Arnold Wyss (1878 - ?) office worker - first Transvestitenschein in Switzerland.
We know of Wyss only from the police file in Zurich. We do not know Wyss’ female name.---Arnold Wyss was born and raised in Bern, Switzerland. At the age of eight he found a suitcase belonging to a...
View ArticleZhao Yede 赵烨德 (1965 - ) sex-change surgeon
It is said but not confirmed that the first transgender operation in China was performed in secret in 1983.In 1992 Zhao Yede, from Zhejiang province, was working as a resident in a hospital in Beijing,...
View ArticleGabrielle Boulianne-Tremblay (1990) author, actress
Boulianne-Tremblay was born and raised in Saint-Siméon, down river from Quebec City, on the north shore of the St Lawrence River.Gabrielle came out as trans in 2012. Her first volume of poetry, Le...
View ArticleTara O’Hara (195? – 198?) performer.
Original June 2011, revised November 2023.Tara's male persona was raised by a Jehovah's Witness family in New Orleans. In the early 80s, he was working in Berlin as an English teacher.Tara and Jayne,...
View ArticleBroden Giambrone (1982 - ) activist.
++Original April 2014; revised December 2023.Giambrone grew up in the West End of Toronto. The family are of Italian descent and moved to Canada from the US to avoid the Vietnam War. Broden...
View ArticleJeanne Hoff (1938 – 2023) psychiatrist
++original Septemeber 2013, revised February 2019 to include extra detail from Gill-Peterson's book, and December 2023 to acknowledge Jeanne's passing. Eugene Hoff was born in in St Louis. Hoff did...
View ArticleJames Bidgood/Terri Howe (1933-2022) 1950s drag performer
James Bidgood was born and raised in Wisconsin. He moved to New York City in 1951.He found work at the drag nightclub Club 82 when it opened in 1953 as a set and lighting designer, and then as one of...
View ArticleBooks on Gender Variance in 2023 - Part 1: (auto) biographies
Trans AutoBiographyCyrus Dunham. A Year Without a Name: A Memoir. Back Bay Books, 2021.Diana Goetsch. This Body I Wore: A Memoir. Picador, 2023. Gigi Gorgeous. He said, she said : lessons, stories,...
View ArticleBooks on Gender Variance in 2023 - Part 2
$£¥ €=Excessively overpriced books. Media$£¥ € Ana Horvat, Orly Lael Netzer, Sarah McRae & Julie Rak (eds). Trans Narratives: trans, transmedia, transnational. Routledge, 2023.ReligiousJoe W...
View ArticleSome recent obituaries, trans and others
Lucy Salani (1924-2023) concentration camp survivor, upholsterer, discovered by Bologna LGBT groups in 2010s. Biography: Il mio nome è Lucy, 2009. GVWW.Katherine Cummings (1935 -2022) Australian...
View ArticleAmber McLaughlin (1973-2023) convicted of murder
McLaughlin was born in Missouri and given the name Scott. The mother abandoned the child who was placed in the foster care system: one foster parent rubbed feces in his face, and an adoptive father...
View ArticleStella Angel (1870 - ?) tailoress
This is the same person that I wrote about as a Patient of Austin Flint in August 2023.The 1890s were a difficult time to be a trans woman. The first books on ‘transvestism’ would not be published...
View ArticleGina Chua (1960 - ) journalist
Chua was born in Singapore, educated in the Philippines, did a bachelors’s degree in mathematics at the Universityof Chicago and a master’s in journalism at Columbia University in New York. Chua worked...
View ArticleMartine O'Leary - gay liberation activist.
Original: May 2011.Martine was a member of Leeds Gay Liberation Front and also of the International Marxist Group. In 1974 she was active at the Third Gay Marxist Conference in Leeds and also at the...
View Articlethe person who rejected the White Goddess
In 1948 Faber and Faber published an adventurous book by Robert Graves, poet and mythologist: The White Goddess: A historical grammar of poetic myth. Graves had been working on the book since 1944. The...
View ArticleBernard Norman Barwin (1939 - ) doctor serving trans persons
Barwin was raised in South Africa by parents of Russian and Lithuanian descent. He and his wife left in 1962 after the Sharpeville massacre:“We were just so much opposed to the whole concept of...
View ArticleMichael Cimino (1939 – 2016) film director and author
Cimino grew up in Long Island, New York. He was educated in private schools and then attended first Michigan State University and then Yale. At the latter he took a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) in 1961...
View ArticlePeggy Deauville (1899 -? ) performer
Tom’s father, Benjamin Davies, was the minister at Caersalem Baptist Chapel in the coal-ming village of Abergwynfi, Naeth Port Talbot, South Wales, and was a prominent figure in the local temperance...
View ArticleDavid Martin (1946 – 1984) burglar.
Original version: December 2009David Martin was born in Paddington, London, and was educated at the Finsbury Park comprehensive school. He was trained as a motor mechanic. However he also started...
View ArticlePatricio Manuel (1985 - ) boxer
Manuel was raised by a single mother in Santa Monica, California, and was five times the women’s national amateur boxing champion, and also competed in the 2012 Women’s US Olympic Trials until forced...
View ArticleMikki Nicholson (1978-2014) Scabble champion
Mikki started playing Scrabble in 2005 after discovering the game online. By 2010 she was coming first in tournaments including the British National Championship, which provided her with £1,500 so...
View ArticleLyn Raskin (1928 - ) aspirant playwright, bookkeeper, secretary
Part I: life until first visit to Benjamin clinicPart II: TransitionPart III: comments(Citation dates refer to entries in Raskin's book, Diary of a Transsexual)Edward Raskin, originally from...
View ArticleLyn Raskin: Part II - transition
Part I: life until first visit to Benjamin clinic Part II: TransitionPart III: commentsRaskin was looking for a writer to write her biography, and a friend suggested Irmis Johnson, a noted journalist...
View ArticleTrans Singapore: Comments & Mediagraphy
Part 1: to the first sex-change operation in 1971Part 2: 1972-nowComments and MediagraphyThe new Bugis JunctionCommentsIs there a Chinese original of Cries From Within? Leana Lo calls it “Cries in the...
View ArticleLyn Raskin: Part III - Comments
Part I: life until first visit to Benjamin clinic Part II: TransitionPart III: commentsIf Lyn Raskin is still alive she will be 93/4.One hopes that she did not come to a bad end, but overestimating how...
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