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30 September 2016

A short history of male pregnancy


This is a convoluted tale consisting of three strands:

1. Doctors attempting to establish whether a cis man or trans woman could get pregnant with an ectopic pregnancy. The theory for how to do this was in place by 1985, but if any such pregnancy has been brought to term, it is not known to the public

2. Frauds and performance by cis men.

3. Trans men have quietly, and then less quietly, been getting pregnant all along, often with no aid at all from doctors.

1601

Daniel Burghammer of the Austrian Army, posted in Italy, gave birth to a girl.  GVWW.

1807

John Fubbister from the Orkney Isles was part of a Hudson’s Bay expedition that canoed 1800 miles up river arriving at Pembina Post on the Red River (in the future North Dakota) for Christmas. There Fubbister gave birth and was outed. AKA Isobel Gunn: EN.Wikipedia

1936

Nochmen Tenenbaum (born 1911) army sergeant, Warsaw, gave birth in 1936. GVWW

Early 1960s

David Kirby of Oxford University transplanted mouse embryos into the testes of male mice. See Teresi & McAuliffe, 1985.

Mid-1960s

Cecil Jacobsen of George Washington University Medical School transplanted a fertilized baboon egg into the abdomen of a male baboon. The embryo attached itself to the omentum (which hangs in front of the intestines). The embryo developed healthily, but was aborted after four months. This was done without external hormones. The embryo produced the hormones that it needed. However the results were never published. See Teresi & McAuliffe, 1985. See also EN.Wikipedia and book and film about Jacobsen. Jacobsen was a pioneer in amniocentesis, but later in life was convicted of using his own sperm in in vitro conceptions.

1970

Leo Wollman flew up to Toronto for the release of Dianna Boileau's autobiography. He rather dominated the event and predicted that transsexual women would be able to become pregnant within 10 years. This never came to pass.

1971

  • Novel: John Varley. The Ophiuchi Hotline. Dial, 1971. A science fiction novel set the future when alien technology enables persons to change sex and be fertile. Men become women to have a child, and then switch back. EN.Wikipedia

1973

  • Film: L'Événement le plus important depuis que l'homme a marché sur la Lune/ Niente di grave, suo marito è incinto/ A Slightly Pregnant Man, with Jacques Demy (dir), Marcello Mastroianni, Catherine Deneuve. France, Italy 92 mins 1973. IMDB EN.Wikipedia . A driving instructor becomes pregnant, and hormones in chickens are deemed to be the reason. He becomes a model for paternity clothing.

1978

  • Film: Rabbit Test, Joan Rivers (dir), with Billy Crystal, Roddy McDowell. US 84 mins 1978. IMDB EN.Wikipedia. A comedy about a sexually inexperienced man who becomes pregnant and gives birth to a daughter.

1979

Margaret Martin, a NZ cis woman, then 29 gave birth to a healthy girl in May, eight months after her hysterectomy, thereby establishing that ectopic [outside the womb] pregnancies were safe and feasible. Her gynaecologist, Peter Jackson told journalists that this proved that pregnant men were therefore possible. See Teresi & McAuliffe, 1985.

1984

Six trans women requested admission to the in vitro fertilization clinic at Queen Victoria Medical Centre, Melbourne. Their request was turned down. See Teresi & McAuliffe, 1985.

1985

  • Dick Teresi & Kathleen McAuliffe. “Male pregnancy”. Omni, December 1985, 8: 50-56 and 118. PDF Influential and inspiring article that summarized the work done to date. Afterwards Teresi got Bob Guccione, founder of Omni and Penthouse to put up $500,000 for Jacobsen to arrange a male pregnancy, but they then considered the mortality rates and dropped the idea.

Early 1990s

Trans man, Oleg (born 196?) Moscow: Four months into term his sperm-donor died suddenly of a leukaemia-related blood disorder. Oleg’s doctor feared that the baby would also be sick, and convinced him to have an abortion. Before they could try again, his wife died of a congenital heart defect. Oleg was considering getting pregnant again, as a way of honouring his wife’s memory. Discussed in David Tuller. Cracks in the Iron Closet: Travels in Gay & Lesbian Russia. Faber & Faber 1996: 161-4.

1992

Edwin Bayron, 32, Phillipines, a midwife, claimed to be hermaphroditic and six-months pregnant. He was able to fake the results of an ultrasound scan and two urine tests, such that the chief gynaecologist at the Bukidnon provincial hospital supported the claim. However this was a deceit resulting from his wish to marry his boyfriend. News article.

Intersex Karl Holzer, living as male, 31, Frankfurt, Germany, gave birth to boy in June. Weekly World News.

1994

  • Film: Junior, Ivan Reitman (dir), with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny Devito. US 109 mins 1994. As part of fertility research, a male scientist agrees to become pregnant. IMDB EN.Wikipedia Based on the theory in the 1985 Omni article. 

1998

  • Sam Dylan More. "The Pregnant Man - An Oxymoron". Journal of Gender Studies. 7, 3, 1998: 319-328. This article studies nine German trans men who have been pregnant, and found that they had to engage in significant identity and body work to mitigate the impact of societal pregnancy scripts. 

1999

Matt Rice (born 1964) San Francisco, twice a lover of Pat(rick) Califia. Pat had undergone a hysterectomy some years before, but Matt had stopped taking testosterone because of related migraines. With the aid of sperm donated sexually by three male friends, Matt became pregnant, and as a bearded man attended birthing classes. Meanwhile Califia started transition. The son, Blake (born 1999), is autistic, and Matt is raising him alone. 2000 article by Califia in Village Voice

Lee Mingwei Taiwanese man in New York who exhibited his pregnancy. ”Curiously, the Web site has been up since 1999, and Mr. Lee is apparently still pregnant! Either the poor man has been in labor for nearly a decade (talk about a rough delivery!), or the story is a fake. Of course, Mr. Lee doesn't exist; the Web site is a hoax created as performance art by an artist named Virgil Wong.”


 

2005

  • Meryl Rothstein . "Male Pregnancy: A Dangerous Proposition". Popular Science, 07.31.2005. Online.

2006

  • Film: Jules Rosskam (dir). Transparent. US 61 Mins 2006. A documentary about 19 trans men who have been pregnant and are now raising the child. IMDB

2008-10

Thomas Beatie, (born 1974, completed top-surgery transition 2002, married 2003) Arizona, with an infertile wife, became pregnant via donated sperm and a syringe. He wrote an article for The Advocate about the experience, and was profiled in The Washington Post. He became a media sensation, and did an hour-long interview on Oprah. He gave birth to a daughter June 2008, a son June 2009 and a second son July 2010. Mr & Mrs Beatie were divorced in 2012-4 in a case that tested legal definitions of gender. EN.Wikipedia Not the first pregnant man, but the first publicised.


  • Film: Pregnant Man, Elizabeth Mcdonald (dir), with Thomas Beatie. US TV 2008. IMDB 

2010

  • J Wallace. “The Manly Art of Pregnancy”. In Kate Bornstein & S Bear Bergman (eds). Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation. Seal Press, 2010: 188-194.

2011

Yuval Topper (born 1988), Israel, top-surgery 2009, gave birth to a son in December 2011. Gay Star News. And a daughter in 2014. Jews News 

Trevor MacDonald (born 1985) Manitoba, top surgery in early 20s, gave birth to a boy in 2011, and a second child in 2014. He was helped by La Leche League Canada, the breastfeeding support group. He applied to be a LLLC coach but was rejected as he does not regard himself as a mother. However LLLC set up an internal review and a year later expunged gendered language from its requirements. He founded in 2012 "Birthing and Breast or Chestfeeding Trans People and Allies which has 1700 members, and in 2014 formed a research team with funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research . The Star   EN.Wikipedia 


 

2012

AJ Kearns (born 1974) Melbourne, started transitioned at age 35. His wife had birth complications with their first child, so AJ postponed transition to give birth to their second child in 2012. The couple have since separated. Daily Mail

2013

Kayden Coleman (born 1985) Philadelphia, and his husband gave birth to a daughter in 2013. NY Daily News
  • Damien W. Riggs. “Transgender men’s self-representations of bearing children post-transition”. In F. Green. & M. Friedman. (eds.) Chasing rainbows, Demeter Press, 2013. PDF

2014

  • Alexis D Light, Juno Obedin-Maliver, Jae M Sevelius, Jennifer L Kerns. “Transgender men who experienced pregnancy after female-to-male gender transitioning”. Obstetrics & Gynecology, 124, 6, Dec 2014: 1120-7. Abstract News article

2015

  • Eve Shapiri. Gender Circuits: Bodies and Identities in a Technological Age. Routledge, 2015: 236-242.
  • Television: “From Daddy’s Tummy” Janine Cohen (dir), with AJ Kearn. Australian Story. AU ABC 30 mins 2015. IMDB

2016

Even Hempel (born 1981) US, gave birth to a boy in Spring 2016. People

Henry Steinn, (born 1997) Iceland, gave birth to a baby girl April 2016. Pink News 

Fernando Machado , Ecuador, pregnant by his trans wife, gave birth in June 2016. Daily Mail

Rafi Daugherty (born 1983) Denver, gave birth to a daughter. JTA
  • Trevor MacDonald. Where's the Mother? Stories from a Transgender Dad. Trans Canada Press, 2016.
EN.Wikipedia(male)     EN.Wikipedia(transgender)
____________________

There is also a book The Pregnant Man by Roberto Zapperi, Harwood, 1991, translated and revised into English by Brian Williams (original Uomo incinto, Cosenza, 1979). This book is not listed in Amazon. It is not about attempts or success of pregnancy in life, but in folklore and in psychoanalysis. It appears that he is totally ignorant of queer studies, but cites Freud, Ferenczi and Devereux instead as the latest research.

-------------------

So is a pregnant trans parent a mother or a father? Trans women with children are divided: some insist that they are mothers to their children, while others talk of their duties as a father, and allow their children to call them ‘Dad’. However trans women parents are, almost all, parents before transition. The trans men whom we list above had done most of transition before they became pregnant.

There are three factors:

1. Fathers impregnate, mothers gestate.

2. Mothers produce a single or a small number of DNA units surrounded by protein (eggs); fathers produce a large number of motile DNA units without protein and which cannot divide, but have a tail (sperm). Fish species of the Syngnathidae family, of which the best known is the seahorse, are said to exhibit male pregnancy. So why do we not regard the gestating parent as a mother? It is because it produces sperm, and receives eggs from the other sex.

3. Gender identity.

Obviously (1) and (2) would make a pregnant trans man a mother, however the current social construction is that (3) trumps (1) and (2). A valuable tenet of second-wave feminism was that gender is a social construction, and that received gender roles should be deconstructed. The more advanced position is that sex, as well as gender, is socially constructed. Male pregnancy is a step further and challenges the historical cultural baggage that we inherited along with the basic biology of making babies. The queering of everyday life continues.
Time: No comments:

27 September 2016

Two New York plastic surgeons in the 1970s

Facial Feminization Surgery is sometimes said to have been developed by surgeon Douglas Ousterhout in 1982.   Of course transsexuals had surgery to change their appearance before that date, although perhaps not in so systematic an approach.   It was then referred to by the more general term "plastic surgery" but also as "facial contouring".    Rhinoplasty (nose jobs) were the most common such operation.  The same plastic surgeons often also did breast enhancements.  Here are two New York surgeons who worked in this field. 

Felix Shiffman (1925 - 2005)

Felix Shiffman was born in New York City, served in the US Army, earned a dental degree at New York University and a medical degree from Hadassah University in Tel Aviv. He practiced cosmetic surgery for over forty years from 1954 in New York City, and also owned an art gallery. He advertised his services to transsexual patients, particularly in New York Magazine, and was known for his rhinoplasties.


In 1974 Luis Suria, then aged 45, was in transition to female.  She was an unlicensed school teacher, who had not worked steadily since 1961, but held sporadic employment as a commercial artist.  She visited Drs Shiffman and Rish, mainly the former, in June/July 1974 and again in December 1974 and underwent injections of free silicone to acquire female breasts. By March 1975 Suria’s breasts were sore and she returned for treatment from Dr Shiffman, who referred her to Dr Dhaliwal who performed a bilateral subcutaneous mastectomy.  Suria, shocked by the severity of the resulting wounds, checked out of the hospital against medical advice, and later developed a wound site infection which required another operation.

Meanwhile, in 1980 Dr Shiffman was advertising: “Specializing in Cosmetic Surgery and Facial Contouring for Transsexuals”. New York Magazine reported that his receptionist was giving quotes for silicone shots at $120 to $240 a unit, but when the magazine spoke to Shiffman, he denied doing silicone shots.

Luis Suria, having abandoned transition, became a born-again Christian, and, with psychiatric help, returned to being “a regular man”.  He sued for malpractice and the case Luis Suria v. Felix Shiffman et al came to court in 1983. The plaintiff argued that Shiffman committed malpractice when he injected silicone into Suria's breasts in July and December 1974, that Dhaliwal committed malpractice in the performance of the mastectomy, and that Dhaliwal had improperly failed to obtain informed consent for the procedure. Suria maintained that consent was given for "incision and drainage” but not for a mastectomy. In contention Shiffman claimed that he did not treat the patient until December 1976, and that “symptoms were caused by injections of mineral oil administered by a transsexual friend”.

In November 1983, the jury found that in July and December 1974 Shiffman did commit malpractice which was a proximate cause of the plaintiff's injuries, that Dhaliwal did not commit malpractice but did fail to obtain plaintiff's informed consent, which failure was a cause of the plaintiff's injuries, that the plaintiff was guilty of negligence that was a cause of his injuries, that Shiffman was 60% at fault, Dhaliwal 15% and the plaintiff 25%, and that the plaintiff's total damages were $2,000,000. The trial court dismissed the claim against Shiffman on the ground that plaintiff's contributory negligence barred recovery and, reducing the amount of the verdict by 25%, the proportionate share of plaintiff's fault, entered judgment in the principal amount of $1,500,000 against Dhaliwal alone.

Both Dhaliwal and Suria appealed, objecting to the direction of a verdict in favor of Shiffman. Dhaliwal argued that he was a "successive tort-feasor" (a person who commits a second tort against the same previously injured party) and should not be held responsible for the entire damage award. The verdict against Shiffman was reinstated.

Suria talked of writing a book to help “those who are confused about their sexual orientation” (sic).   His final award was $600,000.

In later years Dr Shiffman specialized in liposculpture, and as late as 1999, Shiffman was still doing breast augmentations.

In March 2000 Shiffman pleaded no contest to “practicing fraudulently; filing a false report; practicing with negligence and incompetence on more than one occasion and failing to maintain accurate records”, and surrended his medical license.

In 2001 Shiffman retired to Ormand Beach, Florida. In September 2003 he was involved in a car accident where a man pushing a motorcycle was killed. He died at age 79 shortly afterwards.
  • Sharon Churcher. "The Anguish of the Transsexuals". New York Magazine, 13, 25, June 16, 1980: 49.
  • “Suria v. Shiffman”. Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York, First Department, March 19, 1985. Leagle. Find a Case
  • “Former transsexual wins malpractice suit”. The Auburn Citizen, February 20, 1986. PDF
  • Jack Lechner. Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You. Crown Publishers, 2000: 95.
  • Felix Shiffman. Surrender of License. PDF
  • “Man On Road Hit, Killed By Car”. Orlando Sentinel, September 21, 2003. http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2003-09-21/news/0309210026_1_ormond-nova-beach-police.
Obituary

----------------

I couldn't find a statement that Suria actually got the $600,000 (almost $1,450,000 today).

Apparently Luis Suria v. Felix Shiffman et al has become case law with regard to successive tort-feasors. 

_________________________________________ 


Peter Fries (? – 1981)

Peter Freis was a plastic surgeon on Park Avenue, New York in the 1970s. He advertised in New York Magazine, and did facial work and breast implants for mtf transsexuals.

He is said to have practiced 'closed capsulotomy' to break the capsular contracture, a reaction to breast and other implants. This was just brute force, squeezing the breasts till the scar tissue split.

His last nurse was Robyn Arnold, the girlfriend who was charged with, but not convicted of, the murder of Diane Delia. Fries died, by happenstance, a few days after Delia was killed.
  • Linda Wolfe. “The Transsexual, the Bartender and the Jewish American Princess”.  New York, 17 Jan 1983: 30, 33. Online Uses the ‘Freiss’ spelling.
--------

While Wolfe mentioned “Freiss” in the magazine version of the Diane Delia story, he is not mentioned under either spelling in the reprint in her book The Professor and the Prostitute, and Other True Tales of Murder and Madness, 1987.
Time: 2 comments:

18 September 2016

Charing Cross GIC – addendum

Part I: 1818-1982
Part II: 1983-now
Addendum
Stuart Lorimer

There has been an article “Fifty years on: The Charing Cross Gender Identity Clinic and the funding of a category without parallel” published at Youth Trans Critical Professionals and again at Gender Trender.

The author is given as “Susan Matthews, UK Academic”, but does not list any academic qualifications.

The article gets off to a very bad start with one error after another.

“It [CXGIC] was founded in 1966”
I have already discussed this. Treating intersex patients, the clinic dates from the 1930s, treating transvestites and transsexuals, from the 1950s.
“at Johns Hopkins Gender Identity Clinic, the world’s first GIC  founded the previous year” [1965]
Actually the UCLA GIC was founded by Stoller in 1964.
“The founding clinician at Charing Cross, Richard Green, came with an impressive academic pedigree, having worked with Money, collaborating on research on boys who demonstrated cross-gender behaviour.”
Richard Green was reported to be in London in 1966 and 1969. He very likely visited the existing Charing Cross clinic, but he certainly had no position there. He is not even mentioned in John Randell’s book. Also the Feminine Boy Project was still in the future: it was done in the 1970s.
“Up until the second half of the twentieth century, the word ‘gender’ referred to grammatical gender, a feature of language not human identity.”
Not this canard again! Obviously Matthews does not read 17-19th century novels. Some examples:
Henry Fitzgeffrey 1620: “Now Mars defend us! seest thou who comes yonder? Monstrous! a Woman of the Masculine Gender.”
Susanna Centlivre, early 18th century playwright reported that theatre managers 'treated her ... in the Masculine Gender'. 
George Byron, Don Juan, 1824, having got his protagonist into female dress justifies using female pronouns: 'I say her because,/The gender still was epicene'.
Matthews then writes about John Money, lobotomy, John Money again, Bruce Reimer of course. She does not at all mention the Charing Cross doctors who worked with trans patients in the 1960s, ie. John Randell, Lennox Broster, Peter Philip. Come to that, there is also no mention of a certain Harry Benjamin. For Matthews, it seems, Money alone invented transsexualism!

Matthews writes: “For the Reimer case is open to many different readings. Zoe Playdon attributes the failings of UK gender identity clinics to this history”. This is a remarkable statement in that the details of the Reimer case would not be known for another 20 or 30 years. Certainly there is no mention of it in Randell’s 1973 book.

Matthews seems to think that Money was such an overwhelming influence that Charing Cross followed his lead: “The science of gender emerged from a tiny group centred on John Money and its findings were ethically compromised”. If this were so why cannot it be demonstrated from Randell’s writings?

Here is the bibliography from Randell’s book.

 The only mention of Green or Money is the 1969 anthology, which would be included as Randell contributed a paper to it. However none of Money’s or Green’s writings are listed, nor are they in the index, nor are they mentioned in the text.

In the 1960s the UK was less dependent on US fashions. To take two contemporary examples, that is 1965-7, compare the anti-psychiatry of RD Laing to the Scientology fellow-traveller Thomas Szasz, or the radical difference between the psychedelic music of Pink Floyd and Soft Machine from that which came from San Francisco. John Randell, whatever else we may think of his attitude, was his own man, and no-one has argued that he was a disciple of Money.

Having ignored the history of the CXGIC, Matthews jumps quickly to the 21st century, and as proof of Money’s influence she writes: “Echoes of the founding beliefs are still apparent in a 2011 paper by James Barrett, currently lead clinician at Charing Cross GIC. ‘Disorders of gender identity have probably always existed, inside and outside Europe’, Barrett writes, citing a 1975 study (Heiman).”

Heiman is not in her bibliography. Comments about trans people being everywhere are found in every popular survey. May I suggest Oscar Gilbert’s Men in Women's Guise: Some Historical Instances of Female Impersonation, 1926 or many News of the World articles over the decades. To claim this as part of Money’s influence is to show that Matthews does not begin to understand what he had to say.

She spends most of the paper attacking Barrett and the fact that he has said different things at different times. He is wrong when he and other clinicians decide what to do ignoring the patients’ wishes, and he is wrong when he listens to the trans persons who come to the clinic and he accepts their self-diagnosis. “This claim is important, for if trans were a disorder (as in 1966), the work of the clinic would belong in a worrying tradition, one that harks back at the worst to lobotomy and calls up disturbing memories of the treatment of David Reimer. If trans has any links to body dysmorphia, to anorexia, or to self-harm, then it could not be appropriate to medicate or to offer surgery, however acceptable to the patient, however fiercely demanded.”

Having attacked Money for not listening to David Reimer’s self-diagnosis that he was not a woman, Matthews is still not willing to accept the equivalent self-diagnosis of trans persons. She connects trans and trauma: “Perhaps the most important voices are those of transitioners and detransitioners who are now beginning to explore what they see as a relationship between trans and trauma, challenging the constricting logic which demands that the complexity of human experience must fit the constructs of the gender narrative.”

Let us suppose that there is merit in Matthew’s linking of trans and trauma. She undermines her own case by distorting the history of the CXGIC and especially her (how shall we put if) Money-fication of its history and by paying no attention at all to the clinic’s pioneers.
Time: No comments:

16 September 2016

Charing Cross Hospital GIC: Part II: 1983-Now

Part I: 1818-1982
Part II: 1983-now
Addendum
Stuart Lorimer


1983 Stephanie Anne Lloyd, marketing manager, was referred by a Manchester doctor to Russell Reid at Charing Cross GIC. Afterwards she created Transformation retail shops for trans persons in Manchester and later London.

Ashley Robin, who had stepped in as the head of the GIC appointed Donald Montgomery as clinical physician in 1984, and retired in 1985.

1985 Christine Goodwin, bus driver, became a patient. She would later win recognition as legally female at the ECHR in 2002.

Two studies were carried out at the GIC by Charles Mate-Kole, Maurizio Freschi & Ashley Robin.
a) “We presented the results of a retrospective study of 150 patients and a second, randomised controlled study of 40 patients. We studied 150 male transsexuals at different stages of treatment: assessment stage (n= 50); waiting list stage (n= 50); and postoperative stage (n=50). The results indicated a significant reduction in neurotic symptoms and improved social state in transsexuals postoperatively compared with patients at the waiting list stage, who fulfilled the criteria for surgery but were awaiting operation, and assignment to an assessment group.”
b) We “compared two groups of male transsexuals who had been assessed and carefully selected for surgery. They were randomly assigned to one of two groups; the experimental group had their waiting time for surgery brought forward so that they were operated on within three months of fulfilling the criteria, and the control group had to wait for the routine two years before undergoing surgery. All the patients were equally matched for age, social class, number of years of clinic attendance, and several other variables that might affect outcome. The results suggested that after two years of follow up there were significant differences between the two groups on a number of psychiatric and social, variables, showing a significant advantage for the experimental group over the controls.”
11-12 December 1986. International Conference on Gender Identity was held in London. This was really a British conference, but the Clarke Institute, Toronto was represented, and thus the name. It was organised by Charles Mate-Kole, research psychologist at the GIC. “Addresses covered a broad range of themes from the literary style of transsexual autobiographies to the hepatotoxic effect of methyltestosterone, and from the work of the speech therapist in the team to the latest surgical development in phalloplasty which uses a radial artery flap to create the urethra. The present legal disabilities of transsexuals were discussed and an interesting paper on classification clarified the distinction between transsexualism and homosexuality yet noted the curious variants in the relationship of gender identity to sexual orientation.” The Mate-Kole-Freschi-Robin studies were presented.

In 1987 J Bryan Tully completed his PhD thesis, Accounting for transsexualism, based on 204 trans patients, most of whom were seen at Charing Cross GIC, and concluded that “here is a fundamental weakness in the imposition of psychiatric 'syndromes' on gender dysphoric phenomena. Rather, 'gender dysphoric careers' are proposed as fluctuating enterprises in the construction of meanings, some meanings being more fateful and workable than others”.

Grant Williams, consultant urologist at Charing Cross Hospital, wrote to the British Medical Journal in November 1987. “One gender reassignment operation takes the whole of one afternoon in the operating theatre. During that time, I could perform 10 cystoscopies or resect four prostates or do three vasovasostomies. Most people would feel that to pursue gender reassignment surgery in the current climate must be bottom of the list of medical importance. The hospital continues with this, although it is totally against the wishes of the division of surgery." Charing Cross GIC doctors Charles Mate-Kole, Donald Montgomery, James Dalrymple & Steven Hirsch wrote to the BMJ in reply: “He is unaware of studies done in our department, the results of which were presented at a conference in December 1986 at this hospital”. RP Snaith from St James University Hospital, Leeds, pointed out that while surgeons at Charing Cross oppose gender operations, “and this is understandable since this one hospital has undertaken the major proportion of this work for the whole of Britain. This unfair burden should be corrected, as I pointed out, by the establishment of regional services.” Williams resigned from Charing Cross the next year.

1988, James Barrett, joined the GIC

1989 Luiza Moreira/Roberta Close, the Brazilian model, had gender surgery at Charing Cross Hospital.

1990. 20-year old Jackie McAuliffe had a first appointment.

1993 psychiatrist Alfred Hohburger died.

1994 Richard Green, ex-colleague of Harry Benjamin, became Director of Clinical Research, and saw trans persons two days a week.

Donald Montgomery gave a presentation at the Gendys ’94 Conference in Manchester discussing the GIC from the doctors’ point of view. At that time the clinic was getting over 300 referrals a year, 80% mtf, of whom 20% had “some form of gender reassignment surgery within five years”. He presented a typology: “primary core transsexualism, secondary transsexualism, the heterosexual transvestite, the asexual cross-dresser, the female transsexual, the small - the very small - number of patients with a biological component”. He discussed other GICs: “We are by far the biggest in the UK if not Europe, if not the world, I think, in terms of patient referrals. There is a small clinic just for the Leeds/Yorkshire catchment area. Professors Goldberg and Linton used to have a clinic here in Manchester but I think all the Manchester patients are probably being referred to us at the moment. There are occasional psychiatrists scattered around the UK that have an interest in gender identity disorders, without professional back up on the whole. Dr. Christie Brown still has his clinic at Maudsley Hospital but I think it's probably running down rather than increasing. Dr. Dunleavy in Newcastle and his colleagues have a small clinic there. There is also the child and adolescent clinic at St. George's”

Jackie McAuliffe had surgery in 1995. Later she would work as a prostitute in Paddington Green and be featured in a docu-drama based in the area.

++The GIC was moved out of the Charing Cross Hospital and into a smaller building, the Claybrook centre.

2000 The GIC approached James Bellringer to replace Mike Royal as the GIC’s surgeon. Royal provided on-the-job training,

Kelly Denise Richards, serving time at HMP Parkhurst for assault and robbery, was a patient. While still incarcerated, she had surgery and was transferred to a women’s prison.

In December that year it was announced that the number of NHS sex-change operations was set to triple, and that Charing Cross GIC would increase such operations from one to three a week at an extra £1 million per annum. Liam Fox, the Conservative shadow health secretary denounced the Labour Government of pandering to lobby groups.

2001 James Barrett became head of the GIC.












++Stuart Lorimer joined the GIC, first as an intern, but soon had his own weekly clinic.

In 2003 the GIC moved into its new premises at 179-183 Fulham Palace Road. It was now part of the West London Mental Health NHS Trust.



2004 Charles Kane, businessman, in detransition, was, unlike his transition, a client of the GIC.

2004 In 2004 as the Gender Recognition Bill was proceeding through parliament, psychiatrist Russell Reid faced a complaint to the General Medical Council that he too easily accepted patients for hormone therapy and surgery. The complaint was brought by four of his colleagues at the Charing Cross Hospital Gender Identity Clinic, psychiatrists James Barrett, Richard Green, Donald Montgomery and senior registrar Stuart Lorimer on behalf of four of his former patients. Reid retired his NHS post the next year. In 2007 Reid was found guilty of Serious Professional Misconduct, mostly for failing to communicate fully with patients’ family doctor (a rule that many doctors are unaware of) and not documenting his reasons for departing from the HBIGDA Standards of Care guidelines sufficiently.

The same year David Batty of The Guardian interviewed the GIC surgeon James Bellringer and was told “The number who express immense gratitude is overwhelming”. However Persia West who researched a report on the needs of trans persons in Brighton and Hove (many of whom had been referred to the Charing Cross GIC) and found “The level of dissatisfaction with the Charing Cross GIC was very high, in essence concerning the time the treatment took and the manner in which it was given.”

++Christina Richards, herself trans, became part of the staff at the GIC.

2006 The GIC saw 498 referrals.

++2007 Stuart Lorimer represented the GIC at a panel on trans health care as part of London's LGBT History Month, and then at the 2007 LGBT Haelth Summit in Manchester.

2011 A proposed conference, Transgender: Time to Change sponsored by the Royal College of Psychiatrists and led by Az Hakeem of the Portman Clinic, and featuring Julie Bindel, but with no input from any trans persons, was cancelled after the Charing Cross team criticized the emphasis of the meeting: “It now appears that the conference comes at trans issues from a very specific agenda, namely, to explore the validity or otherwise of gender diagnoses as medical and psychiatric phenomena. So long as this is the case, we feel we can’t support it.”

US physician Ted Eyton visited the GIC in 2013, and reported that it gets 1500 referrals per year from GPs. This rate has been doubling every five years. Charing Cross GIC gets about 50% of referrals in the UK. This was the same year as the Conservative-Liberal coalition proposed to demolish the main Charing Cross building, and to sell off 60% of the site to private developers.

2014 James Bellringer, who had been doing the majority of vaginoplasty work for Charing Cross Hospital resigned.

2016 The GIC saw 1892 referrals in 12 months.

The West London Mental Health Trust (WLMHT) announced: 
“However, as WLMHT moves forward it is necessary to refocus the services that we provide. The Board has made a decision that the medium-term strategic focus for the Trust will be to develop mental health services, physical care and integration between the two.
“As a result, the Trust has come to the conclusion that patients requiring gender identity services would be better served in the long term by another provider, and has therefore served notice on our contract to NHS England.”
++However it was becoming increasingly obvious that as trans persons were no longer regarded under a mental health rubric, the connection with WLMHT became more strained.  In 2017 the GIC was repositioned within the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust.

Doctors include:

1933-1965 Lennox Broster, surgeon
193?-194? Clifford Allen, psychiatrist
1950-1982 John Randell, Physician for Psychological Medicine
196? – 198? Peter Philip, surgeon
1982-1985 Ashley Robin, head of GIC
1982-1993 Alfred Hohburger, psychiatrist
1982-2005 Russell Reid, psychiatrist
198?-200? James Dalrymple, Surgeon
1984- ? Donald Montgomery, clinical physician
1985-1990 Charles Mate-Kole, research psychologist
1994- ? Richard Green, Director of Clinical Research
? -2000 Mike Royal, surgeon
2000-2014 James Bellringer, surgeon
2002-now Stuart Lorimer, psychiatrist
1988- now James Barrett, head of GIC from 2001.
EN.Wikipedia   TransActivist    WLMHTGIC
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Deborah Blaustein’s University of London thesis sounds quite interesting. Unfortunately I was not able to find a copy.

Re the two Mate-Kole-Freschi-Robin studies: obviously transsexuals who have been granted what they need are less neurotic than those who are frustrated by being kept waiting year after year for no good reason.

For several of the doctors, eg. Richard Green, I was not able to find out when they came and left.
The Wikipedia page on the West London Mental Health NHS Trust does not even mention the Gender Identity Clinic, nor does the Wikipedia page on the Hospital mention recent attempts to close it and sell off the land.

Obviously the attitude of the staff is much better than it was in the 1960s under John Randell who insisted on using birth pronouns and telling trans women that they would always be men. However Persia West’s report shows that there is further to go. The proposal that Charing Cross GIC be discontinued and replaced by local GICs is possibly a good thing, if it is done right. However the track record of the Conservative government since 2010 does not bode well.
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14 September 2016

Charing Cross Hospital Gender Identity Clinic. Part I: 1818-1982


Part I: 1818-1982
Part II: 1983-now
Addendum
Stuart Lorimer

The hospital was originally founded in 1818 with royal patronage as the Royal West London Infirmary, located behind Haymarket Theatre. Patient numbers forced a move to a site near the Charing Cross. Doctors were being trained from 1822, and from 1829 this was recognised by the newly founded University of London. The hospital was renamed to Charing Cross Hospital in 1827. After a major rebuild in 1877, the hospital had doubled in size, and it was further extended in 1902. In 1926 the Royal Westminster Ophthalmic Hospital was merged in.

Pioneering surgery on intersex persons, mainly those with adreno-genital syndrome (now known as Congenital adrenal hyperplasia) was being done by Lennox Broster as early as the 1930s. In 1936 the champion shot-putter and javelin thrower, Mark Weston underwent two operations. Broster said: “Mr. Mark Weston, who was always brought up as a female, is male, and should continue life as such". A similar operation was performed on Mark’s younger brother, Harry, a few years later. In 1938, Broster was co-author of a book on the adrenal cortex and intersexuality.  ++The same year, an 1938 article in the Daily Mirror about his work was headlined “Doctor Changes Sex of 24: Patients Have Married”.  The article specifically mentioned Donald Purcell who did marry four years later.

Because of the wartime bombing, the hospital was in effect moved to Boxmoor, Hertfordshire in 1940.

Broster's work on the Weston brothers was reported in The News of the World, in 1943 after Harry committed suicide. This report attracted patients who would now be regarded as transsexual. However there is no evidence that such persons were accepted, and Clifford Allen, the psychiatrist who worked with him, specifically rejected surgical treatment for ‘transvestites’ (the term then in use).

Charing Cross Hospital moved back to central London in 1947, but it was decided to relocate, although it would take many years before the new building was ready.

In 1950 John Randell was appointed Physician for Psychological Medicine at Charing Cross Hospital, where he worked with Broster. By then ‘transvestites’ were being accepted. Randell wrote up 50 cases of “transvestism and trans-sexualism” for The British Medical Journal in 1959, and his MD thesis for the University of Wales, 1960, discussed 61 mtf and 16 ftm cases. This was one of the first higher degree theses in English on transsexuality.

In 1957 it was proposed to join Charing Cross with the Fulham and West London Hospitals.

Through the 1960s Randell was seeing 50 ‘transvestite’ cases a year, which rose to nearly 200 in the 1970s. By his own figures, he saw 2438 patients (1768 mtf, 670 ftm). He also spent half his time with general psychiatric patients. However he was not in favour of surgery until his patients who had had surgery abroad returned with positive evaluations. Even in the 1960s less than 10% of his patients managed to achieve surgery and only a third of the mtfs of those had vaginoplasty. However most gender surgery performed in the UK was done at Charing Cross. ++Two transwomen who did succeed in obtaining surgery were the ventriloquist-magician Terri Rogers and sex worker Gloria Greaves,

1965 Lennox Broster died, aged 77.

The future Alice Purnell, a co-founder of the Beaument Society, had been attending the Charing Cross Hospital Gender Clinic under the care of Dr Randell, and in 1966 was offered surgery.  However Purnell married a second wife instead.

Randell contributed a paper: "Preoperative and Postoperative Status of Male and Female Transsexuals" to Richard Green & John Money (eds), Transsexualism and Sex Reassignment, 1969.

The First International Symposium on Gender Identity was held at the Piccadilly Hotel, London, 25-7 July 1969. It was sponsored and organized by the Erikson Foundation and the Albany Trust. Arguments arose between the team from Chelsea Women's Hospital who regarded transsexuals as a form of intersex, and the team from Charing Cross Hospital who regarded them as having a psychological disorder. The Symposium did bring together the doctors working in the field. Randell’s name was mentioned several times in the press. The program for the symposium reported the situation in Britain as follows: “The treatment of transsexuals has also been undertaken by specialising teams of psychiatrists, physicians and surgeons but there is as yet no permanent gender identity unit”.

After reading about the symposium in The Times, Mark Rees, one of the future founders of Press for Change, contacted the Albany Trust, which passed him onto Dr Randell, at first at his Harley Street Rooms for a fee, and then at the GIC on the NHS.

One of Randell’s patients was the London school teacher, Della Aleksander, who had surgery with Dr Burou in Casablanca, 1970, and who was involved in the pioneering gender conferences in 1974 and 1975, and co-produced a BBC2 program on transsexuals in 1974.

1970 was notably the year of Corbett v. Corbett, the divorce trial litigated by Arthur Corbett, the heir apparent to the Rowallan Baroncy, against his estranged wife of seven years, the model, April Ashley. Dr Randell appeared for the litigant and testified that that he “considered that the respondent (ie April) is properly classified as a male homosexual transsexualist”. This opinion contributed to the verdict which redefined legal intersex as chromosomal, gonadal and genital sex at birth not being concordant, and that psychological aspects not otherwise to be considered. It was ruled that Lady Corbett was not a woman for the purpose of marriage, and the re-issue of revised birth certificates for transsexuals stopped immediately.

Randell published a paper, "Indications for Sex Reassignment Surgery" in. Archives of Sexual Behavior,1971.

The new Charing Cross Hospital, now located in the site of the former Fulham Hospital was formally opened in 1973. Initially it was called Charing Cross Hospital, Fulham, but eventually the ‘Fulham’ was dropped.

In the 1970s when numbers increased, still only 15% of patients achieved surgery. By then Randell was arguing that surgery could be appropriate and that psychotherapy did not work. Even then he restricted surgery to sane, intelligent, single and passable individuals. Passable implied conforming to Randell’s old-fashioned ideas of being ‘ladylike’, that many women had abandoned by the 1970s. Until the end he continued to refer to patients, including post-operatives, by the pronouns of their birth gender, and would tell a trans women, accepted for surgery, that ‘you’ll always be a man’.

By 1971 journalist/historian Jan Morris had been accepted in the program at Charing Cross, but withdrew as they insisted that Jan and her wife be divorced.

The future singer and actress, Adèle Anderson became a patient in 1973, the year that Randell’s one and only book, Sexual Variations, came out.

The model and Bond-girl, Caroline Cossey/Tula, was a patient of Randell, and was approved for surgery in 1974. Unlike other patients, Tula found him to be ‘absolutely charming’ (perhaps because she passed so well).

Rachael Padman arrived in England in 1977 as a Cambridge physics PhD student, and was quickly accepted at the Charing Cross GIC, and put on oestrogens.

Randell wrote an article, “Transsexualism and its management”, for the Nursing Mirror, also that year.

Rachael Webb, then a lorry driver, but who would become notorious in the press in 1983 when she used a £2,000 loan, available to all council employees, to pay for her operation (others used it as a deposit for a mortgage), became a patient at the GIC in 1978.

A 1979 episode of the BBC Inside Story documentary series was “George”, directed by David Pearson, about a pre-op transsexual. There was sufficient interest that this was expanded into a ground-breaking documentary, A Change of Sex, 1980, which followed the social and medical transition of Julia Grant (George) and also provided a snapshot of the Charing Cross Hospital Gender Identity Clinic. Randell is the unnamed doctor who shocked most reviewers by his attitude.



In 1980 the News of the World (12/10/80) claimed that Randell and his surgeon, Peter Phillip, had made London the ‘sex-change capital of the world’.

1981 Bülent Ersoy, Turkish singing star, had gender surgery at Charing Cross.

1982 John Randell died of a heart attack aged 64. Ashley Robin, who had retired after a heart attack, stepped in and became head of the GIC. Russell Reid became a consultant, and Alfred Hohburger joined, at first on a honorary basis.

Rachael Padman had GIC approved surgery in October, and her Cambridge PhD thesis was approved while she was in hospital.

Continued in Part II.
  • L. R. Broster, Clifford Allen, H. W. C. Vines, Jocelyn Patterson, Alan W. Greenwood, G. F. Marrian, and G. C. Butler. The Adrenal Cortex and Intersexuality. London: Chapman & Hall Ltd., 1938.
  • “Two Sisters Turn into Brothers”. The Star, 25 August 1939.
  • “Were Once Sisters: Death Brings Strange Fact to Light”. News of the World, 2 Aug 1943. Reprinted in George Ives (ed Paul Sieveking). Man Bites Man: The Scrapbook of an Edwardian Eccentric. Penguin Books, 1981: 40.
  • John B. Randell. "Transvestitism And Trans-Sexualism: A Study Of 50 Cases". The British Medical Journal. 2, 5164, 1959: 1448-1452.
  • John B. Randell. Cross Dressing and the Desire to change Sex, MD Thesis, University of Wales, 1960.
  • R. J.Minney. The Two Pillars of Charing Cross: The Story of a Famous Hospital. London: Cassell, 1967.
  • John B. Randell. "Preoperative and Postoperative Status of Male and Female Transsexuals" in Richard Green & John Money (eds), Transsexualism and Sex Reassignment, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1969.
  • Program of the First International Symposium on Gender Identity: Aims, Functions and Clinical Problems of a Gender Identity Unit. 25, 26 and 27 July 1969. PDF
  • John B. Randell. "Indications for Sex Reassignment Surgery". Archives of Sexual Behavior, 1:2, 153-161, 1971.
  • John B. Randell. Sexual Variations. London: Priory Press. 1973.
  • John B. Randell. Transsexualism and its management, Nursing Mirror, 45-47, 1977.
  • David Pearson (dir). A Change of Sex. With Julia Grant. BBC TV. 1980.
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Charing Cross (51°30′26″N 00°07′39″W) denotes the junction of the Strand, Whitehall and Cockspur Street, just south of Trafalgar Square. It was the location of the most expensive of the Eleanor Crosses erected 1291-4. The cross was destroyed by order of Parliament in 1647, and after the Restoration, an equestrian statue of the first Charles Stuart was raised on the spot, and is still standing. A replacement cross was commissioned in 1865 by the South Eastern Railway Company and is still found in the forecourt of Charing Cross Railway Station. The site of the original cross is the official centre of London, and distances to/from London are to/from Charing Cross. The fact that Charing Cross Hospital later moved to Fulham complicates the issue.

The Wikipedia article on Boxmoor does not mention that it was the wartime location of Charing Cross Hospital.

The WLMHT GIC web site says: “The West London Gender Identity Clinic at Charing Cross Hospital (CX GIC) is the largest and oldest clinic of its type, dating back to 1966.” But what happened in 1966? Lennox Broster’s work with intersex persons dates back to the 1930s, and John Randell’s with transvestites and transsexuals dates to the 1950s. On the other hand the 1969 symposium reported “there is as yet no permanent gender identity unit”.
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03 September 2016

Nochmen Tenenbaum (1911–?) army sergeant

Nochmen Tenenbaum served with distinction in the Polish Army in the early 1930s. He earned medals after saving several persons from drowning, and was promoted to sergeant.

A year later in 1936, after physical and psychological changes, and leaving the army, Tenenbaum, still in male clothing, arrived at a maternity home in Warsaw and requested a room, stating that he was about to give birth. A 4 kg child was born. The father was an artist.
  • “Nine-Pound Child Born to Ex-Soldier A Year after “he” Changed “his” Sex”. Daily Mail, 7 August 1936. Reprinted in George Ives (ed Paul Sieveking). Man Bites Man: The Scrapbook of an Edwardian Eccentric. Penguin Books, 1981: 41.
  • “Soldier Shocks Doctors, As He Becomes Mother”. Daily Mirror, 10 August 1936. Online.
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The anti-sodomy laws in Poland had not been enforced since independence in 1918. They were officially repealed in 1932.

The Daily Mirror story contains the comment: “Although there are many authentic cases of sex changes on record, this is believed to be the first time in the history of medical science that the metamorphosis was so complete that reproduction was possible”.   This in 1936!

Most likely, Tenenbaum was female-born, had transitioned (without hormones, which was the only option at the time) in order to serve in the army, but had been sexually compromised and become pregnant. We know nothing of him after 1936.
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