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.