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29 April 2011

Ismail bin Yaha (1951–) dancer, preacher, healer.

Ismail was raised in Kedah province (map), in northwest Malaysia. He earned a living sewing clothes and dancing in female roles in local dance troupes.

In his twenties he became more and more aware that the dancing and his female clothing were contrary to Islam, but he could not give them up. One night during Ramadan he had a vision of heaven. He vowed to change, but not before a dance performance a few days later. Then he fell into a trance for three days.

On emerging he gave up dress-making, female clothing and dancing. He conducted a special purification for his house in that the materials had been purchased from a Chinese kafir.

He then dressed in the white robes of an alim and began preaching to his neighbours about hellfire. As the others knew him from before, his radical transformation was taken as divine intervention. The religious bureaucrats feared that he would be taken as a prophet. They interviewed him, declared him to be impious, and his preachings to be tempting but false. However he went on to a more prestigious role as a healer.
  • Sharifah Zaleha Syad Hassan. "Versions of Eternal Truth: Ulama and Religious Dissenters in Kedah Malay Society". Contributions to Southeast Asian Ethnography, 8, 1989: 43-69.
  • Michael G. Peletz. Gender Pluralism: Southeast Asia Since Early Modern Times. London & NY: Routledge, 2009: 187-8.
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27 April 2011

Az Hakeem (19??–) psychiatrist, psychoanalyst.

Az Hakeem did a MBBS at University College London Medical School, and then did specialist training in Forensic Psychiatry. He is a consultant psychiatrist and psychotherapist and a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. He has a practice based in Swiss Cottage, SW3. He does media psychiatry and screening of Reality TV contestants, and teaches at University College.

At the Portman Clinic he is involved in individual and group therapy for trans people who want a
solution other than surgery, and for post-operatives who regret their surgery, and need help to avoid suicide. This is the only service of its kind in the UK's NHS.

The Daily Telegraph
In 2002 in response to the European Court ruling in the case of Christine Goodwin v. the UK that she had, among other rights, the right to marry a male person, Hakeem and 5 others wrote to The Daily Telegraph that such a ruling was
“a victory for fantasy over reality and that our concerns were that the problems and conflicts within the trans-sexually conflicted individual may not be wholly solved by either surgical or legal manoeuvres”.
"Trans-sexuality: A Case of the 'Emperor's New clothes'"
Hakeem contributed a paper, "Trans-sexuality: A Case of the 'Emperor's New clothes'", to the anthology from the Portman Clinic, Lectures on Violence, Perversion, and Delinquency. As the title indicates, he compares transsexuality to the story by Hans Christian Andersen about a king who goes naked thinking that he is wearing a special suit because no one will speak the truth.

Hakeem defines a trans-sexual as
"an individual who is biologically and unambiguously a member of one sex who holds the strong belief that he or she is in fact a member of the opposite sex". Not desires to be, or is striving to be, but is.
He takes exception to a 2002 article in the Psychiatric Bulletin where the authors refer to hormonal and surgical treatment as the appropriate treatment for trans-sexuals. Hakeem objects to the presumption that conventional psychotherapy, such as that in fact practised at the Portman Clinic, is not indicated. He objects that to see the core belief defining a trans-sexual as '"an encapsulated mono-delusional belief" is "surprisingly controversial":
"the very nature of the delusion being encapsulated means that such individuals are not 'psychotic' in the same way as, for example, a person with active schizophrenia or another disintegrative condition and explains why such individuals are able to function as perfectly able and capable human beings who do not appear to be affected in any other way than their apparent convictions over their gender."
And furthermore:
"It seems very hard for psychiatrists to challenge the fundamental core belief of the trans-sexual and examine with them what actually it is to be the opposite sex or indeed, more importantly, what it is to be any sex, without falling into the trap of personally or socially constructed actual or mythical gender stereotypes".
He muses that it is "almost as if we were performing neurosurgery by operating on a person's genitalia", and that it is "too politically incorrect even to question the false-belief systems of these individuals".

He mentions some of his patients: C has never had an identity, and if she were to become a man she believes that she could become a 'real' person; A, a retired ex-marine in his 50s, divorced and a father, attempted to become a women in her 30s; F, an immigrant with no friends after 30 years in Britain, thinks that would be less depressed as a woman; B detests homosexuality, and must become a women before having a relationship with a man.

Hakeem then iterates again that “one cannot actually change gender", and bemoans the lack of long-term follow-up studies to support the assumption that surgery is the appropriate treatment (unlike psychotherapy!). He dismisses the explanation that once trans-sexuals have had the operation, they no longer want to be medicalized.

He repeats his opposition to a person being allowed to marry as "a person of the sex which they are not", and his opposition to the changing of birth certificates "which is a record of one's gender at a certain point in time" (though without mentioning the problem of persons being obliged to produce their birth certificates). He concludes with a terrible possibility:
"a man marrying what he presumed to be a woman who had a female passport, a birth certificate declaring him to be female at time of birth, who is taken to be female and an individual whom he believed he could marry and who could be the mother of his children but in reality his wife actually being a man".
www.drazhakeem.com

The Transgender/Gender Identity page on his web site and aimed at the general public is far less confrontational:
"If a person is assessed and is clearly seeking physical gender reassignment and has no uncertainty about this then they are referred to the appropriate gender clinic. For other patients who may have more atypical gender presentations such as those described above they may be suitable for a specially tailored psychotherapeutic intervention aimed at further clarifying and establishing an understanding and certainty of their sense of gender which may or may not correlate with their biological sex.".
Transgender: Time to Change
In May 2011 the Royal College of Psychiatrists arranged a one-day meeting, "Transgender: Time to Change", featuring papers from Az Hakeem and Julie Bindel, but with no input from any trans persons. Understandably there was an outcry from trans persons, and the meeting was cancelled.

*Not the US footballer.
____________________________________________________________

I think that for most of my readers there is no need for detailed comments.  Az Hakeem makes the case against himself in the above quotations.

However:
  • I will point out that he is very coy about himself, hiding not only his age, the year of his graduations, his sexual orientation. 
  • His understanding of the difference between sex and gender wobbles several times.
  • I think that most of us will take objection to a discussion of transsexuality being included in a volume labelled Violence, Perversion, and Delinquency.
  • Hakeem quotes the opinions and practices of other Portman Clinicians, but never those of outsiders.
  • He and the Portman clinic people assume that transsexuality is a ‘perversion’ – hardly a a starting point for dialogue. 
  • Likewise the frequent use of delusion, fantasy, false-belief. 
  • Hakeem mentions that he has several patients who are homophobic like B, but there is no mention of therapy to cure their homophobia.
  • He admits that most transsexuals are sane by any other measure, but when he discusses his patients, they all seem to have other problems.
  • He really does not seem to understand that most transsexuals, not regarding themselves as sick, obviously do not continue with a psychiatrist after getting the approval letter.
Obviously the Portman Clinic is not the place to go if you are serious about transitioning, but is probably useful if you want to be talked out of it, or if you are having post-operative regrets.
Time: 1 comment:

25 April 2011

Gloria Gray (1970–) performer.

Gloria Gray is the stage name of a trans woman born in Zwiesel, Bavaria, child of a long-distance lorry driver and a restaurateur. She is a graduate of the Deutsche Schauspielakademie in Munich, and had surgery in 1992 with the support of her parents.

She became famous in 1993 in the television comedy Halli Galli. And then appeared in variety shows and moderated dinner shows working with celebrity chefs. She worked with Cliff Richard, Marianne Sägebrecht and Amanda Lear, and played Mae West in the film Marlene, 2000. The same year she performed at the German national final for the Eurovision Song Contest.

She has won several court cases for slander regarding her past, including one against a Munich newspaper that had claimed that she is a transvestite.

In 2004 and 2005 she was a presenter and singer on Spanish television for the gay pride broadcasts, and premiered her show, Lieder im Mieder, at Munich's 2006 Christopher Street festival.

In 2007 she was featured in the Magie der Vielfalt photography exhibition.

Her autobiography, Mit allem, was ich bin, (With Everything that I Am), was released in 2009.

In 2010 she opened a cafe named after herself in Zwiesel, and in 2011 attempted to run for the Green Party in the mayoral election there, but did not get enough signatures. In 2006 she announced her intention to marry her male lover of many years in a church wedding, but the Catholic Church refused, and it has not yet happened.


*Not the abortion activist in Alabama.

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22 April 2011

Richard Green (1936 – 2019) Part 2: academic, administrator

 Continued from Part 1.

Also in 1987 Green published The "Sissy Boy Syndrome" and the Development of Homosexuality.  The gender variant children whom he had studied in the 1970s having by then grown up, and Green was able to locate two-thirds of both the 'sissy' group and the control group.  He showed that ‘sissy’ boys who may be taken as early transgender boys girls actually mainly grew up to be gay, without transgender inclinations.  Only one was considering a sex change but was being put off by the difficulties.  Only one of the control group grew up to be bisexual.  No members of either group grew up to be transvestites.

In 1992 he published Sexual Science and the Law, a review of various sexual fields and their legal situation, mainly in the US, but also in the UK. In the chapter on intergenerational sexuality he wrote that the experience for the younger person was not uniformly negative, based on a literature review.  He later commented:
"Bruce Rind et al reached a similar conclusion from a more sophisticated meta-analysis and all hell broke loose. Fortunately for me, no one read my book.(quoted in Newman, 2009)"

In 1993 he was co-counsel for Elke Sommer in her successful libel suite against Zsa Zsa Gabor who had called Elke a has-been.

Since 1994 he has been Professor of Psychological Medicine, Imperial College, London, and research director at the Charing Cross Hospital Gender Identity Clinic, where he saw trans persons two days a week. His life partner Melissa Hines is a professor of psychology and director of the Behavioural Neuroendocrinology Research Unit at the City University of London.  He is also a lecturer in Criminology at the University of Cambridge, where he caused a stir by having his students read Thomas O'Carroll's book, Paedophilia: The Radical Case.

He was president of HBIGDA 1997-9. In 2002 he passed the editorship of the Archives of Sexual Behavior to Kenneth Zucker.

In 2002 Green questioned why pedophilia is classified as a mental disorder.

In 2004, Green was the sole defender of John Money in the BBC documentary, Dr Money and the boy with no penis, on the David Reimer case:
‘‘Based on what we knew at the time about how you become male or female or boy or girl, knowing the difficulties of creating a penis surgically, the decision that John Money made was the correct one. I would have made the same one’’ (Green, 2008).

He was one of the Charing Cross Hospital Gender Identity Clinic psychiatrists who brought a complaint to the General Medical Council that Russell Reid too easily accepted patients for hormone therapy and surgery.

In 2006 he was awarded the Magnus Hirschfeld Medal for Sexual Research.

In 2006, when HBIGDA changed its name to WPATH, Green objected that the change had not been put to a full-membership vote and achieved such a vote, but the name change was then voted for.

In 2008, after Alice Dreger had defended Michael Bailey's The Man who would be Queen, Green commented:
"Dreger's meticulously detailed and documented essay is on remarkedly even terrain ....  And who knows whether [Christine Jorgensen]'s life story was entirely factual? In 1952, how else was an ‘‘Ex-GI’’ to become a ‘‘Blond Beauty’’. Homosexuality was both a mental disorder and a crime. Transsexualism was neither. Was Christine’s autobiography a ‘‘fairy tale’’? .... Is the Board [of HBIGDA] aware that there are medical and psychiatric professionals, including a transsexual, who side with Bailey in this situation? ....  Conway, James, and McCloskey generated a fortune in publicity for Bailey’s book, attracting a moderate sized city of readers who otherwise would have never heard of it. (Lighten Up, 2008)"

In 2010 he criticized Ray Blanchard's proposal to introduce hebephilia as a mental disorder in the DSM-5.

In 2011, the Irish annulment case, B (formerly known as M) v. L, cited a diagnosis by Green that the husband was autogynephilic.

Playwright Bruce Bierman was one of the "sissy boys" seen by Green for seven years in the 1970s, until his parents removed him from the program when he was 13. Later he read Green's 1987 book, and in 2004 turned his memories of the experience into a solo performance, "The Blue Dress", that he presented in San Francisco.

++ Richard Green died age 82.

*Not the artist, nor the actor nor the cricketeer nor the chemist nor the footballer.
  • Richard Green & John Money. "Incongruous Gender Role: Nongenital Manifestation in Pre-Pubertal Boys". Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 131, 1960: 160-168.
  • Richard Green & John Money. "Effeminacy in prepubertal boys; Summary of eleven cases and recommendations for case management." Pediatrics Vol. 27 No. 2 February 1961, pp. 286-291.
  • Richard Green. "Transsexualism: Mythological, Historical, and Cross-Cultural Aspects" and Bibliography. In Harry Benjamin. The Transsexual Phenomenon. New York: Julian Press, 1966.Online at: www.mut23.de/texte/Harry%20Benjamin%20-%20The%20Transsexual%20Phenomenon.pdf.
  • Richard Green & John Money (ed). Transsexualism and Sex-Reassignment. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press,. 1969.
  • Richard Green. Sexual Identity Conflict in Children and Adults. New York: Basic Books, 1974.
  • Richard Green. "One-Hundred Ten Feminine and Masculine Boys: Behavioral Contrasts and Demographic Similiarities". Archives of Sexual Behavior, 5,5,1976.
  • Richard Green. "Sexual identity of thirty-seven children raised by homosexual or transsexual parents". American Journal of Psychiatry 135, 1978: 692-697.
  • Richard Green. Human Sexuality: A Health Practitioner's Text. Williams & Wilkins, 1979.
  • Paul A. Walker, Ph.D., Jack C. Berger, MD., Richard Green, MD., Donald R. Laub, M.D., Charles L. Reynolds, Jr., M.D. & Leo Wollman, M.D. Standards of Care: The hormonal and surgical sex reassignment of gender dysphoric persons. The Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association, Inc. 1979.
  • Richard Green. "The International Academy of Sex Research: In the beginning". Archives of Sexual Behavior 14, 1985: 293-302.
  • Richard Green, K. Williams & M. Goodman. "Ninety-nine "tomboys" and "non-tomboys": Behavioral contrasts and demorgraphic similarities". Archives of Sexual behavior, 11, 1982: 247-266.
  • Jane E. Brody. "Psychiatrists on Homosexuality: Vigorous Discord Voiced at Meeting". The New York Times, Jan 26, 1982. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&res=9E05E0D81E38F935A15752C0A964948260.
  • Richard Green. The "Sissy Boy Syndrome" and the Development of Homosexuality. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1987.
  • Richard Green. Sexual Science and the Law. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1992. 
  • Vern L. Bullough & Bonnie Bullough. Cross Dressing, Sex, and Gender. University of Pennsylvania Press 1993: 273-4, 327-8.
  • Richard Green. "American Law Does/Does Not Respond to the Transsexual". Gendys Conference, 1994. www.gender.org.uk/conf/1994/green.htm.
  • Phyllis Burke.  Gender Shock: Exploding the Myths of Male & Female.  Anchor Books, 1997: 33, 34, 43-6, 52-4, 120-3.
  • DJ West & Richard Green (eds). Sociolegal Control of Homosexuality : A Multi-Nation Comparison. Springer, 1997.
  • Katrina Fox. "Vancouver – The Richard Green Interview". RFTS, 1997 Online at: http://web.archive.org/web/20030609051314/http://www.rfts.a.se/rich_greene.html.
  • Richard Green. "Transsexual's Children". International Journal of Transgenderism, 2,4, 1998. www.wpath.org/journal/www.iiav.nl/ezines/web/IJT/97-03/numbers/symposion/ijtc0601.htm.
  • Dan Pine. "Boy in a blue dress: One-man show relives gender-bending childhood". Jweekly.com, June 18, 2004. www.jweekly.com/article/full/22941/boy-in-a-blue-dress.
  • Richard Green. "Lighten up, Ladies". Archives of Sexual Behavior, 37,3, 2008: 451-452.
  • Cynthia BrianKate.  “Feminine Boy Project”.  Stony Brook Press, March 2010.  http://www.sbpress.com/2010/03/30/feminine-boy-project/
  • Richard Green. "The Three Kings: Harry Benjamin, John Money, Robert Stoller". Archives of Sexual Behavior, 38, 2008: 610-613.
  • Melanie Newman.  "Paedophilia research riles and titillates the academy".  Times Higher Education Supplement, 20 Sept 2009. www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=408084. 
  • "Application for annulment granted to wife of transsexual", The Irish Times, April 4, 2011. www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2011/0404/1224293732456.html.
  • Andrea James. "Richard Green on gender variance". TSRoadmap. www.tsroadmap.com/info/richard-green.html.
  • Peter Tatchell.  "Richard Green obituary".  The Guardian, 15 April 2019.  Online.  
EN.Wikipedia       http://richard-green-sexologist.co.tv. ____________________________________________________________

The good:  like John Money, Richard Green pushed to permit transsexual operations at a time when the vast majority of psychiatrists were against such surgery, and like Money arranged for his institution to become a GIC.  He assisted Harry Benjamin and wrote approval letters for the patients who wanted surgery.  If things had gone differently, this could have rebounded against him later in his career.  He is one of very few sexologists to have written about male spouses of trans women.  He spoke up more than once for the rights of trans parents to continue their relationships with their children.  He appeared several times in court on behalf of trans women seeking to retain their jobs, and on behalf of the gay scout master (his one-time colleague Rekers testified in a different case on behalf of the Boy Scouts of America instead).  He questioned the stereotypes about pedophiles.  He was a major participant in removing adult homosexuality from the DSM.

On the other hand: He pioneered the Feminine Boy Project which has survived in the religious reparation therapy of NARTH and in Kenneth Zucker’s clinic at CAMH, although Green's conclusion that feminine boys merely grow up to become ordinary cis-homosexuals should invalidate the existence of reparative therapy.  Green originated the Archives of Sexual Behavior which has become the organ for the Freund-Blanchard-Bailey heresy.  While Green has many times spoken up for transsexuals against those who would deny surgery, and for employment and  parental rights, when it came to a conflict between his colleagues and trans academics after Bailey’s book was published, he sided with his colleagues – this is not surprising.  However when Russell Reid was under attack, he did not support him.

George Rekers later was a major person in the homophobic Family Research Council and NARTH, but resigned in 2010 after the press caught him on holiday with a rent boy.

The message of The "Sissy Boy Syndrome" and the Development of Homosexuality that the vast majority of ‘sissy boys’ are not pre-transsexuals seems obvious now, but it needed to be said to counter false assumptions.  It is good that autobiographies are now coming out by cis men who talk about their sissy childhood:  Olivier Theyskens, Bruce Bierman, Kevin Sessums (Mississippi Sissy).

The boys were turning 20 or so when Green found them again to write The "Sissy Boy Syndrome" and the Development of Homosexuality.   However some do not come out as gay or trans until middle age.  Now that almost another 25 years have passed, is it time for another follow-up?

Would you have confidence in these psychiatrists to distinguish between a transkid and a ‘sissy boy’?  Do you feel that weak hand-eye co-ordination, playing with dolls, playing with girls identifies a transkid?   12 such boys had reparative therapy.  There is no mention that any of the boys in either group had therapy to counter tendencies to bullying or homophobia.   Why is being nice a failure of socialization, but bullying is not?

How come the Richard Green Wikipedia page makes no mention at all of the Feminine Boy Project?  There is no Wikipedia page at all for the Feminine Boy Project.  The New York Times obituary of Ivar Lovaas somehow forgot to mention the Project, and when Phyllis Burke interviewed Lovaas for her book (p46-51) he was apparently trying to disremember his involvement.  Stony Brook is keeping quiet about its involvement.

If you do read The "Sissy Boy Syndrome" and the Development of Homosexuality, I suggest that you also read Phyllis Burke's Gender Shock.  In fact I recommend Burke's book by itself.


Given that Green compiled the Bibliography for Benjamin’s book, one now understands why the books and articles in the text are not in the bibliography, and the books and articles in the bibliography are not mentioned in the text.  And also that all Green's publications up to 1966 are in the bibliography.
Time: 1 comment:

19 April 2011

Richard Green (1936 - 2019) Part 1: psychiatrist, lawyer.

Richard Green was raised in Brooklyn, NY. He earned an AB from Syracuse University in 1957, and an MD from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in 1961, where he was a student of John Money, who introduced him to gender variant children. Green had the idea of comparing the children to the recollections that adult transsexuals had of their own childhood. He published papers with John Money on such children.

Green did a psychiatric residency at the University of California at Los Angeles, Medical School 1962-4 with Robert Stoller. Money introduced Green to Harry Benjamin in 1964, and for two years he saw patients in Benjamin's New York office and wrote letters for them so that they could obtain surgery in Europe. He wrote the appendix on historical and cross-cultural aspects and the bibliography for Benjamin's book.

He did a further residency at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) 1965-6. Green spent 1966 in London and became friends with Yoko Ono, and part of his anatomy appears in her film, Bottoms.

He then returned to UCLA as a Professor of Psychiatry. In 1969 he co-edited the ground-breaking Transsexualism and Sex-Reassignment anthology with Money, with an Introduction by Harry Benjamin. The same year, with encouragement from Stoller, Green arranged the first transsexual operation at UCLA, only a year after Stoller had retracted his conclusions in the Agnes case.

In 1971 he became the founding editor of Archives of Sexual Behavior, after Stoller nominated him to the publisher, and stayed as editor for 30 years. He was significantly involved in the removal in 1973 of ‘homosexuality’ as a diagnosis in the DSM. In 1974 he published Sexual Identity Conflict in Children and Adults, with a forward by Robert Stoller, which draws anecdotally on the children and adults whom he had seen as a psychiatrist. This book is still one of the very few to discuss the male spouses of trans women.


From the dust Jacket of Sexual Science and the Law
During the 1970s Green, Ivar Lovaas and George Rekers (more) headed the "Feminine Boy Project" funded by NIMH to at least $1.5 million.  The basic study was a 15-year follow-up of 50 'feminine' boys matched with 50 other boys of comparable age. ethnicity and parental education.  Both groups were studied using parental questionnaires, interviews with the boys, psychological testing and observations of playroom activity.  There were follow-ups, usually at one-year intervals.The project was mainly located at UCLA and secondarily at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and also at the Roosevelt Institute in New York City, the Fuller Theological Seminary and the Logos Research Institute.  The last two institutions are Christian, and their principal researcher was Rekers, who was the major advocate that the boys should be not merely observed, but treated, that is persuaded or cajoled back to gender conformity.  Twelve pairs of parents consented that their son should enter such a course of treatment.
 
Green was the founding president of the International Academy of Sex Research in 1973 and a founding committee member of the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association (HBIGDA) in 1979, and was a co-author of the first edition of the Standards of Care.

In 1978 he published a paper, which is still rather unique, to the effect that a parent changing sex has only a small effect on the children, and that there is no reason why the trans parent should not continue to see the children.

He testified as an expert witness for transsexuals who lost their jobs in transition: Smith v. Liberty Mutual Insurance Co, 1978; Ashlie, aka Komarnicki v. Chester-Upland School District, 1979; Terry v. EEOC, 1980; Kirkpatrick v. Seligman and Latz, Inc, 1981; and most famously for Karen Ulane in Ulane v. Eastern Airlines, Inc, 1983. He was also co-counsel for Curran v. Mount Diablo Council of the Boy Scouts of America, 1981, where an assistant scoutmaster had been rejected for being gay. Green completed his JD from Yale University Law School in 1987.

Testifying for Ulane, Green defined a transsexual as:
"Transsexualism is a pervasive, severe and long-standing discontent, discomfort, belonging to the sex to which one was born.  It is accompanied by a long-standing wish for a variety of hormonal, surgical and civil procedures which would allow one to live in the sex role opposite to that to which one was born.  This long-term discontent, dysphoria, if you will, with being male or female, is not a product of some significant type of mental disorder" (Sexual Science and the Law p106).
He defined a transvestite less satisfactorily:
"A transvestite is an individual who is content being the sex to which he was born, does not wish to undergo sex-change surgery.  It is an individual whose primary gratification from cross-dressing or dressing in women's clothes is one of sexual arousal rather than a feeling of social comfort. (Ditto)"

Continued in Part 2.
Time: 1 comment:

17 April 2011

Raymond De Montmorency Lecky Browne-Lecky (1881 - 1961) amateur thespian.

Raymond Browne-Lecky of Flintimara, Warrenpoint, County Down, was an enthusiastic actor in charitable productions, usually arranged by his mother.


Most of his roles were those of females. He impressed the local critics, and then when appearing in Dublin he overcame prejudices against female impersonations. His most successful role was taken to be that of the eponymous lead in Lady Audley's Secret. He also appeared as the self descriptive Mrs Gushington Nervesby.

Irish Society revealed that he had his dresses made by 'Mrs Slyne of Grafton Street', and he wore the family jewels on stage. He was contrasted to his mother who affected plain linen collars and sensible country clothes.


He retained a interest in theatre all his life, and after 1911 when he and his father moved to Ecclesville, Fintona, County Tyrone he had a private theatre built. However he gave up the female parts after his mid-twenties.
_______________________________________________________________________________

Roger Baker explains the role of Lady Audley: "a pretty blonde bigamist who deserts her child, murders her first husband and has similar plans for her second - clearly the kind of role that any self-repecting drag queen would die for".
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    15 April 2011

    The Harry Benjamin Resource Centre Europe

    On Charlotte Gioar’s HBS site, about a quarter of the way down, just above the plug for the never-happening Danish Girl movie (how typical of Goiar to be glad that a major trans role would be going to a cis actress),  you will find a plug for The Harry Benjamin Resource Centre Europe.

    What is The Harry Benjamin Resource Centre Europe?

    HBRCE promises a conference in Oslo in September 2012, and then:
    The Harry Benjamin Resource Centre Europe (HBRC-Europe) is a professional organization devoted to the understanding and treatment of the diagnosis transsexualism.
    HBRC-Europe Mission Statement
    As a European multidisciplinary professional Association the mission of The Harry Benjamin Resource Centre Europe (HBRC-Europe) is to promote evidence based care, education, research, advocacy, and public policy regarding the diagnosis transsexualism
    HBRC-Europe Vision Statement
    The vision of The Harry Benjamin resource center-Europe (HBRS- Europe) is to expand its European authority by promoting, education, advocacy, training, research, quality health care and best practice standards for service providers and policy makers regarding the diagnosis transsexualism.
    And that is it.  There is a list of board members, and a set of bylaws.  And a Links page with no links. But nothing that you might call content.  No essays, no discussion, no policy statement.  In particular, as it was Charlotte Goiar who recommended this site to us, there is no mention at all of HBS.

    There is also Harry Benjamin Ressurssenter (see also Wikipedia page).  By their similar names, one would assume that the two groups are related, but neither web site mentions the other.

    Who are The Harry Benjamin Resource Centre Europe?

    With only one exception, all the board are Norwegian.

    • The president is Thore Langfeldt.   Here is his Wikipedia page.  His major works are: Sexologi ,1993, Barns seksualitet (Child Sexuality),2000, and Erotikk og fundamentalisme: Fra mesopotamia til kvinnefronten (Erotica and fundamentalism: from Mesopotamia to the women’s  movement),2005.  He was active in the paedophila study group, Pedofil Arbeidsgruppe, in the 1970s, and was a defence witness for Erik Andersen, Norway’s most prominent sex crime convict.
    • The vice president is Ingvill Størksen, an advisor to the Norwegian Centre Party.  She has published on gay and lesbian youth and on living with AIDS.
    • Board member Ira Haraldsen is a psycho-endocrinologist who studies Gonadotropin Releasing  Hormone Receptor Blockage and brain development.
    • Board member Olav Bendiksby is writing a PhD on “young violent sex offenders in psychoanalytically oriented intensive psychotherapy”.
    • Board member Tone Maria Hansen is a trans woman, a sociologist, a co-founder and chair of Landsforeningen for transseksuelle, now known as  the Harry Benjamin Ressurssenter in 2000.  She is in WPATH and gave a paper at IFGE in 2003.
    • Board member Richard Green is research director at the Charing Cross Hospital Gender Identity Clinic.
    Conclusion

    The Harry Benjamin Resource Centre Europe is a tentative organization of academics, who, with the exception of Hansen and Green, have little experience with trans people.  It is yet to be seen what will come out of it.

    What is strange is that Charlotte Goiar endorses HBRCE.   There is not the slightest indication that HBRCE will endorse HBS.
    Time: 3 comments:

    13 April 2011

    Olivier Theyskens (1977 - ) fashion designer.

    Olivier was raised in Belgium, his father a chemical engineer. He wanted to be a girl, and was tormented by the fact that girls get to be princesses and wear dresses.
    "A girl in my class told me that, in America, you can have a sex change, so I read everything there was about it, and told my friends at school that I would have this done."
    His parents encouraged him to draw and by the age of seven he declared that he wanted to be a fashion designer. He diverted his energy into drawing women and fashion.
    "I was very attracted to all beautiful women — actresses, singers, but it was like a girl who loves these women, not a boy. I was always imagining what it is to be a beautiful girl."
    By the age of 10, his shoulders began to widen, and he saw that he would never become the beautiful woman that he dreamed of.
    "Because I am a perfectionist, it put me off the idea. So I quickly became Olivier. I am very happy to be a boy and I never think about that any more".
    At 18 he studied fashion design at the École Nationale Superieure des Arts Visuels de la Cambre, but dropped out to start his own label. Madonna wore one his dresses to the 1998 Academy Awards. He went on to design for Rochas and Nina Ricci and Theory. Olivier says that he is happy to live in a age when androgyny is fashionable.
    "I own a few things that I designed for women, but I like looking neither like a man nor a woman, more like a fantasy boy."
    Sometimes strangers address him as 'mademoiselle".
     EN.Wikipedia
    Time: 1 comment:

    11 April 2011

    Amara Vadillo (197?–) sex worker.

    Vadillo was born and raised in Cuba. After emigration to Los Angeles she became Amara. After injections of hormones and silicone, she was a 34 DDD.

    She found work acting in shemale videos and performing at the West Hollywood Club 7969 under the name of Sylvia Boots. She became known for her love of the work, and that it showed on camera. She acted in over 50 videos (see ES.Wikipedia for a list), and as she had facial cosmetic surgery several times, she looks different over the course of her films.

    She generally got on well with her fellow actors, with one exception, fellow performer Tanya Amadore. After being attacked by three of Tanya's friends outside a nightclub, Amara filed a criminal complaint with the police. In August 2002, Amara dated Jorge Espinoza without knowing that he was Tanya's boyfriend. After sex he brutally beat her and stole her car. Again she filed a police complaint. Three weeks later Jorge returned and shot her in the head. Miraculously Amara survived and still has the bullet in her head. She filed a third police complaint and was unofficially advised to carry a gun for self-defense.

    On March 17, 2003 Amara and Tanya encountered each other in the ladies room at the Yukon Mining Co restaurant. Insults, hair pulling and punches started and were continued in the parking lot, and friends of both women joined in. It escalated to the point where Amara pulled out her gun. Tanya tried to take it away from her. It went off and Tanya's hand was seared with gunpowder burns. A few minutes later it was apparent that one of Tanya's friends, Laura Banuelos, was dying of a gun wound. Amara was arrested.

    In jail she was able to positively identify Jorge Espinoza to the police for his attempt on her life.

    Amara herself was charged with Murder in the first degree, Murder in the second degree, Voluntary Manslaughter, Involuntary Manslaughter and an Armed Allegation charge. Tanya was not charged. After 14 months in jail, Amara's trial lasted one week, the defense rested after one day, Tanya "unequivocally testified" that she did not touch the trigger and that she had not encouraged Jorge Espinoza to shoot Amara.  The jury returned after five hours finding Amara guilty of second degree murder. She was convicted under the California law of transfer of intent that was intended to apply to a sniper situation.

    58 people wrote letters and signed a petition urging the judge to reduce the sentence to Involuntary Manslaughter, but Amara was sentenced to 20 years to life for Second Degree Murder and an additional 25 years to life under the anti-sniping law, and that she has to pay $10,000 restitution to Laura's family if ever released on parole.

    In January 2006 it was rumored that Tanya died after an incompetent injection of oil/silicone. Some think that this was a hoax to enable Tanya to escape police attention. In either case her video career was over.

    An appeal of Amara's sentence in October 2007 was denied.

    Amara was initially at Donovan State Prison in San Diego, and is currently in the California Medical Facility prison at Vacaville.

    * Not Jorge Espinoza the Chilean football player, nor the boxer.
      Wikibin (No longer available)    ES.Wikipedia     
    ____________________________________________________________

    Neither Amara Vadillo nor Sylvia Boots is in IMDB nor the Wikipedia Category: Transsexual pornographic film actors.

    45 years plus is longer than many mafia contract killers get.

    The requirement to pay $10,000 is what in Sharia law is a called blood money, except that under Sharia, if you pay the money, you don’t go to jail.

    The US gun lobby groups that proclaim that you should carry a gun to protect yourself don’t seem to be interested in this case.

    Amara is mainly a female name, but sometimes given to boys.  It is unclear whether Vadillo was called Amara at birth, at emigration or later.  However she was charged under that name, so the California prosecution service took that to be her legal name.

    The Wikibin article does not even mention the homicide.

    Amara and Tanya put down each other and others as 'faggots'.   An indication of their lack of self-consciousness.
    Time: 15 comments:

    09 April 2011

    Tamara Adrián Hernández (1954 – ) lawyer, activist, Congresswoman.

    Thomas Adrián was raised in Caracas, and was sent, as a child, to a psychologist for gender problems. However, Adrián graduated in law at Universidad Católica Andrés Bello and joined the family law firm, Adrián & Adrián. After  completing a doctorate at the University of Paris in 1982, Adrián was was from then a professor of law at Universidad Católica Andrés Bello, and at the Universidad Central de Venezuela from 1986. He married and had two children.

    Adrián became a renowned activist for refugees, women's and gay rights. This work resulted in the inclusion of LGBT rights language in the Ecuadorian and Bolivian constitutions, even though Venezuela has resisted them.

    As Tamara, Adrián had surgery in Thailand in 2002. She has since married a woman: they are the only legally married female couple in Venezuela. In 2004 she asked the Venezuelan Sala Constitucional del Tribunal Supremo to recognize her as Tamara. By 2010 it had not even ruled on the admissibility of the request. The Foro para los Derechos Humanos y la Democracia have supported Tamara in her denial of justice.
     
    In 2009 Tamara was one of 33 experts who met in Los Angeles to discuss how to implement the Yogyakarta Principles. Also that year, the Metropolitan Council of Caracas awarded her the Luis Maria Olaso Order on behalf of emerging persons.

    In 2010, still frustrated by the Constitutional Chamber, Tamara presented her papers to the National Assembly that she herself, being better qualified than is required, should be appointed to the Constitutional Chamber. At the personal interview, she was called by her male name, but refused to respond until called by her proper name.

    ++In 2015 Tamara was a candidate for Voluntad Popular, but was obliged to run under her male name.  She was elected to Congress in the December elections.

    ES.WIKIPEDIA

    Time: No comments:

    07 April 2011

    Julie Ann Johnson (1942 – 2011) executive, rail enthusiast, activist.

    James Johnson was born in Geneva, Illinois, and educated in Wheaton. He majored in political science at Wheaton College, and while a student edited two railroad magazines.

    A fan of the Chicago, Aurora & Elgin interurban railroad, he rode the line's last train west from Forest Park. In the early 1960s he wrote a history of Chicago Streetcars and then a history of the CA&E. He worked weekends as the General Manager of the Illinois Railway Museum in Union and helped the museum to significantly expand its operations, spending large amounts of his own money to purchase CA&E artefacts.

    He joined the family printing business in 1972 after working for other companies in the same business. In 1988 he became the president of the family business.

    At the turn of the century, Johnson transitioned as Julie Ann and became active in the Chicago Gender Society and the Be-All Conference for trans people.

    In 2010 she completed a large project of placing her entire collection of CA&E materials online for public use.

    She died of cancer at age 68.
    • James David Johnson. A Century of Chicago Streetcars, 1858-1958. Wheaton, Illinois: Traction Orange Co, 1964.
    • James D. Johnson. Aurora 'n' Elgin: Being a Compendium of Word and Picture Recalling the Everyday Operations of the Chicago Aurora and Elgin Railroad. Wheaton, Ill: Traction Orange, 1965.
    • Bob Goldsborough. "Julie Ann Johnson, 1942 – 2011". Chicago Tribune, March 15, 2011. www.herald-mail.com/obituaries/ct-met-julie-johnson-obit-20110315,0,7161924.story.
    Time: 4 comments:

    05 April 2011

    Roberta Franciolini (1945 - 2011) activist.

    Franciolini was born in Rome. She was a pioneer trans activist as early as the 1960s. She established what was then the largest trans community in the Acqedotto Felice slums.

    In the late 1970s she lived in Turin and founded a trans group there.

    Roberta, along with Marcella Di Folco, Gianna Parenti and Pina Bonanno, founded Movimento Italiano Transessuali in Rome in 1979. Working with civil rights activists, but Roberta as the main animatrice, they struggled for Law 164 ‘Norme in materia di rettificazione di attribuzione di sesso’, which was passed in 1982 and provided legal recognition of a person's acquired gender.



    They worked with the Radical Party. In the 1980s she struggled against police repression and AIDS. At the 1994 Pride rally she gave the rousing cry: “questi vermi che ci vogliono schiacciare devono andare via (these worms that want to crush us must go)”.

    In recent years Roberta was working with the Associazione Radicale Certi Diritti for sex workers' rights. She had intended to get back on the street, but she died of a heart attack at age 65.
    __________________________________________________________________________________

    Movimento Italiano Transessuale, became the Movimento Identità Transessuale in 1999.

      Time: No comments:

      03 April 2011

      Joanne Proctor (1947 – 2011) HBS activist.

      Proctor was raised in Kaikoura on the South Island of Aotearoa New Zealand, the second of four children. After a difficult adolescence he was drug dependent for seven years, culminating in a suicide attempt. Neither parent accepted his femininity, and both died before he transitioned.

      In 1980s, Proctor worked as a crane driver at the port of Lyttelton outside Christchurch during a period of strikes.

      He starting female hormones and became Joanne when she started a BA at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, and then qualified as a lawyer in 1990 at the University of Waikato Law School.



      An unsympathetic psychiatrist told her emphatically that her stature and looks eliminated her as a potential candidate. However she persevered. She was on an invalid's benefit when she was scheduled to have surgery at Waikato Hospital in May 1997, but the local health authority decided to stop funding sex changes less than a week before.

      In 2000 the Chief Ombudsman, Brian Elwood, ruled that Joanne had been unfairly treated, but it still took two more years before the surgery was done by New Zealand's sole sex-change surgeon, Peter Walker. Without consulting her, Walker decided to do a colovaginoplasty rather than a penile inversion, and left Joanne with post-surgical complications, which ended up costing the New Zealand Health Service as much again as the vaginoplasty had done.

      The Chief Ombudsman had to appeal to the Broadcasting Standards Authority in that TVNZ edited an interview with him about Joanne to imply that the decision was a landmark and unusual when Elwood had in fact emphasized that it was neither.

      Joanne lived at an isolated country home with minimal human interaction: "six or seven 'contact hours' with people a month, including grocery shopping and GP visits" (Martin 1/6/02).

      She became an HBS activist on the internet, and the HBS liaison to OII in February 2009. She was also active on TS-SI, and was one of the major authors of the short-lived HBS Wikipedia page.

      In 2010 she closed down her personal blog, and the New Zealand HBS site, and wrote Trans-Fried-Fluff, then deleted its contents, and rewrote it as Trans-FriedFluff. She has claimed that Wikipedia should be treated as the publishing arm of CAMH, she was an admirer of Jan Wålinder, and of Thomas Szasz, and presented 'gender' as a creation of Robert Stoller and her co-patriate John Money, and transgenderism as a social construct similar to multiple-personality disorder and false memory syndrome. Sometimes she posted using the name P. J. Schrödinger.
      "Professor Wålinder’s definition fell out of favour solely due to John Money’s duplicity over the outcome of the Reimer case. It was not the definition that was wrong. It was John Money. (Schrödinger,2010)"

      Joanne died at age 63 of medical problems.
      The TS-Si obituary says that Joanne served "with distinction as a barrister".  However this is not confirmed by the numerous articles in the NZ press.
         "Wikipedia should be treated as the publishing arm of CAMH". Does this mean that she thought that, say, Andrea James, is a spokesperson for the CAMH?

        Wålinder's definition of transsexualism was:
        1. A sense of belonging to the opposite sex, of having been born into the wrong sex, of being one of nature’s extant errors.
        2. A sense of estrangement with one's own body; all indications of sex differentiation are considered as afflictions and repugnant.
        3. A strong desire to resemble physically the opposite sex via therapy including surgery.
        4. A desire to be accepted in the community as belonging to the opposite sex.

        I agree that Jan Wålinder should not be so forgotten.  Even the Swedish Wikipedia does not have an entry for him.  However to connect his lapse into obscurity and Money's behaviour in the Reimer case is going out on a limb. True, the ICD definition of transsexualism was originally that of Wålinder and later adopted a John Money type wording based on gender identity, but that was because Wålinder had slipped into obscurity.

        She doesn't apologize for, explain or even mention Szasz's transphobia.

        Joanne's account of 'gender' totally ignores its use before the 19th century when it was reduced in scope to grammar, and also ignores how feminists took the concept and turned it into something quite different from what Money had intended.
          Time: 5 comments:

          01 April 2011

          Chloe Dzubilo (1960 - 2011) equestrian, performer, activist, artist

          Chloe as Keith was a teenage champion equestrian in Connecticut.

          Chloe moved to Manhattan's East Village in 1982. She briefly worked at Studio 54. She became the ad director at the art magazine, East Village Eye, at a time when the local art scene was taking off. She became the partner of Bobby Bradley, one of the founders of the drag club, Pyramid, and was with him for nine years until he died of AIDS.

          Chloe wrote and performed in a band with Antony Hegarty, and was the lead singer for the punk band, Transisters, which did songs about sexual abuse and being transgender.

          She was photographed by Nan Goldin, Alice O'Malley, and Tanyth Berkeley, and also by David Armstrong, Steven Klein, and Michael Sharky. She was diagnosed as HIV+ in 1987, and later suffered from avascular necrosis. In 1993 she completed her transition to Chloe.

          In 1995 she was in the Wigstock movie. She also acted in Visiting Desire, 1996, Gang Girls 2000, 1999, and Rock Star, 2004.

          She was a long-time volunteer at the LGBT Community Center's Gender Identity Project. She was also part of Transsexual Menace, and directed one of the first federally funded HIV prevention program for transgender sex workers in 1997.

          Chloe studied at the Parsons School of Design, and completed an associate degree in Gender Studies at the City University of New York in 1999.

          Chloe encountered much ignorance and sheer prejudice by health professionals treating trans persons even when the problem was neither HIV nor specifically trans issues, including sudden dropping of treatment and refusals to answer.

          As she was an AIDS activist, Mayor Bloomberg put her on New York’s HIV planning board, where she pushed to separate trans from gays in the HIV statistics.

          Still an avid equestrian, Chloe launched Equi-Aids, a charity that gave inner-city kids the experience of horseback riding.

          She was on the cover of POZ magazine in August 2004 as "Trannie get your gun", a theme that she proposed. In the article she declined to identify as female, preferring to stay outside the 'binary gender construct'.

          Later that year she had the hip replacement required by her avascular necrosis.

          In the L Magazine in 2006 she is quoted:
          “I don’t get into political discussions at dinner often anymore, cause I want to embrace everyone no matter what. ‘Political’ for me is when I walk out of my house. If I can make an impact with my allies who share my views and/or pose questions to people, then that is maybe the best I can do politically. Love seems to be political to me these days, and has for many years. That loving somebody is so political, is such a heartbreaking truth.”
          In 2007 she married trans man, performer T De Long (Chloe being legally a man and T a woman). She was rebuilding relationships with her family. Her visual art was becoming known, even internationally. In January 2011 she co-curated an exhibition of trans art, including some of her own drawings.

          She was living at an HIV/AIDS residence and her prescription dosage had been raised after a brief hospitalization. She left around 2.00 am, wandered into a closed subway station and ended up underneath a service train. She was aged 50.

          Here is one of her poems:
          Ain’t nothing like knowin’ what it feels like…when you slip thru the cracks of society, political niceties, political correctness, health care, housing, employment, wealth, shoe stores, subways, family outings, holidays,
          systems, systems, Systems. Ain’t nothing like knowing these facts deep in one’s bones. When you’re transsexual.
          Ain’t nothing like knowing triumph over all of these adversities.”
          ______________________
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