This site is the most comprehensive on the web devoted to trans history and biography. Well over 1700 persons worthy of note, both famous and obscure, are discussed in detail, and many more are mentioned in passing.

There is a detailed Index arranged by vocation, doctor, activist group etc. There is also a Place Index arranged by City etc. This is still evolving.

In addition to this most articles have one or more labels at the bottom. Click one to go to similar persons. There is a full list of labels at the bottom of the right-hand sidebar. There is also a search box at the top left. Enjoy exploring!

30 December 2023

Amber McLaughlin (1973-2023) convicted of murder

McLaughlin was born in Missouri and given the name Scott. The mother abandoned the child who was placed in the foster care system: one foster parent rubbed feces in his face, and an adoptive father tasered the child. Severe depression resulted in multiple suicide attempts, both as a child and as an adult.

McLaughlin became a registered sex offender in 1992 after a conviction for sexual assault against a 14-year-old girl. In 2003 McLaughlin was arrested for the rape and fatal stabbing of an ex-girlfriend in Earth City, an ex-urb of St Louis, whom he had been stalking. In 2006, the jury found McLaughlin guilty of first-degree murder, but was deadlocked at the punishment phase of the trial. The trial judge intervened and imposed a death sentence. Missouri and Indiana are the only two US states that allow judges make such a decision. 

In 2016, a federal judge ordered a new sentencing hearing after finding that the defense had not used an expert witness on penalty mitigation to discuss the accussed’s mental state after finding that he had falsified data 17 years earlier. In 2021 a three-judge panel of the 8th US Court of Appeals ruled that earlier falsified date was irrelevant, and that the expert should have testified. However, they also found that the testimony was unlikely to change the outcome, and reinstated the death penalty.

On death row at the state prison in Potosi, McLaughlin announced in 2019 that she was trans, and was allowed to transition. She took the name Amber, but her legal name was never changed, nor was she allowed to start on estrogen.

3 January 2023, Amber Mclaughlin was executed by lethal injection.

  • Robert Patrick. “Federal appeals court reinstates death penalty in 2003 St. Louis County rape, murder”. St Louis Post-Dispatch, Aug 18, 2021. Online.
  • Kevin Held. “Missouri executes convicted murderer Amber McLaughlin”. Fox2now, Jan 3, 2023. Online.
  • Riya Teotia. “Who was Amber McLaughlin, the first transgender woman executed in the US? Know about the 2003 case”. Wionews, Jan 04, 2023. Online.
  • Emily Chudy. “Trans prisoner Amber McLaughlin set to be executed today unless governor grants clemency”. PinkNews, Jan 03 2023. Online.

EN.Wikipedia

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Some sites claim that Amber was the first openly transgender woman executed in the U.S. This of course ignores the many two-spirit shamans executed by white colonialists. It also ignores Frank Spisak executed 17 February 2011.

From arrest to execution was almost twenty years. So in effect McLaughlin served a life sentence in addition to being executed.

In Britain, prior to the abolition of the death penalty, it was judges, not juries, who decided between a life sentence and a death sentence.

17 December 2023

Some recent obituaries, trans and others

Lucy Salani (1924-2023) concentration camp survivor, upholsterer, discovered by Bologna LGBT groups in 2010s. Biography: Il mio nome è Lucy, 2009. GVWW.

Katherine Cummings (1935 -2022) Australian librarian, who, working in US, met many of the pioneering trans women. Completed transition at age 52. Autobiography: Katherines Diary, 1992. Elder at Sydney’s Gender Centre. TSsuccesses.   


Jeanne Hoff (1938-2023) first trans person to be a psychiatrist helping other trans persons - she took over Harry Benjamin’s practice. Later a prison psychiatrist in San Quentin. GVWW.

Rusty Rae Moore (1941-2022) professor of international business, dean at Hofstra University, transitioned in her 50s, bought a house in Park Slope, Brooklyn, which became Transy House (Sylvia Rivera lived there at the end of her life). GVWW.

Transy House

Mark Rees (1942-2023) Applied to the ECHR for trans rights, founding member of Press for Change, member of the Tunbridge Wells Borough Council. Autobiography: Dear Sir or Madam, 1996, 2009. GVWW.


Rachel Pollack (1945-2023) novelist, poet, Tarotist, had been London Gay Liberation Front TV/TS Group contact person in 1971. GVWW.

Georgina Beyer (1957-2023) Maori. drag queen, stripper, prostitute, actress, radio host, social worker, Mayor, Member of Parliament, Justice of the Peace, Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit. GVWW.


Loren Cameron (1959-2022) brother to Bobbi, nephew to Marjorie, photographer and trans activist. Book: Body Alchemy, 1996. Suicide at age 63. GVWW.

Shinta Ratri (1963-2023) took over Indonesia’s first Islamic school specifically for waria in Yogyakarta, after Maryani died. Died of a heart attack. HRW.

Sam Villasencio (1992-2023) Filipina lover of Rod Fleming, died of pulmonary tuberculosis. Rod Fleming.

Brianna Ghey (2007-2023) trans schoolgirl in Warrington, Cheshire killed by two 15-year-olds, one of whom admits to fantasies of killing people. Wikipedia, Pink News, GuardianVerdict



Cis Persons:

Peggy Rudd (1933-2023) cofounder of Houston’s Tau Chi chapter of Tri-Ess, wife to Melanie. First wife of a Tri-Ess cross-dresser to write about it. Author of My Husband Wears My Clothes, 1989 and 4 others. OutSmart.

Volkmar Sigusch (1940-2023) German sexologist, director of the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft in Frankfurt, author of 51 books, edited the cultural magazine Sexualität konkret, coiner of ‘cissexual’. Wikipedia,  Spiegel,  WDR.

Minnie Bruce Pratt (1946-2023) poet, academic, LGBT activist, wife to Leslie Feinberg.  Wikipedia, https://minniebrucepratt.net

Norah Vincent (1968-2022) lesbian writer noted for the 18 months living as a man 2004-5 and the book she wrote about it: Self-Made Man, 2006. . She died in a Swiss euthanasia clinic July, 2022. GVWW, Wikipedia.



Drag performers:

James Bidgood/Terri Howe (1933-2022) performed at 82 Club in the 1950s. GVWW.

Barry Humphries/Edna Everage (1934-2023) Australian heterosexual who made his name as Everage in London in the 1960s in the Barry McKenzie films (in the second of which then Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam appeared and fictionally made Everage a Dame). Later Everage and Humphries toured in one-person satirical revues. More recently Humphries damaged his legacy by terfy-style support of Germaine Greer and JK Rowling. Wikipedia, Pink News.

Lily Savage/Paul O’Grady (1955-2023) drag star in ‘80s and ’90s. eight-year residency at The Royal Vauxhall Tavern, award at Edinburgh Festival, MBE. GVWW.


Stefan Grygelko/Heklina (1967-2023) San Francisco’s legendary drag queen, creator of the transgressive drag show Trannyshack, the Miss Trannyshack Pageant. Wikipedia, Vulture.


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For other victims of murder etc see:

https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports


15 December 2023

Books on Gender Variance in 2023 - Part 2

 





$£¥ €=Excessively overpriced books. 

Media

  • $£¥ € Ana Horvat, Orly Lael Netzer, Sarah McRae & Julie Rak (eds). Trans Narratives: trans, transmedia, transnational. Routledge, 2023.

Religious

  • Joe W Gresham. LGBT, Society, The Church & the Bible. Kindle, 2023.

  • Austen Hartke. Transforming: Updated and Expanded Edition with Study Guide: The Bible and the Lives of Transgender Christians. John Knox Press, 2023.

  • Lori Anne Holt. Embracing Androgyny: Androgyny in Faith and Society. Kindle, 2023.

  • Joseph Plaster. Kids on the Street: Queer Kinship and Religion in San Francisco's Tenderloin. Duke University Press, 2023.

  • Bryce E Rich. Gender Essentialism and Orthodoxy: Beyond Male and Female. Fordham University Press, 2023.

  • Rubel Shelley. Male and Female God Created Them: A Biblical Review of LGBTQ+ Claims. College Press Publishing Company, 2023.

  • Max K Strassfeld. Trans Talmud: Androgynes and Eunuchs in Rabbinic Literature. University of California Press, 2022.


  • Ken Summers. Weirdly Queer: Exploring the LGBTQ Perspective of the Paranormal, Occult, and Mysterious World. 2023.

Legal & Activism

  • $£¥ € Aileen Kennedy. Law, Gender Identity, and the Brain: Exploring Brain-Sex Theories in Judicial Decisions on Trans and Intersex Minors. Routledge, 2023.

Crime

  • $£¥ € Abbie Goldberg, Danielle Slakoff & Carrie Buist (eds). The (Mis)Representation of Queer Lives in True Crime. Routledge, 2023.

Biology

  • Daphna Joel & Luba Vikhanski. Gender mosaic : beyond the myth of the male and female brain. Little, Brown Spark, 2019.

Music

  • Will Hermes. Lou Reed. Farrar, straus and Giroux, 2023.

  • William Sauerland. Queering Vocal Pedagogy: A Handbook for Teaching Trans and Genderqueer Singers and Fostering Gender-Affirming Spaces. Rowman & Littlefield, 2022.

  • Sylvan Song. Queering the Western Art Music Canon: A Call for Inclusivity and Representation. Self Publishers, 2023.

  • McKenzie Wark. Raving. Duke University Press, 2023.

Drag

  • Jacob Bloomfeld. Drag: A British History. University of California Press, 2023.

  • Mark Edward & Stephen Farrier (eds). Contemporary Drag Practices and Performers. Methuen, 2020.


  • Elyssa Maxx Goodman. Glitter and Concrete: A Cultural History of Drag in New York City. Hanover Square Press, 2023.

  • Craig Seligman. Who Does That Bitch Think She Is?: Doris Fish and the Rise of Drag. Public Affairs, 2023.

  • Janet Tennant. It's a Drag: Cross-Dressing in Performance. Applause, 2022.

  • Sasha Velour. The Big Reveal: An Illustrated Manifesto of Drag. Harper, 2023.

Theatre & Cinema

  • Tre’vell Anderson. We See Each Other: A Black, Trans Journey Through TV and Film. Andscape Books, 2023.

  • $£¥ € Lucy J Miller. Distancing Representations in Transgender Film: Identification, Affect, and the Audience. State University of New York Press, 2023.

Sports

  • Sharron Davies & Craig Lord. Unfair Play: The Battle For Women's Sport. Forum Press, 2023.

  • $£¥ € Rogs Martins. Finding Fairness: Transgender Athletes in Women's Sports. Lulu, 2023.

  • $£¥ € Amy M West. The Transgender Athlete: A Guide for Sports Medicine. Academic Press, 2023.

Guidebooks

  • Sage Buch. The Transmasculine Guide to Physical Transition Workbook: For Trans, Nonbinary, and Other Masculine Folks. Microcosm Publishing, 2023

  • Jeannie Gainsburg. The Savvy Ally: A Guide for Becoming a Skilled LGBTQ+ Advocate. Rowman & Littlefield, 2023.

  • B Hayes. The FTM Handbook. 2023.

  • Laura Jacobs (ed). Surviving Transphobia. Jessica Lingsleu, 2023.

  • Alo Johnson. Am I Trans Enough?: How to Overcome Your Doubts and Find Your Authentic Self. Jessica Kingsley, 2023.

  • Kiley May. How to Love a Trans Girl: On Romance, Dating and Men Who Adore Us. Dundurn Press, 2023.

  • Rae McDaniel. Gender Magic: Live Shamelessly, Reclaim Your Joy, & Step into Your Most Authentic Self. Balance, 2023.

  • $£¥ € Matthew Mills &Sean Pert. Working with Trans Voice: A Guide to Support and Inspire New, Developing and Established Practitioners. Routledge, 2023.

  • Matthew Waites. Transition to Success: A Self-Esteem and Confidence Workbook for Trans People. Jessica Kingsley, 2023.

Couples & Family

  • Minou Bahrami. Transcultural. 2023.

  • Peggy Gillespie (ed). Authentic Selves: Celebrating Trans and Nonbinary People and Their Families. Skinner House Books, 2023.

  • Brynn Tannehill (ed). My Child Told Me They're Trans...What Do I Do?: A Q&A Guide for Parents of Trans Children. Jessica Kingsley, 2023.

Non-Binary

  • $£¥ € Jai Ajar. Breaking the Binary: A History of Non-Binary Activism. Lulu, 2023.

  • Ocean Atlas. Nonbinary For Beginners: Everything you’ve been afraid to ask about gender, pronouns, being an ally, and black & white thinking. 2022.

Intersex

  • François Soyer. The 'Catalan Hermaphrodite' and the Inquisition: Early Modern Sex and Gender on Trial. Bloomsbury Academic, 2023.

  • Amanda Lock Swarr. Envisioning African Intersex: Challenging Colonial and Racist Legacies in South African Medicine. Duke University Press, 2023.

Clinics

  • $£¥ € Sandra Eder. How the Clinic Made Gender: The Medical History of a Transformative Idea. University of Chicago Press, 2022.

  • $£¥ € Mick van Trotsenburg, Rixt AC Luikenaar &Maria Cristina Meriggiola (eds). Context, Principles, and Practice of Transgynecology. Cambridge University Press, 2023.

Trans/GLBT history

  • Bettina Aptheker. Communists in Closets” Queering the History 1930s-1990s. Routledge, 2023.

  • Elspeth H Brown. Work!: A Queer History of Modeling. Duke University Press, 2019.

  • Emily Cousens. Trans Feminist Epistemologies in the US Second Wave. Palgrave Macmillan, 2023.

  • Jens Dobler. Polizei und Homosexuelle in der Weimarer Republik: Zur Konstruktion des Sündenbabels . Metropol-Verlag, 2020.

  • Jennifer V Evans. The Queer Art of History: Queer Kinship after Fascism. Duke University Press, 2023.

  • Benno Gammerl. Queer: Eine deutsche Geschichte vom Kaiserreich bis heute. Hanser, 2023.

  • Kit Heyam. Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender. Little Brown, 2023.

  • Magnus Hirschfeld (ed) translated by Michael Lombardi-Nash. Annual of Sexual Intermediaries. Urania manuscripts, 2023. 5 volumes.

  • Adam Johnson. Transcending Boundaries: A Journey Through Transgender History. 2023.

  • Grace Elisabeth Lavery. Pleasure and Efficacy: Of Pen Names, Cover Versions, and Other Trans Techniques. Princeton University Press, 2023.

  • Ina Linge. Queer Livability: German Sexual Sciences and Life Writing. University of Michigan Press, 2023.

  • Hannah McElhinney. Rainbow History Class: Your Guide Through Queer and Trans History. Hardie Grant Books AU, 2023.

  • $£¥ € Douglas Pretsell. The Correspondence of Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, 1846-1894. Palgrave Macmillan, 2020.

  • $£¥ € Douglas Pretsell. Queer Voices in the Works of Richard von Krafft-Ebing, 1883–1901. Palgrave Macmillan, 2023.

  • Nino Strachey. Young Bloomsbury: The Generation That Redefined Love, Freedom, and Self-Expression in 1920s England. Atria Books, 2022.

City and province Histories

  • Geoff Alexander. We Weren't Angels: A Memoir of Sex, Drugs and Crime in Boston's Combat Zone. McFarland and Company, Inc., 2023.

  • William Burton & Barry Loveland. Out in Central Pennsylvania: The History of an LGBTQ Community. Penn State University Press, 2020.

  • Kelley Matthew Coures. Out in Evansville: An LGBTQ+ History of River City. History Press, 2023. Evansville, Indiana.

  • Justin Guess. The Little Book of Queer Tennessee History: A Journey through Newspaper Articles between 1790 and 1996. 2023.

  • William Lipsky. LGBTQ+ Trailblazers of San Francisco. History PR, 2023.


  • Andrea Rottman. Queer Lives across the Wall: Desire and Danger in Divided Berlin, 1945-1970. University of Toronto Press, 2023.

Countries and minorities

  • Rustam Alexander. Red Closet: The Hidden History of Gay Oppression in the USSR. Manchester University Press, 2023.

  • B H Bashir. Pakistan and LGBTQ+ Issue. Transcending Empires: Khwaja Saras, Hijras, and Pakistan's Transgender Tapestry. 2023.

  • $£¥ € Danila Cannamela, Marzia Mauriello & Summer Minerva (eds). Italian Trans Geographies. State University of New York Press, 2023.

  • Omar Kasmani. Pakistan Desires: Queer Futures Elsewhere. Duke University Press, 2023.

  • Wilfred Labiosa. The LGBT Cuban Revolution. Deletrea, 2023.


  • Ruth Loe Malloy (ed). Hijras: Who We Are. Collections Canada, 2023.

  • $£¥ € Veerendra Mishra. Transgenders in India: An Introduction. Routledge, 2023.

  • Noah Riseman. Transgender Australia: A History Since 1910. Melbourne University Press, 2023.

  • $£¥ € Lopamudra Sengupta. Human Rights of the Third Gender in India: Beyond the Binary. Routledge India, 2022.

  • Jeffrey Schneider. Uniform Fantasies: Soldiers, Sex, and Queer Emancipation in Imperial Germany. University of Toronto Press, 2023. Both cisvestism and transvestism.

  • Katie Sutton. Sexuality in Modern German History. Bloombury, 2023.

Race and Gender

  • Ronnie Gladden. White Girl Within: Letters of Self-Discovery Between a Transgender and Transracial Black Man and His Inner Female. October Publishing, 2023.

  • Jennifer Dominique Jones. Ambivalent Affinities: A Political History of Blackness and Homosexuality after World War II. The University of North Carolina Press, 2023.

Internet

  • Avery Dame-Griff. The Two Revolutions: A History of the Transgender Internet. New York University Press, 2023.

Written by a trans person  

  • Edward D Wood. When the Topic is Sex. BearManor Media, 2022.

Fiction

  • Gabrielle Boulianne-Tremblay (translated by Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch). Dandelion Daughter. Espalnade Books, 2023.

  • Daniel A Cohen (ed). The Female Marine and Related Works: Narratives of Cross-Dressing and Urban Vice in America's Early Republic. University of Massachusetts Press, 2022. First published in 1815, The Female Marine purported to be the autobiography of a woman who, in order to escape the shame of having a child out of wedlock and subsequent work as a prostitute, disguised herself as a boy and joined the Marines. The popularity of this narrative led to its being reprinted 19 times in 3 years and gave rise to a series of sequels.

  • Hazel Jane Plante. Any Other City. Arsenal Pulp Press, 2023.

  • Alan Lopez. When Language Broke Open: An Anthology of Queer and Trans Black Writers of Latin American Descent. University of Arizona Press, 2023.

  • Andrew Joseph White. Hell Followed with Us. Peachtree, 2023.

Poetry

  • Eleanor Rosewood. Trans Love Poems: Illustrated Transgender Poems. 2023.

Transphobic

  • Miriam Grossman. Lost in Trans Nation: A Child Psychiatrist's Guide Out of the Madness. Skyhorse, 2023.

Miscellaneous

  • Eleonor Adler. Exploring Gender Diversity: Understanding the Spectrum of Genders. 2023

  • K J Cerankowski. Suture: Trauma and Trans Becoming. Pinctum books, 2021.

  • Helen Dale. Understanding Gender Variance: Transgender, Intersex, Non-Binary & Gender Fluid Individuals. Tranzcare, 2023.

  • Debanuj Dasgupta , Joseph Donica & Margot Weiss (eds). Queer Then and Now: The David R. Kessler Lectures, 2002-2020. The Feminist Press at CUNY, 2023.

  • K Allison Hammer. Masculinity in Transition. University of Minnesota Press, 2023.

  • $£¥ € Jennifer Ingrey. Rethinking School Spaces for Transgender, Non-binary, and Gender Diverse Youth: Trans-ing the School Washroom. Routledge, 2023.

  • Michelle Miller. What Is A Woman? Answers From A Transgender Perspective. 2023.

  • Miguel Missé. The Myth of the Wrong Body. Polity, 2022.

  • Tash Oakes-Monger. All the Things They Said We Couldn't Have: Stories of Trans Joy. Jessica Kingsley, 2023.

  • $£¥ € Candace Moore. Marginal Production Cultures: Infrastructures of Sexual Minority and Transgender Media. Routledge, 2023.

  • Adrián Sánchez. La Patologización del colectivo Trans como una política de control de población: Derechos Humanos. Identidad de género y la Nueva Eugenesia. 2023.

  • Shon Faye. The Transgender Issue: Trans Justice Is Justice for All. Verso, 2023.

  • Eric A Stanley. Atmospheres of Violence: Structuring Antagonism and the Trans/Queer Ungovernable. Duke University Press, 2021.

  • $£¥ € J E Sumerau. The Rowman & Littlefield Handbook of Transgender Studies. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2023.

  • Natalia P Zhikhareva. On Your Terms: Gender Transition Redefined for Adults. DR Z Consulting LLC, 2023.