A Gender Variance Who's Who

Lorraine Campbell-Craig

Stephen Goad (1929 - 1990)

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

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

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

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

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

Finally Benjamin helped her obtain surgery in Mexico.

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

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On p187 Meyerowitz says that Sawyer had surgery in Mexico, but on p163 she talks of the difficulty of her surgery with Elmer Belt.
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Part I: Atlanta
Part II: New York City

Part III:  London and Berlin

Wayne Rogers grew up in the small town of Dallas, Georgia. The family was originally Baptist, but became Methodist after moving to a better part of town. When Mrs Rogers was unable to have more children after the birth of the third by caesarean section, she turned to the Worldwide Church of God after hearing Herbert W Armstrong preach on the radio. One of Wayne's aunts killed her husband with a shotgun and walked free after claiming that he was attempting to molest their daughter. Mr Rogers lost the family home gambling.

They then moved to Marietta, which is closer to Atlanta and has bus connections. Wayne started going out dressed female. He also found a copy of John Rechy's City of Night and immediately identified with Miss Destiny, and Kenneth (later Katherine) Marlowe's Mister Madam.

After high school, he got a job in Atlanta, and after work would look for queer people. He then found the beatnik coffee houses and drag bars – although in Georgia you had to be 21 to get into a bar.

He became a Screaming Queen: they wore make-up, screamed at boys and ran away. The local word for that was 'wrecking'. The other queens were referred to as Miss Cocks, Miss Hair, Miss Car, Davinia Daisy who passed well and Queen Elizabeth who managed to get a job as a female model in an Atlanta department store. An older queen, Diamond Lil, ran an antique shop and did drag shows (she is the only one here to be mentioned in Gay and Lesbian Atlanta).

"Everyone was just gay as far as we were concerned; that was the word that we used. … it was just one big grab-bag of being different".(p29-30)

In 1966 Wayne got a Yankee boyfriend, and they got a flat together – the first time that he left home. By now Wayne was a gay hippy rather than a screaming queen. He did his first drag performances miming to Dusty Springfield and Janis Joplin at the hippy bar, The Catacombs, on the corner of 14^th Street. Diamond Lil also performed there.

In 1967 Wayne took the Greyhound bus to New York City for $25 ($175 in modern money). He survived by meeting people in the Stonewall, but could not afford a winter coat, so in September phoned his father for money and returned to Atlanta.

He trained as a male nurse and worked in an old-folks' ward. One night Wayne "in hippy chick drag" took his mother's car but was stopped by the police. He was let out on bail, but the hospital was informed and he lost his job the next day. He took the Greyhound to New York City again.

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The Wikipedia page for Dallas includes Wayne Rogers/Jayne County in its list of notables, but the one for Mariette does not.



Jayne County explains 'Wrecking' (excerpt) from nicholas abrahams on Vimeo.

For 65 years Christina Jwar was a nurse to the black community in Ficksburg, Orange Free State (now Free State) on the border of Lesotho. She was affectionately known as Me Jwar (Mother Jwar).

At the age of 85 she became seriously ill with her legs and feet badly swollen. She was rushed to hospital, where she was undressed and revealed to be male-bodied. The shock of being revealed brought on a heart attack and she died.

• Ivor Crews & Samkelo Kumalo. "After 65 Years the Secret of Christina the Nurse is Out … She's a Man!".. The Sunday Times, 27 July 1986. Reprinted in Ruth Morgan,, Charl Marais, Joy Rosemary Wellbeloved, and Robert Hamblin. Trans: Transgender Life Stories from South Africa. Johannesburg: Jacana, 2010: plate 5.
  
  
  
  
  

++February 2015 - revised after feedback from Alice.


Purnell was conceived in a haystack in the Wirral during an air-raid. He was sexually and physically abused at prep school by the headmaster who was later convicted. His parents had a 'messy horrid' divorce when he was doing his O-level examinations.

He felt confused in that he felt that he should be a girl but was not attracted to men. He developed an alternate identity as Anne who, by the age of 15, socialized only with people who knew nothing of Purnell's male life.

Purnell did a degree in chemistry. He found love with a woman to whom he explained about Anne. She accepted this side of him, but asked that Anne change her name as her sister was also Anne. Purnell had been called Dormouse at school, and, in homage to Lewis Carroll, became Alice.

They were living in Sussex. One evening on the way home from work as a research chemist, Purnell encountered, before the police arrived, a trans girl who had hanged herself in a tree. Her father showed up and expressed anger but not sorrow. Purnell felt that he could easily have been that trans girl, and this led to becoming a volunteer with the Samaritans, the advice line for those at risk of suicide. She found that a third of calls on the line featured gender difficulties.

Alice did not know how to express her femininity until she found a a copy of Virginia Prince's Transvestia in a sex-book shop in London's Soho. She used the Transvestia contact system to find like-minded persons, and became a member of the European Chapter of Virginia Prince's FPE.


Alice, Alga Campbell from Dublin, Giselle, a US expatriate, and Sylvia Carter, met in 1965 and agreed to found the Beaumont Society (named after the 18^th century transvestite pioneer). The membership numbering was started at 100 (which was assigned to Alice, and then issued back and forth from that to give the impression of greater membership. Initially there were almost as many overseas members as in the UK, with some in Malaysia, Kenya and other parts of the Commonwealth. Alice became the overseas contact person because of her French. Regional contacts were appointed but were often the only member in their region.

After an initial meeting in Hampstead, the first full meeting was held in Southampton in 1966 with 12 in attendance including two wives.

Purnell had been attending the Charing Cross Hospital Gender Clinic under the care of Dr Randell, and that same year was offered surgery.  However Purnell married his lover instead after five years together. They had two daughters and a son.

Following the practice of Prince in the US, new members had to be vetted, and the application form explicitly stated that no hint of overt gayness would be tolerated.

"It was also risky meeting others to sponsor them. I remember a character from Gibraltar who was very cagey indeed, who I arranged via the contact system to sponsor so she could attend meetings when in the UK; (you could not do so if not sponsored as they were often in people's homes). At the meeting in a car park this person told me my date & place of birth, schools and University, bank balance and workplace. I was horrified. He had discovered all this via our Secret Service for whom he worked in the Colony. He said he did this to secure his own confidentiality in case we breached his. I felt disinclined to sponsor him and was really horrified that even then governments held so much info' on all of us. I did sponsor him after discussion with Alga. It was a bit of a mutual standoff, but what an invasion of my own privacy!"

Alice, Alga, Virginia, Sylvia - 1971

In 1969 Virginia Prince visited the Beaumont Society in London, Leicester and Scotland. On her return in 1971 she stayed with Alice.

Alice was on BBC Radio 4 with agony aunt Claire Raynor. She attended the TV/TS conferences at Leeds University in 1974, and Leicester University in 1975 – the latter was organized by the Beaumont Society. Also in 1975, Alice was a co-founder of the Beaumont Trust, a registered charity, which separately from the Beaumont Society, set up a helpline and published educational booklets on transgender topics. In 1976 Alice became Vice-President of the Beaumont Society, and President a year later.

In 1977, Alice trained as a nurse, specializing in geriatric services. She then worked as such for 26 years, at one time becoming a matron, ++including nursing support for transgender surgery.

She ++finally had surgery in 1982 after the dissolution of her marriage, and remained President of the Beaumont Society until 1984. She also worked with Judy Cousins at SHAFT. She researched the then literature on trans topics and was disappointed. She joined HBIGDA (now WPATH) and attended its European meetings. She found that they were dominated by US concerns and that the Standards of Care were mainly to protect the surgeons, and that the emphasis was on psychiatry rather than on psychology/counselling. Using the contacts that she had made she organized the first of the GENDYS conferences which was held at Manchester University in 1990. This was intended as a British conference, and deliberately brought together each type of professional who deals with trans persons, and each type of trans person. There were a further seven GENDYS conferences held every two years. Alice edited all the GENDYS Conference Reports and often contributed papers.

Alice in 2011

She is also a poet, a dog lover and a fossil collector. She has lived most of her life in Sussex.

Alice Purnell was made an OBE in the 2012 New Years Honours List: "For services to Transgender People".

• Alice Purnell. "Why does transexuality exist?" and "TV, TG, TS – What's in a label?" in Michael Trevor Haslam. Transvestism: A Guide. Beaumont Trust, 1993.
  
• A. Purnell (ed.). Conference Report of the 1^st International Gender Dysphoria Conference. London: BM Gendys, 1991.
  
• A. Purnell (ed.). Conference Report of the 2^nd International Gender Dysphoria Conference. London: BM Gendys, 1993.
  
• A. Purnell (ed.). Conference Report of the 3^rd International Gender Dysphoria Conference. London: BM Gendys, 1995.
  
• A. Purnell (ed.). Conference Report of the 4^th International Gender Dysphoria Conference. London: BM Gendys, 1996.
  
• A. Purnell (ed.). Conference Report of the 5^th International Gender Dysphoria Conference. London: BM Gendys, 1999.
  
• A. Purnell (ed.). Gendys 2K: Sixth International Gender Conference Report. London: BM Gendys, 2001.
  
• A. Purnell (ed.). Conference Report of the 7th International Gender Dysphoria Conference. London: BM Gendys,2002.
  
• A. Purnell (ed.), Conference Report of the 8th International Gender Dysphoria Conference. London: BM Gendys, 2004.
  
• Alice Purnell. Transexed and Transgendered People: A Guide. Gendys Conferences, 2005.
  
• Alice L100. "A History of the Beaumont Society". Beaumont Magazine, 13,4, 2005. Online at: www.yumpu.com/en/document/view/6971183/a-short-beaumont-history-the-beaumont-society.
  
• Alice Kelly Purnell. Be the Flame Not the Moth: An Anthology of Poems (and Some Prose). Golden Flower Press, 2010.
  
• Alice Purnell & Jed Bland (ed). Trans in the Twenty First Century: Concerning Gender Diversity. Beaumont Trust, 2011.
  
• "New year honours for Brighton and Hove LGBT supporters". Brighton and Hove News, December 31^st, 2011. www.brightonandhovenews.org/2011/12/31/new-year-honours-for-brighton-and-hove-lgbt-supporters/12027.
• email from Alice Purnall, 7 Feb 2015

Christine Burns interviewed Alice Purnell,20 May 2013




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We have a list of the 4 founders of the Beaumont Society, but we still don't have a list of the 12 founders of the Hose and Heel Club.

Alice says that the Beaumont Society was never really anti-gay, merely obliged to distance itself from being perceived as gay because of the laws at the time.  Whether you buy this or regard it as a post-facto PR position, the Beaumont Society has grown away from its Princian origins.  The interview with Christine Burns contains none of the mean spirited rhetoric that Prince herself retained till the end.

Note that Alice uses 'transgender' as a umbrella term apart from transvestites.  You find the same usage with Katherine Cummings, the Australian FPE alumna.   The sterile debate re transgender=heterosexual transvestite is mainly a US hangup.

++In the initial verion of this article I had assumed that Alice was non-op because a) she was president of a Princian organization and b) there was no statment to the contrary.   However it has now been clarified that the assumption was not so, and statements have been added in the narrative above.


Dallas Denny has an essay, Consumer relations: WPATH’s evolving relations with those it serves, in which she mentions that as late as 1989 she was still getting a run-around attempting to join HBIGDA. Alice had joined a few years earlier, but apparently in stealth.

Original February 2008. Revised September 2013. 

Vern Bullough was born and raised in Salt Lake City.  He and his high-school sweetheart, Bonnie Uckerman (1927 - 1996), left the Mormon Church as teenagers in protest against its then exclusion of black people.  Bonnie's mother left her family to live with a woman, Berry Berryman.  Vern found this fascinating and asked many questions and met their gay and lesbian friends.  Vern and Bonnie married in 1947, and had two children. 

After being in the US Army, Vern did a BA in history at the University of Utah and an MA and PhD in 1954 at Chicago University, using GI Bill Benefits. He specialized in the Middle Ages and did a dissertation on medical education.  He was hired the same year to teach at Youngstown University in Ohio. 

In 1959 he became a professor of history at San Fernando Valley State College  (which later became California State University at Northridge), and Bonnie, already a nurse, completed a PhD in Sociology.  Shortly afterwards Vern became associated with Virginia Prince.   He also became involved with the homophile organization, ONE, Inc and became head of the San Fernando Valley chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). 

Vern and Bonnie became friends with Prince and visited Virginia and his wife Doreen at home.  They attended the second meeting of the Hose and Heel Club in 1960.  Having published several articles and books on the early history of medicine and nursing, Vern felt that he could look at sex, and published The History of Prostitution in 1964.  Working with ONE, Inc, where he came to know Harry Hay, Jim Kepner and Don Slater, Vern was successful in getting the San Fernando Valley chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to adopt a policy of protection of homosexuals, transvestites and transsexuals.  He was chairman when the local ACLU was very involved in the struggle to desegregate Los Angeles City schools.

In 1965 ONE, Inc split into two competing factions, and Vern Bullough was one of only two people who were able to maintain working relationships with both sides.  In 1966 the national ACLU adopted a national policy re homosexuals, transvestites and transsexuals based on Bullough's draft.

He rode in an early gay parade in Hollywood in 1966 that Slater organized to demand that gays be drafted to serve in the Vietnam War. Bullough opposed the war but supported gays' rights to serve in the military.  That same year Vern was able to visit West Asia on a Fulbright scholarship.   However the trip was marred when his son David was killed in a hit-and-run accident in Jerusalem.  The Bulloughs subsequently adopted three children of different races, two of whom are gay.

Vern allied himself with gay causes, and was a founder of gay caucuses in the American Historical Association and the American Sociological Association. He was a charter member of the original Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG), which was founded in Los Angeles.  He established the Vern and Bonnie Bullough Collection on Sex and Gender, housed at the campus' Oviatt Library.  He “halfway encouraged” John Brown to do transsexual surgery, as he admits with chagrin. In 1974 Vern and Bonnie organized a conference in Los Angeles under the auspices of the Institute for the Study of Human Resources (ISHR, associated with ONE and sponsored by Reed Erickson) which brought together Virginia Prince, Christine Jorgensen, Zelda Suplee, Laud Humphries, Christopher Isherwood and Evelyn Hooker.  The same year he and Bonnie published, The Subordinate Sex, 1974. This was his first book sponsored by the millionaire trans man Reed Erickson, and the one in which he made the claim that Islam is a sex-positive religion.

In 1976 Vern Bullough, Dorr Legg and other members of ONE, Inc finally published their An Annotated Bibliography of Homosexuality: In Two Volumes, which also contained the largest bibliography of transvestite and transsexual material available at that time.  His Sexual Variance  of the same year was again sponsored by Reed Erickson.  It contains many examples of gay and transgender behavior showing that it differs across time and between cultures.

Bonnie progressed from sociology instructor to professor of nursing, chair of primary care and coordinator of the graduate nursing program.

In 1979 Virginia Prince gave a talk at Northridge and Vern introduced her to his colleague, Richard Docter.  Vern published his Homosexuality, a History, the final book sponsored by Reed Erickson.  Chapter 10 is called “Cross-Dressing: Transvestism, Transsexualism, and Homosexuality” in which only one real transvestite is named: his friend, the avowed non-homosexual, Virginia Prince. He also mentions the Chevalier d’Eon, Lili Elvenes (Elbe) and Christine Jorgensen who were not homosexual either. But only these few. For some reason, even at the price of damaging the logic of his book, he chose not to mention at all any of José Sarria, Sylvia Rivera, Marsha P. Johnson, Bunny Breckinridge, Jimmy Donahue, Miss Destiny, Tamara Rees, Patricia Morgan, Norma Jackson, Hedy Jo Star, Candy Darling, Minette, Rachel Harlow, Rae Bourbon, Francis Renault, Dawn Langley Simmons, Abby Sinclair, Angela Douglas, Perry Desmond, Lee Brewster, Liz Eden, Holly Woodlawn, Carlotta. This was the first sign that he was censoring the existence of gay/androphilic trans women.

Later that year Vern and Bonnie Bullough moved to the State University of New York at Buffalo where Vern was dean of natural and social sciences, and Bonnie was dean of nursing.  In 1981 Vern earned a Batchelor of Science in Nursing from California State University, Long Beach, and proudly put his Registered Nurse license number on his CV.    In 1992 he was honored by the International Humanist and Ethical Union, and was their chairman 1995-6.  He was also on the editorial board of Paidika: The Journal of Paedophilia. 

In 1993 Vern and Bonnie Bullough returned to Los Angeles after their retirement. Vern again taught at Northridge as an adjunct professor until 2003. That year Vern and Bonnie published Cross Dressing, Sex, and Gender, specifically on trans people and their doctors. In the chapter “Transsexualism” they discuss (only) 6 known transsexuals: Lili Elbe (surgery 1931), Alan Hart (1918), Roberta Cowell (1951), Michael Dillon (1949), Christine Jorgensen (1953) and Jan Morris (1972)– none of whom, incidentally, had a male partner. He does also mention Coccinelle (1958), who had three husbands after her operation, but he puts her in the “Drag Queens and Cross Dressing on the Stage” chapter rather than the “Transsexualism” chapter, and omits all mention of her husbands. There is no mention at all of April Ashley (1960) whose divorce by her husband set such an unfortunate precedent, but then she could not be mentioned without admitting that she had a husband. Almost all the people that I mentioned in a previous paragraph are still apparently unknown to the Bulloughs, as are the extra people who were in the news in the additional 14 years. Of those mentioned, only Jan Morris and Coccinelle transitioned later than Jorgensen in 1953. Thus in the 40 years prior to writing their book, the Bulloughs seem to have become aware of only two more transsexuals, although they knew of Michael Dillon from Liz Hodgkinson's 1989 biography rather than from the media kerfuffle in 1958. In the “Organized Transvestism” chapter, again, only his friend Virginia Prince is mentioned, and the equally important work by Louise Lawrence, José Sarria and Sylvia Rivera is totally ignored.  And one more thing: The Bulloughs ignore completely the organizations for female-to-males. Surely they would not omit Reed Erickson, his former sponsor? Actually they do. But the next major ftm organizer is Louis Sullivan. Okay, he is briefly mentioned (p306) as a female cross-dresser who finds men's clothing erotic. They suppress the fact that he transitioned to male, and – this fits the pattern - that he became a man to be a gay man, a role that he tragically embraced to the point of dying of Aids.

Bonnie Bullough died in 1996, just before the publication of the anthology Gender Blending edited by herself, Vern and James Elias.  Vern quickly re-married.

In 2004 Vern encouraged Richard Docter to write and publish his biography of Virginia Prince and provided a Preface.
Helen Boyd asked Bullough to comment on rumors that he must be a cross-dresser because of his strong interests in the transgender community. Others assumed that he was gay and were disappointed to learn that he was an avowed heterosexual.

"If I was everything I wrote books about, I would probably be a very screwed-up person," he said, mentioning his works on sadomasochism, pedophilia, masturbation and other forms of sexual expression. I consider myself a sex researcher, and I will admit to having a strong interest in the way people sexually express themselves."

In his final book with Ariadne Kane, Crossing Sexual Boundaries, 2006, Bullough's Introduction again - as we now expect - fails to mention any transsexuals with male lovers/husbands, as does the book itself which contains 18 mtf and 2 ftm autobiographical essays, but not a single one in which the person has a male spouse. As Kane has said: "We tried to involve contributors from all sectors of the gender spectrum, including androgynes, non operative and post-operative, individuals, spouses and close friends of ‘T’ people" --- and they could not find a single trans person with a male partner!!!

Bullough died later in 2006, of cancer.  He was 77.  

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Apparently Bullough was uncomfortable with transsexuals or transvestites who have male partners. This would explain why he was unable to name any gay transvestites or transsexuals in his 1979 book, and why Coccinelle is put in the other chapter in the 1993 book.  However this is odd in that he worked so well with gay organizations as well as with Virginia Prince.  He is even critical of Prince for proclaiming that transvestites are necessarily heterosexual.  And yet the omission is plainly there in his books.  I suspect somehow the influence of Prince, who apparently also had input into the non-presence of gay transvestites in Harry Benjamin's book and scale. 

Photo of Bullough, Prince, and Docter from Docter's book.

In his Preface to Richard Docter’s biography of Virginia Prince Bullough makes the claim – that surprisingly has been ignored in the debate about social construction - that “there is no evidence in Western culture of what might be called a heterosexual transvestite consciousness before the twentieth century”, and probably not before Magnus Hirschfield modified the term 'transvestite' in 1910.

Michel Foucault is associated with the claim that there were no homosexuals before that term was coined in 1869, and this claim is wrongly taken to represent the social constructionist position. The historian Rictor Norton has written extensively against social constructionism largely by demonstrating the many homosexuals who existed and had sex before 1869.

What a shame that Bullough made this claim only in a Preface to someone else's book. Could someone pay attention to the claim and either refute it or develop it?
---------

• Vern L. Bullough. Sexual Variance in Society and History. New York: Wiley 1976.
• Vern L. Bullough. Homosexuality, a History. New York: New American Library 1979.
• Vern L. Bullough & Bonnie Bullough. Cross Dressing, Sex, and Gender. University of Pennsylvania Press 1993. 
• Vern L. Bullough.  "In Memory of Bonnie Bullough".  The Journal of Sex Research, 33,3, 1996: 179-181.   
• Vern L. Bullough, Bonnie Bullough & James Elias (ed). Gender Blending. Amherst NY: Prometheus Books 1997. 
• Raj Ayyar.  "America's Foremost Historian of Sexuality: Vern L. Bullough, RN, PhD ".  Gay Today, 01/01/03.  http://gaytoday.com/interview/010103in.asp.
• Vern L. Bullough. “Preface” in Richard F Docter. From Man to Woman: The Transgender Journey of Virginia Prince. Docter Press xiv, 149 pp 2004. 
• Helen Boyd.  "Five Questions With… Vern Bullough".  en|Gender, November 16, 2005.   www.myhusbandbetty.com/2005/11/16/five-questions-with-vern-bullough.
• J. Ari Kane-Demaios (Ariadne Kane) & Vern L. Bullough (eds) Crossing Sexual Boundaries: Transgender Journeys, Uncharted Paths Prometheus Books, 365 pp, 2006. 
• Elaine Woo.  "Vern Bullough, 77; Prolific Author Was Scholar of Sex History".  Los Angeles Times, July 2, 2006.  http://articles.latimes.com/2006/jul/02/local/me-bullough2.
• Wayne Dynes.  "Vern Bullough, 1928 - 2006".  Dyneslines, July 02, 2006.   http://dyneslines.blogspot.ca/2006/07/vern-bullough-1928-2006.html.
• Jeremy Pearce.  "Vern Leroy Bullough, 77, Noted Medical Historian, Dies" The New York Times, July 3, 2006.  www.nytimes.com/2006/07/03/us/03bullough.html.
• www.vernbullough.com. 

 EN.WIKIPEDIA     AMAZON.COM     WORLDCAT   PHILOSOPEDIA    PHILOSOPEDIA(Bonnie Bullough)  BOYWIKI  

Angela was born to Italian immigrants in the US Midwest. The father was a macho cop who sometimes beat his wife and child. Angela was criticized for being too much like the father, especially after the mother died when the child was 12, and the father remarried.

At 15 Angela was sent to a boarding school run by nuns, and the next year transferred to an aspirancy, a training school for girls who aspired to be nuns, but was sent home after trysts with a classmate were discovered. Angela trained as a nurse, and with the encouragement of a favorite nun did enter a convent as Sister Mary Dominick, but after further love involvements, had to leave.

Angela then left a first lover who was a lesbian, Angela feeling rather that he was a man who wanted a male-female relationship. While working as an operating-room technician, Angelo found a pregnant woman who accepted him as a man, but she died in childbirth.

Angelo's next girlfriend, Rebecca, had religious objections which were not quieted by the copy of Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness that he gave her to read, but did finally accept that Angelo was becoming a man.

When Christine Jorgensen's autobiography came out in 1967, Angelo (and many other transsexuals) attempted to contact Harry Benjamin.

"And scared was the word. No other word adequately described my feeling as I picked up the phone and put in a long-distance call to the man I wanted most in the world to see, Dr Harry Benjamin. His amiable secretary explained that the doctor was away. She would, however, refer me to a most reputable physician in the city where I was working. 'He can advise you,' she said, 'and make recommendations.' I thanked her and placed the call. That secretary said the doctor had just left on vacation and she had no recommendations to offer. I phoned the county Medical Society and was given three names, among them that of Dr Patterson. My fourth call was to his office.(p143"

Dr Patterson answered his own phone and told Angelo to come right over. After a physical and one session with the psychiatrist in the next office, Angelo was approved as transsexual and started taking testosterone. The physical transition caused a rift with Rebecca who again raised her religious objections. Dr Patterson was apparently stringing Angelo along with assurances that referrals were forthcoming, but eventually Angelo realized that Patterson has no such contacts.

However he became friends with Nick, another patient of Dr Patterson. an East European immigrant who had already had a mastectomy and hysterectomy. Nick found Dr Lake in an out-of-town hospital who was willing to did a mastectomy for high fees. Angelo and Rebecca made up, Angelo had his first phalloplasty as the first-ever such patient of a Dr Fogle, which however became infected and had to be removed.  He did not attempt phalloplasty again for another four years, this time with Dr Robertson in the Midwest.  Again complications set in and he lost the tip.

He tried without success to reconcile with his father. Even when the father was dying after a stroke and heart attack, they were not able to make peace.

Angelo legally changed his name, and he and Rebecca were married. He was employed as a nursing supervisor in Lake's hospital.

Using the name Mario Martino they, assisted by Dr Lake, founded The Labyrinth Foundation Counseling Service in Yonkers, New York for male-to-female transsexuals, and provided a post-operative half-way house.

As Mario he published his autobiography, the first such in the modern sense by a trans man, in 1977. The book is dedicated to Harry Benjamin and to Rebecca, and includes a short Foreword by Benjamin.

Angelo studied for a PhD in counseling psychology which he completed in 1979. Sometime in the early 1980s he dropped out of sight, and wasn't heard of again.

It is rumored that he married a second time, moved to Florida and passed on in 2011.

*Not Mario Martino the Italian photographer, nor the Puerto Rican journalist, nor the character in The Godfather.

• Mario Martino with harriett - Emergence: a Transsexual Autobiography. New York: A Signet Book 1979.
  
• "Personal Profiles: Mario Martini". Gender Review, 4, March 1979: 5-6.
  
• Pat Califia. Sex changes : the politics of transgenderism. San Francisco: Cleis Press 1997. Second edition by Patrick Califia 2003: 38-47.
  
• Judith Halberstam. Female masculinity. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1998: 154-5.
  
• Joanne J. Meyerowitz. How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States. Cambridge, Mass. ; London: Harvard University press, 2004: 94-5, 152, 158, 162, 163, 165, 184, 227, 228, 236-7, 275.
  
• Emily Nelson. FTM Trans Theory VS. Trans Narratives: Working to an Updated Trans Theory. Masteruppsats at Upsale Universitet, 2011. http://uu.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:461938/FULLTEXT01.
  

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Tornebeno/Martino was insistent that he was not and had not been a lesbian, and conceived of FTMs as heterosexual men.   As Califia notes: “It would be interesting to see his reaction to the FTMs with gay male identities who are becoming more vocal today(p46)”.

Another group that Martino did not identify with was trans women:  “But the male-to-female patients were another story.  Too few of them acted like any other female, either in speech or in manner.  The extroverts among them referred to each other as closet queens, shrilled out their demands, showed their newly constructed vaginas to anyone who’d look, and used language that I’d never heard from a woman (p209-210)”.

Was Emergence the first autobiography by a trans man?   Several of the 18th and 19th century trans men wrote auto biographies of a kind, but the assumptions and social constructions are quite different from those of the 1970s.   However Robert Allen’s But for the Grace: The True Story of a Dual Existence London: W.H. Allen 1954 surely counts as a modern trans man autobiography.

Horst Strub, grew up in Emmendingen, Baden-Württemberg.   He had been fostered as a child, and was an outsider, but grew up to be a nurse and a photographer. He was a member of the neo-Nazi Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands 2000-2. In retrospect, Strub claims not to have understood their platform, and joined because he was accepted.

Strub then became Monika. She actually found less acceptance from her fellow nurses, than from the NPD.

She later joined and became a candidate for the Linkespartei (which is to the left of the Social Democrats). She has been threatened by her former NPD associates several times, and her door and windows were covered by NPD stickers.

• "Former neo-Nazi become leftist after sex change". The Local: Germany's News in English, 12 Mar 11. www.thelocal.de/politics/20110312-33671.html.
• “Skinhead's sex, career and party change”. Austrian Times, 13.03.11. www.austriantimes.at/?id=31397.
• Hans-Jürgen Truöl.   "Linke nominieren Monika Strub: Soziale Fragen als Schwerpunkt zur Landtagswahl 2011 definiert". Badische Zeitung, 01 Oct 2010. www.badische-zeitung.de/kreis-emmendingen/linke-nominieren-monika-strub--36119683.html.

Rhodri Davies was raised in a house on Wimbledon Common. His father was a fighter pilot in the Great War, and reservist who died in the Second World War. His mother died in an air accident over Frankfurt in 1952.

He had sexual experiences at his boys' public school, where he gained respect by becoming the captain of the cricket XI.

After school he went to Africa to work on the family’s cattle farm, where he was also a big game hunter.

He did National service in the Life Guards, part of the Household Cavalry, and stayed for ten years rising to the rank of captain and serving in Egypt and Aden, where he was almost killed when his vehicle was blown up. He escorted the Queen, was in the guards at Whitehall, and played polo.

He then took over the family farm in Leicestershire. He met his wife, June, on a course for riding instructors. They had two sons.

After 30 years of marriage they divorced and his oldest son took over the farm. In 1994 Rhodri decided that it was time to become Miranda Ponsonby (Ponsonby being her mother's maiden name). She couldn’t be bothered with a real life test:

“I said bugger that to all that messing about. I saw this chap, a cosmetic surgeon, at a clinic in Huntingdon. I don't think he's practising any more. I asked him how much to skip all that bloody nonsense. He said £6,000. About a week later, I went up to some dreadful place called Rotherham. I hadn't ever dressed as a woman before. So I bought some women's clothes, put them in a suitcase, and drove up on a rainy, awful day. It was a horrifying operation. They managed to leave part of one of my testicles behind. Which was a bit careless. After a day, I decided to go home."

Miranda trained as a nurse at Guys Hospital, and is the oldest nurse ever to qualify in the National Health Service. She has now worked at the Kettering General Hospital for 10 years, and is currently in the coronary care unit.

She is quite open about her past. Her family, her regiment and the hunting set all cut her off. She claims that she is no happier now than she was before the operation. Her advice to those contemplating sex change surgery is "I would say don't do it. I am a very strong person and if you are not you will be destroyed by it”.

She published her autobiography in 2009.

• Miranda Ponsonby. The Making of Miranda: From Gentleman to Gentlewoman in One Lifetime. Gretton: Noble, 2009. www.themakingofmiranda.com.
• “Why I had a sex change operation. Rhodri's tranformation into Miranda”. Evening Telegraph. 10 Oct 2009. http://www.northantset.co.uk/features/Why-I-had-a-sex.5457923.jp.
• Peter Stanford. “The day Rhodri became Miranda”. The Daily Telegraph. 29 Jun 2007. www.telegraph.co.uk/news/features/3633175/The-day-Rhodri-became-Miranda.html.
• Damian Whitworth. “An officer and a gentle woman: the sex-change aristocrat”. The Times. July 13, 2009. http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/article6694517.ece
• ” New book tells extraordinary tale of sex change nurse”. Nursing Times. 10 October 2009. http://www.nursingtimes.net/most-popular/off-duty/new-book-tells-extraordinary-tale-of-sex-change-nurse/5007155.article.
• “Miranda Ponsonby”. Nona-people. July 17, 2009. http://nona-people.blogspot.com/2009/07/miranda-ponsonby.html.

Georges Marie André Schwidenhammer was born into a rich industrial family in the Vosques. There were a few scandals before the war with regard to his crossdressing.

After studying physics and chemistry, he enlisted in the Army, where he attained the rank of captain.

Working with the Résistance in 1940, he helped several hundred prisoners-of-war escape the camp at Luneville. Then from late 1940 to 1943 he organized the production of a scouring powder, which employed a few dozen young people who would otherwise have been conscripted for compulsory labour in Germany. In 1943 he was arrested and sentenced to death by the Gestapo, and finally, interned at Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp (in Alsace which had been incorporated into the Reich). There he was subjected to experimental hormonal treatment.

After 1945, he was forced to resign from the Army, and his internment was not recognized by the Military Pensions office.

Schwidenhammer now chose to live as female, using the name Marie André. She obtained diplomas in para-medical specialities and practiced as a masseuse therapist nurse, first in Paris hospitals and Monaco, then she moved to private practice, establishing a practice in the 17th arrondissement of Paris, where she worked until her death. She was in contact with most French transsexuals and transvestites. She also worked with Mme Bonnet who did waxing and electrolysis.


In the early 1950s, Marie André happened to meet Coccinelle by chance on a train, and informed her of hormones, and of the possibility of transition.

In 1963 Marie André was decorated with the cross for voluntary fighters in the Résistance.

In 1965 she founded AMAHO (l'Aide aux Malades Hormonaux), registered under the law of 1 July 1901 regarding voluntary associations. She proposed that transsexuals and transvestites were the result of growth hormones injected into calves and chickens which were then eaten by pregnant mothers.

She was for many years the transsexual spokesperson, frequently quoted in newspapers and books. She did not hesitate to approach government ministries on behalf of transsexuals. AMAHO issued membership cards that closely resembled the French National Identity Card. This was tolerated by the Prefecture of Police.

With a judgement in cassation in 1975, and and a ruling in the Court of Appeal of Reims, 1979, she was able to remove her first name ‘George’ from her identity papers. This became a precedent for all French citizens.

She became strident as was probably necessary for her work, but this did alienate some.

She died in a car accident. Her grave, very simple with her birth name only, is located near Chartres.

• Joseph Doucé. La Question transsexuelle. Paris: Luminière et justice. 1986 :159.
• Maxime Foerster. Histoire des transsexuels en France. Paris: Harmatten 2003. Beziers: H&O 2006: chp 2.

_________________________________________________________________

While rarely remembered outside France, she is of course a pioneer trans activist, who was working at the same time as Virginia Prince, José Sarria and Reed Erickson in the US and Della Aleksander and Charlotte Bach in the UK.

Both Doucé and Foerster express skepticism re the hormonal treatments in the concentration camp.  We have only Schwidenhammer’s own word for this having happened.

Born in New Orleans of a Haitian mother and Baptist minister father who left when the child was three.

She transitioned to female in 1965, and was billed as ‘The First Negro Sex Change’.

She worked as a nurse and was also a jazz vocalist.

• Delisa Newton. “My lover beat me”. National Insider, June 20, 1965: 4-5.
• Delisa Newton. “Why I could never marry a white man!”. National Insider July 18, 1965: 17.
• Delisa Newton. “From Man to Woman”. Sepia. 1966.

Thomas Völling was born in West Germany with indeterminate external genitalia as a result of virilizing adrenal hyperplasia, and was raised as a boy.



However even as a child he identified as a girl. During an appendectomy at age 17, his uterus and womb were discovered, which led to his fully-intact female internal organs being removed the next year, without his being properly informed. He was also subject to attempts at penis construction and prescribed male hormones.

The surgeon wrote to the German military authorities that Thomas should be excused military service because he was “genotypically female” and “has not been fully informed about the extent of his condition”.

Thomas has worked as a nurse in Düsseldorf, and has been working towards a change to female, but has been treated as transsexual rather than as intersex. Völling did not understand that she was intersex until 2006 when a urologist gave him a questionnaire as part of a national study on intersexuality.

In 2007-8 Christiane sued the surgeon who removed her organs, and sought €100,000 in compensation. The Cologne Justice, Dietmar Reiprich, ruled that the surgeon had acted illegally. She is also applying to have her name and id changed.

• “Gender Warrior Wins Case Against Surgeon”. Deutsch Welle 06.02.2008. www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,3111505,00.html.
• “German Gender-Assignment Case Has Intersexuals Hopeful”. Deutsch Welle 12.12.2007. www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,3000902,00.html
• "Christiane". Organization Intersex International. http://www.intersexualite.org/Christiane.html#anchor_11
• Curtis Hinkle. "The Chatty Cathy Approach to Intersex Activism". Intersex Pride. April 22, 2008. http://intersexpride.blogspot.com/2008/04/chatty-cathy-approach-to-intersex.html

A story was told in The Evening News on 8 September 1955. In Parkhurst Prison on the Isle of Wight, an old lag wishes to unburden his conscience. The old lag had been a sailor, and in 1887 he fell ill and was hospitalized. He fell in love with one of the nurses, and they were married before he left on a last voyage. On return he had a few drinks with his shipmates and he went off with one of the prostitutes who joined them.

His wife would no longer sleep with him. One night he found a bloodstained carving knife on the kitchen table, and a few days later a pair of his trousers hanging to dry though still bloodstained. His wife admitted that she was doing the Ripper killings: 'Both of our lives have been ruined by women of that class - and I'll see they don't wreck other people's lives!' She would dress as a man - as a sailor - but carry a nurses cloak and bonnet in a bag. The deed done she would dress as a nurse and calmly walk away. After the death of Mary Kelly, a man was suspected and almost charged. Not wanting an innocent man to be punished, she decided to stop the killings.

• Colin Wilson & Robin Odell. Jack The Ripper: Summing Up And Verdict. London: Corgi Books 1987.