Essays on trans, intersex, cis and other persons and topics from a trans perspective.......All human life is here.
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Tammy was born with ambiguous genitals, and her parents went with female. This went well until Tammy’s puberty when as Youngson & Schott put it, her “ equipment soon grew to respectable dimensions”. The embarrassed parents quickly switched the child to male clothing. The father, who was a doctor, was especially disconcerted and embarrassed; Tammy hated the change and knew it was all wrong. The father refused to talk to Tammy on the subject and considered his child’s objections to be unreasonable.
Making the best of the situation, Tammy got a good degree in electronics and moved to London with a job in computer mainframe maintenance. She was still Tammy; Tammy was still female inside, and dressed appropriately at evenings and weekends. This led to homophobic abuse from her landlord, and after a co-worker recognised her, a warning at work from the boss.
Tammy’s doctor was skeptical and unsympathetic. However she persevered and was taken on at a gender identity clinic, probably that at Charing Cross Hospital. She was subjected to the usual evaluations and delay tactics, but was finally approved and put on female hormones.
As she dressed female full-time, she lost her job, moved to cheaper lodgings and lived on the dole. After completion surgery she still had problems finding work, but did find work developing CD-ROM disc drives, where she was obviously competent and was promoted.
Her mother embraced her new daughter, but her doctor father continued to be disgusted by her development.
Robert Youngson & Ian Schott. Medical Blunders: Amazing True Stories of Mad, Bad, and Dangerous Doctor Robinson, 1996: 106-111.
Ian Schott & Robert Youngston. A Brief History of Bad Medicine: True stories of weird mediicne and dangerous doctors. Robinson, 1999:101-3.
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Medical Blunders and Bad Medicine are the same book issued under different titles. Robert Youngson gained an extra ‘t’ in his surname for the latter. Both authors were doctors. That said, their research into transsexuality is amazingly deficient. The books jump from topic to topic giving an example of inadequate or bad doctoring. For most of the episodes I can only accept what they say.
However the section labelled ‘Sex Change’ contains only this one example. Tammy (presumably a pseudonym) is obviously intersex, and is not best described as a transsexual although she had to go through the usual transsexual conversion. It is most likely that she had the condition popularly referred to as ‘Penis-at-Twelve’, what doctors properly call 5-alpha Reductase Deficiency (5-ARD). 5-Alpha Reductase is an enzyme that converts testosterone to dihydrotestosterone. A baby deficient in this enzyme develops as a girl until puberty, and indeed may have a pseudovaginal perineoscrotal hypospadias which would be taken as a vagina. At puberty different and stronger forms of testosterone kick in and cause virilization. This condition is due to a defect on an autosome (not a sex chromosome) and requires two mutated genes, one from each parent. I have no idea why Youngson and Schott do not explain this. Nor why they do not name the Charing Cross GIC.
The authors open with: “Tammy ... was undoubtedly a man. A test had shown that every cell in his body contained an X chromosome and a Y chromosome”. So they have presumably not read the first chapter of Benjamin’s The Transsexual Phenomenon.
Later they write: “As a result of his parents’ mistake, Tammy was a transsexual”. They do not tell us when Tammy was born. Assuming that she completed transition in her middle to late 20s, and we know that CD-ROMs came out in the early 1990s, she would have been born in the early 1960s, possibly the late 1950s. Knowledge of 5-alpha Reductase Deficiency was very rare around 1960, and thus it is totally unfair to accuse the parents of making a mistake at that time. However if we assume that Tammy arrived at puberty in the early 1970s, that is the same time as endocrinologist Julianne Imperato-McGinley was investigating the high frequency of 5-alpha Reductase Deficiency children in a village in the Dominican Republic and awareness of the condition was expanding. A particularly well-informed local doctor might have heard of it at that time.
“As a result of his parents’ mistake, Tammy was a transsexual”. Many books have been written on nature vs nurture, it is congenital or caused by rearing? In the 1960s it was fashionable to blame the parents, especially the mother, for all sorts of things. Two doctors writing in the mid-1990s should know better than to blame the parents like this.
The authors do not say what would have constituted good doctoring in this case. We now know that some 5-alpha Reductase Deficiency children choose to grow up as men and some as women. Tammy should have been listened to and counselled at puberty. Given that she felt that she was female, she should then have been offered female hormones to maintain her original sex - such therapy is offered in the village in the Dominican Republic.
Tammy was not transsexual, not in the sense of an apparent boy who grows up to be a woman. She was a girl whose girlhood was disrupted and only regained at great effort.
Her parents in Hungary raised her as a girl, and sent her to school as such, even during the war. When she was 15 she found her birth certificate that said that she was a boy. She was told to shut up and not ask questions.
After leaving school, she worked as a female in a factory. She found her first boyfriend and told him she was different from other girls. He said that he also had a proper girlfriend and now could have the best of both worlds.
When the Hungarian Uprising began in October 1956, Anita was afraid of being raped by the Russians, so she cut her hair, dressed in some of her father’s clothes and fled to the West. Sandor was shot in the knee, and was two months in hospital before getting to England. Sandor found work in a London hotel stillroom. He met and married a French women in 1959. They had two sons, but separated after four years, and were divorced in 1967, with the wife retaining custody of the children.
Anita returned to living as a woman. She was working as a cinema usherette when she met 17-year-old Peter, a building labourer. They socialised and went on holidays with the other building workers. The major problem was his parents who objected to Anita being so much older.
She had applied for a sex-change operation as it was then known. Peter accepted this and they were able to get a council flat in Islington, north London. In 1976 they decided to get married at an Anglican church in Hackney. She explained that she had lost her birth certificate in flight from Hungary. So they had to go to a solicitor and swear a declaration that she was Anita Verig Sandor born in 1940.
There were 50 guests at the wedding, and the vicar attended the reception. All went well until somebody told the News of the World - three years later.
However even the article in that paper finished on a positive note with Peter declaring
“But whatever happens in the future our ambition is to continue to be as happy as we are now. If anything ever happens to Anita, I know that I’d never marry again.”
Ray Chapman. “Secret of the bride in white: she’s the father of two sons”. The News of the World, 25 March 1979. Online.
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As readers of the books by Peter Farrer will know, parents cross-raising a child was considered a cause of adult transgender in the 1920s and 1930s. However it was a very unusual claim by the 1970s.
I was rather naughty of Anita to drop six years from her age.
It is not mentioned whether Anita was making child support payments.
I presume that she was going to the Charing Cross Gender Clinic. There were very few alternatives in 1976.
In 1938 Purcell was living in Monton Green, Eccles, Manchester (map). He was accepted at Charing Cross Hospital in London and operated on by Dr Lennox Broster. An article in the Daily Mirror headlined “Doctor Changes Sex of 24: Patients Have Married”, concentrated on Purcell who was said to be taking the name Donald, although as his sister was quoted: “Doris was always a tomboy and my brothers called her Donald. … She knew all about motors and engineering, and was never happier than when tinkering with engines. …. Pretty frocks made no appeal to her. …. She never used paint or powder, and she smoked like a man”. The press discovered a special female friend, Charlotte, and wrote her up as Donald’s intended. This was not to be.
From his start as a chauffeur, Donald became a small business man. Donald took a wife, Lilian: they were married at Shrewsbury Register Office in May 1942. In 1946 they moved to Gorton, Manchester, close to where Donald’s mother had previously kept a small shop and off-licence. They adopted a son.
In January 1958, after two years of problems with his heart, Donald collapsed at home and was taken to hospital where he died – he was 44. His body was examined, and a policeman reported his death to Mrs Purcell, and also told her that her husband was a ‘woman’ – which came as a great surprise to her.
‘Doctor Changes Sex of 24: Patients Have Married’, Daily Mirror, 5 May 1938: 2.
‘Drama of Girls’ Surprise Meeting in Hospital Ward’, News of the World, 8 May 1938: 7.
‘Police Tell Wife: Your Husband Was a Woman’, Daily Express, 27 January 1958, p. 1.
Alison Oram. Her Husband was a Woman!: Women's gender-crossing in modern British popular culture. Routledge, 2007: 115-6.
Alison Oram. “ ‘Farewell to Frocks’ – ‘Sex Change’ in Interwar Britain: Newspaper Stories, Medical Technology and Modernity” in Kate Fisher & Sarah Toulalan (eds). Bodies, Sex and Desire from the Renaissance to the Present. Palgrave Macmillan, 2011: 102, 109-10.
Clare R Tebbutt. Popular and Medical Understandings of Sex Change in 1930s Britain. PhD Thesis, University of Manchester, 2014.: 88, 128-133, 139.
In the best trans (auto)biographies there are accounts of other trans persons, who are otherwise unknown. This is one such.
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Ina, who was from Newcastle, and April Ashley first met in 1955. Ina was then still in male mode – in fact doing National Service in the RAF. Ina was introduced into the house in London where April was living with other gender variant persons. April was at that time going by the unisex name of Toni, and was androgynous in appearance. This was before she went to France. While others were cruising for men, Ina did not. As April wrote: “Ina however was a true transsexual and very unhappy, as I had been in the Merchant Navy. He didn't want to be discharged for being a homosexual because he didn't consider himself one.”
In 1960, after being a star in Paris, and after going to Dr Burou in Casablanca, April was back in London, modelling and being filmed for her very small part in The Road to Hong Kong. Ina had been accepted at Charing Cross. April commented: “Ina Barton who was in the throes of a marathon sex transformation, the specialty of London's Charing Cross Hospital. They insist on lengthy intervals between each stage and use skin grafts from the legs which leave tell-tale scars on the thighs. So much messier than Dr Burou's technique. But her doctor, John Randell, was very solicitous for her well-being and wrote her letters which began, 'My dearest Galatea...'”.
In 1962 April and Ina were sharing a flat in South Kensington. This was after April had been outed in The People newspaper, and The News of the World had had run her story in six parts. Ina went to Spain with April. On a previous trip they had gotten into a drunken slap fight about who was to drive. This time April did drive, but Ina freaked out when April mentioned that she’d never taken a test and didn’t have a license. In the commotion they went over a small cliff .
When Ina’s surgeries at Charing Cross were complete, April took her to Jersey for a week. They rented bicycles. On the second day Ina fell heavily on the cross bar and her vulva was enlarged. She left immediately and returned to London to see her own doctor.
After the trauma of Corbett v Corbett in 1970 , April rallied by opening a restaurant just round the corner from Harrods, that was an immediate sensation, and continued to run it for five years until she had a heart attack. During this time Ina was having problems of her own, and passed on. April: “Ina Barton had recently died from a combination of booze and pills. I believe an open verdict was recorded but that's splitting hairs - in effect she killed herself.”
Duncan Fallowell & April Ashley. April Ashley's Odyssey. Jonathan Cape, 1982: 46, 104, 139, 140, 156, 257. Also Online.
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In April's second autobiography, The First Lady, the 1955 meeting and Ina's death are mentioned but not the other incidents.
Gay Rights, Trans Rights: A psychiatrist/lawyer's 50-year battle. 2018.
we find on p 154:
"Randell was a careful clinician who assessed nearly as many gender dysphoric patients as Harry Benjamin. John became a friend in my 1966 London fellowship year. He had a home and family in North London. But he also had a flat in Central London. One evening, as we were preparing to go out for drinks and dinner at his club, he went to the wardrobe to get his coat. There were many dresses on hangers. 'A woman stays here sometimes' he explained. I thought he had a mistress. I did not realize that they were his dresses."
Stuart Lorimer (born late 1960s) qualified as a doctor at Aberdeen Medical
School, with a distinction in psychiatry. He has been involved with the Charing
Cross GIC since 2002.
Lorimer has provided a history of the Charing Cross GIC, with emphasis on his
own involvement.
Dr Stuart Lorimer. “1966 and All That: The History of Charing Cross Gender
Identity Clinic”. In Christine Burns’ Trans Britain: Our Journey from the
Shadows, Unbound, 2018: 51-67.
I have also written a history of the Charing Cross GIC – see the links above.
My emphasis is different, discusses more of the patients, and starting much
earlier in time. I have adjusted my account slightly, especially in the most
recent years with input from Lorimer’s account.
There are two points in his account, however, that I would like to examine
closely.
1966 and all that.
British persons over a certain age will immediately recognise the title as a
riff on the 1930 classic satire by WC Sellar & RY Yeatman: 1066 and all that,
which was published in 1930 and is a satire on how English history was taught at
that time. How many readers under 40 would get the allusion is an open question
as the content of history courses has changed so much. Peter Hitchins in his The Abolition of
Britain says “A modern child, shown Sellar and Yeatman’s 1066 and All
That, simply wouldn’t get the joke. You cannot laugh at this satire on
forgetfulness and confusion unless you, too, share the experience of
misunderstanding and mixing up the Wars of the Roses, Lambert Simnel and Perkin
Warbeck and the rest. You cannot even be enjoyably confused or forgetful about
something which you never even knew in the first place.”
However the important question is what did happen at the CX-GIC in 1966 such
that Lorimer and others assume that 1966 was the founding of the clinic, despite
it being in operation since the 1930s under a different name.
In Part I of my account, I commented at the end: “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’.” Lorimer’s account does not answer this.
Lorimer twice mentions 1966. On p53 he writes: “Randell was nonetheless a
trailblazer, the originator, in 1966, of one of the largest and oldest trans
treatment centres in the world”. On p56 he writes of Harry Benjamin:
“Distinguishing his patients from transvestites (a term not coined until
Benjamin was twenty-five), he opened the doors of his first proper clinic in 1966, the same year as Randell’s GIC at Charing Cross”. Neither of these
assertions answers my questions. What did Randell do in 1966 that is taken as
founding the clinic that he had been running since 1950, and was such that three
years later in 1969 it was said that reported “there is as yet no permanent
gender identity unit”.
(Note also that Lorimer is of the school that insists on ignoring the facts
and claiming that Hirschfeld coined ‘transvestism’ despite it being in use from
the 16th
century and that the Paris Police had been issuing permissions
de transvestissement since 1800.)
RussellReid
Complaints were made against Russell
Reid in 2004, and in 2007 there was an investigation by the General Medical
Council that led to his resignation. Lorimer mentions this on p62, but does not
list the doctors who made the complaint. Here is the
list from David Batty’s article "GMC inquiry into gender change expert" in The Guardian, 20 January 2004:
“Donald Montgomery, James Barratt, and Richard Green …. Together with Stuart
Lorimer, a senior registrar at the clinic, they allege Dr Reid has repeatedly
breached guidelines”.
Now of course in 2004, Lorimer had been at Charing Cross only two years, and
was the most junior of the four doctors mentioned. However it is naughty (to use
a mild term) of him not to mention that he was one of the four doctors.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Philip Snaith. “Conference Report: International Conference on Gender
Identity”. Bulletin of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, 11, March
1987: 81. PDF
Grant Williams. Letter to BMJ, 12 September 1987.
Charles Mate-Kole, Donald Montgomery, James Dalrymple & Steven Hirsch.
“Gender Reassignment Today”. Letter to BMJ, 17 October 1978. PDF
Charles Mate-Kole (ed). The state of transsexualism-proceedings of the
International conference on gender identity. Schering Health Care,
1987.
Charles Mate-Kole, Maurizio Freschi, Ashley Robin. “Aspects of psychiatric
symptomatology at different stages in the treatment of transsexualism”.
British Journal of Psychiatry, 152, Apr 1988: 550-3. Abstract
Charles Mate-Kole, Maurizio Freschi. “Psychiatric aspects of sex
reassignment surgery”. British Journal of Hospital Medicine, 39,2, Feb
1988: 153-5. Abstract
J. Bryan Tully. Accounting for Transsexualism. PhD Thesis, University
of Brunel, 1987. Published as Accounting for Transsexualism and
Transhomosexuality: The Gender Identity Careers of Over 200 Men and Women Who
Have Petitioned for Surgical Reassignment of Their Sexual Identity. London:
Whiting & Birch, 1992.
Charles Mate-Kole, Maurizio Freschi, Ashley Robin. “A controlled study of
psychological and social change after surgical gender reassignment in selected
male transsexuals”. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 157, 2, Aug 1990:
261-4. Abstract
Dave King. The Transvestite and the Transsexual: Public categories and
private identities. Avebury, 1993: 39, 60.
D. Di de Cegli, James O. Dalrymple., L. Gooren, Richard Green, John Money,
& Russell Reid. Transsexualism: The Current Medical Viewpoint.
London: Press For Change. 1996.
Nicholas Rufford. “Sex changes on NHS to triple”. The Times, 3
December 2000.
Persia West. Report into the Medical and Related Needs of Transgender
People in Brighton and Hove. Spectrum, 2004. PDF
James Barrett. Transsexual and Other Disorders of Gender Identity: A
practical guide to management. Radcliffe, 2007.
Deborah Blaustein. The Gatekeepers of Gender: A History of Transsexuality
in the National Health Service (including a Case Study of the Gender Identity
Clinic at Charing Cross Hospital). University of London, 2012.
Ted Eyton. “Visiting the oldest Gender Identity Clinic in the World: NHS’
Charing Cross, London England”. Ted Eyton, MD, September 26, 2013. www.tedeytan.com/2013/09/26/16645
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.
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.
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.
_______________________
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”.
Grant Williams, urologist, was, early in his career, from 1968 to 1988, Consultant Urological & Transplant Surgeon, Charing Cross Hospital (Fulham). He was not an advocate of the transgender surgery being done at the hospital.
In November 1987 he wrote to the British Medical Journal:
"This week seven patients have been admitted for urological surgery and been sent home because there were no beds for operating lists, but the 26 bed urological ward has two gender reassignment patients in it, despite undertakings from the management that the urological bed complement would not be reduced. 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."
The next year, 1988, he resigned from Charing Cross citing his objection to gender reassignment surgery.
In 1992 he wrote a Forward for Georgina Somerset's change of sex autobiography:
"It is sad though, that many feel that they can only be fully satisfied when they have a 'sex change'. Sex cannot be changed. ... I have met some delightful young women walking around in a man's body, and I was pleased to help them, but I have to confess that they are a rarity and the vast majority of transsexuals are totally unsuitable for surgery."
In December 2000 when the NHS announced that transgender surgery in England would be tripled, Williams was quoted again in the press:
"It is sad when a patient who can't pass urine is sent home with a catheter because there are not enough beds, while other beds are allocated for transsexual surgery".
Williams' speciality was vasovasostomy, the reversal of vasostomy.
Bobbie Jacobson. “The Sex Changers”. World Medicine 9, 13 Feb 1974: 21,
Rees' parents met on a P&O cruise, where father, born in South Africa, was part of the crew. He continued in the merchant navy. Mother was a secretary. Brenda Rees was born near Tunbridge Wells, Kent in the third year of the war, the sole survivor of premature twins. She had another sister four years younger.
Rees was a defiant tomboy who refused to wear frocks or a bra.
"I took it for granted that all girls wanted to be boys and would share my masculine interests".
She rejected her parents guidance to female occupations and went to the local art college, but she was taunted for her androgynous appearance, which led to a voluntary admittance to a psychiatric hospital. The doctors had little to offer her, but a fellow patient gave her a copy of The News of the World containing an article about Georgina Turtle. Her use of ladies' toilets also led to confrontations.
After working at a clerical post, Brenda was able, after several rejections because of the psychiatric admission, to join the Women's Royal Naval Service. However she was perceived as too mannish, and after two years discharged on medical grounds.
She started studying for the qualifications necessary to apply for medical school. In 1969 the Albany Trust and the Erickson Foundation organized the first International Conference on Gender Identity in London. Brenda read about this in The Times. After a delay because of father's death, she contacted Doreen Cordell at the Albany Trust, which had mainly worked for the decriminalization of homosexuality. With Brenda's agreement she was passed to Dr John Randall, whom she met, first at his Harley Street rooms, for a fee, and then at Charing Cross Hospital on the NHS. At their first meeting Randall said that he could help Brenda live as a man if that was what she really wanted.
She failed to get into medical school, but was accepted for the Dentistry course at the University of Birmingham. The plan was to qualify as a dentist before before becoming a man. However the stress of remaining the wrong sex for five years proved to be too much and in 1971 she asked to start on male hormones. The university supported Rees in his role change. His vicar suggested a week at the Anglican Franciscan Friary in Dorset, an all-male community, before returning home and to the third year of his dentistry studies.
All went well: with staff, with fellow students, and with neighbours in Tunbridge Wells. In December The Daily Telegraph ran an article by medical journalist Wendy Cooper, "Gender is a Mutable Point". Mark wrote to her, and she interviewed him for a subsequent article. Mrs Cordell asked if he would meet with journalist Sally Vincent whose subsequent article showed several misunderstandings. Mrs Cordell also put him in touch with other female-to-male transsexuals. Nonetheless Mark withdrew from the dental course after the third year - he knew that he wasn’t really dextrous enough to make a good dental surgeon.
He had a bilateral mastectomy in 1974, followed by an appearance on BBC Radio 4 Woman's Hour. He had a total hysterectomy in 1975. He then studied at Christ Church College, Canterbury, at first in teacher training, but then for a University of London BA in Literature and Religious Studies. He was out with the college authorities in that it was not then possible to change the gender on any legal documents.
Doreen died, leaving Mark feeling that he had lost a true friend. He submitted an article to The Nursing Mirror, but they wanted an accompanying medical article which Dr Randell was happy to supply. As per his usual practice he referred to female-to male transsexuals as 'ladies'.
Mark felt that he was being called to ordination within the Church of England. He was both a guide and a server at Canterbury Cathedral which was in effect his local church at that time. However it said 'Brenda' on his baptismal certificate. He wrote to the Archbishop, Dr Donald Coggan, who replied courteously that because he was still legally a woman and at that time the Church of England did not ordain women, Mark could not be considered for the priesthood.
Mark knew of Dr Charles Armstrong at Victoria Hospital in Newcastle from Wendy Cooper. In late 1978 he wrote to ask for advice in finding a surgeon who would do a phalloplasty, and was referred to Armstrong's colleague Mr Edwards. This led to a full evaluation in Newcastle by the Gender Dysphoria Panel, including Mark's first examination by an endocrinologist. However the surgeon, Mr Edwards, retired shortly afterwards and was not replaced.
Jacqueline Dufresnoy (Coccinelle) was rebaptised after transition. Such would have given Mark a baptismal certificate in his real name, but he probably realised that if they got beyond the baptismal certificate, the same refusal would have come based on his birth certificate.
Joshua Bussert grew up in the US Mid-west. He married his girlfriend at 18 when she became pregnant. In 1985 he studied data processing at Vincennes University, Indiana. He was also seeing a counselor to overcome his desire to be a woman. He had three children with his first wife before they divorced.
Bussert converted to Catholicism, and then met Sharon, a born Catholic, who became his second wife in 1990, after being told of his cross-dressing. They raised the three children from his first marriage and adopted two sisters from Haiti. Bussert worked in business consulting and systems analysis for networks, went to the Kinsey Institute for counseling, and they found Gender Identity Dysphoria.
In 2001 Bussert started working for Hitachi Data Systems, and in 2003 started laser hair removal, and looked for a transsexual community, but being in the middle of Indiana found none. In addition a 19-year old transsexual was murdered locally with her body set on fire.
Bussert applied for a transfer to the UK branch of Hitachi. He was to be an IT techie and business manager at £88,000 a year. The supervisor was open-minded, but moved on soon after. In London Bussert met Russell Reid at a conference, became a patient of his and started taking female hormones, and going out as female more often. She socially transitioned 2005 with Facial Feminization Surgery and breast augmentation with Dr Douglas Ousterhout in San Francisco. Her new supervisor had responded to the mention of a sex change: “Don’t do that to me, Josh. I had to work in an office with someone who did that once and it was weird”. By this time Russell Reid had been forced into retirement and Charing Cross Gender Clinic gave her a run-around.
Hitachi effectively demoted her and she was given a negative appraisal. She took sick leave for stress, returned and again went on sick leave. Hitachi stopped paying her salary and she resigned. Jessica sued for £500,000 in the UK and $3.6m in the US, but without success.
Since the Sex Discrimination (Gender Reassignment) Regulations 1999 it is clear that not only is it illegal to discriminate against transsexuals, but that this covers employees intending to undergo gender reassignment. However the Employment Tribunal in Reading dismissed Bussert's claims ruling that she had left the company of her own free will. Furthermore it found no fault with the way that Hitachi had handled the situation, and even commended Hitachi managers for displaying good management practice and embracing diversity.
As Bussert was no longer employed, the Home Office ruled that her permit to live in the UK was no longer valid, and Jessica and Sharon returned to Indiana.
They have since become award-winning photographers.
++February 2015 - revised after feedback from Alice.
Purnell was conceived in a haystack in the Wirral during an air-raid. He was sexually and physically abused at prep school by the headmaster who was later convicted. His parents had a 'messy horrid' divorce when he was doing his O-level examinations.
He felt confused in that he felt that he should be a girl but was not attracted to men. He developed an alternate identity as Anne who, by the age of 15, socialized only with people who knew nothing of Purnell's male life.
Purnell did a degree in chemistry. He found love with a woman to whom he explained about Anne. She accepted this side of him, but asked that Anne change her name as her sister was also Anne. Purnell had been called Dormouse at school, and, in homage to Lewis Carroll, became Alice.
They were living in Sussex. One evening on the way home from work as a research chemist, Purnell encountered, before the police arrived, a trans girl who had hanged herself in a tree. Her father showed up and expressed anger but not sorrow. Purnell felt that he could easily have been that trans girl, and this led to becoming a volunteer with the Samaritans, the advice line for those at risk of suicide. She found that a third of calls on the line featured gender difficulties.
Alice did not know how to express her femininity until she found a a copy of Virginia Prince's Transvestia in a sex-book shop in London's Soho. She used the Transvestia contact system to find like-minded persons, and became a member of the European Chapter of Virginia Prince's FPE.
Alice, Alga Campbell from Dublin, Giselle, a US expatriate, and Sylvia Carter, met in 1965 and agreed to found the Beaumont Society (named after the 18th century transvestite pioneer). The membership numbering was started at 100 (which was assigned to Alice, and then issued back and forth from that to give the impression of greater membership. Initially there were almost as many overseas members as in the UK, with some in Malaysia, Kenya and other parts of the Commonwealth. Alice became the overseas contact person because of her French. Regional contacts were appointed but were often the only member in their region.
After an initial meeting in Hampstead, the first full meeting was held in Southampton in 1966 with 12 in attendance including two wives.
Purnell had been attending the Charing Cross Hospital Gender Clinic under the care of Dr Randell, and that same year was offered surgery. However Purnell married his lover instead after five years together. They had two daughters and a son.
Following the practice of Prince in the US, new members had to be vetted, and the application form explicitly stated that no hint of overt gayness would be tolerated.
"It was also risky meeting others to sponsor them. I remember a character from Gibraltar who was very cagey indeed, who I arranged via the contact system to sponsor so she could attend meetings when in the UK; (you could not do so if not sponsored as they were often in people's homes). At the meeting in a car park this person told me my date & place of birth, schools and University, bank balance and workplace. I was horrified. He had discovered all this via our Secret Service for whom he worked in the Colony. He said he did this to secure his own confidentiality in case we breached his. I felt disinclined to sponsor him and was really horrified that even then governments held so much info' on all of us. I did sponsor him after discussion with Alga. It was a bit of a mutual standoff, but what an invasion of my own privacy!"
Alice, Alga, Virginia, Sylvia - 1971
In 1969 Virginia Prince visited the Beaumont Society in London, Leicester and Scotland. On her return in 1971 she stayed with Alice.
Alice was on BBC Radio 4 with agony aunt Claire Raynor. She attended the TV/TS conferences at Leeds University in 1974, and Leicester University in 1975 – the latter was organized by the Beaumont Society. Also in 1975, Alice was a co-founder of the Beaumont Trust, a registered charity, which separately from the Beaumont Society, set up a helpline and published educational booklets on transgender topics. In 1976 Alice became Vice-President of the Beaumont Society, and President a year later.
In 1977, Alice trained as a nurse, specializing in geriatric services. She then worked as such for 26 years, at one time becoming a matron, ++including nursing support for transgender surgery.
She ++finally had surgery in 1982 after the dissolution of her marriage, and remained President of the Beaumont Society until 1984. She also worked with Judy Cousins at SHAFT. She researched the then literature on trans topics and was disappointed. She joined HBIGDA (now WPATH) and attended its European meetings. She found that they were dominated by US concerns and that the Standards of Care were mainly to protect the surgeons, and that the emphasis was on psychiatry rather than on psychology/counselling. Using the contacts that she had made she organized the first of the GENDYS conferences which was held at Manchester University in 1990. This was intended as a British conference, and deliberately brought together each type of professional who deals with trans persons, and each type of trans person. There were a further seven GENDYS conferences held every two years. Alice edited all the GENDYS Conference Reports and often contributed papers.
Alice in 2011
After obtaining a masters degree in counselling and psychology, she co-founded Gender Trust and subsidized it in its first year. It was intended to help transgender rather than transvestite persons, and was, like the Beaumont Trust, a registered charity. However after a year the legal counsel to the Gender Trust was insisting that the trustees were to view her counselling notes. She regarded this potential breach of confidentiality re those she had counselled to be outrageous and resigned from Gender Trust. She also took them to court to establish that the copyright to the 2005 book was hers, and was not held by the Trust. ++She estimates that she has counselled around 500 trans persons.
She is also a poet, a dog lover and a fossil collector. She has lived most of her life in Sussex.
Alice Purnell was made an OBE in the 2012 New Years Honours List: "For services to Transgender People".
Alice Purnell. "Why does transexuality exist?" and "TV, TG, TS – What's in a label?" in Michael Trevor Haslam. Transvestism: A Guide. Beaumont Trust, 1993.
A. Purnell (ed.). Conference Report of the 1st International Gender Dysphoria Conference. London: BM Gendys, 1991.
A. Purnell (ed.). Conference Report of the 2nd International Gender Dysphoria Conference. London: BM Gendys, 1993.
A. Purnell (ed.). Conference Report of the 3rd International Gender Dysphoria Conference. London: BM Gendys, 1995.
A. Purnell (ed.). Conference Report of the 4th International Gender Dysphoria Conference. London: BM Gendys, 1996.
A. Purnell (ed.). Conference Report of the 5th International Gender Dysphoria Conference. London: BM Gendys, 1999.
A. Purnell (ed.). Gendys 2K: Sixth International Gender Conference Report. London: BM Gendys, 2001.
A. Purnell (ed.). Conference Report of the 7th International Gender Dysphoria Conference. London: BM Gendys,2002.
A. Purnell (ed.), Conference Report of the 8th International Gender Dysphoria Conference. London: BM Gendys, 2004.
Alice Purnell. Transexed and Transgendered People: A Guide. Gendys Conferences, 2005.
We have a list of the 4 founders of the Beaumont Society, but we still don't have a list of the 12 founders of the Hose and Heel Club.
Alice says that the Beaumont Society was never really anti-gay, merely obliged to distance itself from being perceived as gay because of the laws at the time. Whether you buy this or regard it as a post-facto PR position, the Beaumont Society has grown away from its Princian origins. The interview with Christine Burns contains none of the mean spirited rhetoric that Prince herself retained till the end.
Note that Alice uses 'transgender' as a umbrella term apart from transvestites. You find the same usage with Katherine Cummings, the Australian FPE alumna. The sterile debate re transgender=heterosexual transvestite is mainly a US hangup.
++In the initial verion of this article I had assumed that Alice was non-op because a) she was president of a Princian organization and b) there was no statment to the contrary. However it has now been clarified that the assumption was not so, and statements have been added in the narrative above.
