Buzz feed a few days ago ran a list of 19 trans persons who had achieved something in life. I have two problems with it.
- It is a list of the usual suspects. Why are such lists almost always aimed at readers who have been off-grid for years and are unaware of trans persons? These days even most cishet persons, old and young, are aware of Lili Elbe, Billy Tipton, Coccinelle, Christine Jorgensen, Renee Richards, Sylvia Rivera. Why not devote more of the list to the lesser known?
- The inclusion yet again of Roberta Cowell, referred to by those who knew her as Betty. Yes, Betty was one of the first trans women in Britain (preceded by Norma Jackson and Dorothy Medway – who unlike her were not nepo-babies and had far fewer resources), but she refused to consider herself as one of us – and in fact was quite transphobic. She insisted that Christine Jorgensen was a transvestist. She declined Michael Dillon’s advances, as she said later: “But as far as I was concerned, it would have been two females getting married (p87 in Hodgkinson’s book)”. On p101 of her autobiography she wrote: “One thing was certain. I had not the slightest desire to swell the ranks of the gentlemen of no particular gender. It is true that I had become a little more tolerant in this direction than I had been in the past; this meant, however, that had I met one I would have refrained from actually kicking his spine up through the top of his head.” When interviewed for the Sunday Times in March 1972 the interviewer commented: “She doesn’t approve of the Permissive Society and she doesn’t welcome Women’s Lib. She certainly hopes the trend towards Unisex has stopped. It’s unhealthy, unnatural.” And quoted her: “My experience shows that men and women are so completely different as to be almost different species. …. I was a freak. I had an operation and I’m not a freak any more. I had female chromosome make-up, XX. The people who have followed me have often been those with male chromosomes, XY. So they’ve been normal people who’ve turned themselves into freaks by means of the operation.” And of course, Cowell totally abandoned the two daughters that she had fathered. And indeed how could she have fathered children were she not XY?
Cowell is not at all a positive role model.
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Here are 15 other trans persons worthy of more attention. I could easily list 50 or more.
The sort is by birth date.
John de Verdion (1744-1802)
German book dealer and language teacher. De Verdion, after some embarrassment re his sex, emigrated to London, where he taught German to Edward Gibbon, and English to the Prussian ambassador. He lived 30 years in London, despite suspicions about his sex. GVWW
Toupie Lowther (1874-1944)
From teenage, a fencing champion, Toupie in 1898 vanquished the army’s Sergeant instructor at The Military Gymnasium of the Army Camp in Aldershot, and in 1903 held her own against the Maître, or Prof. Yvon at the Civil Engineers Hall in Paris. An accomplished singer and composer, Toupie set poems by Oscar Wilde and Alfred Tennyson to music, and her music was performed at the Wigmore Hall in London. Toupie was also a keen tennis player and participated in championship games, especially those held at Homburg 1896-1901, and at Wimbledon where she reached the singles semi-final in 1903. Toupie was one of the ‘first women’ to own a motorbike and lift weights. In 1917 Toupie organized an ambulance unit which worked on the front lines during the war. They were heavily involved in the battles at Compiègne, in June 1918. Lowther and several others in the unit were awarded the Croix de Guerre. Radclyffe Hall’s short story, "Miss Ogilvy Finds Herself", and her novel The Well of Loneliness were largely based on Toupie Lowther’s life. In later years Toupie lived in a small village in Sussex, mainly in male dress. GVWW.Wilmer Broadnax (1922-1992)
From Louisiana, Broadnax took the identity of the elder brother who had died, and moving to Los Angeles, became a successful gospel singer, singing with the Spirit of Memphis and the Five Blind Boys of Mississippi. He died age 70 after a jealousy fracas with his younger girlfriend who stabbed him. GVWW.Lucy Salani (1924-2023)
Compulsorily inducted into the Wehrmacht, in German-occupied Italy, the Repubblica di Salò, Salani from Bologna deserted twice. She survived in Bologna as a sex worker with even German officers as clients, until she was recognised and sentenced to a forced labour camp working on parts for the V-1 rockets. With another inmate, Salani escaped. On recapture, she was deported to the Dachau concentration camp, and had to wear a Pink Triangle. As allied troops approached, Salani was in a group that was lined up and machine-gunned. Salani was hit in the leg but was found alive under some dead inmates. After the war she worked in a drag show, and then became an upholsterer. She had completion surgery in London in the 1980s. In the 2010s she was discovered by LGBT groups and became an advocate for concentration camp survivors criticising how they were ignored and forgotten. She lived till age 98. GVWW.
Anne Vitale (1938 - )
Vitale transitioned while doing a psychology PhD. She opened a clinic in San Rafeal, California in 1984, and has treated many trans persons. She treats older transition persons for what she calls Gender Deprivation Anxiety Disorder (GEDAD). It is this deprivation, not a person’s gender identity, that she seeks to treat. GVWW
Dolly Van Doll/Carla Follis (1938 - )
From Turin, Dolly performed at Madame Arthur and then Le Carrousel. She had completion surgery from Dr Burou in Casablanca in 1964. . In 1971 she accepted a contract in Barcelona. She rose to become a star performer in Franco’s Spain, and also met the love of her life. After Franco’s death she revamped her act and opened her own club in Valencia. GVWW.
Roberta Perkins (1940-2018)
Perkins did a dissertation on transvestism and transsexuality at Macquarie University in Sydney in 1981 – one if the very first by an openly trans woman. She was also one of the members of the newly founded Australian Transsexual Association. Roberta’s book The Drag Queen Scene: Transsexuals in Kings Cross, a study of 146 lives based on her dissertation came out in 1983. The New South Wales Minister for Youth and Community Services read it and approved a grant of $A80,000 which was used to open a centre, Tiresias House. Within a few years, the centre has expanded to four houses. A residential nurse and a community worker were employed. Six years later it was renamed the Gender Centre. Perkins later wrote and published books and articles in peer-reviewed journals on trans women and sex workers. She was involved in the struggle for decriminalization of sex work in New South Wales and Australia. GVWW.Janine Roberts (1942-2016)
Roberts was ordained a Catholic priest, and did degrees in theology, philosophy and sociology. Roberts then resigned from the priesthood and married a woman. They moved to Australia where they had two daughters. Roberts started working with Australian Aboriginals, and in 1976 published a book on their culture and institutional racism. She worked with aboriginal groups in resisting mining on their territory, and researched Granada TV’s World in Action program on the issue. By this time she had transitioned. In the late 1980s Janine was working on a documentary on the diamond industry for Australian, US and UK television. The Sun newspaper outed her to attack her credibility. In 1992, when The Diamond Empire was two-thirds shot, her home was invaded and she was seriously beaten and was in hospital for two months. While she was on the critical list, the BBC took control of the project away from her. The program was shown on the BBC and in the US with her name on it. Pressure from the diamond monopoly, De Beers, resulted in its showing on Australian Broadcasting Company being cancelled, and in the BBC not selling it abroad, especially to South Africa. GVWW.
Sonia Burgess (1947-2010)
Sonia was a lawyer from Yorkshire who had an office in Islington, London where she aided trans persons and immigrants. She sued the Home Secretary in 1991 when a teacher from Zaire was deported in defiance of a court ruling. She was the lawyer for Mark Rees in his appeal to the European Court of Human Right (ECHR) in 1986, and for Stephen Whittle in his four-year struggle to be recognised as his child’s parent – this also went to the ECHR in the early 1990s. Burgess was the lawyer for Press for Change. She building up to transition when in 2010, travelling on the Underground with a frustrated client, the client lashed out and Sonia went under a train. GVWW.Brenda Lee (1948 – 1996)
She lived in São Paulo from age 14. Brenda was one of the first Brazilian travesties to work in Paris in the late 1970s as a prostitute. She returned to São Paulo in 1984 and bought a house in the Bixiga neighbourhood. She turned the building into a Casa de Apoio to care for those with HIV who had been rejected by their relatives, as many were after a series of murders of travesties in the South Zone of Sao Paulo in 1985. It started with three patients and an agreement with the São Paulo Ministry of Health, and in 1992 was legally incorporated. She worked with the Emilio Ribas Hospital which took those who needed hospitalization. Brenda also had a car repair business and a hairdressers in the building. She was brutally murdered in 1996. She was given a full Catholic funeral with representation from the Cardinal-Archbishop. A Brazilian award for defending human rights was named the Brenda Lee Award. GVWW.
Ajita Wilson (1950-1987)
From Brooklyn, Ajita Wilson moved to Europe where she appeared and often starred in almost 50 films, mainstream, porno and Euro-trash. She died from the complications from a road accident. GVWW.
Anna Grodzka (1954 - )
After marriage and raising a son, Anna transitioned in 2010. She was co-founder and then president of Trans-Fuzja, she was also vice-president of the Commission for Social Dialogue Committee for Equal Treatment under the President of the Capital City Warsaw. She was list Member of Parliament 2011-2015. GVWW.
Helen Savage (1955 - )
Savage was also an archeologist and a wine columnist, but was ordained in the Church of England in 1983, and in 1993 became the vicar in the parish of St Cuthbert’s in Bedlington, Northumberland. She transitioned with doctors at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. She did a PhD on gender dysphoria and Christian theology at the University of Durham, which draws upon the experiences of seven trans Christians who were interviewed over a period of eight months from 2002-3. She wanted to return to being a parish vicar, but encountered more problems as a woman than as a trans person in that some parishes would not take a woman priest, and she wished to remain in the north. Finally in 2015 she took the Moorland group of seven parishes around Hexham in Northumberland, and the Hexham Courant acquired its first ever wine columnist. She is also a Master of Wine (one of only 300 or so worldwide). GVWW.Yasmene Jabar (1956 - )
A farmer’s daughter from North Carolina, she had completion surgery at age 20. She married two Moslem men (sequentially). She set up Cafe Trans Arabi and the International Transsexual Sisterhood, thefirst to help trans women in the middle east, and then expanded to help trans women wherever they are. In 2005 she was involved in the Trans Eastern Conference (TEC) in Istanbul. GVWW.
Karine Espineira (1967 - )
Born in Chile. The family fled to France after the US-backed Pinochet coup in September 1973. In the early 1990s Karine was involved in the Association du Syndrome de Benjamin that had just been founded by Tom Reucher; She and her life-partner Maud-Yeuse joined the anti-essentialist, anti-psychiatry, queer-theory group organized by University of Lille sociologist, Marie-Hélène Bourcier. In 2008 Karine published La transidentité: de l'espace médiatique à l'espace public; in 2012 Karine, Maud-Yeuse and Arnaud Alessandrin published La Transyclopedie: Tout Savoir Sur Les Transidentites, a history-cum-encyclopedia of transgender in France. GVWW.