Phoebe Smith (1939–) Part II: state worker, activist

Continued from Part I.

Back in Atlanta early 1969 after a first visit to Dr Barbosa, Phoebe Smith was taken shopping by an aunt who bought her three dresses. Phoebe made an appointment with Harry Benjamin in New York for a hormone prescription. Two aunts and a cousin went to New York with her.

Phoebe attempted to return to work at Rich’s Department Store, but a few co-workers objected, and the supervisor said no. Phoebe appealed up two levels but without success.

A gay former co-worker gave a big party to introduce Phoebe to the local gay scene – but she did not feel that she belonged there.  She was interviewed for a local television news program.

In November Phoebe returned to New York to see Harry Benjamin, and was told that she was ready for the final surgery. She immediately wrote to Dr Barbosa, but he did not reply – and then by telegram – until March 31 giving an appointment for April 11. She was in the hospital for two weeks, and even when she left was in considerable pain.

At first she wanted to be open about her past when applying for jobs, but quickly found that that was not going to work. She took the Georgia State Merit test, and got a position in Disease investigation. In May 1971 she transferred to Medicaid.

She was now undergoing electrolysis, and for a short while worked with a local transsexual support group before it discontinued.

Phoebe several times met persons who knew someone who knew her previous self, but it did not become a problem. One man threatened to out her if she did not date him. In spring 1974 a trans woman whom Phoebe had spoken to with the support group applied to Medicaid in the hope of having her surgery paid for. They met at the elevator, and the woman introduced herself. This made Phoebe think that everyone was talking about her. A close work friend told her that “we all know and we still love you”.

In 1975 Phoebe transferred to Family and Children Services. One day a co-worker rushed in and exclaimed: “Y’all, there is a transsexual that works for the State!”. Again it turned out that most of the co-workers already knew, and never said.


By June 1979 Phoebe had written her first autobiography, Phoebe. She self-published it and advertised in trans newsletters. A thousand copies were printed, and a New York bookstore bought four hundred. Reactions at work were mixed. People she had not previously known became friendly; no man at work ever asked her out again.

In 1980 she put together a brochure, “The Journey from One to Forty was Difficult but Successful”. It included a photograph of herself at age one with father, and a photo at age 40. It criticized the report from Jon Meyers of John Hopkins of the previous year that had been used as an excuse to close its Gender Identity Clinic.

“I have worked for the State of Georgia for almost ten years. During my fourth year of employment, knowledge of my surgery became widespread. It was upsetting, but also a big relief to get it in the open.”

Later that year a new communications office was established, and Phoebe became its supervisor, but with a pay cut.

The sale of the autobiography resulted in mail, much of it from persons seeking information. This led to the idea of a newsletter, The Transsexual Voice. The first two issues were complimentary, and 30 copies were printed. Within a few months there were over 100 subscribers.

A subscriber contacted her wanting to find someone to train in electrolysis. Phoebe jumped at the chance and for the next 15 years they worked on each other.

By the mid-1980s there were over 300 subscribers including Leo Wollman, Rupert Raj and Michelle Hunt. Phoebe mailed packets of transsexual-related material to newspaper editors, television news programs, talk show hosts etc. Very few responded.

Through the 1980s Phoebe’s family health problems deteriorated. Her younger brother was diagnosed with cancer, and died at age 40. Her father died age 74 in 1989 after various health problems. Her mother needed daily care such that Phoebe had to discontinue The Transsexual Voice in 1995. Her mother died in 1998, when Phoebe was 59.

She retired in in 2000. She had worked for the State of Georgia for almost 30 years.

• Phoebe Smith. Phoebe. P Smith Pub Ind, 1979.
• Phoebe Smith. “FMI Forum: The Transsexual Voice”. Female Mimics International, 14,6, 1985. Online. This is the 1980 brochure, which is also found p106-8 in Phoebe’s 2015 book.
• Rupert Raj. “Tribute to Phoebe Smith”. Twenty Minutes, August 1989:3. Online.
• Joanne Meyerowitz. How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States. Harvard University Press, 2002:158.
• Phoebe Smith. From Sharecropper's Son to Who's Who in American Women. CreateSpace, 2014.
• Eve Shapiro. Gender Circuits: Bodies and Identities in a Technological Age: Second edition. Routledge, 2015: 158.
• Dallas Denny. “Creating Community: A History of Early Transgender Support in Atlanta”. dallasdenny.com, Nov 7, 2015. Online.

_____________________

Dr Barbosa’s $4,000 fee in 1969 would be $26,600 now!

Phoebe arrived for the first time at Dr Barbosa’s office only two months after Lynn Conway had completed surgery there.

There is no mention at all of Phoebe in Wesley Chenault, Stacy Lorraine Braukman, Gay and Lesbian Atlanta, Arcadia Pub 2008. Come to that, there is no mention of Jayne County or Dallas Denny either.

Phoebe had started electrolysis in 1971, after her two surgeries. In 1981 she trained as an electrologist and then for 15 years she and one other worked on each other. That is 25 years of electrolysis. I was done and complete in less than two years in the mid-1980s. Presumably there was not an electrologist in the Atlanta area at that time who knew how to do it on transsexuals.

It is striking in Phoebe’s autobiography that there is no mention at all of other trans people in Atlanta other than the trans woman who attempted to apply for Medicaid. The famous Atlanta trans women – Jayne County, Diamond Lil, Lady Bunny, RuPaul – were of a performance persuasion, and mostly took off for New York. However, apart from that there was trans man Jerry Montgomery, and Dallas Denny, who arrived in Atlanta in 1989. AEGIS and Southern Comfort Conference were established in Atlanta shortly afterwards.

Dallas Danny says: “With the Louisiana-based Erickson foundation no longer in operation, Phoebe’s Transsexual Voice was so far as I know for many years the only peer-produced transsexual-specific support publication in the world. Phoebe produced the last issue in 1995. It was an astonishing run, and helped thousands of people”.

Phoebe Smith (1939–) Part I: retail worker

(Phoebe transitioned in Atlanta in the 1960s.   In those days she had great difficulty in finding out about other transsexuals, and in finding any professionals who even knew where to point her, let alone to actually help.   If she were in New York or Paris, she would have had more information even in the 1960s – but she did not know that. Fortunately she was determined.)


James Smith was born to a family of sharecroppers in Irwin County, US Georgia. His relatives referred to him as a ‘sissy’ from an early age, and he was bullied at school, more so because of his disinterest in sports.

In September 1953, the family pickup was hit by a flatbed truck. The father had his left arm crushed and had to give up farming; the mother was in constant pain afterwards. They moved to Atlanta. At the new school Smith was called ‘queer’.

In 1955 a neighbor showed him a magazine article about someone who had a sex-change operation, and asked him why he did not have it also. Smith wrote to a preacher on the radio that he had been listening to, and later phoned him. This was the first time that he ever told someone that he wanted to change sex. The preacher said that he saw nothing wrong or sinful in Smith’s desire, but couldn’t offer any help. In September 1956 Smith attempted suicide by taking his mother’s pain pills. After recovery he insisted on quitting school – he was then seventeen.

After temporary and part-time work, Smith found a position at Rich’s Department Store where he stayed for ten years. Every now and then there would be an article in the news about a transsexual, but when Smith attempted to correspond with a doctor or psychiatrist, he was told that a change of sex was impossible.

In November 1961 Smith was called to report to the Draft Board. He explained himself and was classified 4-F. If questioned he said that this was because of a bad back resulting from the 1953 road crash. Around this time, his father driving a cement mixer was hit by a train on a crossing. Smith’s younger brother joined the US Marines, but was discharged after being diagnosed with chronic bronchitis.

By 1964 Smith had rented a mailbox and was writing letters prolifically: to doctors, to medical universities, to politicians. Many were not answered; some were rudely answered. One, who was helpful, was Amy Larkin, the agony aunt at the Atlanta Constitution (actually a pseudonym for Olive Ann Burns (1924 – 1990) who later became renowned for her novel Cold Sassy Tree). Larkin passed anonymous information about Smith to Harry Benjamin in New York (who was then working with John Money so that the Johns Hopkins Gender Identity Clinic would open the next year). Benjamin wrote back that “there seems very little doubt that this patient is a transsexual”.

Larkin arranged an appointment with a local endocrinologist, but he, despite the letter from Benjamin, maintained that what was wanted could not be done.

Smith wrote to the Governor of Georgia who passed the letter to the Dean of the Medical College of Georgia who replied that the surgery was illegal within Georgia.

Smith contacted Atlanta Constitution journalist, Dick Herbert, who became interested and wrote a sympathetic story (by the standards of the time) using a pseudonym: “Long-Ill Tim Gets New Hope to Solve Endocrine Malady”.

Smith applied to Georgia Vocational Rehabilitation and Georgia Mental Health Institute. They responded with a mixture of ignoring him, giving a run-around and even rudeness. In 1968 Smith saw Christine Jorgensen on the Merv Griffin television show, and wrote to ask for Christine’s address. Christine put Smith in touch with a doctor, who in turn gave the names and addresses of two surgeons: Dr Burou in Casablanca and Dr Barbosa in Tijuana. Smith decided on the latter.

In January 1969, Smith moved out of the family home to stay with a friend; resigned his job; sent a letter to his parents saying for the first time that he was transsexual and asking them to borrow $4,200 against their house to lend to him. Smith paid $200 for a flight to Los Angeles, and then took a train to San Diego, crossed the border into Mexico at 2am. After resting in a hotel, Smith arrived at Dr Barbosa’s office – still in male clothes.

Dr Barbosa examined Smith and then explained that he required a full year of hormone therapy prior to surgery. Further examination discovered a thyroid problem. Dr Barbosa compromised and treatment for the thyroid condition was provided as well as an orchiectomy. While in the clinic, Smith contemplated a female name and decided on Phoebe.

She had brought a mail-order catalogue with her and made her first purchases of female clothing. On return to Atlanta, Phoebe was welcomed by her family and relatives. The mail-order purchases had arrived, and from that day on, she never wore male clothing again.

Continued in Part II.

History of TAO: Part 2: 1972-80. TAO in Miami Beach

TAO and Angela Douglas

Angela Douglas (1943 - 2007) musician, activist

History of TAO: part 1: to 1971. USAF, music, GLF

History of TAO: bibliography

History of TAO: Part 2: 1972-80. TAO in Miami Beach

History of TAO: Part 3: aftermath

Kimberley Elliot (1953 - 1980) TAO, Neo-American Church

More on Angela Douglas

In July 2019 a Gender Critical Reddit thread  linked to the original 2007 posting.  Apparently some anti-trans women think that a letter, be it satirical or whatever, from 42 years ago, written by someone who died 12 years earlier, and who never worked well with other trans activists, is a relevant document in discussing trans activism today!!!!                         My Reply.

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Part II. 1972-82. TAO in Miami Beach

1972
Douglas and TAO move to Miami Beach. Publishes Moonshadow and later Mirage Magazine over next three years. Douglas: "Year of the Transsexual in Miami Beach: hundreds were there, from all over the nation, and many Puerto Ricans and Cubans. … the cha-chas became as thick as tourists; the Latin transsexuals were referred to as 'cha-chas'."

Transvestites are still no longer welcome as members.

Douglas and Colette Goudie meet during the protests against the Presidential conventions in Miami Beach.

Kilo, 22 and pre-op, is a TAO member and also a popular performer who had appeared at the Stonewall club in a production of Wild Side Story.

Miami Beach's anti-cross-dressing ordinance is declared unconstitutional and police threaten to rewrite it. Kilo calls for street protests. The police continue to enforce the old ordinance nevertheless.

Canary Conn has stage-one surgery with Dr Barbosa in Tijuana (named as Dr Lopez in her autobiography).

1973
Collette Goudie joins TAO, as do Kimberly Barreiro and Tara Carn, Puerto Rican-born, New York-raised. Douglas: Goudie and Carn were ‘both very beautiful and wild and hated each other with a hot passion. Getting them to work together was nearly impossible’.

Kimberly fully transitions with surgery in less than a year. She marries Steve Elliot and they became involved in Art Kleps' psychedelic Neo-American Church at Millbrook, New York.

Goudie & Carn are arrested on Twenty-first Street beach for disorderly conduct. Surprisingly they are well treated by the police.

TAO sets up a 'security force' to stop police and public abuse of 'transsexuals and gays'.

After a raid and arrests at the Stonewall Club on Twenty-first Street, Douglas files suit for discrimination.

Article in Mirage objects to the emphasis in mainstream media on the medical aspects of transsexuality. There are more severe problems including exploitation by surgeons, psychiatrists and gender identity clinics, as well as extortion and persecution by the police.

After the American Psychiatric Association announced that homosexuality would no longer be considered a mental illness, TAO called for transsexualism to be likewise removed (although technically it was not even added until the 1980 version of the DSM).

1974
Douglas steps down as president. Barbara Rosello becomes president of TAO: "Tao is an organization for transexuals only … We have many goals which can only be accomplished by our own efforts."

Rosella resigns due to family pressures and nerves. Goudie becomes 3^rd president in September.

Carn was to have her photograph in Mirage. Her boyfriend was terrified. Carn: 'I'm proud of what I am, and I want to help anyway I can.' She is also quoted saying that that she is lesbian, and likes girls and other transsexuals.

Carn passes well. However the Miami Beach police follow her around and tell men that she is a 'fag in a dress'. "To retaliate, the beautiful Tara sometimes went to a crowded beach, started dancing topless to music from a radio and after a crowd of applauding people surrounded her, would take off her bikini panties, display her male genitals and cause a near riot. Police would arrive and she’d shake her genitals at them, screaming ‘you say I’m a man’ ...She was taken to jail, fined, and sometimes went back and repeated the performance."

Goudie and 2 other TAO members appear on Marsh and Adams Show on WKID in Fort Lauderdale, and discuss housing discrimination, police harassment, difficulties receiving proper medical attention and difficulties with getting identification.

During June, the Miami News published a series on transsexual issues. Four trans women are featured including two TAO members: Tara Carn and Colombian-American Crystal Gresham.

Crystal Gresham is TAO Miami Beach director. She ‘lives fully as a female except when teaching ballroom dance to elderly women in Miami Beach’.

Douglas first meets surgeon Dr John Brown. ‘He wanted to help aid me and came up with several thousand dollars cash to help publish Mirage Magazine. In exchange, I promoted him considerably’.

Canary Conn publishes her autobiography, followed by appearances on television.

TAO had increasingly bad-mouthed the Erickson Educational Foundation, which indeed never mentioned TAO or other militant organizations in its newsletters. Despite this Zelda Suplee on behalf EEF offers $20,000 to 'place the TAO within the EEF's framework'. Douglas declines, in that 'every cent would have strings attached'.

A TAO press release suggests that the CIA is behind the transsexual program at Johns Hopkins University Hospital, and that Donald Laub at Stanford's Gender identity Clinic was connected with a plot to transplant the brains of transsexuals.

1975
In February issue of Mirage Jennifer Otera 'third place winner in the Miss [Gay?] Universe contest held in Caracas’ reports on intense police harassment in Venezuela.

In the same issue, Goudie is asked about transvestites: "I have nothing against them. Some transsexuals say they are transvestites because it’s easier for the world to comprehend. But it’s not the same. A transvestite is a man who dresses up like a woman for a little while and then becomes a man again. A transsexual, like you and me and so many others, live as we are all of the time. It is so different ...I don’t think it’s good for both TVs and TSs to belong to the same groups, as the values are so different, the laws and problems are so different. In some ways the problems overlap, but not completely."

However units or associate memberships were set up for non-transsexual members. Lesbian and transvestite units were created. The police did not observe any distinction between transvestites and transsexuals, and Moonshadow and Mirage continued to report harassment of both groups.

Intersex persons were offered full membership.

"TAO also strongly relates to the problems and efforts of transvestites, gay men and women and feminists. However, we consider transexualist values of paramount importance and are not subject to the values of other sociosexual liberationist movements, such as the feminist and gay liberation movements. We prefer to meet members in person."

Goudie on August cover of Moonshadow. Contains article by Douglas & Goudie on trans Santaria deities, especially Santa Barbara/Shango.

Kilo dies in a house fire.

Gay Action Alliance – Miami sue the police in Miami Beach for brutality, but refuse to include transsexuals in the lawsuit, even though they were more often targeted. This leads to TAO breaking off relations.

A network of UK trans activists loosely affiliate themselves with TAO. The group in Birmingham was run by Brooklyn (ftm) and Leyla (mtf) who were a couple. They urged an "anarcho-transformative, transsexual-separatist agenda" such as protesting a National Front march. Stephen Whittle, for a short while ran a London TAO group. (Whittle in Ekins & King: 192).

Birmingham TAO put out a leaflet: "The T.A.O. is a national organization which is open to all transsexuals (whether they are presently undergoing sex change treatment or not) irrespective of their race, religion, politics or sexual orientation. The T.A.O. has no official membership at present and is not structured. All decisions as to the running of the organization are taken collectively."

Moonshadow reports that TAO has had chapters in San Francisco, Philadelphia, Chicago, Atlanta, Orlando and Jacksonville as well as Miami Beach. Abroad it has chapters in Canada, England and Northern Ireland. Almost a thousand members in all.

++In this year, trans man Joe Carstairs sells his home, Whale Cay in the Bahamas, and buys a house in Miami.   There is no reason to assume that he ever contacted TAO.

1976
Canary Conn reportedly killed (reported by Douglas, however Kay Brown says that she met Canary at a later date).

TAO disbanded? Douglas travels in California and Hawai'i. Carn also leaves Miami, and has gender surgery. They meet again in Hawai'i, but Carn is unfriendly. Later she is arrested on a prostitution charge.

1977
Douglas has vaginoplasty with Butcher John Brown and paid around $600. She describes him as one who "fed, housed, paid and helped hundreds, and gave free or nearly free surgery to at least two hundred of us". Brown has his California license revoked later that year. Later Douglas claimed that she "helped get him arrested twice".

Goudie joins Douglas in Berkeley, they fall out, and Douglas sends Goudie back to Miami on a plane.

Angela Douglas in San Francisco becomes upset at the vitriolic, absurd, and transphobic comments broadcast on listener sponsored station KPFA and letters published in the feminist journal Sister. Especially the attack on trans woman Sandy Stone donating her skills at the feminist Olivia Records.

Douglas meets Kay Brown who is with her when she writes a letter. Brown attempts without success to dissuade her from sending it. It is published in Sister Aug-Sep, p7. As quoted by Raymond p xvii it goes: "Free from the chains of menstruation and child-bearing, transsexual women are obviously far superior to Gennys in many ways .... Genetic women are becoming quite obsolete, which is obvious, and the future belongs to transsexual women. We know this and, and perhaps some of you suspect it. All you have left is your 'ability' to bear children, and in a world which will groan to feed 6 billion by the year 2000, that's a negative asset."

The letter is generally regarded as satire, but in her 1997 email to Kay Brown, Douglas insisted: "The l997 letter as for women becoming obsolete is valid, not whimsical or tongue in cheek, women are becoming obsolete as evidenced by Islamic treatment of women, etc. The future of humanity is male homosexual. Women are becoming irrelevant. I despise all lesbians anyway, and applaud when they get killed. I don't give a shit about feminists."

photo by Kay Brown

Next day Brown and Douglas march in the SF Pride Parade, where leaders had demanded that 'drags should stay home'. They are welcomed to ride with the Mattachine Society. Douglas writes up the event for the Berkeley Barb.

1978
Douglas appears in a porn mag with pre- and post-op photographs of her genitals.

TAO formally dissolved.

Douglas reported to be participating in US Nazi politics.

1979
Janice Raymond. The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-male: xvii quotes part of the letter to Sister out of context attributing it to 'one transsexual' and giving Douglas' name only in the end notes. Douglas later claimed that the 13 direct interviews cited in the book were actually quotes from a letter that Douglas had written to her.

1980
Dave Potter, formerly of Euphoria, (and 86 others) dies in fire at MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas.

Kim Elliot is found dead at Miami Beach’s Midtown Plaza due to a drug overdose.  She is buried in North Miami Beach, and TAO people attend her funeral.

The Mariel Boatlift exodus from Cuba adds many trans women to the Miami population.