Philadelphia (now demolished) at Broad and Vine Stree, which was won in 1967 by the 19-year-old Rachel Harlow.

Flawless Sabrina held the Miss All-American Camp Beauty Pageant. Miss Philadelphia (Rachel Harlow) was the winner; Mis Manhatten (Crystal Labeija) staged a tantrum. Kim Christy and International Chrysis were in the chorus line. Minette and Mario Montez performed songs. Dorian Corey, Jackie Curtis, Andy Warhol and Terry Southern were also present.

Wayne County (the future Jayne) arrived in New York for the first time, and survived by meeting people in the Stonewall Inn. However he returned to Atlanta come September as could not afford a winter coat.

Siobhan Fredericks’ Turnabout magazine for transvestites ceased publication.

Valerie Solanas, masculine woman and room-mate of Candy Darling, wrote the SCUM ManifestoScum stood for Society for Cutting up Men. She commented on male transvestites:

“Women, in other words, don't have penis envy; men have pussy envy. When the male accepts his passivity, defines himself as a woman (males as well as females think men are women and women are men), and becomes a transvestite he loses his desire to screw (or to do anything else, for that matter; he fulfills himself as a drag queen) and gets his dick chopped off. He then achieves a continuous diffuse sexual feeling from `being a woman'. Screwing is, for a man, a defense against his desire to be female.”

Pudgy Roberts was a New York female impersonator most famous in the late 1960s. He also wrote two novels, an how-to book, and edited a monthly magazine, The Great Female Mimics.

· Andy Milligan (dir) Compass Rose, with Minette. US 73 mins 1967.

· Jackie Curtis play: Glamour, Glory and Gold. Performed by Candy Darling and Robert De Niro.

· Pudgy Roberts. Female Impersonator’s Handbook. Capri Publishers, 1967

· Bob Clarke (dir). She-Man. With Hans Crystal and Dorian Wayne. US 68 mins 1967. Bad transvestites blackmail men into feminization.

· The Rolling Stones in the song “Citadel” on Their Satanic Majesties Request: “Candy and Taffy, hope we both are well/Please come see me in the citadel”

1968

Leo Wollman was on the WBI Boston television channel with Virginia Prince.

Renée Richards met with John Money at Johns Hopkins, but at the end was told that Johns Hopkins was not accepting any more transsexual patients at that time.

Dr Stanley Biber, in Colorado, contacted the Johns Hopkins Clinic for advice on how to do gender corrective surgery. He was supplied with diagrams based on Dr Burou’s penile inversion method.

The most prominent patient in the Gender Identity Clinic was writer Dawn Langley Hall who had surgery in 1968, married an African-American the next year, and publicly announced the birth of a daughter in 1971 (a claim that the Gender Identity Clinic said was “definitely impossible”).

Erica Kay had surgery with Dr Benito Rish.

Lee Brewster, from West Virginia, who had been fired from the FBI finger-printing section because of suspicions that he might be gay, had arrived in New York, and started organizing drag balls as fund raisers for the Mattachine Society.

Eddie Dames joined Charles Ludlam's Ridiculous Theatrical Company, and had a part in When Queens Collide. The troupe gave him the name Bunny Eisenhower.

Wayne County met photographer Leee Childers and they shared a coldwater walkup. Later Jackie Curtis and Holly Woodlawn moved in.

June 3. Valerie Solanas, shot Andy Warhol three times. He was pronounced clinically dead. The doctors managed to revive him and operated for 5 1/2 hours, removing his spleen. Warhol was in critical condition but survived.

At approximately 8:00 pm, Valerie walked up to a traffic cop near Times Square and surrendered. She was arrested and later taken to Bellevue Hospital for psychiatric examination.

A photograph of Kimand Chrysisappeared in Female Mimics.

Flawless Sabrina/Jack Doroshaw was special advisor for gay and trans aspects on John Schlesinger’s film Midnight Cowboy.

Schlesinger’s new lover, photographer Michael Childers -- an old friend of Morrisey -- negotiated for a bunch of Factory regulars to be in the film’s party scene. They each got $25 a day, but were left sitting around and became very bored, and only a few of them appeared very briefly in the film. Schlesinger’s film was the first notable Hollywood film to tell of hustlers and the underground countercultural life. Warhol, still in hospital, spoke on the phone to Morrissey, and admitted jealousy that his material was being stolen. They had made a film, My Hustler, in 1965. Warhol suggested the Morrissey make a similar film, and have it out before Schlesinger’s, and use whoever had not been sent to Midnight Cowboy. This Morrissey did. He shot the film, Flesh, over six weekends, and for less than four thousand dollars (compared to $3 million for Midnight Cowboy). He again used Joe Delasandro, as a hustler called Joe, and he included two trans actresses who had not been in the bunch sent to Midnight Cowboy: Jackie Curtis and Candy Darling. During their short scene, they sit reading Hollywood magazine, commenting on the articles while Joe gets a blow job. The film opened at the New Andy Warhol Garrick Theatre in the last week of September 1968 and played there for seven months before moving to the 55th Street Playhouse in May, 1969. At the Garrick, its average gross was $2,000 per week, making $10,000-12,000 during the first six weeks.

A troupe of street queens, with varying membership sometimes camped out in the parkette opposite the Stonewall tavern. It was a tough life. One drugged-out queen fell asleep on a rooftop and came close to death with third-degree sun burn; ‘cross-eyed Cynthia’ (?=Wanda) died when she was pushed out of a window of the St George Hotel in Brooklyn; another, Sylvia (not Rivera) jumped off its roof; Dusty ‘ugly as sin, never out of drag, very funny, big mouth’ who was careless about the term she used to refer to an African-American and was stabbed to death.

Sandy, a Yale-educated lawyer, was 6'5" (1.96m). He liked to say that he was five foot 17 inches. He was a regular in both Virginia Prince's FPE organization in New York, where he rarely wore female clothing, but did show photographs of himself so dressed. He was also part of the local bondage community. His lover was the drag performer Tobi Marsh.

David Wilde, who had been a focal point for FPE members in Manhattan, met Joan Bennett (1910-90), the film star and member of the New York acting dynasty, at a party. When she met David she was appearing in the occult soap opera, Dark Shadows, 1966-71. They would date for ten years. When David told her about his female persona, Gail, she was initially dismayed, but afterwards she was unperturbed. David knew Harry Benjamin and asked him to talk to her about cross-dressing.

Susanna Valenti responded in her column to Prince’s recent appearance on the Alan Burke television show. Burke pushed the line that a transvestite taking hormones and considering surgery was close to being a transsexual. Prince replied that she would not have the operation for anything. Susanna commented: “Such a statement marks the boundary between the TV and the TS. The TV rejects the thought of surgery. He enjoys living the two sides of the human coin.” However she estimated that she personally knew a dozen transvestites who had had surgery. “I met them all before the sex change, and some of them, at first, did not know they were TS’s, they only knew that they enjoyed dressing and would feel much happier as girls than in their male role.” However she believed that many who did think themselves as transsexuals were mistaken. She also criticized transsexuals as a group as not being able to pass: “Very few of the TS’s I know have learned to move and gesture with that suppleness that is exclusively female”. Later she continued: “Society insists upon females behaving like ladies—and this is where our TS and pseudo TS friends fail in a most regrettable way. I am thinking right now of several instances whereby people continue to ‘read’ a TS as being a man even AFTER the operation”.

Catherine Bruce was photographed by Diane Arbus in both female and male personas.

Joe Tish had been a female impersonator since the early 1950s. In particular she performed at the Moriccan Village on West 8^th St. In the late 1960 she had a long running show at the Crazy Horse. Tish was one of the few performers who left the club dressed as female. Although refused admission at the Stonewall when so dressed, she had no such problem at uptown straight clubs.

Alexis Del Lago, from Puerto Rico had studied at the Parsons School of Design, and had started going as female. She met Jackie Curtis which led to her being introduced to Andy Warhol’s Factory where she was invited to be in one of his films.

Desiree, who had previously hung around the Stonewall Tavern, took up with Petey, a gangster, and they moved to the suburbs as a heterosexual couple. Petey, in a fit of jealousy, shot and killed her.

October: Mauricio Archibald appealed to the New York Supreme Court. He contended that a) he could not be a vagrant in that he has visible means of support b) while cross-dressed, he had no intention of committing any illegal act. Judge Markowitz observed that the 1845 law had been updated and readopted, with a more modern aim to discourage “overt homosexuality in public places which is offensive to public morality” as well as disguises used to cover criminal activities.” But Archibald was not engaged in criminal activities, nor was he gay. Mere “masquerading” without harming third parties is not a crime in New York, suggested Judge Markowitz. “If appellant’s conviction was correct then circus clowns, strangely attired ‘hippies,’ flowing-haired ‘yippies’ and every person who would indulge in the Halloween tradition of ‘Trick or Treat’ ipso facto may be targets for criminal sanctions as vagrants. However Judges Streit and Hofstadter rules that the wording of subdivision 7 does not require that the State must establish either a lack of means of support or an intention to commit an illegal act. Thus the conviction was affirmed.

Edward Sagarin, who had published The Homosexual in America, 1951 as Donald Cory, wrote a paper "Ideology as a Factor in the Consideration of Deviance" for The Journal of Sex Research, in which he made the commonplace observation that scientists are not always as objective as they should be. In the section he named "Normal Necrophiles and Transsexuals", he quotes Harry Benjamin finding "no evidence of serious mental illness", and replies: "Benjamin describes a condition in which 'the male speaks of his female counterpart as of another person,' but to label this schizophrenia would constitute social condemnation, rather than diagnostic realism" and "One need only read the case histories, written by Benjamin or his collaborators, to note how disturbed are the patients". The Journal allowed Benjamin to reply: "My criticism of Sagarin's contribution is that his own ideology leads him to draw unwarranted conclusions in some (not all) instances, and his tendency to generalize too much".

Patrician but ever controversial novelist, Gore Vidal (1925-2012) produced a novel, Myra Breckinridge, (named for San Francisco transvestite Bunny Breckinridge, and an outgrowth of a proposed sketch for the risqué revue Oh! Calcutta!- itself produced by semi-closeted transvestite, drama Critic Kenneth Tynan). An exploration of what real-life transsexuality never could be. Myra, the supposed widow of film critic Myron, is taken on at a Los Angeles acting academy owned by Myron’s uncle, also rapes one of the young men. After a car accident, Myra reverts back to being Myron.

· Frank Simon (dir). The Queen, with Flawless Sabrina, Rachel Harlow, Crystal Labeija, Mario Montez, Minetteand uncredited in the chorus line: Kim Christy and International Chrysis. US 68 mins 1968. Rachel went to the Cannes International Film Festival with the film and was a center of attention. David Bowie, in his androgynous phase, would cite her influence.

· Mart Crowley. The Boys in the Band. Dir: Robert Moore. Premiered Off-Broadway April 14, 1968 and played 1001 performances through September 1970. Despite its rather old-fashioned view, it was one of the first plays centered on gay men.

· Jack Smight (dir). No Way to Treat a Lady. Scr: John Gay from a novel by William Goldman, with Rod Steiger and Kim August. A misogynist serial killer does drag for one killing of a cis woman played by Kim August. US 108 mins 1968. One scene shot in the 82 Club.

· Andy Milligan (dir). The Filthy Five. A heterosexual sex film, with Selena Robbins as the stripper who has a threesome with two men. Robbins was featured prominently on the film’s poster – and incidently was post-op by then.

· Paul Morrissey (dir). Lonesome Cowboyswith Francis Francine as the transvestite sheriff. US 109 mins 1968.

· Avery Willard (dir) Flaming Twenties. With Mario Montez, Minette, Jack Smith, Charles Ludlam, Bill Vehr. US ? mins 1968

· Minette. Come to Me at Tea-Time. LP, 1968.

· Jean Marie Stein. Season of the Witch. Essex House, 1968. Stein was still pre-transition when she wrote this science fiction of a man, accused of rape, who has his consciousness transferred to the woman’s body.

· Jackie Curtis’ play Amerika Cleopatra with Harvey Fierstein and Alexis Del Lago.

· Lou Reed’s song “Sister Ray” – said by some to be about Sylvia/Ray Rivera who was 16 at the time. although the lyrics don't support this.

· Lou Reed’s song “Lady Godiva’s Operation”. “Life has made her that much bolder now/ That she [has] found out how/ Dressed in silk, latin lace and envy/ Pride and joy of the latest penny-fare” -- however the operation ends badly.

1969

Transsexual pioneer Christine Jorgensen came to Johns Hopkins for corrective surgery.

Future showgirl Michelle Brinkle ran away to Baltimore intending to register at the Johns Hopkins Clinic, but never did, and ended up at Dr Burou’s Clinic in Casablanca instead.

Psychiatrist Jon Meyer became chairman of the Johns Hopkins Gender Identity Clinic, and his predecessor, John Hoopes wrote: “The surgery, often considered outrageously excessive and meddlesome by the uninformed, must be undertaken regardless of the censure and taboos of present society”.

Charles Ihlenfeld was a medical 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".

Kim Christywas being kept by an oil tycoon. She also starting doing photography for Eros Publishing Company, which published Eros, Mode Avantgarde, Hooker and Exposé.

Phoebe Smith, from Atlanta, came to New York after initial surgery with Dr Barbosa in Tijuana, to see Harry Benjamin for a hormone prescription. She returned in November and Benjamin declared her ready for final surgery.

Terry Noel had been performing at the 82 Club since her operation in 1964. Later she was a typist. Then she moved to Virginia and married a naval officer.

Holly Woodlawn talked her way into Paul Morrissey’s Trash, first in a bit part, but then as the female lead (a heroin addict’s girlfriend). She was paid $25 a day, and ad-libbed many of the lines. Several Hollywood people petitioned the Academy to nominate her for best actress.

Vicki Strasberg, sex worker, was photographed by Diane Arbus at her birthday party.

Susanna Valenti, writing her column in Transvestia, took up the concept that had been proposed by Sheila Niles of ‘whole girl fetishist (WGF)’ for members who did not pass well enough, particularly if it were for lack of trying, Susanna even estimated that the majority of members were WGFs (Transvestia #55, 1969). Later in the year, despite what she had written the previous year, Susanna Valenti had decided to live full-time as female. She planned to quit her job in the city and run Casa Valenti as a year-round bed-and-breakfast.

Joe Tish was performing in upstate New York.

June 22: Judy Garland died, age 47 from an overdose.

June 27: Judy’s funeral.

Edmund White: “I was just walking past Sheridan Square with my close friend Charles Burch the night of the raid. I had stopped going to the Stonewall because it had been taken over by drag queens, whereas before it had been a simple gay cruise bar where people danced to jukebox tunes.”

27/28 June - 1^st night of Stonewall Riots. The police raid against the Stonewall Tavern hours after the Judy Garland funeral, was co-ordinated by Deputy Inspector Seymour Pine, who used the excuse that the bar was unlicensed. The raid was carried out without the knowledge of the local precinct which was suspected of being on the take. Interpol had recovered negotiated bonds from Wall Street which were turning up in Europe. The bonds were being stolen by Wall St. employees who were victims of a blackmail operation run by Ed Murphy, sometimes called the Skull from his time as a wrestler. Murphy sometimes worked the door, where one task was to hand envelopes to a representative of the Sixth Precinct, rumored to be $1,200 a month. Other times he behaved as if he were the manager of the Stonewall Inn. Murphy had served time for stealing gold from dental offices, and had been arrested previously on blackmail charges, but supposedly had incriminating photographs of J. Edgar Hoover, and the charges had not been pursued. The NYPD figured out that the theft of bonds was tied to blackmail at the Stonewall Inn, and the order went out to shut down the club. One of the first reported actions that started the riot on the 27th, was that a cop hit a butch female/trans man and that he hit back. It has been debated whether this was Stormé DeLarverie, who was previously the sole male impersonator in the Jewel Box Revue. Deputy Inspector Pine has testified that the first significant resistance that he encountered in the bar was from the transvestites. Allyson Allante, then 14, was arrested, as was Maria Ritter who was there with her friend Kiki to celebrate Maria being 18 and legally able to drink for the first time. Street queen, Birdy Rivera was also there. Diane Kearny was in the area and for a time joined the crowd that was observing events. Tammy Novak was arrested and put in the paddy wagon for drag queens, but escaped in the confusion and ran to Joe Tish's apartment where she holed up for the weekend. A police officer putting Maria Ritter into the paddy wagon had commented that he couldn't believe that she was a boy. She said that she wasn't. As some more trans women were directed in, Maria stepped around them and walked away. The same policeman went to intercept her, but as she broke into tears, waved her to go away. Marsha P. Johnson and Zazu Nova were also active in the riots, and Michelle, Dario Modon and Christine Hayworth were present. Marsha was observed dropping a heavy weight onto a police car. Wayne County met Miss Peaches and Marsha P Johnson on arrival and realized what was going on. He joined an impromptu march up and down Christopher Street shouting "Gay Power!". Beat poet Alan Ginsburg lived on Christopher Street and inevitably joined the crowd. Ed Murphy was handcuffed to another man, but they managed to escape into the crowd and took a taxi to an S&M friend who knew how to remove handcuffs. Perhaps the Sixth Precinct cops, already peeved in not knowing about the raid in advance, recognized the man who paid them off.

Apparently Sylvia Rivera was not at the Stonewall Inn at the outbreak of the riots as often been claimed. Comparing the different accounts, the most likely account is that she had fallen asleep in Bryant Park after taking heroin. (Marsha later went to Bryant Park, found her asleep, and woke her up to tell her about the riots.)

A few weeks later the Gay Liberation Front was formed. Five months later, the Gay Activists Alliance split from GLF.

A few months after the riots, the Stonewall Inn closed. The space was occupied in turn by a bagel sandwich shop, a Chinese restaurant, and a shoe store.

September 19: Leo Wollman was on the Phil Donahue television show to discuss transsexual operations.

In the October 1969 TransvestiaSusanna Valenti, announced what she was doing. She had lost the “fabulous thrill” that comes with the transformation from ‘him’ to ‘her’ but it was becoming increasingly agonizing for her to make the switch back to ‘him’. She was criticized for failing to maintain the balance.

John Money conducted a follow-up study of ‘17 male and seven female patients’, and found that after surgery nine patients had improved their occupational status and none declined. “Seven male and three female patients married for the first time” and “All of the 17 are unequivocally sure they have done for themselves the right thing”.

There had been discussion that a book should emerge to embody the findings of the Harry Benjamin Foundation, but this was felt to be too narrow. In particular that would exclude the important work being done in Europe. The book, financed again by the Erickson Educational Foundation, eventually came out in 1969.

· Richard Green and John Money (eds) Transsexualism and Sex Reassignment, with a preface by Reed Erickson, an introduction by Harry Benjamin. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1969. With contributions by Erickson, Money, Green, Stoller, Guze, Pomeroy, Doorbar, Hamburger, Wollman, Sherwin.

Avery Willard (dir). Camp Burlesgue. With Pudgy Roberts impersonating Bette David, Carol Channing, Tiny Tim, Marlene Dietrich, Lily Tomlin, Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand. US 6 mins 1969.
Jackie Curtis play: Heaven Grand in Amber Orbit, with Candy Darling.
Lou Reed’s song “Candy Says”: “Candy says, I've come to hate my body/ And all that it requires in this world …. Candy says, I hate the big decisions/ That cause endless revisions in my mind”

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The five years following Stonewall - a New York timeline

June 22, 2019, 6:16 am

≫ Next: The trans geography of New York 1966-74

≪ Previous: The four years leading to Stonewall – a New York timeline

On the topics of, and around Stonewall, I have already published the following accounts

Stonewall Inn and the Riots
Three Centuries of Police Raids
Other Trans Person in New York 1969-72
Recurring Untruths: Masha P Johnson's Birthday
Where was Sylvia the night of 27/28 June 1969?
New York in the 1960s
East New Jersey in the 1960s
1969 – a Year of Much Activity

In the 14 months following Stonewall there were two other major gay riots in response to police raids: in January 1970 at the Snake Pit, and in August 1970 at the Haven. I have not found any notice of trans participation at either of these. And yet, and yet, there are still writers who wish to diminish the trans participation at Stonewall. We claim only one out of three, and there are those re-write of history to take away even that !!

The wave of radicalism initiated by Stonewall was pretty much spent after the 1973 Christopher Street Liberation Day, and the retirement of Sylvia Rivera from activism, and shortly afterwards the death of Candy Darling. I have include 1974 below to show the beginnings of the next phase: Rachel Humphreys, The New York Dolls at the changed 82 Club, Ajita Wilson, the Gilded Grape nightclub. Jean Hoff was introduced to Harry Benjamin.

The four years leading to Stonewall
The five years following Stonewall
The trans geography of New York 1966-74

1970

March 8: Seymour Pine, who had led the raid on The Stonewall nine months previously, led a raid on the Snake Pit, a gay-run, non-mafia bar. The police arrested 167 persons and took them to the 6^th Precinct Station House. Argentinian immigrant Diego Vinales, afraid of deportation, jumped from the second floor, and was impaled on the iron fence. He survived but word was that he was dead. The Gay Activists Alliance and the Gay Liberation Front organized a quick response and 500 marched from Christopher Park to the precinct station. Mattachine New York organized legal defenses and almost all charges were dismissed. Future NY mayor Edward Koch accused NYPD Commissioner Howard Leary of resuming raids and harassments against gays. Both Leary and Pine were reassigned to the Flatbush section of Brooklyn.

Leo Wollman flew up to Toronto for the release of Dianna Boileau's autobiography. He rather dominated the event and predicted that transsexual women would be able to become pregnant within 10 years. At this time he claimed 110 sex change patients with only one case of regret. He estimated 5 male-to-females for each female-to-male.

Rupert Raj, then 18, visited New York for an appointment with Charles Ihlenfeld, and was given a prescription for testosterone.

In her last column for Transvestia, January 1970, Susanna Valenti wrote about the support from family and friends, and her ability to pass. She said nothing about her relationship with her wife Marie, or what Marie thought about what she was doing.

Chris Thompson, a dancer, black, gay, trans and asthmatic, sought treatment for asthma at New York’s Bellevue Hospital, but was locked in the psychiatric wing, and ridiculed by the staff for her gender deviance. Arthur Bell and Sylvia Rivera discovered her and were able to publish an interview in Gay Flames.

Richard Raskin/Renee Richards abandoned transition and remarried. They had a son in 1972.

Bebe Scarpinato became active in the Gay Activist Alliance, where she met Sylvia Rivera. Sylvia felt that GAA was not radical enough, but never actually left the organization. It was Bebe who ensured that Sylvia's dues were paid up.

GAA had started a petition to get the reluctant Carol Greitzer of New York City Council representing Greenwich Village to introduce a bill for gay rights. Sylvia Rivera liked the idea and starting soliciting signatures right on 42^nd Street between 7^th and 8^th Avenues where she did her usual sex hustling.

15 April: there was an anti-war demonstration down the street, and cops, actually the Tactical Patrol Force, told Sylvia to move. This escalated and she was arrested and had to pay $50 bail. She recounted her adventures at GAA. This was heard by Arthur Bell, who wrote a story for Gay Power, and made Sylvia a celebrity. When her case came to court the public gallery was filled with activists from GAA and GLF. Gay attorney Hal Weiner volunteered his services, and GAA picked up the legal fees. It was also her first meeting with Bob Kohler.

In GLF Bob Kohler often spoke up for the queens, despite opposition. At different times he brought along various queens, including Bambi L’Amour and Zazu Nova, but only Sylvia had the staying power. Kohler was on the committee that organized GLF dances. He put Sylvia on door duty, where, even though often stoned, she fiercely collected and guarded the money.

Eddie Dame found a bisexual woman who was accepting of his cross-dressing. They married in 1970. She gave up the Communist Party for him; he gave up the Ridiculous Theatrical Company for her.

Vicky West had returned from Los Angeles, and decided that she was more interested in art than in engineering. While still a student, Dirk (her male persona) was hired by publisher Henry N. Abrams, Inc. where he continued to work until retirement. At this time Dirk was living with a woman, but also investigated the homophile Mattachine Society. Here Vicky met Lee Brewster, Eddie Dame and also Chris Moore, the Jewel Box Revue performer.

It was becoming increasingly obvious that the Mattachine Society were disinterested in drag queens and other trans persons, so Lee Brewster and Eddie - using his thespian name of Bunny Eisenhower – and also Vicky and Chris and Bebe founded the Queens Liberation Front.

The Queens Liberation Front campaigned and hired lawyers to de-criminalize cross-dressing in New York, which was achieved in 1971. Previously, under city ordinances a bar or club could be closed and patrons arrested, simply because a single person, deemed to be cross-dressed, was present.

Furthermore the words "homosexuals, lesbians, or persons pretending to be ..." were also struck, thus decriminalizing gay clubs and parties. In addition, the still extant 1965 Anti-Mask: New York Penal Law criminalizing "the wearing of mask or disguises by three or more persons in a public place" was found inapplicable to those in drag.

Ex-sailor Deborah Hartin (1933-2005) had became a patient of Leo Wollman, and then had surgery from Dr Burou in Casablanca.

April 16: Deborah was granted a divorce from her wife whom she had not seen since 1957. The mother retained custody of their daughter. The case attracted press attention as it was one of the first divorce cases where one party had transitioned. Hartin’s name change to Deborah Hartin was also granted – despite that being the name of the daughter.

Harry Benjamin received a letter from Angela Douglas then in Los Angeles: "As I progress as a transsexual, I find myself more attuned to Women's Liberation, in particular, the demands and ideas of gay women".

After Angela’s father, Czinki senior, was murdered in Maryland, she visited New York as part of investigating her father's death, where she met with Zelda Suplee of the Erickson Educational Foundation, and passed on a leaflet for a demonstration in Sheridan Square for 'transvestite and transexual liberation'. However only Suplee and one organizer turned up.

The New York State Government issued an order that all employees in the financial industry be fingerprinted. This resulted in a fair number of matches with the police records of old arrests for homosexual activities, and many old and trusted employees were fired because bonding companies would not insure known homosexuals. This confirmed to the gay employees that if the situation came up, they should give in to blackmail rather than tell their employers - the same problem that was behind the Stonewall raid.

After the Stonewall riots, the mafia had attempted to appease the gay community by setting up gay businessmen as fronts, and by hiring gay bartenders and managers. They even joined in the gay pride celebrations, and accused the police of homophobia if a bar was raided. Not that this was an easy union. Robert Wood was the gay owner of the nightclub Salvation in Sheridan Square who was murdered in February because he was not happy to hand over his profits to the mob.

June 28: The 1970 Christopher Street Gay Liberation Day, the first anniversary of Stonewall. The first Pride parade. A march up Sixth Avenue to Central Park's Sheep Meadow for Gay-In. Assembly at Sheridan Square, 12-1. There was an attempt to exclude the drag queens, but Sylvia and Bebe led the parade repeatedly chanting a spelling of GAY POWER along the 60 blocks of the march.

There was an increase in police harassment after the Christopher Street Gay Liberation Day, particularly during the last three weeks of August. In one week alone over 300 hundred queers were arrested in the Times Square area.

Despite this and despite several appearances, Sylvia’s court case was thrown out 28 August when the arresting officer failed to show.

August 29: in response to the increased harassment, GLF, GAA, Radicals Lesbians and other women’s groups and organized a demonstration. About 250 people met near Times Square and marched down to Greenwich Village. While this was happening, the police were raiding The Haven, an alcohol-free gay after-hours club at 1 Sheridan Square. The demonstration met the raid and a battle ensued. A record shop was looted; eight were injured and fifteen were arrested.

August-September: the Gay Activist Alliance and then the Christopher Street Liberation Day Committee had booked the basement of Weinstein Hall, a New York University residence building for fundraising dances. On the eve of the third dance, to be held 21 August, the administration attempted to cancel the rest. Although the two remaining dances were held, the situation escalated and the Hall was occupied. Bob Kohler told Sylvia and brought her along. She was pleased to see Marsha Johnson and Bubbles Rose Lee. They discovered a matron’s bathroom, and Sylvia and others from the street were able to clean up. Disparate gay types bonded: street people, middle-class, those used to passing for straight, students, Latinos, black, white. The lesbians and the transvestites got on. Sylvia said: “I never knew lesbians like you. The only lesbians I knew were street dykes. But you’re all really nice”. One replied: “I feel the same way about you, Sylvia. I’ve never known any drag queens before”. “Transvestites” said Sylvia. “Transvestites”. It was here that the idea of a home for street people evolved. At first it was called Street Transvestites for Gay Power. On the Thursday night, the NYU students had been invited to meet the protesters. Sylvia ran uptown to the GAA meeting and implored more GAA persons to attend. Most GAA members did not seem to care, but a few came, one of whom was Bebe Scarpi. A further dance was planned for Friday 25 September. However the administration called the New York City Tactical Police Squad, which gave the occupiers 10 seconds to vacate the Hall.

After the demonstration following the eviction from Weinstein Hall, Bubbles, Sylvia, Marsha, Bebe Scarpi, Bambi L’Amour, Andorra and others continued with what became Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) which attempted to provide shelter, food and legal support for street queens.

Their first home was a trailer truck seemingly abandoned in a Greenwich Village outdoor parking area. This was a step up from sleeping in doorways, and a couple of dozen young street transvestites moved in. One morning Sylvia and Marsha were returning with groceries, and found the trailer starting to move. Most of the queens were woken by the noise and movement and quickly jumped out, although one, stoned, was half-way to California when she woke up.

Bubbles knew a Mafia person, well-known in the Village, Michael Umbers, manager of the gay bar, Christopher’s End, operator of various callboy and porno operations and also a friend of future Dog Day Afternoon bank robber, John Wojtowicz. Bubbles spoke to him and for a small deposit the STAR commune was able to move into 213 East 2nd Street in November. There was no electricity or plumbing, not even the boiler worked, nor did the toilets. However with help they got the building working and it became STAR House, the first communal shelter that explicitly served street transvestites. Sylvia: “We had a S.T.A.R. House—a place for all of us to sleep. It was only four rooms, and the landlord had turned the electricity off. So we lived there by candle light, a floating bunch of 15 to 25 queens, cramped in those rooms with all our wardrobes.” Several of them hustled. Others liberated food from the supermarket. Neighbors left their kids for baby sitting. Expenses were supplemented by dances and a bake sale.

Sylvia continued her concern with the incarcerated. In 1970 over 4,000 boys were held in Riker’s Island, mainly because they could not afford bail. S.T.A.R. publicized what happened when transvestites were arrested, often several times: long waits in remand, beatings by guards, rape, attempted suicide. Street transvestites on the outside joined the Gay Community Prison Committee, organized protests, interviewed prisoners and attempted to provide legal aid.

While GLF had openly supported The Black Panthers, had helped them with bail money etc, there was a constant problem with the Panthers’ homophobia. They had been confronted on this issue by GLF at a rally at New Haven on 1 May 1970. Shortly afterwards Panther Huey Newton published an admonishment that militant blacks should acknowledge their insecurities about homosexuality. The GLF was invited to send a delegation a Panther convention in Philadelphia, and Sylvia was chosen as part of the delegation. Huey even remembered her from a demonstration in New York.

In late 1971, GAA succeeded, after lobbying and protesting, in getting the New York City Council's General Welfare committee to discuss the problem’s faced by gays and transvestites. GAA equivocated and for a while agreed to removal of transvestite protections. However it ultimately endorsed them. Lee Brewster, Bebe, and Sylvia argued that transvestites “were being used as scapegoats by the gay movement” seeking to explain its failure to get the asked-for protections. Sylvia, usually an extemporaneous speaker, her face bruised after a confrontation with police at a recent demonstration, wore a conservative dress and her hair in a bun, and read in muted fashion, a statement based on STAR’s platform.

After her starring role in The Queen, and at the Cannes Film Festival, Harlow, now known as Rachel Harlow, had a few other minor film roles. Especially in Philadelphia, she became a night-life personality. Bar owner Stanley Rosenbleeth opened Harlow's in the Old City area in 1970, with Rachel as hostess. The place was an immediate sensation. A short time later, a second Harlow's was opened in Atlantic City. There were also interviews, endorsements, modeling jobs and television appearances.

Yugoslav film director Dusan Makavjev filmed scenes with Jackie Curtis that were to be incorporated in his WR: Mysteries of the Organism.

Jack Doroshow/Flawless Sabrina was a special advisor on film Myra Breckinridge. Candy Darling and Rachel Harlow had petitioned for the role but it went to Raquel Welch, a cis actress.

Jackie Curtis’ play Femme Fatale, with Patti Smith, Jayne County and Penny Arcade.
Jackie Curtis’ play Heaven Grand in Amber Orbit with Holly Woodlawn.
Arthur Bell & Sylvia Rivera. “Chris: Gay Prisoner in Bellevue”. Gay Flames, Nov 14, 1970: 1,2,7.
Paul Morrissey (dir). Trash, with Joe Dallesandro & Holly Woodlawn. US 110 mins 1970.
Win Chamberlain (dir). Brand X with Taylor Mead & Candy Darling. US 87 mins 1970.

1971

Richard Green, Ivar Lovaas and George Rekers headed the “Feminine Boy Project”, funded by NIMH to at least $1.5 million. In retrospect the project was criticized for its valuation of gender conformity, and it attempts to get boys to conform. Although mainly located at UCLA in Los Angeles, work was also done at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, the Roosevelt Institute in New York City, The Fuller Theological Seminary and the Logos Research Institute.

Roberto Granato, urologist, age 46, an immigrant from Argentina started doing vaginoplasties and phalloplasties. He did about 800 before retiring in 1985.

Dr David Wesser taught and practiced surgery in the New York area, usually at the Yonkers Professional Hospital. He also had an office at east 86th St and Park Avenue. His first transsexual patients were those who had had surgery elsewhere, and corrections were needed.

Dr Benito Rish was named to the advisory board of Reed Erickson’s Erickson Education Foundation, and was subsequently on the list of surgeons sympathetic to transsexuals issued by EEF.

March: A Conference of Gay Liberation was held at Rutgers University in New Jersey, with forums on sadism, masochism, and leather; bisexuality; and transvestism. Speakers from STAR, Queens Liberation Front and GAA addressed the inaugural event on transvestism.

Psychoanalyst Ethel Person was introduced to Harry Benjamin and Charles Ihlenfeld. She spent time in their office interviewing patients. Person and her colleague Lionel Ovesey also sought confirmation for their work by visiting pornography shops and reading trans publications.

Ed/Edna, 60, a retired tugboat captain had become the superintendent of a rental building. He fell in love with Clair, one of his tenants, a completed transsexual. He detransitioned to become her lover, and was devastated when she left him for a truck driver. To cope with the resulting depression, Edna restarted hormones and dressing full-time. Again he rented to a completed trans woman, Janet. Again he reverted to male, and became her lover. After Ed’s original wife died, he married Janet, and lived happily with her until she also died ten years later. He was then 85.

Edna subscribed to Transvestia magazine, and through that discovered transvestite social groups. Edna introduced Person to these socials: “it was at these events that I gained some of my deeper insights into the subjective meaning to transvestites of their participation in that world”.

One of the transsexuals included in the Person-Ovesey study was Elizabeth (194? - 2014) – author of the Notes from the T Side blog. She wrote

Harry Benjamin “in 1970 -71 asked me to talk to a Dr. Ethel Person as part of a study and I agreed although I am inherently distrustful of shrinks but I found her pleasant and quite nice and we became friendly. When the study was published I was stunned to be honest. ... We talked about our lives as children until the current time and at the time I was 24 and had close to enough money for surgery. In point of fact Harry might have been more upset by the study than anyone. I am posting this to refute what they found because as one of the participants in the study I walked into her office and asked her where I fit in late 1974 and she said Secondary because I liked boys so I was a homosexual transsexual where by Harry's definition I was a Type VI high intensity transsexual and according to Harry the study was bogus.”

Zelda Suplee of EEF was part of the First National Conference on Religion and the Homosexual, which took part in New York, and several time attended police conventions where EEF pamphlets were distributed.

The EEF sponsored the production of a 28-minute documentary, I am Not This Body, which featured a discussion in the EEF office between Zelda Suplee, Leo Wollman, two trans women and actress Pamela Lincoln (who was purportedly seeking information about transsexuals). Suplee and Wollman had previously known each other through their mutual interest in hypnosis.

Zelda introduced film-maker Doris Wishman, whom she had known since Diary of a Nudist, to Dr Leo Wollman, which resulted in the film Adam or Eve.

There were tragedies among the people at STAR House. One transvestite, June, died after drinking her mixture of methadone and alcohol. In March, Marsha P Johnson was overwhelmed when her husband, Cantrell, was shot dead while out to get money so that they could buy drugs. Sylvia, who had started heroin when in Riker’s Island prison, eventually locked herself in Marsha’s place and went cold turkey during several excruciating days.

July: mafia landlord Mike Umbers came around to STAR House about the three months rent that he had not received. Bubbles mumbled something about the cost of repairs. Umbers said that if he didn’t get his money, Bubbles was as good as dead. Sylvia screamed that if he killed her, she would go to the police. Bubbles skipped town soon after. Umbers decided against violence and simply had STAR put out on the street for non-payment of rent. Sylvia and the others reversed the improvements and threw the refrigerator out of the back window. Arthur Bell wrote an article for the Village Voice about STAR House.

STAR “is mainly into whoring and radical politics. Their philosophy is to destroy the system that’s fucking us over. They’re a sub-culture unaccepted within the subculture of transvestism and looked down at in horror by many of the women and men in the homosexual liberation movement. Sylvia and Marsha and Bambi and Andorra with their third world looks and their larger-than-life presences and their cut-the-crap tongues do not ‘fit’ at a GAA meeting. ‘We don’t relate to each other,’ says Sylvia. Marsha says, ‘Why should I go to their dances? No one asks me to dance. I freak them out.’ S.T.A.R. didn’t do too well with the Gay Liberation Front toward the end, either. The S.T.A.R.s relate very well to themselves, and to a certain segment of the ‘live and let live’ street people. But by and large, they’re the great unwanteds.”

Perhaps he said too much about how the inhabitants hustle. Its publication was followed by a flurry or arrests on 42^nd St.

Sylvia found temporary refuge with friends on 109th Street. Marsha returned to her 211 Eldridge Street apartment that once again became S.T.A.R.’s de facto address.

Paula Grossman, music teacher in nearby New Jersey (Meryl Streep had been a student), transitioned and was suspended.

John Wojtowicz met Liz Eden at an Italian feast, and married her in a Catholic ceremony in December (despite being already married).

M.T. had socially transitioned at age 14, and had the same boyfriend, J.T. since 1964. Charles Ihlenfeld arranged surgery, and for her New York birth certificate to be revised. The next year the couple married and lived in Hackensack, NJ.

Artists Vaughn Bode and Catherine Jones shared a studio in Woodstock, NY, and did cross-dressing together

Lyn Raskin's 1971 autobiography, Diary of a Transsexual uses the pseudonym "Dr Len Williams" for Dr Wollman. He sent her to Dr Burou in Casablanca for surgery.

Patricia Morgan’s criminal lover escaped from prison. He had changed so much that she did not love him anymore. He was re-arrested.

Tracy Gale Norman, from Newark, had started going to the Ball scene in Harlem, where she became known as Tracy from New Jersey. She was encouraged by friends to attend a modeling event at the Pierre Hotel in New York where she was discovered by renowned photographer Irving Penn and booked for Vogue Italia a few days later. During the last session, the hair dresser's assistance, who was from the same part of New Jersey and had been asking around trying to figure out who Tracy was, spoke to the editor and spread the word that Tracy 'was not female'. Work in New York dried up.

Lee Brewster and the Queens Liberation Front started publishing Drag: A Magazine About the Transvestite, one of the more political transgender publications of the 1970s, which ran for 10 years. Initially Lee was the editor, and then Bebe Scarpie took over. Vicky West did the covers and illustrated stories in the magazine. Initially the cover illustrations were Vicky's versions of herself in different situations, but then she started doing other people.

Bebe also had a career as a high school teacher. It was commented that she looked like a middle-class lady. Bebe would be the first known trans woman to become a school principal.

Drag Magazine also evolved into Lee's Mardi Gras Boutique. Vicky was often to be found there, but always as Dirk. The Boutique was in business for 30 years at various locations around Manhattan, carrying a large stock of clothes, prosthetics and books. In addition to individual clients, the shop supplied costumes for Broadway, television and movies, in particular To Wong Foo and The Birdcage.

Often Chris Moore, ex soldier and merchant seaman, and ex Jewel Box Revue, won the Most Outstanding Performance award at drag balls. Chris was a constant at QLF parties.

November: the androgynously-dressed Bebe was called to testify before the New York City Council's General Welfare committee. The Gay Activist reported:

"'Bebe' Scarpi, a transvestite in male attire, gave testimony on the minority group, he pointed out that transvestites used the men's room because they 'd been warned they would be subject to arrest if they entered the ladies room. And even transvestites had to heed the call of nature. Bebe, a student at Queens College, gave what amounted to a short course on the lifestyle and problems of transvestites with such charm, ready wit and intelligence, that even the Councilmen appeared beguiled. … Chairman Sharison seemed unable to comprehend that some transvestites were heterosexual. He wanted to know whether Bebe believed transvestites would be protected by Intro 475. 'Only as a homosexual, not as a transvestite', Bebe explained, and perhaps the councilman would care to enact legislation protecting the transvestite."

At a third hearing in December, policemen were posted outside the ladies' rooms to prevent 'transvestites' from using them. Bebe, definitely not androgynous that day, asked the policeman what he was doing, and then went in and did her business. On the way out she commented to the policeman that he had not checked her. The New York Mattachine Times complained that transvestites were jeopardizing the bill with their restroom behavior.

Debbie Hartin made a stir by being featured on local cable television and in Screw magazine. Both appearances included a clear view of her vagina. Later, in March the Queens Liberation Front presented themselves in a class on homosexuality at New York University, where Debbie also spoke. Later Debbie spoke about her problems with ‘her family, her neighbors and her daughter’ at a meeting that was supposed to be the inaugural meeting of Transsexuals Anonymous held at the office of Dr Benito Rish. That same year she was on the New York David Susskind Show, and later was filmed being interviewed and examined by Leo Wollman. Again this examination included a close-up of her vagina. The segment would be eventually incorporated in the 1978-released film Born A Man... Let Me Die A Woman. Debbie was living with her parents at that time.

A revision to the New York City Health Code was adopted unanimously to incorporate the existing practice that a re-issued birth certificate for a transsexual should not indicate the applicant’s sex.

Andy Warhol had been taping private telephone conversations, and he arranged for them to be transcribed and arranged into a play, that became called Pork. Wayne County was to play a character based on Viva. The play got a big write-up in The New York Times, and it was taken to England.

Back in New York Wayne got a gig as the house DJ at Max's Kansas City, and did some more theatre. While playing a transvestite revolutionary in a play, Wayne though about forming a band, which became Queen Elizabeth, which took a lot of ideas from the Ridiculous Theatrical Company and Jackie Curtis and put them to music. They played with the New York Dolls and at Max's.

November: San Francisco’s drag troupe The Cockettes were in New York, and celebrities John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Liza Minnelli, Truman Capote, Gore Vidal, Angela Lansbury, Andy Warhol Holly Woodlawn and Candy Darling attended the first show. However many walked out. Gore Vidal quipped, "Having no talent is not enough."

Avery Willard. Female Impersonation. Regiment Publications, 1971. Online.
Lyn Raskin. Diary of a Transsexual. Olympia Press, 1971.
Alan J Pkula (dir). Klute with Jane Fonda, Donald Sutherland, and with Candy Darling in a small role. US 114 mins 1971. A prostitute murder mystery.
Mervyn Nelson (dir). Some of My Best Friends Are ..., with Candy Darling. US 110 mins 1971. A group of sad people in a mafia-run gay bar, on Christmas Eve.
Mario Monicelli (dir). La Mortadella starring Sophia Loren with Candy Darling in a small part. Italy 97 mins 1971.
Dusan Makavjev (dir), WR: Mysteries of the Organism with Jackie Curtis. Yugoslavia 84 mins 1971.
Jackie Curtis’ play Vain Victory: Vicissitudes of the Damned.
Jackie Curtis’ play: Heaven Grand in Vain Victory: The Vicissitudes of the Damned, with Candy Darling.
Candy Darling was in Tennessee William's play Small Craft Warnings after impressing Tennessee at his birthday party.
Bob Roberts (dir). The Love Thrill Murders/Sweet Savior, with Tobi Marsh as a hair-dresser in drag who is killed. US 92 mins 1971.
Paul Morrisey (dir). Women in Revolt, with Candy Darling, Jackie Curtis and Holly Woodlawn. US 97 mins 1971. Sometimes referred to as Blonde on a Bum Trip, in reference to Candy’s character.
Doris Wishman (dir) Adam or Eve. With Leo Wollman. Cinematography by Susan Malick. This was later recut as Born a Man … Let Me Die a Woman, 1978.

1972

Rachel Harlow had completion surgery.

Wendy Carlos had completion surgery, but still went in male drag to meet Stanley Kubrick and appear on television.

Diane Kearny was referred by Charles Ihlenfeld and had completion surgery with Roberto Granato.

Rupert Raj had his mastectomy from Dr Wesser.

14 March: STAR, QLF, GAA and other groups went to the New York State Capital, Albany to demonstrate for repeal of laws against sodomy, solicitation and impersonation as well as to ask for housing and employment protections. Sylvia Rivera and Kate Millet were among the speakers.

Future doctor Dana Beyer, then a student, came to the Johns Hopkins Clinic but found the intake application so off-putting that she fled before seeing a doctor.

Dr Benito Rish was sued for malpractice in silicone injections.

Ex-Stonewall manager Ed Murphy founded the Christopher Street Festival committee, and by 1974 succeeded in reversing the direction of the march so that it ended in the Village so that the crowds would go on to drink in mafia bars.

August 22: John Wojtowicz and two others attempted to rob a Chase Manhattan Bank branch at 450 Ave P, Brooklyn. Wojtowicz held the bank employees hostage, and gave his reason as paying for Liz Eden’s sex change. Liz was in hospital at the time under her male persona following an overdose of barbiturates, and knew nothing of the plan.

Crystal Labeija founded the House of Labeija; the scene that was to become the voguing balls of the 1980s was evolving.

Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P Johnson were organizing transvestites with STAR (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries).

Drag queen Herman Slater and his husband, both witches, opened the Warlock Shop in Brooklyn Heights.

After Stonewall, the business at the 82 Club drifted away, when people could be more open on the streets. At this time the club was run by two butch dykes, Tommy who worked the door and Butchie who ran the bar. As the club had an outcast image, punk and early glitter and glam kids started going there from 1972. Another Pretty Face was the house band in 1973.

Werner Schroeter (dir). Der Tod der Maria Malibran with Magdalena Montezuma and Candy Darling. West Germany 104 mins 1972.
Theodore Gershuny (dir). Silent Night, Bloody Night/Night of the Dark Full Moon with Candy Darling, Jack Smith, Ondine, Mary Woronov. US 81 mins 1972.
Robert J Kaplan (dir). Scarecrow in a Garden of Cucumbers. With Holly Woodlawn. US 82 mins 1972.
Lou Reed’s song “Walk on the Wild Side”: “Holly came from miami f.l.a./ Hitch-hiked her way across the u.s.a. … Candy came from out on the island/ In the backroom she was everybodys darling … Jackie is just speeding away/ Thought she was james dean for a day …. She said, hey babe, take a walk on the wild side/I said, hey honey, take a walk on the wild side/ And the coloured girls say”.

1973

The American Psychiatric Association voted to remove homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses.

Charles Ihlenfeld came out as gay. His boss Benjamin was surprised but then became supportive.

Leo Wollman was an associate of Michael Salem, the cis-heterosexual who ran a boutique in New York and a mail-order service for transvestites. Wollman advised re colors and lingerie styles. He also helped Salem write his 1973 book How to Impersonate a Woman. He then sent copies to what he called "the clown-transvestites": Milton Berle, Tony Curtis, Johnny Carson, Flip Wilson, George Burns, Jack Benny.

John Wojtowicz, sentenced to 20 years in a federal penitentiary for bank robbery, sold his story to Warner Bros. for $7,500 and 1% of the net profit - it was filmed as Dog Day Afternoon. He had to sue (from prison) to get the money. He gave Liz Eden $2,500 for completion surgery, which she had with Dr Rish.

The National Gay Task Force was founded. Bebe Scarpinato was on the originating Board.

Bebe was also active in organizing the fourth Christopher Street Liberation Day (the precursor of Pride). She even went to the 82 Club and got the remaining showgirls, in full regalia, to march behind an 82 Club banner. Prominent were International Chrysis and Jean Chandler. Old style performer Ty Bennett was conveyed in a convertible. Sylvia Rivera and Bebe led the parade.

Lee in tiara, Sylvia in jumpsuit

Sylvia, wearing a jumpsuit that had belonged to the now deceased June from Star House, and not a listed speaker, pushed her way on to the stage, and gave an impassioned speech for Gay Power:

“They’ve been beaten up and raped. And they have had to spend much of their money in jail to get their self home and to try to get their sex change. The women have tried to fight for their sex changes or to become women of the Women’s Liberation and they write S.T.A.R., not the women’s group. They do not write women. They do not write men. They write S.T.A.R. because we’re trying to do something for them.”

Jean O’Leary of the Lesbian Feminist Liberation insisted on an opportunity to reply. She asserted biological sex, and that Sylvia was “a genital male”. She read a statement on behalf of 100 women that read, in part,

"We support the right of every person to dress in the way that she or he wishes. But we are opposed to the exploitation of women by men for entertainment or profit."

She was booed and MC, Vito Russo, the film historian, asked the crowd to let her continue. Lee Brewster, jumped onstage and responded,

"You go to bars because of what drag queens did for you, and these bitches tell us to quit being ourselves!”

The situation was calmed only when performer Bette Midler took to the stage and sang.

All this angry public confrontation left Sylvia in such a state that she attempted suicide.

Kimberly Barreiro from Cuba, raised in New York, fully transitioned with surgery less than a year after she joined TAO in Miami. She married Steve Elliot and they became involved in Art Kleps' Neo-American Church at Millbrook, New York which was based on the use of psychedelic drugs.

Puerto Rican Soraya Santiago had surgery with Dr Rish.

Dr Rish was sued for malpractice in surgery.

The balls that Lee Brewster had organized had continued until 1973 – the last one was attended by the real versions of Jacqueline Susann, Carol Channing and Shirley MacLaine.

Chris Moore was diagnosed with cancer. She was able to fight it for over five years. Lee Brewster put on a special ball for Chris so that she could perform and be the star, and Vicky West drew her for the cover of Drag magazine.

Debbie Hartin had been able to get her name and sex changed on her baptismal certificate and certificate of discharge from the navy. She applied to get the same changes on her New York birth certificate. As per established New York practice, the name was changed but sex left blank. Despite the fact that this practice had been previously tested in court in 1966, and subsequently incorporated into the New York City Health Code, Debbie sued the Director of the Bureau of Records in that she was not issued a revised birth certificate saying ‘female’ and that this was arbitrary and capricious and constituted an abuse of discretion. However the court denied her suit ruling that the Board had acted in a rational manner and made no error with regard to their own rules. They cited the 1966 precedent.

The New York City Council's General Welfare committee was still blocked in its attempt to pass a bill to ban discrimination against homosexuals in employment, housing and public accommodation. To get it passed, an amendment was proposed that nothing in the definition of sexual orientation “shall be construed to bear upon the standards of attire or dress code". Bebe Scarpinato, as QLF director, was put in the uncomfortable position of submitting to this wording or seeing the bill fail.

Female Mimics was relaunched as International Female Mimics in 1973, the first issue featured Kim Christy winning a Los Angeles beauty contest.

Patricia Morgan as told to Paul Hoffman. The Man-maid Doll. Lyle Stuart, 1973.
Gilles Larrain. Idols. Links, 1973. A book of photographs of New Yorkers. Alexis Del Lago was on the cover.
Michael Salem. How to Impersonate a Woman; A Handbook for the Male Transvestite.: M. Salem Enterprises, 1973.
Carolyn Heilbrun. Towards a Recognition of Androgyny. Knopf, 1973. Heilbrun was a professor at New York’s Columbia University. The book is only a tepid proposal to avoid gender extremes. Camille Paglia, then a graduate student reviewed it: “Heilbrun’s book is so poorly researched that that it may disgrace the subject in the eyes of serious scholars”.
Vaughn Bodé. Schizophrenia. Last Gasp Eco Funnies 1973. Bodé’s Last work. It included a confessional running below a collection of Cheech Wizard strips. He describes himself as “auto-sexual, heterosexual homosexual, mano-sexual, sado-sexual, trans-sexual, uni-sexual, omni-sexual..”.
TV Series The Corner Bar. Episode “Mixed Doubles” featured Jackie Curtis.
TV series An American Family, #1.2 featured Jackie Curtis.

1974

Eugene Hoff was introduced to the Harry Benjamin practice, possibly by Wardell Pomeroy of the Kinsey Institute. Hoff was a guest on the NBC television program Not for Women Only where he explained transsexualism from a medical viewpoint referring to trans women as 'men' as was the then practice.:

"You can say that you know that you are a woman, therefore you want to be one. But no woman I have ever asked has been able to tell me what that means, and I doubt that transsexuals will be the first to define it."

In a paper with John Hoopes, psychiatrist Jon Meyer, chairman of the Johns Hopkins Gender Identity Clinic, wrote:

“Most of the patients continue to be emotionally and socially much the same as they were in the pre-operative phase”.

Dr Benito Rish was sued for malpractice in surgery.

Luis Suria, then aged 45, was in transition to female. She was an unlicensed school teacher, who had not worked steadily since 1961, but held sporadic employment as a commercial artist. She visited Dr Felix Shiffman and also Dr Rish, mainly the former, in June/July 1974 and again in December and underwent injections of free silicone to acquire female breasts.

23-year-old future intersex-cum-HSTS activist Denise Tree (Kiira Triea) had surgery with Dr Howard Jones at Johns Hopkins after years of therapy from Dr Money.

Bebe Scarpinato attended a feminist conference where Jill Johnston, mother of two and author of Lesbian Nation, had proposed that mothers neglect to care for male babies. Bebe, from the question line, accused Johnston of being a neo-fascist and dictating to women as well as to men. At this point Bebe was recognized from earlier encounters.

M.T.s husband left, and she filed for support. He replied that was ‘was a male and the marriage was void’. The judge ruled that the plaintiff was female, and ordered $50-a-week support payments.

Garrett Oppenheim, an acquaintance of Leo Wollman, had been running Confide Personal Counseling Services with his wife. They specialized in advice to transvestites, and put out a 54-minute cassette giving advice on hormones and make up for $12. They had sold 100. Benjamin, Ihlenfield, Green and Money were listed on his board of directors.

Gloria Hemingway was living as man in New York. He was a doctor and married to his father’s last secretary. In 1974 he read Jan Morris’ Conundrum, and talked about having the same surgery.

Georgia Ziadie, from Jamaica and living in New York, met Lord Colin Campbell. They were engaged on the first night, married within a week, and divorced a year later. She used his name, ie Lady Colin Campbell, on the books that she later published.

Candy Darling died: some say as a side effect of the particular hormones that she was taking; others say of leukemia.

October: The former firehouse at 99 Wooster St, the headquarters of the Gay Activists Alliance was destroyed by Arson

Mafia associate Gerald Cohen founded the Gilded Grape at 719 8th Ave. He was quoted:

“Drag queens, tranvestites came to my place. I had a market and I served them. The only people I didn’t let in were whores. I’ve been harassed by the SLA and the police. Once a cop told me they kept the pressure on me because the ‘establishment’ didn’t like drag queens. My lawyer has been fighting all the way. I wanted to stand by my customers. They’ve got a right to be that way.”

It was from the Gilded Grape that Andy Warhol recruited models for his Ladies and Gentlemen (The Drag Queen Paintings) series. They were paid $50 and Andy took polaroids. They were not shown as such in the US, but in September 1975 were exhibited in Italy.

Rachel Humphreys, was a regular at Max’s Kansas City and the 82 Club. She met rock singer Lou Reed. He took her home, and his then current girlfriend moved out. Reed said “Rachel knows how to do it for me. No one else ever did before. Rachel’s something else”. She appeared on the inner sleeve of Sally Can’t Dance.

The New York Dolls started to perform at the 82 Club. For their first show, April 17, 1974, they performed in drag, except for Johnny Thunders who refused. They were followed by Wayne County (later to be Jayne) and short-lived glitter bands like Teenage Lust and Harlots of 42nd Street. David Bowie, and Lou Reed and Rachel were encountered there.

New Jersey Appeals Court upheld Paula Grossman’s dismissal as a teacher.

Ajita Wilson had started transition. After surgery she appeared in adult films, and went on to become a film star in Europe.

Robert Bogdan (ed). On Being Different: The Autobiography of Jane Fry. John Wiley & Sons, 1974. Not really an autobiography, rather an edited condensation from 100 hours of interviews in Bogden’s office. Place and person names are replaced by pseudonyms. Fry is 27 and still pre-op at the end of the book.
Roberto C. Granato. “Surgical approach to male transsexualism”. Urology. 1974 Jun; 3(6):792-6. PMID: 4836347
Ethel Person & Lionel Ovessey. “The transsexual syndrome in males I: primary transsexualism”. American Journal of Psychotherapy, 28, 1974: 4-20.
Ethel Person & Lionel Ovessey. “The transsexual syndrome in males II: secondary transsexualism”. American Journal of Psychotherapy, 28, 1974: 174-193.

↧

The trans geography of New York 1966-74

June 23, 2019, 7:24 am

≫ Next: Review of two books about Stonewall

≪ Previous: The five years following Stonewall - a New York timeline

The four years leading to Stonewall
The five years following Stonewall
The trans geography of New York 1966-74

Mid Town

The Village

↧

Review of two books about Stonewall

July 12, 2019, 5:34 pm

≫ Next: Richard Curtis (1967 - ) doctor, yacht racer

≪ Previous: The trans geography of New York 1966-74

While Stonewall was an iconic event for both the trans and the gay movements, the perspectives of the two movements are quite different. This is shown in the two books here, which, although both of much merit, do mainly reflect the gay perspective, but not the trans.

•Richard Schneider Jr (ed). In Search of Stonewall: The Riots at 50, The Gay & Lesbian Review at 25, Best Essays 1994-2018. 245 pp G&LR Books, 2019.

The Gay & Lesbian Review is a bi-monthly magazine out of Boston that publishes much that is worth reading. I read most issues. Unlike most gay/lesbian organizations and publications from the 1990s, the G&LR never renamed itself as the LGBTQ Review. Writing from a trans perspective, it is right that they did not do so, as while it publishes occasional pieces about trans issues, they are usually from a gay and/or lesbian perspective. Many of the issues that a trans reader would look for have not been tackled, so the magazine name is appropriate.

The book contains various essays previously published in the 25 years of G&LR, with new essays by Martin Duberman, Lillian Faderman and Andrew Holleran, and an introduction by editor Richard Schneider. The book itself is supplemented by the May-June 2019 issue Stonewall Special.

Schneider writes: ”If nothing else, it is a marker in historical time with a clearly defined ‘before’ and ‘after.’ But to imply that Stonewall interrupted the flow of history, singlehandedly resetting the LGBT calendar, is to pile a lot of responsibility onto a single event or era. Still, something happened, and it happened quite rapidly and even magically after the riots, so in this sense the search for Stonewall can also be a desire to reconnect with the overpowering energy and excitement of this period.”

From this he includes essays about before and after Stonewall, and about elsewhere in the US, although not in Canada nor in Europe. No one discusses the wave of partial decriminalizations of homosexuality that had swept Europe in the 1960s: 1961 Czechoslovakia, Hungary, 1963 Israel, 1967 England & Wales, 1968 East Germany and Bulgaria, 1969 Canada and West Germany. In the US, only Illinois and Connecticut followed. The question of whether the fact that the US had fallen behind other countries contributed to the Stonewall events is not discussed.

Nor are there any essays in the book about how movies, theatre and novels partly prepared the way. In the few years leading up Stonewall, there were plays by Jackie Curtis, John Vaccaro and Charles Ludlam, films by Andy Milligan, Avery Willard, Jack Smith and Paul Morrissey - not to mention Boys in the Band and Myra Breckinridge. This dificiency is addressed in the May-June issue with a review by Andrew Holleran of Kembrew Mcleod’s The Downtown Pop Underground.

Martin Duberman, in his introduction to Part 1, says:

“A prominent theory about the corrupt Sixth Precinct's uncharacteristic failure to alert Stonewall's Mafia owners to the imminent raid ascribes it to the owners' tardiness in the making their usual payoff. An opposing theory emphasizes instead that the Precinct's new commanding officer was sending a message that henceforth the payoffs had to be higher-or, argues yet another theory, that he was determined to abolish them altogether. And so it goes.”

Surely there should be mention of the theory presented in David Carter’s book that Ed Murphy was running, from Stonewall, a blackmail racket against gay employees in the financial services and that stolen bonds were turning up in Europe. Having noted that, I also noticed that none of the writers mention Police Inspector Seymour Pine who was in charge of the Stonewall Raid, and also of the raid on the Snake Pit the following March. Nor are any of the mafia persons mentioned: not Eddy Murphy (who, in addition to working from the Stonewall later founded the Christopher Street Festival committee), nor Michael Umbers, landlord of STAR House, nor Matty Ianiello who co-ordinated the Stonewall for the mafia, and would in 1974 be behind the opening of the Gilded Grape - a new bar for trans women.

There were four activist groups in New York that emerged in the wake of Stonewall: Gay Liberation Front (GLF), Gay Activist Alliance (GAA) the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) and the Queens’ Liberation Front (QLF). There is significant mention of the first two. There is a passing mention of the third, and nothing at all about the fourth. The mention of STAR names Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P Johnson, and Duberman’s Introduction concedes that she may actually not have been at Stonewall. But that is all. Not a word about Tammy Novak. Joe Tish, Candy Darling, Holly Woodlawn, Lee Brewster, Bebe Scarpinato, Jayne County, Allyson Allante, Bubbles Rose Lee, Bunny Eisenhower, Kim Christie, International Chrysis, Siobhan Fredericks, etc. The only trans woman featured is Major Griffen-Gracy, usually referred to as Miss Major. Griffen-Gracy is not mentioned in either Duberman’s or Carter’s book on Stonewall, and did not particiapte in GLF, GAA, STAR or QLF. So to choose her as the one and only trans woman to feature is a very odd choice.

I seem to be mainly listing what the book is not. Much of it is well-worth reading, but do not expect coverage of the trans content of the Stonewall event.

•Jason Baumann (ed). The Stonewall Reader. 316 pp. The New York Public Library & Penguin Books, 2019.

This book is a collection of pertinent documents from the New York Public Library donated by many gay and trans New Yorkers, and as such is invaluable to gay and trans historians. Some of the interviews were previously published in Eric Marcus’ Making Gay History, 1992.

Like the G&LR book, this does before, during and after Stonewall, and spreads out to other cities across the US, but is also totally disinterested in Canada and Europe.

There is much more trans content: Masha P Johnson (twice), Sylvia Rivera, Holly Woodlawn, Jayne County, and again Major Griffin-Gracy. So the four best known trans women in New Yorks activism and the arts, and Griffin-Gracy who was not in STAR or QLF or in any films, but all the others listed above are again ignored, and in particular there is nothing on the Queens’ Liberation people. The trans bits are all in the “during” section, with nothing in the “after section” except for the second Masha P Johnson piece which is about STAR. The “before’ section includes an excerpt from John Rechy’s City of Night, but not the section about Miss Destiny.

There also is an entry from Transvestia in which Virginia Prince discussed being divorced by wife number 1 and marrying wife number 2 – which is rather out of sync with the rest of the book. Prince was not a gay-libber in any sense. Not that I want to wall off the FPE-TriEss people from the rest of the trans movement, but surely - to take a sample from Transvestia - something by Susanna Valenti would be much more suitable, or perhaps an excerpt from Darrell Raynor’s A Year Among the Girls. Both Susanna and Darrell were, of course, New Yorkers.

This leads to the question: having included material from Transvestia, a Los Angeles trans newsletter, why is there nothing from the New York trans magazines and newsletters: nothing from Turnabout, nothing from Female Mimics, and most importantly, nothing from Drag, A Magazine of Transvestism (which featured writings by Lee Brewster and Bebe Scarpinato and was by far the most radical of the trans periodicals).

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

To recap:

None of the trans historians are mentioned or quoted (not even yours truly). I published a before and after Stonewall, New York trans timeline last month. The story from a trans perspective is significantly different than that from a gay perspective. We need to know gay perspective and read their books, but unfortunately, the gay editors are not paying much attention to the trans perspective.

My Timeline:

The four years leading to Stonewall
The five years following Stonewall
The trans geography of New York 1966-74

↧

Richard Curtis (1967 - ) doctor, yacht racer

July 24, 2019, 5:45 pm

≫ Next: Fatima Djemille (187? – ?1921) belly dancer

≪ Previous: Review of two books about Stonewall

Richard Curtis started life as Vanda Zadorozny, the child of a Polish immigrant who survived a Nazi forced labour camp and became a mine worker in West Yorkshire.

Vanda had medical training at St. Bartholomew’s Medical College and the Royal London School of Medicine, followed by work in various hospitals. Zadorozny also did an MBA and for three years worked in the pharmaceutical industry bringing medical expertise to sales and marketing, before returning to doctoring as a general practitioner.

Zadorozny had developed a passion for sailing while at university and competed at the national level for 15 years winning several championships. Zadorozny had affairs with men, but they did not feel right: he felt that he was “a gay man trapped in a woman’s body”.

He was working as a locum at a general practice in Richmond, London, when he completed transition as Richard Curtis in 2005, shortly after the Gender Recognition Act came into force. He was the first transsexual to be recognised by the General Medical Council under its terms.

Dr Curtis met Russell Reid, and started to sit in with trans clients, and by the end of the year was

taking his own patients. He took over the private practice in 2006, when Reid retired facing complaints that he was too willing to be helpful to transsexuals. Curtis was a member of professional and activists groups: WPATH, Gendys Network, FTM NetWork, FTM London, Gender Trust and GIRES. He aimed to offer a ‘one-stop’ service wherein trans clients can be assessed, diagnosed, given referrals, prescribed and dispensed hormones, given follow-up and health checks, offered counselling and hair removal treatment and even speech therapy. Ruth Pearce describes his reputation at the turn of the decade:

“The name ‘Dr Curtis’ was widely associated with a more liberal form of care that centres informed consent rather than placing the burden of proof upon trans patients, a factor that was sometimes linked by participants to Curtis’ own background as a trans man. Transhealth patients such as Ben felt more confident that the possible future of transition would eventually manifest, and within a predictable time frame too. They were less worried about encountering cisgenderism or transphobia from Curtis, or having to prove themselves ‘trans enough’.”

However some complaints were made: mainly about his high fees: as high as £240-an-hour. More significantly, a woman, who had presented as a trans man, regretted taking testosterone and having a double mastectomy; it was alleged that Dr Curtis had prescribed to patients under 18 “without the specialist knowledge or skills to do so”; that he failed to follow “accepted standards of care”. In November 2011, the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) imposed a number of restrictions on Dr Curtis’ practice. He "must maintain an anonymised log detailing every case where he prescribes for patients with gender dysphoria and for patients who he refers for gender dysphoria surgery". The panel also ruled: "He must not prescribe hormonal treatment for patients with gender dysphoria, or refer any patients for gender dysphoria surgery, unless those patients have undergone a recent mental health or psychological assessment carried out by an appropriately trained mental health care professional."

In 2013 the General Medical Council opened an investigation into the practice of Dr Curtis. However in February 2015 it announced that the Fitness to Practice hearing originally scheduled for that month would not be going forward.

Curtis maintained the support of trans patients and activists. The Twitter #TransDocFail campaign led to a dossier of over 100 cases of serious and sometimes dangerous mistreatment of trans patients by other doctors. This was formally presented to the GMC, and Jane Fae wrote an article for The Guardian making the same points. However, no action appears to have been taken against a single doctor as a result.

Dr Curtis had made several changes so that his service was more similar to NHS gender clinics, such as requiring a second diagnosis prior to hormone prescriptions, and he stopped accepting patients under 21.

On June 2017 Dr Curtis announced the discontinuance of his practice. This was at the same time as the Welsh physician Helen Webberley who had been offering prescriptions after consultations by Skype, was also investigated by the GMC and put under restrictions.

*not the screenwriter, nor the Washington State representative.

Luke McEwan. “Laser 4000 Nationals at Dalgety Bay Sailing Club Report”. Yachts and Yachting, 22 Aug 2000. Online.
Nicki May Reid. Dr Richard Curtis BSc. MB.BS takes over from Dr Russell Reid. Angel News 2 Feb 2006 www.theangels.co.uk/article.asp?id=524 . No Longer available.
Elizabeth Day. “Richard, the first transsexual GP, was Vanda, the miner’s Daughter”. The Telegraph, 09 Oct 2005. Online.
Curtis, R., Levy, A., Martin, J., Zoe-Jane, P., Wylie, K., Reed, T. and Reed, B. Guidance for GPs, other Clinicians and Health Professionals on the Care of Gender Variant People. Department of Health Publications, 2008.
David Batty. “Doctor under fire for alleged errors prescribing sex-change hormones”. The Guardian, 6 Jan 2013. Online.
Martin Evans & Andrew Hough. “Dr Richard Curtis: transsexual doctor faces investigation”. The Telegraph, 07 Jan 2013. Online.
Sam Webb. “Transsexual doctor who charges £240-an-hour investigated over sex-change treatments after complaint by woman who regretted having her breasts removed”, The Daily Mail, 7 January 2013..
Matthew Jenkin. “Campaign calls for end to trans doctor 'witch hunt'”. Gay Star News, 10 January 2013. Online.
Jane Fae. “The real trans scandal is not the failings of one doctor but cruelty by many” The Guardian, 10 Jan 2013. Online.
Nick Duffy. “General Medical Council drops case against transgender doctor”. Pink News, February 27, 2015. Online.
Tris Reid-Smith. “Is General Medical Council failing trans people as they clear top doctor after four year probe?”. Gay Star News, 26 February 2015. Online.
Kamilla Kamaruddin. “What it’s like to be a transgender patient and a GP”. British Journal of General Practice, 67 (600) 2017: 313. Online.
“Dr Curtis is closing his Gender Clinic”. Susan’s Place, June 2017. Online.
Ruth Pearce. Understanding Trans Health: Discourse, Power and Possibility. Policy Press, 2018: 72, 149-50, 165-7.

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

An item I did not put in the bibliography is Sheila Jeffreys’ Gender Hurts. She has a half-page on Curtis. Simply citing David Batty in TheGuardian. she puts far too much weight on a statement that Curtis was quoted as saying: ‘I’ve never wanted children, or a white wedding like most women dream of, or a man to take care of me. Instead, you were more likely to find me fitting a kitchen or tiling the bathroom’. Jeffreys comments: “Her understanding of gender was very constricting and traditional”. Really! A woman who becomes a yacht-racing champion has a constricting and traditional view of gender! Of course Jeffreys does not mention that Curtis was a yachting champion.

Richard Curtis Gender Specialist - Part 1 from Jay Stewart on Vimeo.

↧

Fatima Djemille (187? – ?1921) belly dancer

July 31, 2019, 7:14 pm

≫ Next: Revival of an old bogey-person

≪ Previous: Richard Curtis (1967 - ) doctor, yacht racer

In 1893 the 11^thWorld’s Fair was held in Chicago, and named the World’s Columbian Exposition. It attracted over 27 million visitors and introduced electricity, the zipper, the Ferris Wheel and much more. It included an ethnological section and for North Africa (then called the Orient) introduced North African dancing. Dancing for middle-class Europeans and North Americans at that time consisted of a rigid body and educated foot-work – such as the Waltz. As respectable women were then corseted, this could not have been otherwise. North African dancing consisted of mainly moving the body while not moving the feet, and was considered scandalous, although of course it was a precursor of twentieth-century dancing. A variant of such dancing was already known as danse de ventre, and soon acquired the names belly dance and hoochy-coochy.

Jim Elledge in his The Boys of Fairy Town writes:

“Among the many forms of entertainment available to the fair-goers, one of the most popular acts was the performance of a belly dancer called Fatima. A hit of the Midway Plaisance, which ‘featured over a score of exotic dances,’ Fatima’s was ‘the wildest of them all.’ She danced with such ‘wild abandon’ and her movements were so lewd that the police felt obliged to step in and stop her act almost daily. As Fatima’s act grew in popularity, a rumor began to circulate. She was really a he, the gossipers claimed, a rumor that has been since verified by historian Joe McKennon.” (p33)

So is this true?

Elledge mentions McKennon as above, but not in his notes or bibliography. He does give a citation of Joe Nickell. McKennon, writing in 1972, said of the Exposition:

“Maybe he saw Fatima, the wildest of them all, over at the Turkish Village. This female impersonator when last heard of in 1933 was the father of five and grandfather of seven.”

Nickell writing in 2005 simply quotes McKennon.

There is no evidence that any dancer used the name Little Egypt at the Exposition. However the Wikipedia page on ‘Little Egypt’ assumes that one or more did and considers three candidates for being the original Little Egypt – one of whom is Fatima Djemille. Wikipedia is the only source to give her a surname, but makes no claim at all that she might be trans in any way.

The best book on North African dancing, its popularity at the Exposition and the legend of Little Egypt is by Donna Carlton, a dancer herself, and a teacher of dance. She explains that there were both authentic and inauthentic oriental exhibits at the Exposition. The inauthentic included the Moorish Palace and the Persian Palace. The latter engaged a troupe of Parisian dancers who performed to popular songs of the day. There were however three genuine exhibitions of the danse de ventre: the Turkish Village, A Street in Cairo and the Algerian Village.

The Algerian Village featured dancers from Ouled Naïl, a Berber tribe from the Atlas mountains. Modern belly dancing uses their name for a style of dance. Carlton says:

“Female impersonators of the Ouled Naïl also entertained in some cities of Algeria (It is possible that at least two impersonators came to Chicago with the Algerian Village troupe).” (Carlton p29-33)

The Turkish Village featured Mohammed in the costume of a cengi (a cross-dressed dancer). Carlton reminds us that the cengi were so popular in Constantinople that quarrels about them broke out in the Janissaries, the elite guard, and so Sultan Mahmud banned them in 1837. Many then left and continued their trade in Egypt. It is said that this Mohammed remained in Chicago after the Exposition, married and raised children. (Carlton p 36)

A Street in Cairo featured the Ghawazi, although without using that term. As Wikipedia puts it:

“there was a small number of young male performers called Khawals. The Khawals were Egyptian male tradiitonal dancers who impersonated the women of the Ghawazi and their dance. They were known to impersonate every aspect of the women including their dance and use of castanets.”

We have already considered the cross-dressing belly dancer Hasan el Belbeissi in 1849 who was mentioned by Gustave Flaubert. Most histories of belly-dancing acknowledge the Ghawazi influence in both style of dance and costuming. (Carlton p36-45)

So far no Fatima. Were any of these exhibits raided by the police? Actually the three authentic exhibits were not. However the Persian Palace with its Parisian dancers imitating the oriental dance was singled out and ordered to be shut down – but is was not raided. The Persian Palace obtained a court injunction, and its shows continued.

On p62 Carlton refers again to the Turkish Village Mohammed, and calls her “Mohammed/Fatima” without any explanation. Presumably Fatima was Mohammed’s drag name. Carlton then provides photographs of Fatima in Coney Island, and on the cover of The National Police Gazette. She says:

“Some 1896 photographs provide a rare instance of a sideshow dancer who is convincingly genuine: Fatima, a Coney Island performer. Her poses are common ones in the Oriental Dance of today. Her costume has interesting authentic touches and was probably assembled by someone familiar with Egyptian jewelry and traditional Eastern symbols.”

This appears to be the same Fatima who was filmed in 1897.

Elledge tells of an elderly man who returned to Chicago in June 1920, tried to get the attention of younger men and claimed to be the Fatima from the exibition – but Elledge assumes that it is a different person.

The Wikipedia page on Little Egypt claims that Fatima Djemille died 14 March 1921. Joe McKennon claims that Fatima was last heard of in 1933.

So. Is Mohammed Fatima? Is the Fatima in Coney Island 1896 the same person? Was s/he a female impersonator, or any other kind of trans. Where does Elledge get the claims of police raids and arrests?

Joe McKennon. A Pictorial History of the American Carnival. Carnival Publishers of Sarasota, 1972: 1.34.
Donna Carlton. Looking for Little Egypt. IDD Books, 1995. Passim. 60, 62, 78 for Fatima.
Erik Larson. The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic & Madness and the Fair That Changed America. Vintage, 2004: 312.
Joe Nickell. Secrets of the Sideshows. The University Press of Kentucky, 2005: 49.
Jim Elledge. The Boys of Fairy Town: Sodomites, Female Impersonators, Third-sexers, Pansies, Queers, and Sex Morons in Chicago’s First Century. Chicago Review Press, 2018: 33-4, 89-90

EN.Wikipedia(Little Egypt) EN.Wikipedia(Ouled Naïl) EN.Wikipedia(Ghawazi)

↧

Revival of an old bogey-person

August 6, 2019, 11:58 am

≫ Next: Edward Dolan (1880-1937) murdered

≪ Previous: Fatima Djemille (187? – ?1921) belly dancer

Those of you who pay attention to my sidebar may have noticed a surge in visits to my June 2007 article on Angela Douglas. In fact there have been 450 visits in the last week. I am not always able to find where such surges come from, but in this case I was able to find that it came from a Gender Critical Reddit thread. The first line in my article suggests that visitors also read my July 2015 History of Tao. I can see from my statistics that very few of the Reddit visitors did so.

I assume that the participants in the thread are youngish. Their older sisters would have been quite aware a long time ago of Douglas’ ‘scandalous’ letter, which was published in Sister magazine Aug-Sep 1977. That is 42 years ago. The infamous Janice Raymond published a selection from it in her The Transsexual Empire, 1979.

"Free from the chains of menstruation and child-bearing, transsexual women are obviously far superior to Gennys in many ways .... Genetic women are becoming quite obsolete, which is obvious, and the future belongs to transsexual women. We know this and perhaps some of you suspect it. All you have left is your 'ability' to bear children, and in a world which will groan to feed 6 billion by the year 2000, that's a negative asset."

Now again this is being used to justify negative emotions. One of the Reddit contibutors writes:

“These dudes are so full of rage that they will never be us. They KNOW they are just men with fetishes in bad wigs. I used to think HSTS trans weren't AGP, but I've since been disabused of that myth. This is only further proof.”

There are various adjectives that could describe Douglas’ letter: satirical, ill-advised, arrogant, foolish, counterproductive. The editors of Sisters magazine in 1977 had enough sense of humour to print it, and their readers laughed at it, and that should have been the end of it. However two years later Raymond was looking for things said or done by trans women that she could pretend to be scandalized by, and as her book is still read by anti-trans people, the tale of Douglas’ letter gets repeated again and again.

The Reddit thread suggests that one foolish person can bring an entire movement into disrepute. That game goes both ways. Here is a list of lesbian serial killers. Here is review of a book about the suffragettes pointing out that some of them went way too far, e.g. bombing unoccupied houses (unoccupied meant that only the servants were there).

In fact all non-fascist social movements contain good and bad, wise and stupid, eccentric and otherwise. This encyclopedia features all kinds. Here is a pointer to trans persons convicted of murder– to balance the lesbian serial killers link.

Douglas did good in organizing TAO in Miami. Douglas did bad in sending trans women to Dr John Brown.

All of Raymond’s books are aligned with dogmas of the Catholic Church. In addition to transgender, she is also against abortion, contraception, reproductive technologies and the decriminalization of prostitution. In the early 1980s she campaigned against medical care for trans people, and both federal and private insurance care was thus denied to those who needed it. It must be the case that some died as a result.

Women in the US and elsewhere have their rights under attack. Serious issues like the right to choose, access to contraceptives, access to medical care, misogynist murders etc. Real issues! And these women on the Reddit forum are spending their time getting worked up about a letter written 42 years ago that perhaps deserved momentary attention, but not four decades of people saying the same thing again and again.

________________

Kay Brown’s early comments on Angela Douglas, part of her Transsexual, Transgender and Intersex History, long unavailable is again available courtesy of the Wayback Machine. Read it here.

↧

Edward Dolan (1880-1937) murdered

August 15, 2019, 9:56 am

≫ Next: Janis Ashley (1951 - ) pediatrician

≪ Previous: Revival of an old bogey-person

Associated Press version May 28 1937

In 1937, Edward Dolan (we have only her male name) was living with her husband, Kenneth Reese, a hospital orderly, at an apartment building on Ludlow Street in Manhattan’s Lower East Side (in fact only three blocks away from where Marsha P Johnson would live 30 years later). The Building was known as ‘the house of all nations’ because of the variety of its tenants.

Neighbours reported that Dolan “sometimes went out dressed in the attire of a woman”, and when questioned claimed that he worked as a female impersonator, and “preferred to dress at home”.

In late May 1937, the neighbours complained about much noise and commotion in Dolan’s apartment, and some hours later Dolan was found dead, strangled.

· “Female Impersonator Slain in New York,” Baltimore Sun, 28 May 1937, 4.

· “Dancer Found Slain in His Apartment,” New York Times, 28 May 1937, 3.

· James Polchin. Indecent Advances: A Hidden History of True Crime and Prejudice Before Stonewall. Counterpoint, 2019:

-----------

Two unanswered questions:

1) Was Dolan a professional female impersonator? There is no statement about a bar or nightclub where she was appearing. Perhaps she felt that she needed an excuse to wear female clothes when the neighbors had noticed her. It was actually quite unusual for professional female impersonators to dress female outside work at that time. Artists in the 1950s are considered pioneers for doing so: Mrs Shufflewick, Ron Storme, the performers at Le Carrousel, Hotcha Hinton. We might also consider the police raid on New York's Black Parrot Tea Shoppe Hobo-Hemia 14 years earlier when Ruby Bernhammer (non-professional) and Rosebud (professional) were nabbed. Variety and the New York Times disagreed as to whether Rosebud was in mufti or in female dress.

2) WhoDunnit? Was it the husband Kenneth or a third party? I could find no record of any arrest in the case. Nor any mention of Kenneth - did he stay or flee?

↧

Janis Ashley (1951 - ) pediatrician

August 18, 2019, 7:52 am

≫ Next: Fulcanelli (?1839 - ?1954) alchemist

≪ Previous: Edward Dolan (1880-1937) murdered

Ashley qualified as a doctor, and married young. At age 25 he knew he wanted to be a woman, and the marriage ended in divorce.

She had completion surgery in 1978 and became one of the two practicing pediatricians in Sedalia, Missouri, a town of 21,000. In 1985 she adopted a baby boy.

In late 1989 Ashley decided that she wanted to be man again, and mentioned that she did so in an interview with the Sedalia Democrat. Many of her patients rallied in support.

“Pediatrician Discloses Sex Change, Desire to Change Back”. Associated Press, October 12, 1989. Online.
“Doctor Who Changed Sex Will Become a Man Again”. Chicago Tribune, October 13, 1989. Online.
“Woman Wants to Change Sex Again”. TGIC, Butterfly, Eon, November-December 1989:3. Online.
Susan Jimison. “Sex Swap Doc Wants to be a Man Again”. Twenty Minutes, January 1990: 1. Online.

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Fulcanelli (?1839 - ?1954) alchemist

August 21, 2019, 12:04 pm

≫ Next: Alfred H Read (187?-?) minister.

≪ Previous: Janis Ashley (1951 - ) pediatrician

Fulcanelli is the name, almost certainly a pseudonym, on two esoteric books, Le Mystère des Cathédrales and Les Demeures Philosophales, both published at the end of the 1920s, which discuss alchemy, architecture, science and languages.

In accordance with the alchemical tradition Fulcanelli obfuscated the details of his life. However he is reputed to have made the philosopher's stone that transmutes metals to gold and imparts longevity and androgyny.

He disappeared after his books were published, except that in 1937 Fulcanelli apparently met Jaques Bergier and Andre Helbronner, French scientists, who were working on nuclear physics, to warn them of its potential (this was five years before the start of the Manhattan Project). Bergier reported him saying:

“… the vital thing is not the transmutation of metals but that of the experimenter himself”.

Eugene Canseliet, Fulcanelli’s only student, met him for the last time in probably 1954, when Fulcanelli would have been over 110 years old - if he had indeed made the philosopher's stone this would not be surprising. Canseliet went to Seville where he was contacted and taken by a circuitous route to an isolated castle.

Fulcanelli was there looking younger than he had done in the 1920s. In Canseliet's presence, Fulcanelli appeared in female guise, a hypostasis of the Divine Androgyne of alchemy.

Fulcanelli. Le Mystère des Cathédrales (The Mystery of the Cathedrals). Paris 1926.
Fulcanelli. Les Demeures Philosophales (Dwellings of the Philosophers). Paris 1929.
Kenneth Rayner Johnson. The Fulcanelli Phenomenon: the Story of a Twentieth-Century Alchemist in the light of a new examination of the Hermetic Tradition. Neville Spearman. 1980: chp VII.

EN.Wikipedia

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Alfred H Read (187?-?) minister.

August 29, 2019, 5:26 pm

≫ Next: John Coulter (1834 - 1884) servant, labourer

≪ Previous: Fulcanelli (?1839 - ?1954) alchemist

An elderly Congregational minister, the Rev. Arthur Read was featured in the press in the late 1920s when he was captured as the supposed female ghost that had been haunting the lanes around the village of Curry-Rivel, near Taunton in Somerset for a few years.

Villagers had reported seeing a large female ghost, usually veiled, who hung around after dark. One day in 1927, Read was recognized by the local postman as the supposed ghost. This story quickly went around the village. Later that evening, a visitor staying at the King-William Inn, reported that he had just seen the lady in question. Two men took bicycles and caught up with her near Stoney Lane. The two did not then know the Rev Read, but Mr Woodrow, a leading member of the Congregational Chapel, had followed and immediately identified his minister.

Read bumped into one of the three men the next morning in the village and gave a partial excuse. He followed up by issuing a handbill, “Talks by the Masquerader”, inviting the public to hear his explanation. There would be separate meetings for men and women, and boys and girls under 16 would not be admitted. However the only meetings held were in the nearby village of Drayton.

Alfred’s explanation was that he had cross-dressed , usually when his wife was away, to see if men were so immoral that they would flirt with a strange woman. Without the knowledge of his wife, he had acquired female garments from items to be sold at rummage sales.

'It was difficult, for my height was against me. But by pressing a hat down tight on my head and stooping as much as possible, I seemed shorter.'

In this guise, Alfred went many places, in the country and in the city. To his surprise and satisfaction, no one gave him any trouble.

“Only once did an immoral man molest me. That was at a far-away seaside resort. I sat on the sea front, and all at once I felt a man leering at me. It was a terrible feeling, and I moved away quickly.”

He was therefore very impressed by the high moral standard of English manhood.

He referred himself to the Somerset Congregational Union, where he promised to stick to preaching.

His congregation released a statement:

“We do hereby place on record our unqualified conviction that such behaviour was not due to any moral laxity, but is the result of a nervous disorder induced by anxiety and over work. Further, we record our gratitude to God for our pastor's long and arduous ministry and affirm that our church has been most happy and successful during his four years as our leader. We have found him a helpful preacher and devoted friend and pastor, recklessly spending his strength in bringing the church through great difficulties to a place of honour in the community and the union.”

However Rev Read resigned his pastorate at the end of November 1927. He is still remembered for his efforts in raising 1,000 guineas which was used to reconstruct and renovate church buildings in the village.

“A Minister’s Masquerade”, Western Morning News, 19 Sep 1927: 4
C. J. Bulliet. Venus Castina: Famous Female Impersonators Celestial and Human. Covici 308 pp 1928. Bonanza Books. 1956: 248-9.
Dr Beachcombing. “Transvestite Vicar Ghost in Interwar England”. Beachcombing’s Bizarre History Blog, May 4, 2016. Online.
Paul Gallagher. “The Woman In Black: The Strange Story of a Crossdressing Ghost”. Dangerous Minds, 04.06.2017. Online.
Laura Linham. “Somerset's most unusual ghost story...a vicar who walked the streets as a woman”. Somerset Live, 18 Feb 2018. Online.

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

1,000 guineas would be almost £65,000 today.

Bulliet gives Read's first name as Arthur, not Alfred.

If his intention was to discover how women are treated by men, he could have started by asking his wife and other female members of the congregation. However that was probably just an excuse.

↧

John Coulter (1834 - 1884) servant, labourer

August 31, 2019, 5:23 am

≫ Next: Tracey Gayle Norman (1951 - ) model

≪ Previous: Alfred H Read (187?-?) minister.

John Coulter was a man of definite masculine appearance with good muscular development.

At the age of twenty-one he was working as a man-servant on a farm near Dungannon in County Tyrone. In this position he courted his master’s daughter, and was successful in marrying her.

From 1872 he worked for the Belfast Harbour Commissioners as a labourer. In 1878 his wife started living apart from him because of his dissipated habits.

He died from injuries caused by falling down a flight of stairs, and was discovered to be female bodied.

His wife returned to bury him.

The story was written up in The Lancet.

*not the Irish surgeon-apothecary who became famous for working on whaling ships in the 1820s and 1830s.

•“Extraordinary Personation case” The Lancet, Feb 2, 1884: 229. Online.
•Havelock Ellis. Sexual Inversion. In Studies In The Psychology Of Sex. Random House. 1936: 246

↧

Tracey Gayle Norman (1951 - ) model

September 14, 2019, 1:32 pm

≫ Next: A Chronology of trans persons in modelling and fashion: Part I: to 2000

≪ Previous: John Coulter (1834 - 1884) servant, labourer

Original version: April 2014

Tracy Norman was raised in Newark, New Jersey. Father thought that his child was too effeminate and made a desultory attempt at teaching boxing. He moved out when Tracy was 6; the mother worked multiple jobs to support her two children.

The first in her family to graduate high school, Tracy, on the same day, told her mother that she was a woman, and was accepted. A few months later. Tracy met a old-school friend who had started transition. She answered questions and gave Tracy some birth-control pills.

In trans clubs, Third World and Up the Down Stairs, she was told of a doctor who prescribed to trans women, and soon she was not just being taken as female, but was being noted for her beauty. This was at the same time as Lottie and Crystal LaBeija founded the House of Labeija with a ball at the Up the Down Stairs.

A friend of Tracy who helped her with make-up, worked in the fashion industry and knew where fashion shows were being held. He taught her what to say at the door, that she was a student at the Fashion Institute of Technology, which let her stand in the back row. Thus she attended a modeling event at the Pierre Hotel in New York in 1975. She noticed a group of black models and followed them in, making sure that she was the last person. There she was discovered by renowned photographer Irving Penn and booked for Vogue Italia a few days later.

One of the other models, Peggy Dillard, was nice to her, while the others shunned the newcomer. Dillard revealed many years later that, as she had spent years DJ-ing at a gay disco, and had friends who had transitioned, she was able to read the newcomer. Tracy was paid $3,000 – more than she had ever had before. Penn referred her to an agency, Zoli. Some weeks later, Penn received a phone call from Condé Nast magazine, passing on the rumor that Norman was not born female. Penn dismissed it out of hand as ridiculous. A make-up artist approached her during a break and said that he knew what was going on with her. He also said ‘Don’t worry, I think you’re beautiful. Just be natural.’ He also told the photographer Anthony Barboza, who replied that if that were the case, the magazine must know. Apparently it went no further and Tracy was rehired by the same magazine six months later.

Tracy was similar in appearance to the rising black model Beverly Johnson, and quickly was featured in major advertising campaigns, Ultra Sheen and Avon Cosmetics. Clairol put her face on their dark-auburn hair dye no 512, launched that year.

Essense Magazine booked her again for several sessions in 1980. During the last session, the hair dresser's assistant, who was from the same part of New Jersey and had been asking around trying to figure out who Tracy was, spoke to the editor, Susan Taylor, who stopped the shoot. Nobody said anything. However Tracy was never paid for the last shoot, and the pictures were never used. Work in New York dried up. There was a rumor that Taylor threatened to sue Zoli, the agency for false advertising, but the agency did not know either. Eventually a friend confirmed that her secret had gone around quickly, but still no-one said so directly.

By 1982, Tracy had given up her apartment, and moved back in with her mother. A friend was already working in Paris, and another suggested that they go there. Tracy used her sister’s birth certificate to get a passport. In Paris the three friends shared hotel rooms. One day Tracy got a phone call for another model, who had returned to New York. She was offered the gig, but delayed it for two weeks while she slimmed down to a French size 6. This led to a six-month contract with Balenciaga.

The UltraSheen ad

Next she tried Milan, but work was slow there too. She returned to Newark in 1984, and signed with the Grace del Marco Agency. However after a few months she was featured in an Ultra Sheen cosmetics ad, and then she was remembered.

One thing went right. Tracey dated a straight male office worker from Long Island. He did not mind when she told him that she was trans, and they had a three-year relationship.

Tracy found work in shoe retailing, but again word got out and people came to stare through the window. She then took work at Show Center, a burlesque peep show in Times Square that featured trans women, but behind glass so that the customers could not touch. She was able to earn over $1,000 a day there, and stayed three years. This led to her involvement in the voguing balls, first as an observer, and then as a member of the House of Africa. She used her modelling experience and trained her team to walk like professionals, rather than the flamboyant style that the other houses affected. Her personal trademark was to walk in just jeans and t-shirt. She would take a white handkerchief and wipe her face in front of the judges to show that she was wearing no make-up – and the was met by applause. She became mother to the house, and was elected to the Ballroom Hall of Fame in 2001.

In the 1990s Tracey had encountered her father who was driving a bus that she was on. “I was like, ‘Daddy, it’s me.’ He was shocked to see me.” Later he was diagnosed with cancer, and she visited him in hospital. “He saw that I have done something very exciting with my life. I think he was proud of me at that point. He was more accepting.”

Later Tracey worked again in shoe retailing – for the up-market Peter Fox Shoes, and for a while was a manager.

Tracey in 2016

In December 2015, New York Magazine/The Cut ran a cover story reminding readers that Tracey, now 63, was the first black trans model. This led to Clairol welcoming her back as the face of its new “Color As Real As You Are” campaign.

Meekaprodigy. "Paris Is Burning Tea (Harlem Ballroom Scene)" Lipstick Alley, 03-26-
"Tracy Africa" The Luna show#100. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGWhRQSzqzk, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvCKxygj0vM.
Jada Yuan & Aaron Wong. "The First Black Trans Model had her Face on a Box of Clairol". New York Magazine/The Cut, 14 December, 2015. Online.
Carly Stern. "The 'first black transgender model' reveals how her high-flying fashion career, posing for the likes of Vogue and Clairol, crumbled after her gender identity was exposed". Daily Mail, 17 Dec 2015. Online.
Jada Yuan. "Susan Taylor Says She Wouldn’t Have Outed Tracey Africa". New York Magazine/The Cut, Dec 27, 2015. Online.
Jada Yuan. "Tracey Africa Norman Is Back As the Face of Clairol". The Cut, August 2016. Online.
Hermione Hoby. "How Tracey Norman, America’s first black trans model, returned to the limelight". The Guardian, 21 Aug 2016. Online.
Yada Yuan. "Trans Models Will Cover Harper’s Bazaar for the First Time". New York Magazine/The Cut, Sept 19, 2016. Online.
Elspeth H Brown. Work! A Queer History of Modeling. Duke University Press, 2019: 2-4, 13, 263-5, 267, 270-2.

MySpace

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

Tracy or Tracey? She changed the spelling in the early 1990s.

After the December 2015 article in New York Magazine/The Cut, JadaYuan, the author, was finally able to get feedback from Susan Taylor, the editor at Essense who had supervised Tracey’s last shoot in 1980. Not surprisingly Taylor remembers things differently: “I always suspected she was genetically male. I accepted her as she presented herself, as an exquisitely beautiful black woman. Now, this is 40 years later, but I think someone that she went to school with in Newark told me that they knew her as a boy. I think.” … “And we sought to hire her into the ‘80s and she was not available. I just learned that a few days ago.”

↧

A Chronology of trans persons in modelling and fashion: Part I: to 2000

September 18, 2019, 4:56 pm

≫ Next: A Chronology of trans persons in modelling and fashion: Part II: 21st century

≪ Previous: Tracey Gayle Norman (1951 - ) model

Part I: to 2000
Part II: 21^st century

1889

L.S., a fashion model in Paris, In 1909. Aged 20, she was engaged to be married and was bothered by apparent tumours in her labia majora and attended the Hôpital Beaujon. A biopsy of the tumours resulted in them being identified as testicles. The doctors then decided that she was a 'true male', that is a masculine pseudo hermaphrodite. She was informed that her feminine 'genital aspiration', that is her engagement to her fiancé, was an act of homosexuality.

1950

Michel-Marie Poulian worked as a model in Paris, in addition to painting portraits and doing stained-glass windows for churches.

1955

Charlotte McLeod did modelling in New York and New Orleans.

1959-62

Noted Swedish photographer Christer Strömholm went to Paris and shot Jacquie Sarduy, Nana and other trans women. These were later published as Les Amies De Place Blanche, 1983.

1960

After completion surgery in Casabalanca, April Ashley returned to England, and was able to build a career as a model; clothed, in underwear and nude. This led to a very small part in the film The Road to Hong Kong. Until November 1961 when she was outed in the Sunday People.

1964

Holly Woodlawn was briefly employed as an in-house model at Saks Fifth Avenue, new York.

1965

A person we know only as ‘Queen Elizabeth’ got a job in Davison’s department store in Atlanta as a model. One day the boss walked in as she was changing and saw her penis. She was immediately fired.

1966

Benjamin’s The Transsexual Phenomenon tells us of Betty/Suzanne who after surgery worked as a fashion model.

1970

Les Lee, performer at Le Carrousel, designed and modelled a collection of women's clothes with some success, such that the models union was able to persuade the French Government to pass a law forbidding female impersonators from working as models.

Georgia Ziadie was working as a model in New York when she met Lord Colin Campbell, married him a week later, and they were divorced the next year.

1971

Rachel Harlow, following her lead role in The Queen, 1968, and her subsequent triumph at the Cannes International Film Festival, had become the hostess at a Philadelphia nightclub named with her own name. There were also interviews, endorsements, modeling jobs and television appearances.

1974

Andy Warhol recruited models from the new transy bar Gilded Grape for his Ladies and Gentlemen (The Drag Queen Paintings) series. They were paid $50 and Andy took polaroids. They were not shown as such in the US, but in September 1975 were exhibited in Italy.

1975

Tracy Norman attended a modeling event at the Pierre Hotel in New York in 1975. There she was discovered by renowned photographer Irving Penn and booked for Vogue Italia a few days later. She was quickly featured in major advertising campaigns, Ultra Sheen and Avon Cosmetics. Clairol put her face on their dark-auburn hair dye no 512, launched that year.

1976

After the end of her public affair with John B Kelly, brother of movie-star and princess Grace Kelly, businessman and on the Philadelphia Council, Rachel Harlow dropped out of the night-life business and the gay subculture. She did continue to work as a model in New York, but avoided publicity.

1977

Potassa de la Fayette, model and star on the dance floor at Studio 54.

Robertina Manganaro was a model for the avant-garde artist, Enrico Baj.

1979

Diane Delia worked in New York as a model for Avon Cosmetics.

1980

Lauren Foster had started working as a model in Johannesburg and then Paris regularly in magazines and advertisements. However she was disqualified from the Miss South Africa Pageant. Her big break was in 1980 when she was hired by and was featured Vogue to do a 6-page fashion editorial. She was outed by the tabloid Scope, when another model sold the story, which resulted in ignorant press attention.

Essense Magazine booked Tracy Norman again for several sessions in 1980. During the last session, the hair dresser's assistant, who was from the same part of New Jersey and had been asking around trying to figure out who Tracy was, spoke to the editor, Susan Taylor, who stopped the shoot. Nobody said anything. However Tracy was never paid for the last shoot, and the pictures were never used. Work in New York dried up. There was a rumor that Taylor threatened to sue Zoli, the agency for false advertising, but the agency did not know either. Eventually a friend confirmed that her secret had gone around quickly, but still no-one said so directly.

1981

Caroline Cossey (Tula) was noted in Smirnoff Vodka’s “Well They Said Anything Could Happen” advertisement in 1981 that shows her water-skiing behind the Loch Ness Monster. She was a Page Three Girl for The Sun. This led to a small part in the James Bond film, For Your Eyes Only, 1981, and an associated article in Playboy. This led to her being outed as trans, and as a consequence lost most of her modelling contracts.

1982

Tracy Norman, seeking work in Paris, got a phone call for another model, who had returned to New York. She was offered the gig, but delayed it for two weeks while she slimmed down to a French size 6. This led to a six-month contract with Balenciaga.

1984

in New York, the new fashion sensation was the openly transgender Teri Toye, who had moved to New York from Iowa to study fashion. She was offered modeling work, especially for the cult fashion designer Stephen Sprouse, but also for Karl Lagerfeld and Jean Paul Gaultier.

Circulate magazine dedicated six pages to Lauren Foster.

Tracy Norman returned to Newark in 1984, and signed with the Grace del Marco Agency. However after a few months she was featured in an Ultra Sheen cosmetics ad, and then she was remembered. Again work dried up.

Roberta Close in Rio was becoming famous as a model and actress.

1985

Valerie Taylor, in stealth, was working as a model in Los Angeles.

Leslie Townsend, in stealth, was working as a model in Houston.

1988

Noor Talbi found work in Paris on the fashion catwalks at age 19, before she returned to Morroco and became a renowned dance.

1993

Robertina Manganaro, encouraged by her rich husband to become a stilista, opened a studio in Paris, using her title-by marriage Comtessa.

1994

Alessandro di Sanzo, who had played a trans teenager in the films Mery per sempre, 1989. and Ragazzi fuori, 1990, was hired by the Rome fashion designer Egon von Furstenberg to walk the catwalk in a bridal dress. The Church took umbrage as she was a known transsexual.

Storme Aerison posed as a supermodel and claimed to be the sister of real supermodel Kathy Ireland. Photographers and others gave her their services in exchange for a percentage of a calendar that she said that she was producing.

1996

Estelle Asmodelle was the face of the Supermodel Agency in Australia; she was their spokesman and main model during 1996-2000.

1998

Claudia Charriez, then age 16, was already modelling.

1999

Sophia Lamar modelled for Levi’s and others.

Lee Si-Yeon first made a name as a male model, and was known for a feminine appearance and wearing women's clothing on the catwalk – the first model to do so in South Korea. Later she decided to transition, which was completed in 2007.

Before becoming the host on Taiwan's Eastern TV Auction Channel, Li Jing had worked as a model.

2000

Amanda Lepore worked extensively with photographer David LaChapelle advertising Armani and MTV. Swatch released a ‘Time tranny’ watch with her features.

Robertina Manganaro, stilista, had her first show at the Milan Pret-a-porter, which cost her a million francs of the family money.

↧

A Chronology of trans persons in modelling and fashion: Part II: 21st century

September 21, 2019, 8:59 am

≫ Next: Kimberley Elliot (1953 – 1980) TAO, Neo-American Church

≪ Previous: A Chronology of trans persons in modelling and fashion: Part I: to 2000

Part I: to 2000

Part II: 21^st century

2001

Barbara Diop from Senegal worked as a model in Milan.

2003

The 2003 Cricket World Cup was held in South Africa. It was arranged that each team be led onto the field by a model, and Barbara Diop was chosen to lead the Zimbabwean team. It was only later, during the contest, that word went around about Barbara's gender history.

Yollada Nok Suanyot worked as a model and beauty queen before she became one of Thailand’s major trans activists.

2004

IVAN, Japanese-Mexican, was selected as a model of Paris Fashion Week.

2005

Camilla De Castro, São Paulo, model and porn star, killed herself.

Choi Han-bit was a contestant on Korea's Next Top Model, Cycle 3, where she ended 10th.

2006

Claudia Charriez made it to the semi-finals of America's Next Top Model hosted by Tyra Banks, but was then disqualified for being transsexual. Tyra Banks then declared Claudia to be "America's Next Top Transgender" on her talk show. One of the judges, Janice Dickinson, a former model and now running her own agency brought Claudia onto her own television reality show, made her pose as a man, but then fired her in the last episode on the grounds that they could not make any money from her.

2008

Alicia Liu had participated in 2006 in a fashion contest on Taiwan TVBS. In 2008 she became a professional model and appeared on television.

Allanah Starr and Buck Angel were modelled life-size by artist Marc Quin. Allanah also modelled for men’s magazines.

America’s Next Top Model 11 included Isis King, who had up till then been living in a homeless shelter. She asked whether she could be accepted as a girl "born in the wrong body", and came 10^th overall. This led to being on the Tyra Banks show twice, the second after surgery from Marci Bowers.

2009

Erika Ervin, 6"8'/2.03m, did modeling work for Harper's Bazaar and in fashion shows in Milan, and in 2011 Amazon Eve, her performance name, became the Guinness World Record World's Tallest Professional Model.

Dominique Jackson from Tobago became a resident model for fashion designer Adrian Alicea and walked for the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week. She has also modeled for Vogue España.

Choi Han-bit, amongst more than 1,200 applicants to the annual SBS-sponsored Super Model Contest, gained public attention by progressing through the contest's preliminary rounds. Choi's participation drew mixed reactions from internet users and other contestants, but SBS officials stated that they would view it as a "violation of human rights" to disqualify a transgender individual whose legal sex was female. As one of the contest's 32 finalists, Choi automatically qualified as a professional model. Despite this, Choi faced discrimination in the modelling industry, having been refused participation in fashion shows without any clear reason.

2010

Lea T had attempted a career as a male model, but was always being taken as female. Later Riccardo Tisci employed Lea as his personal assistant and used her as his fit model. He based his autumn/winter 2010 Givenchy collection around the idea of androgyny and Lea agreed to be featured. Later Carine Roitfeld, the editor of the French Vogue published a nude photograph of Lea with her male genitalia only partly covered. She was also featured in the Italian Vanity Fair, and was on the cover of Lurve magazine.

Kayo Satoh had been doing modelling work in Nagoya, and became an exclusive model for Tokai Spy Girl magazine. She became more famous when on 31 August 2010 she mentioned on Nippon Television's Majotachi no 22ji that she had been born male, after online rumours.

Alicia Liu was outed in 2010 when a schoolmate put a photograph of her as she had been on the internet. She called a press conference and stated: "As far as I can remember, I love being a woman. The past is not important".

Anastasia Michaelsdotter, Sweden, age 14 was scouted by several modelling agencies.

2011

Andrej Pejić, androgynous model from Bosnia via Australia, walked both the men’s and women’s shows for Jean-Paul Gaultier, was on both Schön! and Dossier Journal covers, number 18 in top 50 male models, and 98 in FHM 100 Sexiest Women.

Isis King, having completed transition, returned to America’s Next Top Model 17. She was eliminated in the third week. She then became a model for American Apparel.

Miss Sahhara, from Nigeria, walked at London Fashion Week for four seasons. She was also involved with Alternative Fashion

Liu Shi Han, had had completion surgery and became China’s first trans model.

Nikkiey Chawla, 26, India, has walked at Milan, and is in an episode of UTV Bindass’s show Emotional Atyachaar.

Valentijn de Hingh was followed by a documentary team from age 8-17. Then a model, then rejected because too tall. Now modelling again.

2012

Carol Marra 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.

Anastasia Michaelsdotter, now 16, was walking in Milan and Paris.

24 May 2012. The trans models were pulled from a fashion show at SM Mall of Asia for Philippine Fashion Week at PFW's insistence.

2013

A petition that Carmen Carrera, alumna from RuPaul’s Drag Race, serve as a model for Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show garnered 45,000 signatures, but to no effect.

Nicole Gibson walked the runway at London Fashion Week, just days before undergoing gender confirmation surgery.

Lea T featured in Benetton campaign.

Andreja Pejic on cover of Serbian Elle.

American Apparel put out a call for transgender models.

2014

The Bangkok-based Apple Modeling Agency has launched the first transgender model division with 18 models on its books.

Ines Rau, of Algerian descent, who had comnpletion surgery at age 16, was featured in the May issue of Playboy, and then worked as a model in New York, and also appeared in Vogue Italia.

Geena Rocera, from the Philippines, then 30, having worked as a model for over a decade, came out.

Carmen Carrera on cover of Dress to Kill, profiled by CNN.

Valentijin de Hingh featured in Tom Ford's autumn campaign.

2015

Andrej Pejić, after completion surgery in late 2013, was profiled by Vogue, and also became the first-ever trans woman to sign a cosmetics contract.

Valentino Sampaio went from doing local shows and photo shoots to being in São Paulo Fashion Week, and being on the cover of Elle Brasil and L’Officiel Brasil.

December. New York Magazine/The Cut ran a cover story reminding readers that Tracey Norman, now 63, was the first black trans model. This led to Clairol welcoming her back as the face of its new “Color As Real As You Are” campaign.

Loiza Lamers won Holland’s Next Top Model 8, initially in stealth until rumours were found on the internet. She was voted the winner after disclosing her gender history.

Hari Nef walked shows during New York Fashion Week, and was signed to IMG Models.

Peche Di, from Bangkok, started Trans Models NYC.

2016

Lea T hosted the opening ceremony at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio.

Andrej Pejić, was awarded "Best International Female Model" by GQ Portugal and the following year she made history by becoming the first transgender woman to appear on the cover of GQ.

Gemma Cowling debuted at the Adelaide Fashion Festival at age 19. She claimed to be the first Australian trans model signed to agency, Estelle Asmodelle having been forgotten.

Shay Neary, from rural Pennsylavania, signed by Coverstory, becoming the first openly trans plus-size model.

2017

Valentino Sampaio was on the cover of Vogue Paris, March 2017, with the by-line: ‘Transgender beauty: How it’s shaking up the world’ and with an editorial inside.

Teddy Quinlivian, who had been discovered for Louis Vuitton in 2015, came out, and was praised by those she worked with.

Playboy featured Ines Rau, proclaiming her to be the first trans women so featured, despite her own earlier appearance, and that several others had been featured in past years.

Kami Sid, Pakistan’s first trans model.

Munroe Bergdorf was employed as the first transgender model to front a L'Oréal campaign in the UK.

Leyne Bloom, from Chicago, appeared in Vogue India.

2018

Giuliana Farfalla, who had completion surgery at 16, participated on the twelfth season of Germany's Next Topmodel, and finished in eleventh place. In January 2018, she became the first transgender model to appear on the cover of the German Playboy.

2019

Teddy Quinlivian, hired by Chanel. Listed as one of the "Top 50" models by models.com.

Geena Rocera, Playboy Playmate for August.

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

Elspeth H Brown. Work! A Queer History of Modeling. Duke University Press, 2019. The only trans models mentioned are Teri Toye and Tracey Norman.

10 greatest transgender models

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Transgender_and_transsexual_female_models

Both Wikipedia and 10 Greatest Transgender models list persons not mentioned above. I have not included those who have not either walked a significant catwalk, been featured in a significant advertising campaign or been featured in a significant photography exhibition. Participation in beauty pageants, being a porn star, being an actor or on the internet does not count.

www.theguardian.com/fashion/fashion-blog/2012/sep/13/brazil-transgender-models

www.advocate.com/transgender/2015/08/21/50-years-transgender-models

https://thehhub.com/2018/08/21/transgender-models

www.worldstopmost.com/2017-2018-2019-2020/celebrities/most-beautiful-transgender-models-world-best-famous-sexiest-richest-highest-paid-top-10-popular-list

www.trendrr.net/22294/most-beautiful-hottest-transgender-models-world-famous-gorgeous

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Kimberley Elliot (1953 – 1980) TAO, Neo-American Church

October 14, 2019, 4:33 am

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≪ Previous: A Chronology of trans persons in modelling and fashion: Part II: 21st century

Kimberly's story is told from two sources: Susanna Pena's history of TAO and Art Kleps' history of the early years of psychedelism. Putting the two together we get the following. However see also the discussion below.

Along with Colette Goudie and Tara Carn, Kimberly Barreiro – originally from Cuba – was one of the original members of the Transsexual Action Organization after Angela Douglas moved it to Miami. They joined in 1973, became officers of TAO and were a major part of its public face. Kimberly served as director for the town of Miami Beach.

Douglas described Kimberly in 1974 when she was 21 as “tiny, bubbly”. She was one of the first in the group to have transgender surgery, and apparently did a full transition in less than a year. In the TAO newsletter Mirage for Autumn 1974, Kimberley is quoted: ‘I don’t regret it all. But the pain was incredible. I don’t know if I could go through it again’.

She married Steve Elliot, and took his surname.

They were both into psychedelic drugs, and having heard of Art Kleps and his drug-based Neo-American Church, decided to drive up to New York state to visit. In his book, Kleps refers to Kimberly Harrison and Stove (“Ah is all stoved in, man”).

Kleps: “Stove and Kimberly had a strange story to tell. They were both from Miami, where Kimberly, a classic blonde beauty, plied her trade as a Miami Beach hooker. She had met Stove after he had freaked out on the most colossal and one of the weirdest bummers I had heard about up to the time. It involved hordes of fleas appearing in his house on some crazy but exact schedule, not being able to take a shower because the water wouldn’t touch his skin, and aimless wanderings during which he was pursued by flocks of blackbirds and was picked up on the road by kindly spades driving white cars who knew all about him even though he had never seen any of them before in his life.

Kimberly …, had driven Stove up to be cooled out, paying all the bills along the way, in the ancient and honorable tradition of the whore with a heart of gold. She loved every variety of psychedelic drug, and never had anything but splendid and happy experiences while stoned.”

Kleps regarded Stove as as a “well-defended” paranoid in that he did not, “most of the time, do anything particularly bizarre or fail to handle the routines of ordinary life in an acceptable manner”.

Kimberly had to sell the air-conditioner and the radio out of her car for the journey back to Miami. She stopped for a few days in Millbrook and intrigued Timothy Leary who wanted to know more about her.

In 1980 Kimberly was found dead from a drug overdose at Miami Beach’s Midtown Plaza. Angela Douglas considered her death as suspicious. Several of the old TAO people attended her funeral.

Susana Pena. "Gender and Sexuality in Latina/o Miami: Documenting Latina Transsexual Activists". Gender & History, 22,3,2010: 763. Reprinted in Kevin P. Murphy & Jennifer M. Spear (eds). Historicising Gender and Sexuality. Wiley-Blackwell, 2011.
Art Kleps. Millbrook: A Narrative of the Early Years of American Psychedelianism. Original Klepian Neo-American Chuch, 1975: 85-91. Chp 13 Online.

Is this True?

Pena says in her footnote 50: “Reportedly Kimberly Elliot and her husband are mentioned in Art Kelps’s Millbrook: A Narrative of the Early Years of American Psychedelianism ... under the pseudonyms Kim and Steve Newell.” Which is why I included a mention of Kleps and the Neo-American Church in my History of TAO: Part 2.

Pena is wrong in identifying Steve Newell with Steve Elliot. Kleps introduces Kimberly thus: “Then Kimberly Harrison and Stove (“Ah is all stoved in, man.”) arrived, followed by Steve Newell and then Mike and Gai Duncan. It was an entertaining group.” Therefore Kimberly is with her man Stove who is not the same as Steve Newell. Kimberly Harrison and Stove do appear to be Kimberly and Steve Elliot in that both couples are from Miami Beach, both are into drugs. Pena, following Angela Douglas, does not say how Kimberly made a living, but sex work in the context of TAO does seem plausible.

There is no mention in Kleps of Kimberly being trans. Good we say – it is good not to be read. However on page 87 he says: “I had a private trip with Kimberly a couple nights later, or at least she had a trip and I just smoked a lot of hashish while she told me the story of her life, which hadn’t been all that bad, really”. So she told the story of her life while on LSD and did not mention her transition and the painful surgery. Indeed! The CIA had pioneered LSD as a truth drug.

Kleps is not good at giving dates – at least not in the book version. What jarred for me was the mention of Kimberly stopping in at Millbrook to see Timothy Leary. I quickly assertained that he was not there after 1968 when LSD was made illegal. In the online version of the book, the section about Kimberly is in Chapter 13, and the Contents Page specifies that Chapter 13 is 1965-6, not 1974-5.

Thus Kimberly Harrison cannot be Kimberly Barreiro Elliot. To regard them as one is a false positive.

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Two mafiosi

October 16, 2019, 3:54 am

≫ Next: Frankie Jaxon (1895 – 1953) female impersonator, singer, actor

≪ Previous: Kimberley Elliot (1953 – 1980) TAO, Neo-American Church

Giovanni Arrivoli (1975 - 2016)

Post-transition Giovanna Arrivole was arrested with 17 others for drug dealing, and was released in 2012. He still owned a café bar, the Blue Moon in Campania, which was said to be a meeting place for the Pagano Amato crime family – although others say that he refused to be involved with Amato Pagano, and still others say that he wanted to become a Camorrista boss.

In 2016 he went missing, and three days later was found partially buried and face-down near Melito di Napoli. He had been shot three times.

So far nobody has been tried for the murder.

Chris Summers. “Transsexual mafia boss who had a sex-change op to become a man is found tortured and killed near Naples”. Daily Mail, 13 May 2016. Online.
Dario del Porto. “La vera storia di Giò, eliminata per un rifiuto ai narcos. Non volle mettersi in affari con loro”. Napoli Republia, 17 maggio 2016. Online. Translation.
Jean-Philippe Savry. “Napoli: la Camorra dézingue aussi 38 bis”, “ Napoli : la Camorra dézingue aussi 56”, “La Camorra en Espagne partie 6”. jean-philippe.savry.over-blog.com/search/arrivoli/.

Lucia Aviello (19?? - )

Aviello had been raised as Luciano. Luciano and brother Antonio were involved with the Camorra, and in 2007 they were living in Perugia in Umbria.

On 1 November 2007 Meredith Kercher, an exchange student from the University of Leeds was studying in Perugia, and was murdered. Her US flatmate, Amanda Knox and Knox’ boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were charged with the killing, and Rudy Guede, whose fingerprints were found at the scene of the crime was tried separately and found guilty.

Meanwhile Luciano was convicted and in jail, and was Raffaele’s cell-mate. Antonio had been killed. Luciano sent letters to the authorities saying that Antonio with an unnamed Albanian had planned a robbery but went to the wrong address, that of Kercher who was killed when she screamed. Aviello’s testimony was contradicted by other cell-mates who claimed that Aviello boasted about being paid to make the claim. Also he has eight previous convictions for slander.

Aviello was called to testify at the Supreme Court of Cassation on 4 October 2013. By then she had started transition, and asked to be referred to as Lucia. She repeated that her brother had committed the murder, and denied receiving any payments. She said that she knew where the murder weapon and Kercher’s keys were hidden, having been given them to hide. Other cell-mates were called and repeated her boasts of having been paid. Because she was not considered credible, the police did not search for the weapon and keys – another knife, believed to be the murder weapon, had already been submitted for forensic analysis.

Aviello was convicted and sentenced to 10 months in May 2014 for oltraggio (offending the judiciary – similar to contempt of court), and was also charged with slander against her brother.

Tom Kington. “Amanda Knox retrial: mafia gangster claims brother was killer” The Guardian, 4 Oct 2013. Online.
Egle Priolo. “Omicidio Meredith, la verità del pentito: «Confermo, è stato mio fratello»” Il Gazzettino, 4 Ottobro 2013. Online. Translation.

Themurderofmeredithkercher(The Prison Informants)

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Frankie Jaxon (1895 – 1953) female impersonator, singer, actor

October 22, 2019, 10:39 am

≫ Next: Transgender Lexicons: Morgan Holleb's The A-Z of Gender and Sexuality

≪ Previous: Two mafiosi

Frank Devera Jackson was born in Montgomery, Alabama,. He and his sister were orphaned. They were then raised by a widowed aunt in Kansas City, Missouri. At age 19, the aunt died, and the rest of the family moved to Chicago.

From age 15 Frankie Jaxon, as he became, toured as a singer and as such joined the Henry McDaniel Minstrel Show. He worked in medicine shows in Texas and then worked regularly in Atlantic City and Chicago. He did a stint in the army 1918-19, and was promoted to sergeant before being honorably discharged.

Within months he was starring; he sang, danced, and performed as a female impersonator in Atlantic City. He returned to his family in Bronzeville (more), Chicago’s African-American district, which he made his home base. He supplemented successful home-town shows with short tours by small companies of black performers. In 1925 he joined Mae Dix (1895 – 1958) and her Chicago Harmonaders. He was the only black and the only known queer man in the troupe. When they played in southern US states, he had to be escorted to and from the theater and whenever he needed to leave the hotel. Despite this he won rave reviews. This publicity translated into major bookings in Chicago. His appearance at the faltering Grande Theater on South Slate Street is said to have saved the owners from bankruptcy.

He was known as “Half-Pint” because he was only 5’2” (1.57m). At the same time he was a jazz singer appearing with King Oliver, Tampa Red and Thomas Dorsey. He had a small part in the Duke Ellington film, Black and Tan, and in King Vidor’s Hallelujah, both 1929. He had been signed to play a female role in The Mortage Man as a target of an unscrupulous banker – but the film was never made in the aftermath of the Wall Street Crash.

The Pansy Craze 1930-1933 suited his act perfectly, but it ceased to be acceptable after Prohibition was repealed in 1933. Jaxon however was on the bill for the opening ceremonies of the Chicago World Fair 27 May 1933.

Through the 30s, he was often on radio with his band, the Quarts of Joy. The shows included bawdy humor, and Jaxon often played the women’s roles in the songs – usually about sexual topics. He had a convincing female voice. It was these radio appearances that made him a household name. Some of his songs were originals, but others were cover versions with more risqué lyrics – such as “My Daddy Rocks Me with One Steady Roll”, previously recorded by Trixie Smith. Jaxon’s last recording was “be Your Natural Self” in April 1940. This was just after the Chicago Defender had repeated rumors insinuating that the Rev Clarence Cobbs was gay, and Cobbs had sued for libel. The song warns [gay men] to "Watch your step" and "Be careful what you say”. Yet despite being cautious, they should still be "your natural self".

Shortly afterwards he walked away from his show-biz career. In the spring of 1941 he moved to Washington, DC. He found government work, some say for the Pentagon.

It in unclear when he died. Most accounts have him dying in a veterans' hospital in 1944. Elledge however dates this as happening in 1953.

Jim Elledge. “Play It, Whip It, Pat It, Bang It”. In The Boys of Fairy Town: Sodomites, Female Impersonators, Third-Sexers, Pansies, Queers and Sex Morons in Chicago's First Century. Chicago Revew Press, 2018 : 159-172.

Red Hot Jazz. EN.Wikipedia Discogs Allmusic QueerMusicHeritage

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Unfortunately we have no photographs of Frankie in drag.

Some say that Jaxon’s version of “My Daddy Rocks Me with One Steady Roll” gave its name to the genre Rock and Roll which emerged over a decade later. Anyway it is the first known recording to include an orgasm.

Henry McDaniel Minstrel Show was not black-face minstrelsy. The troupe were real black people. I was unable to find an account of Henry McDaniel to link to. He was a remarkable man, born a slave, fought in the US Civil War, a Baptist minister, a carpenter, banjo player and ran his own minstrel troupe. His is remembered today only as the father of Hattie McDaniel, the first black actor to win an Oscar.

Did Jaxon have a wife? A census taker visited 5149 Calmut Avenue and Evelyn, a white woman, listed herself as Jaxon’s wife. They also had two lodgers: a white woman and a black man. In 1933, the Chicago Defender announced that “Mr. and Mrs. Frankie (Half Pint) Jaxon are expecting a blessed event”. Jim Elledge searched marriage and birth records in Illinois, New York and New Jersey and failed to find any confirmation at all. He suggests that there was a male couple and a female couple living at 5149 Calmut Avenue - and that all the rest was camouflage. In which case we can name Frankie’s husband as Cliff Oliver. Neither Evelyn nor Clifford, nor any child accompanied Frankie to Washington in 1942.

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1966

1967

1968

1969

1970

1971

1972

1973

1974

Mid Town

The Village

Part I: to 2000Part II: 21st century

1889

1950

1955

1959-62

1960

1964

1965

1966

1970

1971

1974

1975

1976

1977

1979

1980

1981

1982

1984

1985

1988

1993

1994

1996

1998

1999

2000

Part II: 21st century

2001

2003

2004

2005

2006

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

2018

2019

Is this True?

Giovanni Arrivoli (1975 - 2016)

Lucia Aviello (19?? - )

Part I: to 2000
Part II: 21^st century

Part II: 21^st century