Lyn Raskin: Part II - transition

Part I: life until first visit to Benjamin clinic 

Part II: Transition

Part III: comments

Raskin was looking for a writer to write her biography, and a friend suggested Irmis Johnson, a noted journalist whom the Hearst company had sent to Copenhagen in 1953 to meet Christine Jorgensen. This had resulted in five consecutive weekly articles in the the American Weekly, actually written by Johnson but attributed to Jorgensen. Johnson expressed interest and even gave Jorgensen’s contact details. Raskin as Edward phoned several times starting the next day, and Christine told Raskin that her autobiography was being filmed. During this period Raskin continued attempting his theatre career as Edward. Wollman told Raskin that she should start to live in female clothes

In May Raskin got a reply from Dr Money at Johns Hopkins. Money said that “I had to prove my capacity to earn, dress and live as a female before undergoing irrevocable surgery” (May 3, 1969). Raskin and Wollman dismissed this as ridiculous as thry thought that drag was illegal in New York State (unlike Maryland – where Johns Hopkins is – where it was legal).

After feedback from possible publishers re an advance or not, Irmis Johnson bowed out from the project.

The next appointment at the Benjamin clinic was with Dr Benjamin himself, as Wollman would in future be seeing his patients at his Coney Island practice – although Raskin did visit him there to have a mole removed. Benjamin revealed that a) Wollman had her down as a “Type 4 – Transsexual, nonsurgical” b) the pills that Wollman had prescribed were not estrogen but Dilantin. In Jan Wälinder’s 1967 Transsexualism: a study of forty-three cases, he had reported finding an abnormal EEG in 28% of a group of transvestites and transsexuals, and that an anti-convulsive drug had led to a cessation of the desire to cross-dress in some cases. Benjamin had tested this on a few volunteers, but Wollman had prescribed surreptitiously. 

Raskin asserted strongly that she was a “Type 6 – Transsexual, true, high intensity” and that the Dilantin had not decreased her urge to transition. Benjamin asked whether Raskin would still want to become a woman if she could not have sex afterwards. Raskin replied: “I said I wouldn’t but I understand once the vagina is created you can have fulfilling sexual relations”. Benjamin gave a subscription for real estrogen. (May 3, 1969)

The visits to Benjamin were $20 and the estrogen was $3.75 for fifty capsules.

At a final visit to Wollman’s office in Coney Island to finish the warts treatment Raskin expressed her displeasure at being classified as a Type 4, and over the Dilantin.

Benjamin transferred Raskin to his new associate Charles Ihlenfeld, and Raskin went in for hormone shots every second week. Benjamin wrote a letter to excuse Raskin from jury duty. Raskin finally started electrolysis having found an electrolysist who would do it for $10 per hour (most charged $20), and also started to let her hair grow. In September she bought dresses for the first time, and tried wearing them in the apartment. She finally had her nose job with Dr Rish. She spoke to Rish re sex change operations, and he claimed that he did not do them, but mentioned a Dr Jones who required a record of cross-living. A week later she wrote to Dr Burou in Casablanca to ask his prices.

In her diary she wrote: “I have definitely decided against having any New York doctors perform the sex operation on me. They require you to come to their office and have a castration done there — with only a local anesthetic. Then a month later they complete the surgery in a hospital.” (October 8, 1969). 

Two weeks after her letter, she received an answer from Dr Burou: 

“I received your letter of October 9. The cost of surgery and 15 days of hospital is $4000. You must send it before you arrive to the enclosed address. [It was a Swiss bank.] If you can come with another patient I can do the two operations for $7000. I have not a brochure or the itinerary for transportation, but you can find that in any travel office in New York City. You have not need to bring many things. Only your clothes. You can make operation of breast implant here, but is necessary that the Doctor see you before — and difficult for me to tell you what is the cost of the operation.

                                            Sincerely yours,

PS. Please if you think coming in April send to me a confirmation for reservation.” (October 20, 1969). 

In November Raskin wrote back and said that she could afford only $2000. 

For the first time, through a common friend, Raskin met with another transsexual, and compared notes. In January 1970 Look Magazine had a feature on transsexuals. Raskin felt chagrin in that she had approached them a year previously – however Look specifically featured transsexuals who had already transitioned.

Finally Raskin started wearing female clothing outside, but only after make-up sessions and shopping with female friends. Edward told the building superintendent that his sister Lyn would be staying in the apartment. Lyn met several transsexuals at a party given by her electrolysist. She was doing electrolysis as much as six hours a week. A friend suggested Maurice Girodias’ Olympia Press to publish Lyn’s autobiography. Girodias was in New York after being pressured out of Paris in 1963. Lyn presumably did not know of his practice of not paying his writers.

Both Lyn and Edward had a joint bank account, and the manager, citing a possible discrepancy, insisted that both Lyn and Edward come in together. (May 7, 1969)

Edward had met Zelda Suplee twenty years earlier in the town of Homestead, Florida. Lyn encountered her again as she was now the director of the Erickson Educational Foundation (EEF). Zelda was due to return to Florida, and said that she would visit Lyn’s father and explain things – although when there she was unable to do more than phone him. Zelda, Lyn, Dr Wollman, Constance (who had met Lyn at their electrologist, and had recently returned from completion surgery in Casabalanca) and cis actress Pamela Lincoln (who was purportedly seeking information about transsexuals and ten years later would be in the film Tootsie) were in a 28 minute filmed discussion sponsored by EEF. By this time Raskin had a job as Lyn, working from home doing sales promotion for a music company.

Constance had reported unhygienic practices at the clinic in Casablanca. However she had a history of lying; Zelda introduced Lyn to Bonnie, also back from Casablanca, who gave a much more positive account, and had negative accounts of three friends who had had problems after gender surgery in New York.

In June one of Lyn’s aunts supplied a check for $2500 (which Lyn suspected actually came from her father). She wrote to Dr Burou saying that she could afford only $1500, and that a flight was booked. This was accepted. Only then did Raskin apply for a passport – as Edward as stated on her birth certificate.

Lyn Raskin arrived in Rabat, Morroco and then Casablanca July 7, 1970. Three days later all was complete. She returned to her apartment in New York. She still had appointments with Dr Ihlenfeld, and also with Dr Rish as she wished to increase her vaginal depth. Rish sent her to Dr Roberto Granato, who found the urethra and vagina infected. She was in Rish’s Yonkers Professional Hospital several times: for an operation on the urethra, to have her ears pinned, breasts implanted and a facial skin-peel. She started having sex with straight men, usually without mentioning her past.

Lyn’s book, Diary of a Transsexual, was published by Olympia Press in 1971. We don’t know if Maurice Girodias did pay any royalties. 

Later that year the agony aunt Ann Landers was on the tail-end of the Dick Cavett television show following a pre-op trans woman enthusing about designing her wedding dress. Landers felt that that particular trans woman was inauthentic, and resented having to comment on her performance. When Patrick M McGrady, Jr wrote this up in his 1972 book, The Love Doctors, he added a comment from Raskin as a footnote: “They should not have had that sort of person. Ann Landers had a perfect right to be upset. It was like having a guy in drag.”

Nothing is known of Lyn Raskin after that.

• Roland Berg. “The Trans-sexuals: Male or Female”. Look Magazine, January 1970. Online.
• I Am Not This Body, with Zelda Suplee, Leo Wollman, Lyn Raskin, Constance and Pamela Lincoln. EEF, US 28 mins 1971.
• Lyn Raskin. Diary of a Transsexual. The Olympia Press, 1971.
• Patrick M McGrady, Jr. The Love Doctors. Macmillan, 1972: 165-6, footnote.

Paul Walker (1946 – 1991) psychologist - Part I: Baltimore and Galveston

 (Original version April 2012.)

Walker was raised in Baltimore, did research in behavioural endocrinology with John Money at Johns Hopkins Psychohormonal Research Instititute from 1966, and graduated 1976 from the University of Rochester with a PhD in Social Psychology with a thesis on attitudes toward drug use and sexual behavior. 

He then gained a teaching position at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) at Galveston where he started a sex offender treatment program using a combination of medication and psychotherapy. He also ran the Gender Clinic there which had been serving transsexuals since 1972, and was becoming one of the major Gender Identity Clinics in the US.

Reed Erickson closed the Erickson Educational Foundation (EEF) in 1977. Walker and Zelda Suplee, who had been Director of the EEF, then formed Janus Information Facility which carried on some of the work of EEF, and Zelda also moved to Galveston.

Most of the trans patients at UTMB were self-referred after they learned of the Gender Clinic by word of mouth or, from 1977, through information available from the Janus Information Service. The patients' physical and hormonal measurements were taken, and hormones were prescribed. The program ran 1976-80, and an account was published in 1986. The program evaluated and treated 60 male-to-female transsexuals (age 15 to 53 years, median 28 years) and 30 female-to-male transsexuals (20 to 55 years, median 34 years). Results were published in 1981 and 1986.

In 1977 Walker was the defense psychologist at Fort Rucker. Alabama, where a young female soldier was accused of homosexuality for marrying a transman, Kristian von Hoffburg. Walker testified that the wife was not at all homosexual, and described the marriage as ‘cognitive heterosexuality’.

When the Johns Hopkins Gender Identity Clinic was closed in 1979 based on the contentious study by Jon Meyer, Walker was quoted in the New York Times: 

“If the study shows anything at all, it’s that careful screening before surgery is critical to the outcome. You have to be very careful about whom you operate on. Many applicants, certain that they want an operation, give a very convincing biography of a transsexual. They know exactly what to say. But if you put up any barriers to the surgery, they change their minds”. He pointed out that Meyer’s study examined patients just before their surgery but after they had completed the real‐life test. He added that “most of the changes had already taken place, so it's no surprise that he found no further improvement afterward”. (Brody)

In response to to Dr David Barlow of Brown University who claimed to have ‘cured’ three transsexuals through conditioning techniques to act and think more like others of their biological sex, and earlier had reported a transsexual “well on his way to surgery” who was changed by a faith healer through exorcism, Walker countered that “if you can change them, they weren't transsexuals in the first place. I cure people every week, sometimes just by telling them what the preoperative workup and surgery will involve.” (Brody)

Millionaire trans man Reed Erickson had sponsored and financed three symposia (London 1969, Elsinore 1971, Dubrovnik 1973) that brought together the professionals in transsexual treatment. There was a fourth - not sponsored by EEF - at Stanford University in 1975 (The Harry Benjamin 4th International Conference on Gender Identity) and a fifth in Norfolk, Virginia in 1977 - the year that EEF closed down. Some organization was required. At the sixth Symposium at San Diego in February 1979 the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association (HBIGDA) was formally approved with Walker to be the first president. HBIGDA was officially incorporated as a non-profit corporation in the State of Texas, by Walker and his colleagues Walter J Meyer III and Alice Webb.

It was realized that a Standards of Care was needed. Apparently Walker wrote most of the first draft himself, but then struck a committee which he chaired. The first edition of the Standards of Care for transgender clients was published in 1979.

Continued in Part II. 

Writing by others about Paul Walker will be listed in Part II.

By Paul Walker:

• With John Money. “Prenatal androgenization of females. A review.” Hormones. 1972;3(2):119-28.
• "Transexualism". Medical Journal of Australia,2,790, 1973.
• "Transexualism". in Wilbur W Oaks (ed) . Sex and the Life Cycle, Grune & Sratton, 1976: 141-6.
• Attitudes toward drug use and sexual behavior. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Rochester, 1976.
• With John Money. "Counseling the Transexual” in John Money and Herman Musaph (eds). Handbook of Sexology V: Selected syndrimes and therapy. Elsevier, 1977: 1289-130.
• With John Money, Walter J Meyer III, C Wiedeking, AA Kowarski, CJ Migeon, DS Borgaonkar . “Pituitary function in adult males receiving medroxyprogesterone acetate”. Fertility and Sterility. 28(10) Oct 1977:1072-6.
• With AF Payer, Walter J Meyer III. “The ultrastructural response of human Leydig cells to exogenous estrogens”. Andrologia,11(6), 1979:423-36.
• With Jack C. Berger, Richard Green, Donald R. Laub, Charles L. Reynolds, Jr., & Leo Wollman. Standards of Care: The hormonal and surgical sex reassignment of gender dysphoric persons. The Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association, Inc. & Janus Information Facility, Online.
• With Walter J Mayer III & Zelda R Suplee. “A Survey of Transsexual Hormonal Treatment in Twenty Gender-Treatment Centers”. The Journal of Sex Research, 17,1, Nov 1981: 344-9.
• With Walter J Meyer III, RW Furlanetto. “The effect of sex steroids on radioimmunoassayable plasma somatomedin C concentrations”. Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, 55(6) Dec 1982:1184-7.
• With Walter J Meyer III, LE Emory, ER Smith. “Physical, metabolic, and hormonal effects on men of long-term therapy with medroxyprogesterone acetate”.Fertility and Sterility. 43(1) Jan 1985:102-9.

The University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston Gender Center:

• Walter J Meyer III, Jordan W Finkelstein, Charles A Stuart, Alice Webb, Edward R Smith, Andrew F Payer & Paul Walker. “Physical and hormonal evaluation of transsexual patients during hormonal therapy”. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 10(4) Aug 1981:347-56.
• Walter J Meyer III, Alice Webb, Charles A Stuart, Jordan W Finkelstein, Barbara Lawrence & Paul Walker. “Physical and hormonal evaluation of transsexual patients: a longitudinal study”. Archives of Sexual Behavior;15(2) Apr 1986:121-38.
• C M Cole, L E Emory, Ted Huang & Walter J Meyer III. “Treatment of gender dysphoria (transsexualism)”. Texas Medicine, 90, 5, May 1994.
• Ted T Huang. “Twenty years of experience in managing gender dysphoric patients: I. Surgical management of male transsexuals”. Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, 96, 4, Sep 1995: 921-30.

Zelda R. Suplee (1908 - 1989) Director of Erickson Educational Foundation.

Updated 15 March 2012, 2 Feb 2013, 15 October 2013, 21March 2016.

Zelda was raised in New York City, and did a BA at New Jersey College for Women (now part of Rutgers University).

She was a keen nudist. With her then husband, Reed Suplee (1916-86), she owned and managed three nudist camps in the period 1930s – 1950s, and was in Doris Wishman’s Diary of a Nudist, 1961, and also in The Moving Finger, 1963 and The Parisienne and the Prudes, 1964 – all nudist films. She was the first full-frontal nude in Playboy magazine (in black-and-white).

For 17 years she was editor and researcher of True Story, True Detective and Master Detective Magazine.  She was a consulting sexologist, an hypnotist and one of the first to do past-life regressing, and was interested in all kinds of health and psychic phenomena. 

In 1965, after Reed Erickson had founded the Erickson Educational Foundation (EEF), he hired Zelda to run it. From her office in New York she and lesbian feminist activist Phyllis Saperstein (they had met in a nudist camp) managed the daily operations, and the contacts with transsexuals who asked for help. Erickson made the final decisions about who and what he funded, but spent much of his time in Baton Rouge and then Mexico with his family.

In 1969 EEF and the Albany Trust co-sponsored a symposium, “The First International Congress on Gender Identity" in London.  Zelda was the co-ordinator. In 1971 she was part of the First National Conference on Religion and the Homosexual, which took part in New York, and several time attended police conventions where EEF pamphlets were distributed.  She compiled the EEF newsletter 1969-76 which reported the ongoing dialogue between EEF, trans people and associated professionals.  In 1971 EEF sponsored production of a 28-minute docuentary, I am Not This Body, which featured a discussion in the EEF office between Zelda, Leo Wollman, two trans women and actress Pamela Lincoln (who was purportedly seeking information about transsexuals).

Also around that time Zelda introduced Doris Wishman, whom she had known since Diary of a Nudist, to Leo Wollman, which resulted in the film Adam or Eve, 1971, which was later recut with additional footage and finally released as Let Me Die a Woman, 1978.

Zelda was also Erickson's contact with psychic research and healing. In 1971 her apartment was the location for pioneering infrared photography of psychic energy.  In 1976 she was given a pre-publication copy of the book, A Course in Miracles, which she passed on to Reed who financed its printing.

Zelda was the public face of EEF until it closed in 1977.

In 1981, at the 7th International Gender Dysphoria Symposium, HBIGDA presented lifetime achievement awards to Reed Erickson, Zelda  and Harry Benjamin.

In 1983 she moved to Los Angeles to handle Erickson's dealings with ONE Inc..

Zelda introduced Suzanne Kessler and Wendy McKenna to some of the transsexuals whom they interviewed for their book, Gender: An Ethnomethodological Approach, 1985.

After EEF, she moved to Galveston to start the Janus Information Facility (JIF) with Paul Walker who was a co-founder of HBIGDA.

She died aged 81 in Los Angeles.

• Doris Wishman (dir).  Diary of a Nudist, with Zelda R Suplee as the camp director.  US 72 mins 1961.  
• Nicholas Ghosh.  "Tribute to Zelda R. Suplee".  Gender Review, December 1978.  
• Walter J. Meyer,  Paul A. Walker & Zelda R. Suplee. 1981. "A Survey of Transsexual Hormonal Treatment in Twenty Gender‐treatment Centers". Journal of Sex Research, 17, 4: 344-349.  Abstract
• Suzanne J. Kessler &Wendy MacKenna. Gender: A Ethnomethodological Approach. Univ. of Chicago Press, 1987: xiii. 
• Ingo Swann. Remote Viewing: The Real Story: An Autobiographical Memoir. 1996: Chp 5. www.biomindsuperpowers.com/Pages/RealStoryCh5.html.
• Joanne Meyerowitz. How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States. Cambridge, Ma, London: Harvard University Press. 363 pp 2002: 211-2 ,216, 227, 231, 236, 239-240, 257, 280.
• Andy Humm & Joan Nixon. “Phyllis Saperstein Recalled”. Gay City. 12/29/2005. gaycitynews.com/site/index.cfm?newsid=17007725. 
• Michael J. Bowen.  " 'StrangerHer': The Peculiar Saga of Let Me Die a Woman".  Booklet included in Synapse DVD release of Let Me Die a Woman, 2005. 
• Aaron Devor. "Building a Better World for Transpeople: Reed Erickson and the Erickson Educational Foundation".  International Journal of Transgenderism, 10, 1, 2006: 47-68.  
•  "'What's My Line?' segment from the 50s (60s)?".   Clothes Free Forum, April 2008.  www.clothesfreeforum.com/archive/index.php/t-12092.html.  
• C. Todd White. Pre-Gay L.A.: A Social History of the Movement for Homosexual Rights. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009: 204. 

IMDB     

This clip is of Zelda, using the pseudonym Yolande Reed, when she appeared on What's My Line in 1953.

Reed Erickson (1917 – 1992) engineer, scion of wealth, philanthropist, drug addict.

Rita Alma Erickson was born in El Paso, Texas, of German descent, and raised in Philadelphia. In 1946 she was the first woman to graduate from Louisiana State University in mechanical engineering.

Reed as a teenager

She was already involved with a New York woman who was a left wing activist. Rita worked as an engineer, until she was fired for refusing to fire a woman suspected of being a communist. The FBI kept her under surveillance, and recorded in 1954, that she refused to become an informant.

She started her own company making stadium bleachers. In 1962, when her father died Erickson inherited the majority of the family businesses, Schuylkill Products Co., Inc. and Schuylkill Lead Corp.

In 1963, at the age of 46, she became a patient of Harry Benjamin, and started living as a man. Reed legally transitioned the same year, and had an hysterectomy in New York, and double mastectomy at Johns Hopkins University Hospital, both in 1965 – which was a legal precedent in Louisiana. Also in 1963 he married his first legal wife, who was in the entertainment industry, but they divorced in 1965.

In 1964 he founded the Erickson Educational Foundation (EEF), financed entirely by himself. That year he also met Aileen Ashton, a New Zealander who was working as a dancer in New York City. He proposed on their second date, and they had a lavish wedding in Christchurch, New Zealand. They lived in Baton Rouge, and within a few years they had a son and a daughter, and Reed had started doing recreational drugs.

++Reed employed Zelda Suplee to run the Erickson Educational Foundation.  She had managed nudist camps, and was the first full-frontal nude in Playboy magazine (in black-and-white).  From her office in New York she and lesbian feminist activist Phyllis Saperstein (they had met in a nudist camp) managed the daily operations, and the contacts with transsexuals who asked for help. Erickson made the final decisions about who and what he funded, but spent much of his time in Baton Rouge and then Mexico with his family.

Reed in 1962

In 1969 he sold the Schuylkill business for $5million and went on to amass over $40 million, mainly from investments in oil-rich real estate. In 1973 the family, including his pet panther, moved to Mazatlan, Sinola, Mexico. By the end of 1974, Reed and Aileen were divorced. She took the children to Ojai, California, and he followed to be near the children. He married his third wife, a Mexican, Evangelina Trujillo Armendariz, in 1977, but she also left him, in 1983, because of his drug usage.

Though the EEF he financed gay and trans organizations, and research into New Age activities such as acupuncture, homeopathy, dolphin communication and altered states of consciousness. The EEF published booklets on various aspects of transsexuality, sponsored addresses to various professionals, and sponsored two of John Money’s books, and three of Vern Bullough’s. It donated money to the Harry Benjamin Foundation, but fell out with Benjamin in 1968. It subsidized the transsexuality program at the Johns Hopkins Gender Identity Clinic. It sponsored three symposia that grew into the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association (HBIGDA).


The longest-running recipient of financial support was ONE Inc of Los Angeles, founded in 1952 and still running, the pioneer homophile organization. Erickson had advised them to create a non-profit tax-exempt charitable arm, the Institute for the Study of Human Resources (ISHR). Erickson was president of ISHR from 1964 till 1977. He donated 70-80% of the budget, some $200,000. In 1981 ONE was accredited as a graduate degree-granting institution. Erickson suggested that the college needed a proper campus, and for $1.9 million purchased a 3.5 acre property from the religious leader, Elizabeth Clare Prophet. ONE moved its large library and archives into the campus. However by this time Erickson had apparently soured on the organization. He failed to turn over the property deed as previously agreed, and began filing legal suits against ONE to remove them from the campus. The expense of the move and the cut of funding from EEF almost bankrupted ONE, and the defensive efforts paralyzed its operations. The battle continued for over 10 years, with Erickson’s daughter continuing his fight. In 1992 a settlement was reached whereby ONE received $1 million, the property was sold and ONE came under the auspices of the University of Southern California.

By the end of his life Erickson was addicted to drugs, and a fugitive from US drug agents.He was
arrested for cocaine possession in Ojai, in 1983. After two more arrests he retreated to Mexico.

He died in January 1992, aged 74.

• Aaron Devor writing as Holly Devor. "Reed Erickson (1912-1992): How One Transsexed Man Supported ONE." In Vern Bullough (ed). Before Stonewall: Activists for Gay and Lesbian Rights in Historical Context. New York: Haworth. 2002. Online at: http://web.uvic.ca/~ahdevor/ReedErickson.pdf
• Aaron Devor. Reed Erickson and The Erickson Educational Foundation. http://web.uvic.ca/~erick123.
• Joanne Meyerowitz. How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States. Cambridge, Ma, London: Harvard University Press. 363 pp 2002: 210-2, 215-6, 219, 223, 258, 268, 327n5,8, 336n6.

_________________________________________

Vern Bullough's stipend from Reed Erickson was $70,000 (almost $1 million in today's money), and the ingrate completely leaves Erickson out of his Cross Dressing, Sex, and Gender.