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02 June 2013

Hoax biographies

Biographies:




Canadian (auto)biographies
Hoax biographies
(auto)biographies that are almost unobtainable
French and Belgian (auto) biographies and Histories
Biographies with the pre-transition name in the title 
Advice Manuals I: 1957-1979
Advice Manuals II: 1980-2000
Advice Manuals III: 2001-2017
Non-Fiction Books on other topics by trans authors




Hoax biographies can be considered a genre, although those that are most successful are accepted at face value and not designated hoaxes.

The concept of hoax does not have clear boundaries, nor is there an established typology (see the various bits and pieces in Wikipedia).  Debate continues over the founding documents of religions and which terrorist events are false-flag events.   Some writers include women who wrote under male names.   Most annoying to us are the anthologies of hoaxes which include the lives of trans persons as if to be trans were in itself a hoax.  This issue is confused of course by a small number of trans persons who are indeed fraudsters (eg Charlotte Bach, Alice Baker, Storme Aerison, Celeste Tate, Elizabeth Young, Tito da Paixao Gomes, Lechane Bezuidenhout, Desiré Dubounet). 


Some examples of cis hoax biographies:


Authors writing as an other gender, who are not otherwise trans (are these people cross dreamers?)


Books that appear to be biographies of trans persons, but on a closer look appear to be something else.


Juliet Griffiths. GVWW Eric Oakley, hack writer and sometime drag performer, published this implausible account of what would be Britain's first surgical transsexual who was also a famous performer, but who has otherwise been lost to history.


  •  Eric Gilbert Oakley. Man into Woman: The Amazing account of a male’s change into female, with full psychological and medical Case History and Personal Analysis Questionnaire. London: Walton Press, 1964.


Margo Howard-Howard. GVWW EN.WIKIPEDIA If Margo Howard-Howard is a not a performance piece by Penny Arcade who is otherwise Susana Ventura, he is a New York drag artist and sex worker who had encounters with James Dean, Truman Capote. Judy Garland, Andy Warhol, Jackie Curtis, Tallulah Bankhead, Madonna and Elizabeth Windsor.

  • Margo Howard-Howard with Abbe Michaels. I was a White Slave in Harlem. Four Walls Eight Windows. 1988. Reissued in 1991 with an Introduction by Quentin Crisp.

John White. EN.WIKIPEDIA Don Akensen insisted when his book was published that the story of Irish-Canadian John White, MP made more sense if we assumed that John died young and that his sister Eliza had taken over his identity. More recently Akensen has said that this was a hoax, and the book is now listed as fiction.
  • Donald H.Akenson. At Face Value: the life and times of Eliza McCormack/John White. Montréal. McGill-Queen's University Press, xiii, 245pp. 1990.


1 comment:

  1. Today, I often find I'm considered a hoax by many genetic men and women merely because I'm a biological male who thinks I'm a female. They see me as only a transvestite.

    Good article, Zagria.

    ReplyDelete

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