Towards a TS dictionary -- the letter Rr

   BOLD=cross reference, see item when appropriate letter posted

Radical Drag

a)     The drag performers who emerged from the RadFems of London Gay Liberation Front, who combined gender-mix drag with radical left politics.  Bloolips became the major performing troupe, taking inspiration from the New York troupe Hot Peaches, and Bette Borne the best known performer. 

b)    More generally, drag that mixes male and female clothing, and is often acquired in charity shops.  See also Gender Fuck.

Radical Faeries

A movement founded in 1979 by Harry Hay and Don Kilhefner.  A major concept was the rejection of Hetero-imitation, supplemented by the values of the 1960s counterculture and creative spiritualism.  Inspiration was taken from indigenous cultures.   It remained gay-centred.  Trans persons were accepted in, but the movement was not a trans movement.  A type of Men’s Liberation.

Radical Feminists

a)     RadFems. A term for the more gender variant of males involved with London Gay Liberation Front in the early 1970s.  Drag became the thing at Gay Lib dances and meetings, and then evolved into street theatre: most notable in support at the trial of women for disrupting the Miss World contest, and the disruption of the 1971 Christian Festival of Light.  These Radical Feminists lived in communal squats in Brixton and Notting Hill, and wore drag all day.  They aligned themselves with the lesbians in GLF, and after the women split, they came to dominate the all-London meetings.   However, the movement had run its course by late 1973.   As far as it is known, no Radfem from this movement ever completed a transgender Transition.  See also Bethnal Rouge.

b)    A branch of feminism, that arose from the second-wave feminism of the 1960s, that concentrates on the role of the Patriarchy and its rules, that Gender is a Social Construct that enables the patriarchy.  Gender equality can be achieved only by toppling this Social Construct.

c)     A subset of (b).  The Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists (TERFs) who faced with trans people, some of whom are actually deconstructing the Gender Binary in their own lives, decided that that was not what they meant by destroying the Gender Social Construction.

Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD)

The supposed phenomena of teenagers suddenly self-identifying as Trans, probably at the same times as others in their peer group.   Some regard this as a social coping mechanism for a non-discussed disorder of another kind. The paper initially proposing the concept was based on surveys of parents of transgender youth recruited from three anti-trans websites, and is not recognized as a valid mental health diagnosis by any major professional association.   See Transtrender.

Reclaimed, Redeemed

Some words, previously used as slurs, have been reclaimed by the group that they refer to, and thus used as words of pride.  Examples include the words Queer, Virago, Decadence, Sissy, Travesti, Baeddel, Bakla.

Read                          

a)     To realise that someone's sex or gender is other than as presented, or was so at some time in the past.  See also Parviscience.

b)    To insult imaginatively - NY ball scene usage.

Read to filth, read for filth

A stronger form of Read (b).  To scold, to call out, to correct.

Real, Realness

A term used by the New York Voguing Houses for those able to pass in sunshine or under bright lights.

Real Disguise

A term proposed by Roger Baker with reference to Cross-Acting on stage or film performance.  A performance such that the audience accepts it as portrayed even if the off-stage gender of the actor is known to be other.   Baker nominates the Boy Actresses of the Renaissance stage as a prime example.  See False Disguise.

Real girl

A term for a cis woman, used by trans women in previous decades. This is an example of False Consciousness in that the trans women are downgrading their own realness, 

Real-life Experience/ Test (RLE)

The requirement by gender clinics that a trans person should have lived a year or more in the target gender before Completion Surgery.  Some clinics even require it before prescribing Hormones.    There is merit in the practice, as opposed to the requirement, in that if the person does change their mind, Detransition is more achievable if there is no surgery to be reversed.   However, for those who are quite certain of their path, this is an extra frustration.    The refusal of some clinics to acknowledge Real-Life Experience before registering with the clinic is particularly exasperating.    The requirement for RLE before being prescribed Hormones is counter productive is that the person may not therefore pass and thus be subjected to abuse.   While many GICs require a one-year RLE before surgery, there is much evidence of trans persons who have avoided this and thrived well afterwards.

Real name

There is a persistent fallacy that one’s initial name (pre-Transition) is one’s real name.   Unsympathetic interlocutors will demand of a trans person: what was your real name?  This is both rude and illogical.   A trans person has gone through an Ycleptance. A taking of a new name that is as psychologically intense as an Ycleptance for a woman who takes a new name at marriage, or a person who takes a new name as part of acceptance into a religion.  A person’s real name is the one that he/she answers to. A new name fully taken is one’s Real Name.  Also see Heteronym,.

Realignment

An ironic redrafting of Sex Reassignment Surgery is Sex Realignment Surgery.  This avoids the problematic assumption that doctors and surgeons assign and reassign sex/gender. 

Real Self

It is an irony of Transgender change that one must alter one’s body to manifest one’s Real Self.

Recognize Alan Hart, Ad Hoc Committee to

Portland’s The Right to Privacy Political Action Committee held a big fund-raiser each year in the 1990s using Alan Hart’s pre-Transition name.  Local trans persons objected, but it took direct action interrupting the proceedings before the name was changed.  In this they were supported by the Lesbian Avengers.

Rectosigmoid vaginoplasty

The construction of a Neo-Vagina using a section taken from the rectosigmoid colon of the patient.  This was first done for a cis woman with Vaginal Agenesis in 1892 in Paris by Dr WF Sneguireff.   Such surgery for trans women was pioneered by Dr Donald Laub at the Stanford School of Medicine in the mid 1970s. 

Red Pill

A reference to the 1999 film The Matrix, in which the protagonist is offered a choice between a blue pill (and return to obliviousness) and a red pill (which reveals what is really going on).  The term has been adopted by the alt-right for those who convert to their racist, misogynous, homophobic, transphobic viewpoints.  The irony is that in the film, the pill is offered by a black man, and the film was directed by two trans women, and taking the red pill is also taken as an allegory for transgender hormonal therapy.

Regina v Tan, UK 1982

“It is an offence for a man knowingly to live wholly or in part on the earnings of prostitution”.  By this wording only a man can commit this offence.

In 1982 Gloria Greaves of Belgravia, London and her tenant, Mrs Tan, were both arrested and convicted of keeping a disorderly house under the Disorderly Houses Act of 1751.  Furthermore, Mrs Greaves was convicted under the Sexual Offences Act 1956 of living on the earnings of prostitution in that she was Tan's landlady, and her husband of living on the earnings of male prostitution (that is of his wife's).  Mrs Greaves had completed surgical Transition in the early 1960s, and was recognised as female for national insurance purposes.  She was sent to a women’s prison.  

Re-Identify

A person who declared that they were trans, but before surgery, hormones or even cross-living, changes back and Re-Identifies as their birth gender.  Not to be confused with De-Transition where more serious steps were taken.   One type of Change-Back. 

Rén yāo  人妖    

A Chinese term for person altered from nature, a freak or person fond of dressing up and make up.  Applied to trans persons in a derogatory fashion.   Rén=person; yāo=want or request.

Reparative Therapy

A term proposed by Elizabeth Moberly for Homosocial Bonding to replace a failure of bonding with the same-sex parent.  She sees this ‘failure’ as the primary cause of homosexuality.  Where the failure of bonding is particularly severe, ‘a defensive detachment from the same sex implies disidentification: not just an absence of identification but a reaction against identification’. In other words, transsexuality is Extreme Homosexuality.  Her therapy has been condemned as ineffective, and her theory was revealed as based on the reading of only three writers with no new research.     

Replication

Any discovery in science should be able to be replicated by other scientists using the published description.  Alleged Etiologies or causes of gender variance often fail this requirement.   See BSTc, H-Y Antigen, and also Heuristic.

Retro-disguise

A person in disguise playing a role of his/her original persona. This trope was named by Victor Freeburg in his writing on Renaissance theatre. As a dramaturgical device it dates back to ancient Sanskrit drama and was quite popular in Italian and English Renaissance drama. This is not necessarily a gender trope: it can be done with racial impersonation, when characters who are technically black but able to pass as white put on black-face for narrative reasons.  A variant retro-disguise uses the gender of the actor as the first gender-role. This was common in the British theatre until the Restoration when Boy-actresses played females who disguised as male. A modern version would be to cast a woman as a drag queen.

Retrojection

The use of a name acquired or chosen later in life when discussing the early life of the person.   For example, the Wikipedia article on the writer Fay Weldon retrojects her name inappropriately. Weldon was born Fay Birkinshaw, and by a first marriage became Mrs Bateman.  However, the Wikipedia authors refer to her as 'Weldon' in childhood and again when she was Mrs Bateman, that is before she married, or even met, her second husband Ron Weldon in 1960.  A similar practice is that of referring to a person who Transitions, say at age 40, and using the post-transition name for the person’s childhood.

Reverse Discourse

The employment of the terminology of psychiatrists or other authority groups in such a way that the meaning is quite different and even counter to the original.  See e.g. Collusion with Delusion where trans patients supply the contrary-to-fact expected data to psychiatrists.

Ridiculous Theatrical Company (RTC)

A Greenwich Village theatre founded by Charles Ludlam in 1967 which was part of the Theater of the Ridiculous movement.  Over the next twenty years the RTC was a major part of the counter-culture in New York.  The plays were often parodies or re-workings of pop culture with much Camp, Drag, kitsch, grotesque etc.

Rough Trade

A man, who affects to be thuggish, and may be involved with criminal activity or even have membership in a Mafia, who has an affair with a trans woman or a gay man.  He may put the trans woman on the street to sell herself, and live off her income.  It was a stereotype before Stonewall that a trans woman should have such a lover, as is depicted in Jean Genet’s Notre Dame des Fleurs. See also Trade.

Royal Vauxhall Tavern (RVT)

London’s oldest surviving gay venue.  The building was built 1860-2.  It first attracted a gay clientele after the Second World War.  In the 1960s drag performer Chris Shaw and business partner Peter King started the drag shows that the Vauxhall became famous for.  They were performed along the bar after it was cleared of drinks and glasses.  Mrs Shufflewick, Hinge and Brackett, Regina Fong and Lily Savage performed there and Freddie Mercury of Queen was a frequent visitor.

Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle

Charles Armstrong, endocrinologist, specialised in intersex patients and that included transsexuals. He testified for the trans person in both the Forbes-Sempill and the Corbett v. Corbett cases. Surgery on intersex and trans persons ceased in late 1978 when the surgeon, Mr Edwards, retired and was not replaced.

Rupantarkami

A Bengali term for one who desires transformation of their form (roop).  A term used of Transsexuals.

 

Xie Jian Shun 謝尖順 (1918 - ?) soldier

 Xie Jianshun 謝尖順 was born in Chaozhou, Guangdong. The family lived out in the countryside. At the age of seven, he was sick, and a doctor visit was not feasible. It was later reported that his penis was attached to a labium, and the mother simply tore them apart.

In 1934 at age 16, Xie joined the National Revolutionary Army (NRA, 國民革命軍), the military arm of the Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang) which was commanded by Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石). Xie’s mother died the next year, and his father the year after that. By the age of 20, Xie’s breasts had developed in a female fashion, but he was able to keep that hidden. A brief affair with a young woman was going well. Her father accepted that they would marry. However, Xie could not talk about his body and ran from the relationship.

Xie was with the NRA during the struggle against the Japanese invasion, and then against the Communist Party’s People's Liberation Army (PLA, 中国人民解放军). After the PLA’s victory in 1949, Chiang Kai-shek and the NRA retreated to Taiwan, and imposed themselves on the indigenous population there as a one-party dictatorship using martial law and the so-called White Terror (白色恐怖). Xie, as part of the NRA, was part of the move to Taiwan.

In August 1953, just after the end of the Korean War, Xie was suffering recurrent abdominal pains, and went to hospital in Tainan. Dr. Lin Chengyi, a graduate of the Tokyo Zhaohe Hospital and the external medicine department of the Jingjing Medical School, diagnosed the case carefully and found that Xie had a mixture of male and female organs. The details were discussed in the Taiwanese newspapers. 

The first operation, observed by out-of-town doctors and reporters, was an exploratory laparotomy (the opening of the abdominal cavity) to detect the presence of ovarian tissues; labia dissection to examine the vaginal interior, determine the length of the vagina, and confirm the presence (or absence) of the hymen. As reported in the press, Dr Lin assumed that Xie was a biological woman trapped inside a male body, whose feminine-like features gradually revealed themselves under the fingertips of medical experts and in the eyes of the public. “If ovaries and vagina are found inside the womb, removing the penis can turn Xie into a woman; otherwise he becomes a man”. The press compared Xie Jianshun to Christine Jorgensen, and noted that Jorgensen strongly wanted to be a woman, while Xie wanted to remain a heterosexual man. He was quoted in the press: “If my biology does not allow me to remain a man but forces me to become a woman, what else can I do?” It was announced that a uterus and ovaries were confirmed. From this point onward the press started using the female glyph 她 for ta=he/she rather than 他, the male glyph.

Xie was not informed of the results until nine days later, because they were afraid that, given his stated desire to remain male, he might attempt suicide. However Xie did agree to cooperate in the subsequent operations, and signed a consent form. While the doctors were quite aware that actually Xie was intersex (yinyang ren 陰陽人), they talked of the coming operations as sex-change operations. As Chiang says: “the construction of Xie Jianshun’s (trans) sexual identity was driven less by his self- determination— his eventual signature on the surgical consent form notwithstanding— and more by the cultural authority of the surgeons involved and the broader impact of the mass circulation press”.

Xie’s case had come to the attention of the Kuomintang government which ordered that Xie be transferred to the capital, Taipei: “In order to ensure Xie’s safety, and in the hope that a second operation will be carried out smoothly, it has been decided that she will be relocated to Taipei. After being evaluated and operated upon by a group of notable doctors in a reputable hospital, [Xie’s sex change] will mark a great moment in history.”

Shun (to use her personal name), however, refused, writing to say that she preferred to stay in Tainan and with the same doctors. The punishment for this was that Dr Lin was denied the formal permission to proceed. Around this time Xie’s former commanding officer in the NRA came for a visit and made a financial donation. 

After a few months, in November 1953, Shun finally agreed to relocate to Taipei. In early December the United Daily News announced her arrival and a small crowd gathered at the railway station to greet her, but no avail. On 9 December, she was quoted again as saying that she would not relocate. However in mid January, she quietly arrived at No. 1 General Hospital in Taipei. The new surgeon Jiang Xizheng was in charge, and female hormones were prescribed. Both Xie and the new doctors were far less co-operative with the press which was now not informed of the details of the operations. In the second operation, in April 1954, also a laparotomy, two male gonads were removed. In August 1954, there was a penectomy, and a vaginal opening was created.. The media blackout continued until January 1955 when one newspaper ran the headline: “Xie Jianshun’s Male-to-Female Transformation Nearly Complete: The Rumour of Surgical Failure Proved to Be False”, but with no further details

Shun had been developing stronger female attributes: larger breasts and regular menstruation. However she was not happy. She wrote to the President, Chiang Kai-Shek complaining about how her case was handled, and about the hospital food. This led to a visit from two representatives from the Ministry of National Defense. The doctors explained that her recurrent cramps were actual menstrual periods, and that they needed to construct a functional vagina. The Defense officials quickly persuaded Xie to agree.

By now Xie had a third surgeon, Zhang Xianlin, who had regarded the third operation as a simple reconstruction. A vaginoplasty was done in August 1955. A newspaper in Taiwan, and another in Hong Kong, published what they purported to be half-nude photos of Xie, which were quickly dismissed by the hospital as frauds. The Ministry of National Defense awarded Xie one thousand New Taiwan dollars to help buy feminine clothing.

By now the Taiwanese army had started screening new recruits for intersex conditions, and the majority of such press stories came from this source.

In October 1955, several Taiwanese newspapers ran stories on Xie’s completion and success in becoming female. The United Daily News ran a sixteen-instalment series: “The Story of Miss Xie Jianshun”.

In 1959, Chiang Kai-shek’s wife Soong Mei-ling, and a number of celebrities visited Xie, who was working at a relief institute for women and children. By then Shun had dropped the middle part of her name and was going by Xia Shun, and claimed nine, not four surgeries.

• Howard Chiang. “Gender Transformations in Sinophone Taiwan”. Positions, 25,3, 2017.
• Howard Chiang. “Christine Goes to China: Xie Jianshun and the Discourse of Sex Change in Cold War Taiwan” Chp 8 in Angela Ki Che Leung & Izumi Nakayama (eds) Gender, Health, and History in Modern East Asia, HKU Press, 2017.
• Howard Chiang. “Transsexual Taiwan” Chp 5 in After Eunuchs: Science, Medicine, and the Transformation of Sex in Modern China.  Columbia University Press, 2018.
• Jason Lee. “The Rebel”, www.metastasispodcast.com. Online.

EN.Wikipedia

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Xie Jianshun was intersex, and therefore, despite the fuss in the Taiwanese papers, she was not a first in the sense that Jorgensen or Olmos were. Surgical correction of adult intersex persons
(hermaphrodites as they were then called) goes back to the 19^th century.

In the Chinese language (Hàn yǔ) called Mandarin in the West, ‘he’, ‘she’ and ‘it’ are all ‘tā’, and the plural , (they) is ‘tā men’. A unisex pronunciation. However the glyphs are quite different. The male ‘tā’ (he) is 他; the female ‘tā’ (she) is 她. This is the change in the newspaper reports after the first operation.

Traditionally Chinese names have three parts: family name, generational name, personal name. Xie Jianshun can also be written Xie Jian Shun. Her personal name is Shun. Some accounts say that she changed her name by 1959 to Xie Shun. This is not really a change of name, merely a dropping of the middle part.

Nagai Akiko (永井明子) (1918 or 1924 - ? ) cabaret singer

In the early 1950s, the most attention went to Christine Jorgensen as being the first operated-on transsexual.  However there were others around the world who were in the news before the Jorgenson story broke, and who even had surgery earlier than Jorgensen did.  We know of Marta Olmos in Mexico, Marie Jefferson in Canada and Xie Jianshun in Taiwan  (not to mention the sex-change surgeries in Berlin in the late 1920s - early 1930s, and in Switzerland in the early 1940s).

There was also Nagai Akiko 永井明子, a hostess and cabaret singer in Tokyo.  She had surgery 1950-1 at the Nippon Medical School Hospital 日本医科大学, and in November 1954, in accordance with Article 113 of the Family Register Law, Nagai had her civil status changed.

However, unlike Jorgenson, Olmos, Jefferson and Xie, that is all that we know of her.  Not even historians Mark McLelland or Howard Chiang have any more to say - nor is there agreement re her birth year,

• Mark McLelland. Queer Japan from the Pacific War to the Internet Age. Lanham Md & Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield 2005: 113.
• Ishida Hitishi & Murakami Takanori, translated by Win Lunsing. “The Process of Divergence between 'Men who Love Men' and 'Feminised Men' in Postwar Japanese Media”. Intersections: Gender, History and Culture in the Asian Context, 12 January 2006. p8.
• Howard Chiang.  “Transtopia: A Keyword for Our Century”. Cupblog.org, 2021/06/01. Online.  p3-4.
• Eric Seizelet. “Transidentité et droit au Japon".  Revue du droit public et de la science politique en France et à l’étranger, 2023, 5, pp.4-5.

Frances Marie Jefferson (1929- ?) truck driver, domestic

 Jefferson was born in the village of Bridgetown, Nova Scotia, seventh in a family of 10 living children. The attending practitioner was undecided as to the child’s sex, and called in 12 other doctors for advice. They decided the child was a boy, and he was raised as such. 

In the poverty of the Great Depression, the child was admitted to Children’s Aid. With puberty, Jefferson was made to go to school wearing a tight sweater. Jefferson was sent to Victoria General Hospital in Halifax for an ‘exploratory’. The doctors were almost sure that Jeffertson had both male and female organs, but advised against any operations. Soon after, when 14, Jefferson ran away, and returned to the parents who had moved to Saint John, New Brunswick. The mother advised a mastectomy – which was done in Saint John. 

Being 14, Jefferson was old enough to work as an adult – and for six months worked for a construction company building a theatre until fired for not being strong enough, Jefferson then took off for Texas and worked on a ranch, herding cattle from horseback. By age 16 Jefferson was a truck driver in the Yukon. After a fight while nightclubbing, Jefferson was in the army hospital for two weeks, where his non-standard body was noticed. Moving on to Edmonton, Jefferson found work as a lumberjack until a fall from a tree led to an injured kidney and hospitalisation. 

Then there was a job driving trucks between Vancouver and Calgary. Jefferson gave a ride to a young woman in need, and in Calgary they rented an apartment together. They never made love, and Jefferson could not get to telling her what the problem was. They actually arranged to get married, but Jefferson could not go through with it, and on the day flew to Regina, and sent a letter telling the truth. Jefferson saw a psychiatrist in Regina, and was advised that if he could not live as man, she should become a woman.

In October 1953, now aged 24, Jefferson moved to Toronto, and was admitted to the General Hospital for a minor operation, and was diagnosed using dated jargon as a ‘pseudo-hermaphrodite’. 

Jefferson then went to Windsor, Ontario. There Frances Marie– as she was becoming - wore female clothing for the first time. As she walked down Windsor’s Ouellette Avenue she felt that all were staring at her, but it went well. She registered at the Hotel Dieu Hospital, the Catholic Hospital in Windsor, and consulted Dr Walter Percival, who had done a vaginoplasty for a cis woman. Five doctors came to Jefferson’s bedside, and made it clear that there was no going back – that if she had the operation, she would die a woman. Dr Percival created a vagina using skin from her stomach. The operation took two hours, and she was then moved to the Metropolitan Hospital for a month. Afterwards she was started on female hormones.

The Jefferson family had moved to Port Colborne, Ontario and Francis Marie joined them. She had some minor operations with Dr Stuart Wilson in nearby Welland, mainly to remove scar tissue. There had been rumours that a ‘Miss X’ had had a sex change, but she was not identified until Wilson spoke to the Toronto Telegraph – with her permission he said. He gave her name as ‘Josephine Jefferson’, falsely gave her male name as “Kenneth Jefferson”, and claimed that she had had surgery in the US, with no mention of Dr Percival or even Windsor, and that she was only 21. This version was picked up by Associated Press, and repeated in newspapers across the US and Australia. The Ottawa Journal also ran this version 20 March 1954. 

However Ron Kenyon of the Toronto Telegraph, who had written up the “Josephine” version, March 19, searched for the real person, found Frances Marie Jefferson and interviewed her and some members of her family. 

That story was published in three issues, on page 3 in each case, March 20, 22 and 23.

Other than that, 1954 was not a good year for Marie Jefferson:

A week after the publication, Jefferson was charged by the police after failing to stop at a stop sign and damaging the rear of a car. She was fined $24.50 and the damaged was estimated at $400 to her own car and $200 to the other.

May 24, she was arrested in Buffalo, USA, on hit-and-run and drunken-driving charges, and referred to immigration authorities. They checked their records and realised that she and her male persona were the same, and that as a man she had been deported from Detroit in 1950. She was confined in the women’s wing of Erie County Jail. She pleaded guilty, was given a two-year suspended sentence, and she was deported again.

And in August Marie, back in Canada, was robbed of $37 and attacked by two men said to be US tourists who quickly fled across the border. She was treated for cuts and bruises. 

After that she managed to stay out of the press.

* Not Josephine Jefferson, the actress.

• “Doctor Identifies Port Colborne Man Changed to Woman”. Associated Press, March 19, 1954.
• Ron Kenyon. “Pt Colborne Man Changes His Sex”. The Toronto Telegram, March 19, 1954 p1,3.
• “Ontario Man Now Woman – First Canadian Sex-Change”. The Ottawa Journal, March 20, 1954 p36.
• Marie Jefferson as told to Ron Kenyon. “ “I Felt Guilty Living as a Man’ … Marie: People who think I’m Amusing Don’t know the horror …”. The Toronto Telegram, March 20, 1954p3.
• Ron Kenton. “Doctors Detail the Operations”. The Toronto Telegram, March 20, 1954p3.
• Richard Hayward. “Marie was his Girl Friend, and a Truck Crash was their bond”. The Toronto Telegram, March 20, 1954p3.
• Beth Balcom. “Man now Woman‚ Loved to knit” The Toronto Telegram, March 20, 1954p3.
• Marie Jefferson as told to Ron Kenyon. “ ‘Now Men whistle at me …’ I like that, too – Yet I ran out on my wedding“. The Toronto Telegram, March 22, 1954p3.
• Richard Hayward. “Operations amazed her friends”. The Toronto Telegram, March 22, 1954p3.
• “Liked to Knit, Sew long before Sex Change”. The Ottawa Journal, March 22, 1954 p30.
• Marie Jefferson as told to Ron Kenyon. “ “Sex switch aids understanding: Has escaped depths of horrible despair: Home, family her aim”. The Toronto Telegram, March 23, 1954p3.
• “Marie Jefferson in Auto Mishap”. Welland Evening Tribune, March 26, 1954 p12.
• “Marie Jefferson Fined for Careless Driving”. The Hamilton Spectator, Mar 31, 1954 p31.
• “Canadian woman faces jail terms if she returns”. The Buffalo News, May 29, 1954 p4.
• “Woman, once deported as a man, jailed”. The Buffalo News, June 9, 1954 p9.
• “Officials seek to end sex change confusion”. Buffalo Courier Express, June 23, 1954 p15.
• “Marie Jefferson is Deported”. Niagara Falls Review, June 25, 1954 p16.
• “Woman once Man treated here after assault: Marie Jefferson attacked in Motel”. The Hamilton Spectator, Aug 18, 1954 p18.
• Maélys McArdle. “’The first trans person in Canada’”. maelys.bio, January 23, 2022. Online.

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Jefferson’s work history while male was very masculine. Over-compensation perhaps. However Jefferson had left school at age 14, and perhaps could not do office-style work.

Canada did not introduce a European-style health system until 1966. So who paid for the operations? Jefferson says nothing about saving up while working as a truck driver. Did the doctors work pro-bono as the case was experimental?

I have gone with the second Toronto Telegram version as it is an interview with Frances Marie herself, and not a second-hand account. 

If Wilson changed her name to protect her privacy, it would have been better to change her family name. In the 1950s, the population of Port Colborne was just over 8,000. Any competent journalist would enquire after/speak to all the Jefferson families in the town and find the real person – as Ron Kenton in fact did.

Wilson also said that such an operation had been done thousands of times – but had been kept quiet before.

The Game of Typology

 There are Typologies of this and that. In particular there are Typologies of being Trans. Four years ago, I listed a Miscellany of Typologies.

The best known Typology of course is that proposed by Harry Benjamin. In 1954 he proposed 6 types grouped into 3 Groups:

1. The principally psychogenic transvestite. “He is miserable when dressed as a man and immediately comfortable and relaxed in the clothes of a female. He has become an expert in cosmetic make-up, yet is occasionally in social or legal difficulties. He assumes a female first name and wants to be referred to as 'she.' … In fighting his peculiarity he sometimes over-emphazises masculinity and becomes known as a ‘tough guy.’ ”

2. The intermediate type. “ .. he inclines at times toward transsexualism, but is at other times content with merely dressing and acting as a woman. He wavers between homo- and heterosexual desires usually according to chance meetings.”

3. The somatopsychic transsexualist. “Feminine appearance and orientation is often striking in these people but masculine features are compatible with full transsexualism. The conviction of these endocrine males that they are really females with faulty sex organs is profound and passionate.”

This he expanded in his 1966 book in what is referred to as the Benjamin Scale, which I reproduce below.

Of course the problem with any Typology is human beings are idiosyncratic, they are human. Some appear to fit into one of the boxes of the Typology; others are re-interpreted until they appear to fit; others read the Typology as an instruction manual; and many just do not fit in any way at all.

As Kris Kirk wrote in 1984:

"If there is any one lesson to be learned from studying this field it is that the individual is individual. People define themselves and the self-definition must always takes priority over the received wisdom. I have met self-defined draq queens whom others would describe as TV either because they enjoy 'passing'; or because they 'dress' so often that it could be seen as a compulsion; or because they wear lingerie, either to turn men on or to make themselves feel sensuous. I have met drag performers who have grown to dislike drag, and men who insist on being called 'cross-dressers' because they dislike what the word 'drag' stands for, and men who wear part-drag in order to create confusion and doubt amongst others, but who would never wear full drag because that would defeat their object. I know self-defined TVs who are gay or bisexual or oscillating, some of them having learned to cross this sexuality barrier through their cross-dressing. I have met TVs who dress like drag queens and drag queens who dress like TVs, and TVs whose cross-dressing has encouraged them to question their 'male role', which in turn has made them examine their idea of 'femininity'. And perhaps most important of all, I have learned how marshy a terrain is the middle ground between our earlier clear-cut distinction between transvestites and transexuals."

Anyway, as an experiment, as a game, I took the Benjamin Scale and revised it.

1. I added Group 0, Cis persons, and divided them into 4 kinds: Gender Play, Homeovestism, Involuntary, Narrative/Literary Transvestity.

2. I removed the differnt Kinsey Scale numbers. Benjamin in effect erased gynephilic “True Transsexuals” and gay Transvestites. Instead I write: “Androphilia, gynephilia and any degree of bisexuality are found with any Cis-Trans type”. I must admit however that I cannot think of any Anne Vitale G3 Gender Deprivation Anxiety Disorder (GEDAD)/Autogynephile who are androphilic - although such can be theorised.

3. Benjamin had three types of Transvestites: Pseudo, Fetishistic and True. I regard the Pseudo as a type of Cis. Fetishistic is a problematic term: a) various groups, including the Princian tranvestites, use it as an insult b) there is a Fetish subculture which Benjamin’s usage does not reflect at all. Instead of Fetishistic I have placed Cross-dreamer as defined by Jack Molay. I know that some regard ‘Cross-dreamer’ as merely a euphemism for either fetishistic transvestite or autogynephilic - this is polemical and unfair. I and many others do not see it that way.

4. Benjamin’s type IV has always been confusing. Some took it to be Nonsurgical but living as female full-time, but Benjamin’s only example in his 1966 book was a person who oscillated, sometimes presenting as male, sometimes as female.

5. So I have moved “Nonsurgical but living as female full-time” into Group 3 as a third type of Transsexual. I posit two types in Group 2, using Benjamin’s word ‘Wavering’: the Oscillators of course, and also the GEDAD)/Autogynephiles. Either of these two types can grow over time and become Nonsurgical or Moderate Intensity Transsexuals - but never High Intensity.

6. I have also added a Type which I call “Desister/Changeback”. This includes not only such as Walt Heyer, but also Jennie June who gave up transvesting and became a well-known male writer.

So as a reminder, here is the Benjamin Scale:

And here is my tentative revision. Please remember that I am doing this as a demonstration that Typologies never actually do what they claim. You, probably, will think of many trans person who just do not fit anywhere on this chart.

Towards a TS dictionary -- the letters Xx, Yy, Zz

  BOLD=cross reference, see item when appropriate letter posted

X

An indicator of gender inclusivity, e.g. Latinx, Mx, Womxn, etc.   These terms are written but not always pronounceable.   X is also the third option specified by the International Civil Aviation Organization in addition to M or F.  Some countries permit this on their passports.

Xanith خنيث‎

An assigned male third gender in Oman, who are socially accepted as female e.g. at weddings.   In later life some go back to living as male.  Also spelt Khanith, and as such related to the word Mukhannathun.

Xenoestrogen

Estrogen Imitators including widely used industrial compounds, such as PCBs, Bisphenol A, and Phthalates, which have estrogenic effects on living organisms.  In some fish species they induce sex changes.   They have reduced sperm counts and induced precocious Puberty.  They are certainly acting Epigenetically and are probably affecting the frequency of Transgender.

Xenovestity. 

Dressing as a foreigner,

Xier/xies .. xiem/xien

A German gender neutral pronoun.

X-Jenda Xジェンダ

A Japanese term for gender queer / non-binary.

Xtravaganza, House of

An initially Latinx LGBTQ New York ballroom house founded in 1982 by Hector Valle.  One of the first to join was Angie Xtravaganza, who assumed the role of house mother.  It was later opened to other racial groups.   Several members of the House of Xtravaganza of this period went on to become pioneers and icons within the ballroom community. The House was also known for its stable of “impossible beauties”, Trans women who reigned in the ballrooms and worked as professional models and entertainers.

XO

See Turner’s Syndrome.

XX

The designation for standard female sex chromosomes in mammals.  See Homogametic.

XXY

See Klinefelter Syndrome (KS).

XY

The designation for standard male sex chromosomes in mammals. See Heterogametic.

 

Yard

An old term for a Penis, cf. the French Verge which if masculine, le verge, means a yard (=3 feet) and if feminine, la verge, means penis.   In 18^th century usage, anal sex would be the introduction of a Yard into another’s Fundament.

Ycleptance

Naming and being named. An important process during Transition when a new name is taken and accepted by others.  From the early modern verb ‘to clepe’=to name or to style.  A term revived by John Money.  Ycleptance can also occur in marriage and in religious conversions

Yearning

A feeling of intense longing for something.   A trans woman has or had an intense yearning to be a woman. This is a philosophically neutral term that does not imply choice, social construction or biological causation. 

Yimpininni

Trans and gay indigenous persons on the Tiwi Islands off the coast of Australia’s Northern Territory.  They are estimated to be as many as 5% of the population.  Crystal Love, the entertainer, is Yimpininni.  Sometimes called Sistergirls.

Yirka'-la'ul

Yirka'-la'ul (=soft man) were assigned male shamans among the reindeer-herding Chukchi in the very far east of Siberia, who forfeited their masculinity and gained esteem.  The yirka'-la'ul had a choice of the young men from whom she took a husband, a marriage that would last until the death of one of the partners.

Yogyakarta Principles

A document about human rights in the areas of sexual orientation and gender identity, published as the outcome of an international meeting of human rights groups in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, in November 2006. The Principles were supplemented in 2017, expanding to include new grounds of gender expression and sex characteristics, and a number of new principles.  The Principles and the supplement contains a set of precepts intended to apply the standards of international human rights law to address the abuse of human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex persons.

Yonkers Professional Hospital, New York

Located at 27 Ludlow St, Yonkers, New York, and partly owned by Dr Benito Rish, who was also president of its board.  Rish did Transgender Surgery on patients referred by Harry Benjamin and Leo Wollman. Transgender surgery was also done by Dr David Wesser, who had done 200 sex-change operations by 1980, mainly using Burou’s technique.

From 1972 Dr Rish was sued for malpractice several times. Yonkers Professional Hospital was closed down after a surprise inspection by the state in 1980, and the next year Dr Wesser was charged with negligence by a panel that was hand-picked to be partial against him. 

The building stood empty for almost a decade, and was then converted into apartments.

The Yuga Ball, Metairie, New Orleans

The first gay 'krewe' – of the krewes that put on the New Orleans Mardi Gras celebrations – was the Yuga Krewe, founded in 1958. The fourth and fifth Yuga Balls were held in the New Orleans suburb of Metairie in a school that had a large dance studio, and was surrounded by a wooded area close to the lake. The second gay krewe, that of Petronius, held its first ball in 1962 at the same location. However, the Yuga Ball a week later was raided by the Parish Police. Some managed to flee, but many were arrested in what the police dubbed a ‘lewd stag party’. Those arrested had their names printed in the newspapers and thus most lost their jobs.

Yūsei Hogo Hō 優生保護法 Japanese Eugenic Protection Law 1948

While this law permitted sterilisations and abortions, even without the consent of the persons involved, it also forbade any unnecessary operations that resulted in sterilisation.   This was the charge in the Buru Boi Saiban trial 1965-6 in which a sex-change doctor was found guilty of removing otherwise healthy sex organs.  There were no more sex change operations in Japan until 1998. 

 

 

Zee Zee

A word for Penis favoured by April Ashley.

Zenana

A term in Pakistan for a Kothi.

Zie, Hir

Gender-neutral pronouns popularised by Leslie Feinberg.   As in Zie and hir friends have arrived.

Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft (=Journal of Sexology)

The first scholarly Sexology journal.  It was first published in 1908 by Georg H. Wigand's Verlang, Leipzig, edited by Friedrich. Krauss & Herman Rohleder, with help from Magnus Hirschfeld.  It was then merged with Hirschfeld’s Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen. It was later revived and published 1914-28 by A. Marcus & E. Webers Verlag of Bonn.

Zoovestity

Dressing as an animal.

Zwischenstufen

The term used by Magnus Hirschfeld for homosexuality, transvestism and other intermediate stages.   See also Geschlechtsübergänge.

Zwittertum

A German term for Intersex is use in the early 20^th century.

ZW

The designation for standard female chromosomes in birds, fish, insects, reptiles etc. See Heterogametic.

ZZ

The designation for standard male chromosomes in birds, fish, insects, reptiles etc. See Homogametic.

Marta Olmos Romero (1931 -1972) Mexican pioneer

 Olmos was from Veracruz, a middle child with five siblings. Feminine even as a child, Olmos played with dolls and did female chores, and had a first sexual encounter with a man at age 13. After a denouncement from the father, Olmos moved to Mexico City and at 21 was working as a men’s fashion clerk.

In November 1952, just weeks before the Christine Jorgensen story first broke in New York, Olmos was suffering from chronic amoebic colitis. This was treated at the clinic of Rafael Sandoval Camacho and his team. They treated the colitis, but quickly realised that there was another issue to be addressed.

Sandoval, a graduate of the prestigious Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, specialised in public sanitation and school hygiene, and also practised surgery at the Sanatorio Flemming and had developed interests in treating homosexuality surgically.

Olmos was interested in medical treatments that would bring out her essential womanhood; Sandoval and his team, Antonio Mercado Montes, Carlos Dupont Bribiesca and Marco Antonio Dupont, were thinking in terms of the gender binary and how to make their patient heteronormative. They completed a clinical case study, diagnosing Olmos with an ‘intersexual syndrome’ manifesting in homosexuality and feminine mannerisms, habits and libido. They researched Olmos’ biography, noting childhood illnesses, a cousin suffering ‘oligophrenia’ (‘interrupted mental development’ associated with hysteria and homosexuality), a preference for flashy masculine attire, and desires to cross-dress. They conducted anthropometric examinations; Binet–Simon and Raven intelligence tests; Rorschach, Szondi and Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) psychodiagnostics; and blood tests.

Marta as a brunette

From preceding sexologists, Sandoval concluded that homosexuality was pathological but could be converted. However a reorienting towards heteronormativity left an irresolvable, ‘implicit antagonism between the psychic and the somatic’. In addition, too few competent analysts existed. Contrariwise Sandoval also rejected such therapy that would help such men accept themselves, adjust to societal hostility and live openly. He thought that this would leave worrisome structural and functional issues unresolved.

What the team found with Olmos was perhaps an artifact of their research tools and their presuppositions. What they did find they regarded as pathologies: sexual complexes causing insecurity and anti-societal aggression, hysteria and ‘feminine sexual tendencies accompanied by the need to constitute as a love receptacle, and an intense desire to receive tenderness, strong depressive and hysterical states’, thoughts of suicide, pubic hair with a ‘feminine’ triangle pattern. They diagnosed ‘degeneration’ and ‘passive homosexuality’.

Marta as a blonde

From this perspective, they provided Olmos, Marta as she was now addressed, with what she wanted. Over a period of 18 months, 1952-4, Marta was treated psychiatrically, hormonally and surgically. The first surgery was a penectomy in May 1953, and a final vaginoplasty in March 1954: six surgeries altogether, four in private clinics, and two at Marta’s home. The pioneering Mexican pharmaceutical company, Syntex, provided oestrogen and progesterone, and in effect Marta was a test subject for their untested product. Syntex later marketed the product as Norethisterone - used for birth control and menopausal therapy. Syntex re-located to California in 1959.

The involvement of Syntex led to support from the then president, Adolfo Ruiz Cortines (1952-8), who also extended the vote to women in October 1953, and two lawyers close to Ruiz, Manuel Rangel y Vázquez and León Méndez Berman, who provided both funding and moral support. This was expected to be Mexico’s next scientific triumph.

Sandoval’s team photographed Olmos’ body as it changed, recorded their procedures, extolled their methods, presented to the press and screened surgical films for colleagues.

The eminent criminologist Alfonso Quiroz Cuarón who regarded homosexuality as dangerous but imprisonment as ineffective, expressed interest in Sandoval’s proposal.

Some of the family objected, and even tried legal objections. However Marta’s sister Soledad was supportive, and her mother Refugio Romero relented.

In May 1954 the story was in the press, at first the Mexican, and then internationally. Excélsior interviewed Marta and published restrained reports, an editorial cartoon and a letter to the editor, but the articles in its tabloid Últimas Noticias, supplement Magazine de Policía, were splashy, front -page and with lots of photos. The modern Mexican term for gender surgery, ‘operación jarocha’ (‘Veracruz operation’) is a memory that Olmos was originally from Veracruz.

Marta and Soledad, her sister

Marta’s story was compared to that of Christine Jorgensen which had been in the press the previous year, and that of Betty Cowell which had been published just weeks before. Marta’s operation was regarded as the first of its kind to be performed in the Americas. Press accounts quoted Marta proclaiming “Now I have found myself, and I am happy”. She also said: “‘I felt feminine impulses. I liked to cook, sew, and keep house” - the kind of sentiment expected of women, trans or cis, in the 1950s. She dyed her hair blond, and spoke of marriage, and men, strangers, proposed to her. She also spoke of having children and returning to work, this time selling female attire. After the devaluation of the peso from MX$8.65 to 12.50 per US$ in April 1954, and the subsequent inflation, Marta presented herself as a bona fide Mexican woman, somewhat conservative and Catholic. She had chosen her name after praying to St Martha of Bethany (sister of Mary and Lazarus). She hoped to be re-baptised, but the Church dismissed the idea, saying that she was an unnecessarily mutilated healthy male.

Initially, some Mexican commentators and officials near the Ruiz Cortines government celebrated the operation as proof that Mexico could stand with “advanced” nations in medical science.

While initial coverage in the press was sympathetic, it changed quickly. Physicians, politicians, clerics, and cartoonists turned on the case, denouncing the surgery as a fraudulent “cure”. They wrote about her as an afeminado, a Mexican term from the 19th century for men who were not heteronormative. The coverage of Christine Jorgensen led to the term Cristinas being used, not just for trans women, but also for queer men in general. Marta was compared to the foreigners Jorgensen and Cowell.

As Ryan Jones says: “Marta’s trans womanhood was thus an ‘import’ at a time of nationalism, indigenismo, modernising patriarchy, and scepticism towards foreign ‘contamination’. She evoked earlier cases where the ‘national’ was defined against a foreign, queer, grotesque other. After initial enthusiasm, the conceptual space for considering trans(sexuality) as a Mexican state of being – and transitions as legitimate for achieving it – withered. Marta instead epitomised an afeminado/‘Cristina’ defrauding the public”

Marta had briefly made public appearances and there was even talk of potential film work. However the state was moving to maintain its moral authority against youth culture and rock ‘n’ roll, and prohibited Jorgensen from performing in Mexico. Fernández Bustamante – director of Mexico City’s Oficina de Espectáculos – banned Olmos from appearing in vaudeville revues, decreeing no ‘spectacle exploiting morbid interest’ would be tolerated. Rómulo O’Farrill’s XHTV stated its ‘Tele-Síntesis’ programme would not interview Marta. The Asociación Nacional de Actores, led by Congressman Rodolfo Landa, refused her membership; which removed all stage, radio or TV performances because she was not a ‘bona fide actor’.

Direct reporting on Marta diminished, but her case persisted in debates about homosexuality, “degeneracy” and the bounds of modern medicine in Mexico.

Her later life is not recorded.

Ryan Jones found a death certificate dated 29 December 1972 for ‘Martha Olmos Romero’, referencing her mother, Refugio, which is likely hers. If so she died age 40 from a myocardial infarction and twisted, occluded intestine. She never did marry.

• “Un mexicano se convirtio en mujer y dice que tendra hijos”. Los Angeles La Opinion, May 6, 1954: 1

• “Hopes to ‘Make Some Man a Good wife’: Husky Mexican clerk is transformed into woman in series of operations”. Lubbock Morning Avalanche, May 7, 1954: 39.

• “La cirugia ha logrado de nuevo convertir a un hombre en mujer”. Phoenix El Sol, May 14, 1954: 3.

• “El Lic. Jose Vasconcelos condena la intervencion medica en estos casos”. Phoenix El Sol, May 21, 1954: 3.

• Juan Morales. "Mexico's Hush-Hush Clinic: Sex Surgery While You Wait!". Whisper Magazine, 8,6, 1955:24-5.

• Rafael Sandoval Camacho, Una contribución experimental al estudio de la homosexualidad. 1957.

• Emily Skidmore. “Constructing the "Good Transsexual": Christine Jorgensen, Whiteness, and Heteronormativity in the Mid-Twentieth-Century Press”. Feminist Studies, 37, June 2011,

• Fabrizzo Mc Manus. “Homosexuality, Homophobia, and Biomedical Sciences in Twentieth Century Mexico”, Sexuality & Culture, 18,2, 2014.

• Omar Durán-García. Aesthetic Misdiagnoses: Biomedicine, Homosexualities, and Medical Cultures in Mexico, 1953-2006, Phd thesis, Columbia University, 2021: Chp 2.

• Omar Durán-García interviewed by Analia Lavin. “Mexican Homosexualities and the Distortions of the Medical Gaze”. Medical Health Humanities, July 26, 2022. Online

• Ryan M Jones. “‘Now I Have Found Myself, and I Am Happy’: Marta Olmos, Sex Reassignment, the Media and Mexico on a Global Stage, 1952–7”. Journal of Latin American Studies, 55, 2023.

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As is normal in hispanophonic countries, Marta had two surnames, Olmos from her father and Romero from her mother. She is sometimes referred to as Marta Olmos Ramiro, but in common usage more frequently as simply Marta Olmos. Skidmore refers to her as Romero but not as Olmos for some reason, and, strangely, Mc Manus, who argues that Olmos never properly consented to transitioning, does not give her a name at all but refers to “an unidentified 21-year-old boy from Veracruz”.

There are no EN.Wikipedia articles for Marta Olmos or for Rafael Sandoval Camacho, and more notably no ES.Wikipedia articles either.