A rereading of Benjamin: Part 2: transvestites

• Harry Benjamin. The Transsexual Phenomenon. Julian Press, 1966. Warner Books Edition 1977, with a bibliography and appendix by Richard Green.  PDF (with different pagination).  Page references eg p32/13 mean p32 in the 1977 Warner edition and p13 in the PDF. 

Part I:  intro and the Scale
Betty (?1938 - ?) female impersonator, salesgirl, model. --- 2nd entry, Appendix D, autobiographies
Part II:  transvestites
Clara Miller (1899 - ?) fur merchant, office worker ---  3rd entry, Appendix D, autobiographies
Part III: trans women
Joe (1920 - ?) cattle breader, art dealer ---  4th entry, Appendix D, autobiographies
Part IV: photos, legal, trans men, conclusions
Comments

Chapter 2: Transvestism, Transsexualism, and Homosexuality.

Virginia Prince, writing as C.V. Prince, with a preamble by Harry Benjamin, had published. “Homosexuality, Transvestism and Transsexuality: Reflections on Their Etiology and Differentiations” in The American Journal of Psychotherapy, 11, 1957.   Prince proposes that there are three kinds of ‘males’ who dress as women. Benjamin seems to have taken this as a starting point.

The first sentence is more carefully phrased than many later writers' claims: "Transvestism (TVism) as a medical diagnosis was probably used for the first time by the German sexologist, Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, about forty years ago when he published his book, Die Transvestiten". p24/10  

Actually Die Transvestiten was published in 1910, which was 56 years, not forty, before 1966. 

Benjamin continues to use TV and TS as abbreviations throughout the book. In Transvestia 12 (December 1961) Prince credited herself as having coined the term TV, although as usual she did not say where. As it is the obvious abbreviation, it is more than likely that other people had used it without waiting for her to coin it. Furthermore, she said, she therefore had a right to "pronounce a death sentence", and urged that all would use FP (=femme personator) instead. (Robert S. Hill. ‘As a man I exist; as a woman I live’: Heterosexual Transvestism and the Contours of Gender and Sexuality in Postwar America. PhD Dissertation. University of Michigan. 2007:62)    Five years later, Benjamin's usage of TVism implicitly denied her claim to coinage, and her admonition that it not be used.

Benjamin writes: “Most writers on the subject refer to transvestism as a sexual deviation, sometimes as a perversion. It is not necessarily either one. It also can be a result of ‘gender discomfort’ and provide a purely emotional relief and enjoyment without conscious sexual stimulation, this usually occurring only in later life.” p24/10

But shortly afterwards he writes: “Because of the much more permissive fashions among women, and for other reasons, the problem of transvestism almost exclusively concerns men in whom the desire to cross-dress is often combined with other deviations, particularly with fetishism, narcissism, and the desire to be tied up (bondage) or somehow humiliated (masochism).” p25/10 , and then “The majority of transvestites are overtly heterosexual, but many may be latent bisexuals. They 'feel' as men and know that they are men, marry, and often raise families. A few of them, however, especially when they are 'dressed,' can as part of their female role react homosexually to the attentions of an unsuspecting normal man. The transvestite’s marriage is frequently endangered as only relatively few wives can tolerate seeing their husbands in female attire. The average heterosexual woman wants a man for a husband, not someone who looks like a woman; but mutual concessions have often enough preserved such marriages, mostly for the sake of children.” p26/11

Virginia Prince writing in Transvestia, and speaking in public played down the erotic and/or fetishistic aspects of cross-dressing. On the other hand, in her meetings with psychiatrist Robert Stoller, she affirmed at least the erotic aspects. While she denied finding men attractive, she did enjoy being attractive to and flirting with men. She had a cross-dresser friend who was willing to play the male role and took her for lunch and drinks. Afterward they did mutual masturbation. She found kissing, hugging and affection from a man to be sexually rewarding. (Richard F Docter. From Man to Woman: The Transgender Journey of Virginia Prince. Docter Press, 2004: 66-7). One wonders, in the paragraph by Benjamin, if Prince had discussed the same eroticism with Benjamin. In either case Benjamin had certainly encountered it in discussions with other patients.

Benjamin contrasts TVs and TSs: “The transsexual (TS) male or female is deeply unhappy as a member of the sex (or gender) to which he or she was assigned by the anatomical structure of the body, particularly the genitals. To avoid misunderstanding: this has nothing to do with hermaphroditism. The transsexual is physically normal (although occasionally underdeveloped). These persons can somewhat appease their unhappiness by dressing in the clothes of the opposite sex, that is to say, by cross-dressing, and they are, therefore, transvestites too. But while ‘dressing’ would satisfy the true transvestite (who is content with his morphological sex), it is only incidental and not more than a partial or temporary help to the transsexual. True transsexuals feel that they belong to the other sex, they want to be and function as members of the opposite sex, not only to appear as such. For them, their sex organs, the primary (testes) as well as the secondary (penis and others) are disgusting deformities that must be changed by the surgeon’s knife. This attitude appears to be the chief differential diagnostic point between the two syndromes (sets of symptoms) - that is, those of transvestism and transsexualism.” p27/11

Benjamin gives a brief account of Christine Jorgensen, and in a footnote: “A few daring surgeons performed 'conversion operations' thirty or forty years ago but with very doubtful if not unfavorable results. In most cases, they castrated or removed the penis only, without attempting to create a vagina (see case of Lilly Elbe).” footnote, p28/18. He seems to be unaware of Hirschfeld’s patients Toni Ebel, Dörchen Richter and (suppposedly) his own patient whom he sent on to Berlin, Charlotte Charlaque. One also wants to ask if Kurt Wenekros’ patient Lili Elvenes (Elbe) underwent only a penectomy, why is she said to have died after a uterus transplant.

Bemjamin then asks whether “transvestites with their more or less pronounced sex and gender indecision may actually all be transsexuals, but in varying degrees of intensity”. p35/14 “A low degree of largely unconscious transsexualism can be appeased through cross-dressing and demands no other therapy for emotional comfort. These are transvestites…It must be left to further observations and investigations in greater depth to decide whether or not transvestitic desires may really be transsexual in nature and origin. Many probably are, but the frequent fetishistic transvestites may have to be excluded.” So much for HBS and other transsexuals who claim to cite Benjamin that transvestites are a different something (but see otherwise in Part III).

He continues: “If these attempts to define and classify the transvestite and the transsexual appear vague and unsatisfactory, it is because a sharp and scientific separation of the two syndromes is not possible. We have as yet no objective diagnostic methods at our disposal to differentiate between the two. We - often - have to take the statement of an emotionally disturbed individual, whose attitude may change like a mood or who is inclined to tell the doctor what he believes the doctor wants to hear. Furthermore, nature does not abide by rigid systems. The vicissitudes of life and love cause ebbs and flows in the emotions so that fixed boundaries cannot be drawn. It is true that the request for a conversion operation is typical only for the transsexual and can actually serve as definition. It is also true that the transvestite looks at his sex organ as an organ of pleasure, while the transsexual turns from it in disgust. Yet, even this is not clearly defined in every instance and no two cases are ever alike. An overlapping and blurring of types or groups is certainly frequent.” p35/15

Chapter 3: The Transvestite in Older and Newer Aspects

Nonaffective dressing: a cis person who cross-dresses to cross a border, rob a bank, get into an all-male or all-female place, even to attend one's own funeral. Those female impersonators who are not transvestites or transsexuals. Gay men in drag for a competition, to seduce straight men. This is covered in two short paragraphs, and certainly does not consider such gays as then progress on the road the womanhood. This is Type 0 (what today we might call Cis Cross-dressing). There are of course thousands of books and films that use these events as plot devices – a phenomenon of both high culture (Benjamin the opera buff would have been very aware of Marriage of Figaro and Der Rosenkavalier) and the cinema (Some Like it Hot and Thunderball are prominent examples from the early to mid 1960s).

“Their actions usually have nothing to do with transvestism either, the female attire being incidental, nonaffective, and without eroticism. ... In transvestism proper, the emotions are always involved, tinged more or less with eroticism, sexual stimulation, - and often masturbatory satisfaction.” p46/20. In Chapter 2, Benjamin had argued that transvestism was not a sexual deviation. Now he seems to be backtracking.

Type I Pseudo Transvestite. Again a very short section. His main example, p46/21, is a man, 60, previously a Kinsey 3 and married to a woman, who when younger had often cross-dressed. Now, since his wife’s death, he is a Kinsey 5 and never cross-dresses. I have a Label Youthful Phase in my encyclopedia. Are persons who cross-dress when young, but then desist not to be regarded as transvestites? This would result in us losing Kim Christy, John Herbert, Herbert Beeson, Boy George from our history. But more importantly I have never regarded ‘lifelong’ as an essential word in the definition of ‘tranvestism’, nor have I seen other definitions include it.

Then there is a throwaway paragraph at the end of the section. “Another, probably very small group of men may belong to the same category. They do not ever 'dress' overtly, out of fear or shame, but greatly enjoy transvestitic fantasies and literature. It is probably immaterial whether to classify them as pseudo or not at all.” p47/21 It would not be until over 45 years later that the concept of Cross Dreamer would be articulated.

Pseudo-Transvestite is marked Kinsey 0-6 in Benjamin’s Scale. This is all sexual orientations. The next two Transvestite types are marked 0-2 only. And thus gay transvestites are erased, unlike in Benjamin’s previous book Prostitution and Morality. Let us mention Patricia Morgan who was a patient of Benjamin in the late 1950s. She started as a male prostitute, became a transvestite prostitute, had surgery from ElmerBelt in 1961, and continued as a female prostitute. Perhaps Benjamin should have listened more attentively to what Morgan had to say. In her very being she refutes the distinction between the homosexual, presumed to be a pseudo transvestite who will discontinue, and the transsexual.

Type III True Transvestite.

“A large group of male transvestites (TVs) can be called "true" because cross-dressing is the principal if not the only symptom of their deviation. They dress out of a strong, sometimes overwhelming, emotional urge that – to say the least - contains unmistakable sexual overtones. Some of them can resemble addicts, the need for ‘dressing’ increasing with increasing indulgences.“ p47/21 and continues: “Sexual reasons for male transvestism are especially evident in the early stages of a transvestitic career. No experienced clinician can doubt the sexual roots in the large majority of transvestites. In most of the medical literature it is, therefore, perhaps not too fortunately, referred to as a sexual deviation or perversion. The often admitted masturbatory activities during or after a transvestite spree confirm this view. The frequently reported guilt feelings and disgust that are followed, with purges, that is to say, getting rid of all female attire, likewise point to the, - basically - sexual nature of transvestism (‘Post coitum omne animal triste?’).” p48/22 Then Benjamin talks about the ‘transvestite with a latent transsexual trend’: “The sexual element in transvestism seemed to me always more manifest in the fetishistic than in the latent transsexual type where (as in true TSism) a low sex drive and gender dissatisfaction frequently predominated.“ p53/24

What about female transvestites? “The facts may apply to the female as well as to the male, but this chapter will be devoted to the male only. Female transvestism seems to be rare and of somewhat doubtful reality. Women's fashions are such as to allow a female transvestite to indulge her wish to wear male attire without being too conspicuous. Her deviation has been considered merely arrogant while male transvestism is to many objectionable because, in their opinion, it humiliates.” p47/21 This again is a repetition of what Virginia Prince said. And the claim is offensive in that many female cross-dressers were in fact arrested – especially if they were anywhere near a lesbian bar. The Los Angeles police actually had a special section, the Daddy Tank, to imprison female cross-dressers. Louis Sullivan and Patrick Califia would later mock this attempted erasure of female cross-dressers, but that was still in the future. Here is a quote from Califia. Sex Changes: The Politics of Transgenderism  Cleis Press, 1997: 201.  “A whole book could probably be written about the misogyny and homophobia that has led sexologists and other 'experts' to frequently state, as Prince does, that women can wear men's clothes without being punished, so they have no need to become transvestites. This is patently false. … As any stone butch or passing woman can tell you, the general public continues to be deeply disturbed by a biological female who appears in public in men's clothing. There is no difference between the discrimination, condemnation, and violence that is routinely inflected upon male and female cross-dressers, if they are exposed as such."

On p49/22 we are formally introduced to “Charles Prince, Ph.D., who himself is a transvestite” and “Emphatic among present-day writers as to a supposedly nonsexual nature of transvestism”. Note the ‘supposedly’. Charles is of course Virginia. The PhD was earned by Virginia’s male persona Arnold Lowman in pharmacology, which led to his two successful books Chemistry in Your Beauty Shop, 1955 and Survey of Chemistry for Cosmetologists, 1959 – none of this mentioned. There has obviously been some sort of dialectic between Prince and Benjamin, who had known each other at least ten years by this time. Prince seems to have pushed Benjamin further in erasing gay transvestites and female transvestites, but Benjamin has resisted Prince’s position that transvestism is non-sexual. It is a shame that this was not documented.

Benjamin does not introduce us to Taylor Buckner, a future sociologist at Sir George Williams University, Montréal (and in fact mispells his name as Buchner), but does cite his master’s thesis on subscribers to Prince’s Transvestia magazine several times.

Type II Fetishistic Transsexual. Benjamin gives two examples p51/23.
 a) “a man in his late sixties, was accustomed to this form of transvestism when he went out. Only at home did he "dress" completely. Once he was in a street accident and was taken unconscious to a hospital. When the female undergarments were discovered, the examining physician, completely unacquainted with transvestism, wrote the fact into the hospital record (where I saw it), together with the diagnosis of ‘concussion’ and ‘patient evidently a degenerate’." p51/29 Footnote 7 tells us that his case was fully described by Dr Talmey, and thus we identify OttoSpengler.
b) “a nearly sixty-year-old, largely heterosexual pharmacist, who looks little more than forty, combines his fetishistic ‘dressing’ with a strong fetish for youthful apparel (civistism). He gets an even greater ‘sexual glow’ (as he describes it) from dressing like a very young boy than as a woman”.

There is also a short section at the end of the chapter, Concomitant deviations, where Benjamin mentions bondage, flagellation, and auto-asphyxiation with its risk of suicide. However he goes on: “Fetishism (S.O.S. II) complicates other TVs' sex lives. At the same time, it puts an additional strain on married life. There are those who like furs or leather. They buy jackets, coats, and entire outfits at considerable expense so that the wife has a just grievance, if she cannot afford anything like it for her own wardrobe.”p63/28

Now this was 1966, seven years before Richard O’Brien’s Rocky Horror Show; four years before Jayne County incorporated fetish themes into her act; 10 years before Punk, and well before the fetish club scene. Psycho-analysts had been ignorantly writing for decades that transvestism was a type of fetish. On the other hand there was a publisher in New York, Leonard Burtman  who had been putting out real fetish titles since the late 1950s, and around this time became a mentor of Kim Christy. It is very difficult from our 21^st century perspective to give any credence to what either the psychoanalysts or Benjamin wrote about fetishism. They just don’t know what they are talking about.  A small number of transvestites were and are fetishists, but the examples cited by Benjamin hardly count.  ‘Fetish’, much like the word ‘autogynephile’ in later years became a general insult term to throw at a trans person whom you dislike. The HBS people put down Prince’s femmiphilics as fetishists, while FPE was actually obsessed with not being fetishistic. Two years after Benjamin’s book, Transvestia columnist Sheila Niles popularized the concept ‘whole girl fetishist (WGF)’ for FPE members who did not pass well enough, particularly if it were for lack of trying. Over the next few years it came to be that those who failed or didn’t bother to fashion themselves as truly feminine were "fetishistic". Susanna Valenti even estimated that the majority of members were WGFs.

What about real fetishistic transvestites? One was certainly known to Benjamin. Two years earlier in 1964, Leonard Wheeler had published Sex Life of a Transvestite. He revealed Connie, his female self as an erotic transvestite who was also into bondage, with cruel sadistic fantasies about women. His book contained an introduction by Benjamin’s colleague Albert Ellis, and was featured in Taylor Buckner’s 1969 paper “The Transvestic Career Path” - in fact it was the only autobiography that Buckner referred to. However there is no mention of Leonard Wheeler in Benjamin’s book.

Transvestite Publications.  Again Virginia Prince is mentioned, and her magazine Transvestia and her denial of a sexual component. And then: “The de-sexing attempt is merely one example of the frequent lack of realism among transvestites and their ever-present capacity for illusion and self-deception. The inability of many of them to look at themselves objectively is their great handicap. It explains that all too often they do not look like women at all when ‘dressed,’ but like men dressed up as women. They do not see it and that is why some of them are arrested. One only has to look at some of the photos published in Transvestia and Turnabout to recognize the truth of this observation. While unfortunate, the self-deception is understandable if we think of the wish being the ever-present motivating force.” p54/24

Benjamin is more positive about Turnabout: “A seemingly more objective approach to the problem can be found in the pages of Turnabout, another more recent magazine of transvestism. Its competent editor, Fred Shaw [Siobhan Fredericks], writing under different pseudonyms, with several qualified collaborators, likewise provides self-expression for their readers through letters and photographs, but they provide, at the same time, education and information through scientific debates, giving expression to diversified views. They disagree with ‘Virginia Prince’ and her principal theory that ‘the girl within’ prompts transvestites to be what they are and to act as they do. Yet - as we have seen - such theory does contain a grain of truth, namely, the biological fact that in every male there is an element of the female, and vice versa. Our culture and upbringing, however, lead to the practical demands (for males and females), for masculinity and femininity as such, and allow no ‘girls within’ men. It does exist only under just such abnormal conditions as transvestism, transsexualism and certain cases of homosexuality with effeminacy. All this, however, permits no generalization.” p55/25

Benjamin says nothing about Female Mimics, which had been available since 1963. While it was more oriented to female impersonation, many of the same people read both Turnabout and Female Mimics.

Transvestites’ wives. Prince had published The Transvestite and His Wife in 1962, which Benjamin does not mention. He does say: “The wives of transvestites constitute a psychological problem by themselves. I have spoken to at least a dozen. Most of them put up a brave front, claiming to be unaffected in their love for their husbands, but admitting they are certainly not happy about the TVism, even suffering acutely at times. Few, but very few, say they enjoy helping their husbands to "dress" and "make up" and actually like him in his female as much as his male role.” p61/27

Jayne County (1947 - ) Part II: New York City

Part I: Atlanta
Part II: New York City
Part III:  London and Berlin

After a spell living at the YMCA, Wayne met the aspiring photographer Leee Childers (1945 - 2014) who invited him to share a coldwater walkup on 13^th St. Wayne hung out at the Sewer club on West 18^th St where he encountered members of Charles Ludlum's Ridiculous Theatrical Company, and also Holly Woodlawn, a friend of Tammy Novak. Leee had already photographed Holly and Tammy.

On the night of June 27 1969 Wayne was on his way to the Stonewall when he met Miss Peaches and Marsha P Johnson and realized that a riot was in progress.  He joined an impromptu march up and down Christopher Street shouting "Gay Power!".

Through Leee, Wayne came to know Jackie Curtis and Candy Darling, and the Andy Warhol crowd. After falling out with Warhol's screenwriter, John Vaccaro, Jackie moved into Leee's flat. Shortly afterwards, Holly also moved in. After Leee and Wayne had been to Woodstock, Wayne started going to Max's Kansas City at 213 Park Avenue.

Wayne's first on-stage performance was in Jackie Curtis' Femme Fatal, a women-in-prison play.  He wanted a stage name and took Wayne County, from where Detroit is located, in homage to Iggy and the Stooges. He was cast as a psychotic southern lesbian. Patti Smith played a mafia dyke, and Bunny Eisenhower was also in it.

Wayne wrote a play World – Birth of a Nation that had lots of sex and fetishes in it. It was produced, and one of the stars was Cherry Vanilla. Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey came to the opening night, and The Village Voice gave it a rave review.

Andy Warhol had been taping private telephone conversations, and he arranged for them to be transcribed and arranged into a play, that became called Pork. Wayne was to play a character based on Warhol Superstar Viva. The play got a big write-up in The New York Times, and it was taken to England, where it opened, August 1971, at the Roundhouse in Camden Town. This was the same time as the Oz Magazine trial for obscenity. The reviews in the British Press were completely negative, but crowds came anyway. Rod Stewart and Ron Wood came more than once. As did David and Angie Bowie.

Back in New York Wayne got a gig as the house DJ at Max's Kansas City, and did some more theatre. While playing a transvestite revolutionary in a play, Wayne thought about forming a band, which became Queen Elizabeth, which took a lot of ideas from the Ridiculous Theatrical Company and Jackie Curtis, and put them to music. They played with the New York Dolls and at Max's. David Bowie's manager Tony Defries put Wayne on a retainer, but never recorded the band.

In October 1973 Wayne was on the cover of Melody Maker, and was in David Bowie's 1980 Floor Show with Amanda Lear and Marianne Faithful. In 1974 Wayne started doing shows at the 82 Club.


At this time Wayne read Canary Conn's autobiography, and felt that she wanted to be more transsexual than drag queen. She was referred to Eugene/Jeanne Hoff (who herself was starting transition) at what had been the Harry Benjamin practice. Hoff advised

"You should only get a sex change if you are one hundred and twenty five per cent sure about it. If you have the least hesitation about it, don't do it".(p100)

After starting on female hormones, early in 1976, Wayne resumed being the DJ at Max's, and working with the new band, The Back Street Boys, and wrote the song 'Man Enough to be a Woman'. A proposed album with ESP records fell through, but they were included on the compilation album Max's Kansas City: New York New Wave.

While mainly a Max's performer, Wayne did a gig at the competing nightclub, CBGBs where she was heckled by ex-wrestler Dick Manitoba, singer in the band, The Dictators, shouting homophobic taunts.  Manitoba then climbed on the stage holding a beer-mug, and County hit him with the microphone stand.   County cut his hair short and wore a false beard, but was arrested for assault some days later and spent one night in jail.   Other musicians and performers including the Ramones, Blondie, Talking Heads, The New York Dolls, Jackie Curtis, Holly Woodlawn, Divine put on a benefit to meet County’s legal costs.  Three times Manitoba failed to show in court and therefore the charges were dropped.

Leee Childers was working in London, and phoned that Wayne should be also.

• Viviane K.Namaste. " 'A Gang of Trannies': Gender Discourse and Punk Culture". Chp 4 in Invisible Lives: The Erasure of Transsexual and Transgendered People. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. 
• Zagria. "'A Gang of Trannies': Gender Discourse and Punk Culture – a review of the chapter by Viviane Namaste". Gender Variance in the Arts, 05 March 2011. http://gvarts.blogspot.ca/2011/03/gang-of-trannies-gender-discourse-and.html

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Viviane Namaste doesn't seem to have a feel for how trans and punk interact.    She takes the Dick Manitoba episode and attempts to deform it to fit her theoretical position.  This attempt is not helped by her getting most of the facts wrong, nor by her disinterest: "Yet I remain uninterested in a type of historical inquiry that would establish the presence of MTF transsexuals in punk culture”.

Jayne County's account of Stonewall has been added as a comment to that posting. 

Song by Wayne County

Jayne County, The Lower East Side Biography Project, excerpt from 28 minute biography from Steve Zehentner on Vimeo.

Lana Wachowski (1965–) film writer, director.

Larry Wachowski and brother Andy, of Polish descent, were raised in Chicago. They both dropped out of college and ran a construction business, while creating comic books for Marvel and Epic. In 1993 Larry married his childhood sweetheart.

The Wachowskis' entry into Hollywood was with the script for Assassins, 1995, however their script was 'totally rewritten' by Brian Helgeland and they unsuccessfully attempted to have their name removed from the film.

They wrote, directed and produced Bound, 1996. In the development of the film the male lead was rethought, with the advice of Susie Sexpert, and became a female butch, and the female lead character changes during the film from a femme bimbo to a leather dyke.

In 1999 the Wachowskis took Hollywood by storm with the first Matrix film in 1999. Like the two sequels, The Matrix features several digital gender morphings. With earnings from the film, Larry and his wife bought a $1.9 million house in Venice, California, and the brothers moved their production company into a nearby building.

Larry reportedly went to several dominatrices who catered to transvestites, and in January 2001, Larry was in The Dungeon in West Hollywood which featured celebrity dominatrix Karin Winslow (Ilsa Strix) who had been married since 1998 to a trans man, the future porn star Buck Angel. Larry returned for further sessions. It soon became clear that the convention that there be no sexual or social congress between dominatrix and client outside the sessions was being broken. Ilsa reportedly offered Larry free bondage sessions that lasted overnight. Buck demanded some answers and it was arranged that the three would meet at a trans club on Santa Monica Boulevard. Ilsa and Lana arrived in almost identical outfits of fur jackets and blond wigs. Soon afterwards Buck kicked Ilsa out of their home, and filed for divorce. He then left for New Orleans. Larry's wife also filed.

Ilsa was flown to Australia, first class, where the two subsequent Matrix films were being made, and it was Lana rather than Larry who picked her up at the airport. Larry was struggling with the idea of being transgender, and how to tell their parents. Sometimes he did not sleep for days. After a phone call in which it was apparent that something was wrong, the Wachowskis' mother flew to Australia the next day. The morning after, Larry blurted out: “I’m transgender. I’m a girl". The father arrived a few days later, and accepted their eldest child as Lana, to the extent of going out with her. Shortly afterwards Lana was also on the film set.

However communication with the public on the topic was cut off. It was Larry who appeared with Ilsa at the LA premiere of Matrix Reloaded in 2003, and then again at the Cannes Film Festival. Larry looked different, androgynous, and it was supposed that he was taking female hormones. He and Ilsa moved into a $2.7 million home in San Francisco's Castro area. Later that year the Wachowskis had to attend a Screen Actors Guild arbitration hearing where Marcus Chong, who played Tank in the first Matrix film, claimed that he had been unfairly treated. Again it was noticed that Larry's appearance had changed.

Rumors without confirmation continued as to where Lana was within the transgender options. Sources close to the Wachowskis denied the rumors. One employee on the Speed Racer film pointed out to Fox News that: "on the call sheets, it still says Larry", although it is rumored that she had transgender surgery soon after that film wrapped.

Karin and Lana married in 2009. It was not until 2012 that Lana emerged for a press conference to discuss their new film Cloud Atlas, which featured its major actors in a variety of roles including some cross racial and some cross gendered.

Later that year she was awarded the Human Rights Campaign Visibility Award and gave a well-received acceptance speech in which she discussed being trans.

++In March 2016, it was announced in the press that Andy also had started transition, using the name Lilly.

• Mark Miller. “Matrix Revelations: The Wachowski Brothers FAQ”. Wired 11.11 Nov 2003. www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.11/matrix_pr.html.
  
• Peter Wilkinson. "The Mystery of Larry Wachowski". Rolling Stone, 01-26-206. Online at: Lector.org, 07-23-2006. http://lecter.org/forum/showthread.php?t=248.
  
• Chris Hudson. "Matrix creator’s gender reassignment surgery". Pink News, 6/9/207. www.pinknews.co.uk/2007/09/06/matrix-creators-gender-reassignment-surgery.
  
• Andrew O'Hehir. "Lana Wachowski’s quiet coming-out party". Salon, Jul 31, 2012. www.salon.com/2012/07/31/lana_wachowskis_quiet_coming_out_party.
  
• Aleksandar Hemon. "Beyond the Matrix: The Wachowskis travel to even more mind-bending realms.". The New Yorker, September 10, 2012. www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/09/10/beyond-the-matrix?currentPage=all.
  
• Husam Sam Asi. "The Wachowski siblings (formerly brothers) seek the meaning of life in Cloud Atlas". UKScreen, October 2, 2012. http://ukscreen.com/articles/interviews/the-wachowski-siblings-formerly-brothers-seek-the-meaning-of-life-in-cloud-atlas/#.UNBtkneBMT1.
  

EN.WIKIPEDIA      IMDB



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Both IMDB and Wikipedia do not seem to like Ilsa Strix.   IMDB lists her as in only one film (she was in at least 6 or 7)  and lists only her marriage to Buck Angle.  On the Lana Wachowshi page it lists Larry's first marriage, but not that of Lana and Ilsa.

Ilsa had a Wikipedia page but it was taken down in May 2010 for a given reason of  "Non-notable person. Being romantically involved with a notable person does not confer notability".   The text can be read in Wikibin.   She would certainly seem to be at least as notable as the others persons in the Wikipedia category on Dominatrices. 

Kim Christy (1950 - ) performer, editor, adult film producer

Kim was raised in the Bronx, New York. By age 14 he was going out in semi-drag. He took up with the young Billy Schumacher (later to become International Chrysis). They were photographed fooling around outside the Astor in Manhattan when Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton were staying there, and the picture appeared in a Life Magazine article on teenage delinquents.

The photograph in Life Magazine: Kim with back to camera, Chrysis at front

Kim and Chrysis each left home and shared a tiny apartment in the area that later became New York's SoHo. They met sex magazine pioneer and editor of Exotique magazine, Lenny Burtman who arranged photo-shoots and other favors. Kim had a boyfriend who worked with her to soften her Bronx accent. She got to know New York female impersonators such as Tammy Novak, and performed at Club 82 as a stripper and as a showgirl. Her song was the theme music from A Man and a Woman. She toured North America as a female impersonator.


Kim and Chrysis had uncredited roles in the chorus line in the 1967 contest that became the film, The Queen. In 1968 a photograph of Kim and Chrysis appeared in Female Mimics. By 1969 Kim was being kept by an oil tycoon.

Kim with her mother

She also starting doing photography for Eros Publishing Company, which published Eros, Mode Avantgarde, Hooker and Exposé. When Female Mimics was relaunched in 1973, the first issue featured Kim winning a Los Angeles beauty contest. In 1979 Kim became editor of Female Mimics,which was owned by Jennifer Jordan, one of Lenny Burtman's ex-wives, and the name was changed to International Female Mimics. The transsexual content was increased and eventually explicit photographs were introduced. Kim also became editor of Exotique, a revival of Burtman's pioneering fetish magazine from the 1950s.

Also in 1979 Kim was in Los Angeles doing a photo-shoot when he discovered Sulka in the audience. The next year he put her in the film Dream Lovers, and then after her surgery, in The Transformation of Sulka, 1981, and Sulka's Wedding, 1983. He became a major producer of she-male and fetish porn – spanning 8mm, VHS and DVD. He also made straight porn.

In FMI, 11,1, 1980

++Kim had reverted to male as Ken Olsen.  He met and married a woman. Their marriage has lasted: they now have grandchildren.

In 1998 Kim/Ken won an award as Best Fetish Producer. The same year he edited the original run of Exotique in book form. In 2001 he edited The Christy Report, a historical survey of sex and fetish images. He was inducted into Adult Video News (AVN) Hall Of Fame in 2004, the first transgender person to be so.

“I am married to my wife. I am with her. Something I learned from all my years working with clients all over the world: Men and women can both be very fluid in their sexuality. Plus things like certain sexual scenarios can engage a person deeply for a time. Sometimes it’s same-sex activity. Some people stay attracted to one gender or another all their lives. I was with men — when I lived as a woman — who never would have called themselves gay, but they were not unhappy about my extra parts at all. Like I said, back then we did not name things so much. I never thought of any of the things I did as who I was. They were things I liked. Things I did.”

*Not the horse exhibitor.  Not Ken Olsen the sound engineer.

• James Mills.  "The Detective:  a good cop fights for law but the deck is stacked against him". Life, 3 Dec 1965: 90d-132.  http://bit.ly/1cJ6A0B.
• "These are the twins - Kim and Bobbie".  Final section in George Alpert. The Queens. New York: Da Capo Press, 1975. 
• "Kim Christy".   Guys in Drag, 1,4,1977: 3-4.
• "Meet your Editor: 'Kim Christy's' Personal Photo Album".  Female Mimics International, 11,1, Winter 1980: 6-11.  Online.   
• Kim Christy (ed). Letters to Kim Christy. North Hollywood, Calif: Leoram Productions, 1986.
  
• Kim Christy (ed). The complete reprint of Exotique: the first 36 issues, 1951-1957. Köln: Taschen, 1998.
  
• Kim Christy & John Quinn. The Christy Report. Taschen, 2001. Review.
  
• Christopher Harrity. "Kim Christy's Lost World". The Advocate, February 12 2011.http://www.advocate.com/arts-entertainment/photography/2011/02/12/kim-christys-lost-world.
  
• Ms Bob. "Female Mimics Magazine — Part 1, The Early Years". TG Forum, Jan 16, 2012. www.tgforum.com/wordpress/index.php/female-mimics-magazine-part-1-the-early-years.
  
• Jim Beaux. "Leonard Burtman, 1921 – 1994", "Jennifer Jordan 1938 - ????", "Kim Christy" The Transsexual Erotica Archive of Magazines and Films, May 2013. http://www.hungdevils.com/index.php?/topic/18134-the-transsexual-erotica-archive-of-magazines-and-films-we-need-your-help/page-2.
  
• www.kimchristy.com.
  

IMDB   IAFD
________________________________________________________

The Internet Adult Film Database (IAFD) entry on Kim is a bit dubious.   See Jim Beaux’ comments.  The image supposedly of Kim is actually of Carnal Candy in a 1984 film.  It lists Kim’s years active as performer: 1984-2001 – except that Kim never performed in any adult films.

Ms Bob wrote a 3-part history of Female Mimics for TG Forum.  Bob lists Kim as appearing in the magazine, but says nothing at all about Kim becoming the editor.

I couldn’t find any photographs of Kim after the early 1970s. 

In the Advocate  article, Kim says that her aunt and then her mother recognized her in the Life Magazine photograph.  As she has her back turned, how could they be sure?

Michael Berke (1964 - 2018) roadie.

Michael grew up in Cincinnati. He went to Wright State University in Ohio. In 1985 his parents divorced, and he dropped out.

In San Francisco he became a roadie for a metal band, and became a heroin addict. He did other drugs and alcohol and was in therapy. He worked again as a roadie for Paula Abdul, Janet Jackson, Barry Manilow, the Grateful Dead and Crosby, Stills and Nash.

He wanted to complete college, and followed a friend to Florida. He started going to fetish parties, sometimes dressed as female. He identified with the camaraderie of women. In 1997 he went to a clinical psychologist with a self-diagnosis of borderline personality disorder. By 2003 he was going to her as Michelle. The psychologist, who had no other transsexual patients, wrote Michelle a letter for surgery in 2004.

Michelle never did have genital surgery, but she spent $80,000 on clothes, a nose job, a brow lift and fat injections in her cheeks. After a year on hormones, she had breast implants. She developed bulimia and shrank from a size 12 to a 7. She was gynephilic but mainly bambisexual. As Michelle she made friends easily, and re-established contact with her mother and sister.

Two years after transition, in 2005, she was having problems with her flatmate, whose new boyfriend was an evangelical Christian. Michelle went with them to the Calvary Chapel mega church in Fort Lauderdale. Church leaders spent weeks counseling Michelle and told her that she should be a man. They bought her a set of men’s clothes in their thrift store and arranged for a church member, a plastic surgeon, to remove her breast implants. “Michelle was gone”.

Michael became a shaven-headed biker. He returned to the church complaining about what he had become, but they dropped him quickly when he said that he could not believe that Jesus rose from the dead. He regrets that he is not still Michelle, but cannot afford to go back. His mother and sister have stopped talking to him.


He was featured with Josef Kirchner in an MSNBC documentary in 2008.

++Micheal died by suicide in February 2018.

• Ashley Harrell. "Tranny Regret". Broward-Palm Beach New Times, Oct 11, 2007. www.browardpalmbeach.com/2007-10-11/news/tranny-regret.
• “From man to woman, back to man”. The Daily Telegraph. Nov 26, 2007. www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,22822185-5001021,00.html.
• Born in the Wrong Body: A Change of Heart. With Joseph Kirchner, Michael Berke. MSNBC US 60 mins 2008.
  
  ____________________________________________________________________________
  
  As with Perry Desmond,  a trans woman goes to an intolerant church.  Whatever happened to church shopping?  There are churches that accept transsexuals as themselves.  Why do people like Michael and Perry never go to the accepting churches?

Johnny Science (1955 - 2007) musician, activist, make-up artist

Suzie started dressing as a boy when still a child. She did theatrical make-up with friends, and even then was mainly making girls look like guys. Growing up, she hardly menstruated at all.

In the late 1970s/early 1980s Suzie Science was the lead singer in the band Science, which played the New York club, Max's Kansas City, Women's One World (WOW),and elsewhere. She was art director at Max’s, and as an advocate of lesbian S&M made occasional performance with leather implements.

As a man he used different names: John Grant, Johnny Armstrong, John Austen. By the mid 1980s Johnny was being taken as a man, and was doing live S&M shows with his girlfriend at Belle de Jour, a professional dungeon located in a loft in Chelsea. In 1986 he made serious enquiries about hormonal and surgical transition, and began taking testosterone.

He then founded his F2M Fraternity for both cross-dressers and decided transsexuals. He also invited curious doctors and writers. There was no other such group in New York at that time, Mario Martino's group of the late 1960s being long forgotten. A Gender Identity project was founded in 1989 at the New York Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Community Center, but it was primarily for MTF clients. The new group met at Kit Rachlin's apartment, and Johnny picked up most of the expense for advertising. He went on the Howard Stern radio show even though he knew that he would be presented as a freak, but it would get the word out.

Annie Sprinkle had met Johnny at an S&M show at Plato's retreat, and although not herself in transition, she loved the people, and started an affair with Les Nichols whom she met at the group. Johnny shot and co-directed and wrote the music for the film about them.

Johnny evolved from a butch dyke into a gay man. He moved from the lesbian S&M scene into a male sub/dom netherworld. He once went home with a man he met in a bar who tied him to a bed for days on end with a gun pointed at his head. The man finally ejaculated when Johnny gave him permission to shoot.

Dianne Torr met both Annie and Johnny when Johnny made her up for before and after photographs. Dianne credits Johnny with giving her the extra push that she needed to develop a male persona that could pass in public, by teaching her the necessary make-up. He claimed that he had coined the term 'drag king', and in 1990 he started the Drag King workshops, where he did the make-up on the participants and also gave lectures on phalloplasty. Dianne joined him to give instruction on body positions, gestures and attitudes. They also performed together at the 10^th anniversary of WOW later that year. His demi-monde adventures made him unreliable, and Dianne had to take over doing the make-up as well.

In 1992 Johnny and several drag kings were on the Joan Rivers Show, and he organized two Drag King Balls that same year, with the first formally judged drag king contest (although the voguing ball houses had been doing much the same for some time and the film Paris is Burning had come out in 1990).

However his increasing desire was to pass as a gay man, and not be known as transsexual. But in 1998 he hosted a low-budget cable television show where he stated that he was not a drag king, but a regular guy. After that he returned to his private life.

He died in 2007.

• Annie Sprinkle interviews Johnny Science. "Inside a Female Gender-Bender". Adam, 33, 1989: 29-30.
• Annie Sprinkle & Johnny Science (dir). Linda/Les and Annie. With Les Nichols and Annie Sprinkle. Music and photography by Johnny Science. US 32 mins 1992.
• Lauren Wells Hasten. Gender Pretenders: A Drag King Ethnography. Columbia University. 1999. www.laurenhasten.com/genderpretenders.htm.
• Gabriel Baur (dir). Venus Boyz. With Dianne Torr, Johnny Science and others. Switzerland/US/Germany 102 mins 2002.
• Dianne Torr & Stephen Bottoms. Sex, Drag, and Male Roles. The University of Michigan Press, 2010: 2, 26, 27, 30, 89, 90, 92-4, 97-9, 101-5, 113-4, 118, 122-4, 143, 149, 206.
• Veronica Vera, Kit Rachlin, Diane Torr & Annie Sprinkle. "Johnny Science". Transgender Tapestry, 114, 2007.

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Leigh Crow (Elvis Herselvis) also coined the term Drag King in San Francisco around 1990.  She was impersonating ‘the king’ and doing an inversion of what a drag queen does.  There is no reason to assume that either Science or Crow borrowed the term from the other.  Like the word transgender, drag king was an obvious term that would be coined sooner or later, and it is no surprise that two persons coined it independently.

Leonard Wheeler (? - ) a transvestite into bondage and misogyny.

In 1964 Leonard Wheeler published Sex Life of a Transvestite. He revealed Connie, his female self as an erotic transvestite who was also into bondage, with cruel sadistic fantasies about women. He does state that his bondages and his attitudes to women are separate from his crossdressing, and that he is hardly typical of transvestites.

His thoughts were written up by Jack Jardine (1931 - 2009), a lesser science fiction writer using one of his aliases. Using the same alias he had published Girls on Sin Street, about prostitution, the year before.

The book contained an introduction by Albert Ellis (1913 – 2007), an associate of Alfred Kinsey, who had published Sex Without Guilt in 1958, and was then writing Homosexuality, Its Causes and Cures which would be published in 1965. He later became the father of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), and was known for his liberal use of swear words.

Wheeler’ book was the only biography cited, and Wheeler the only person quoted,  in H. Taylor Buckner’s convention paper on transvestites that was read to the American Sociological Association in 1969, which found the practice to be a pathology.

Nothing else is known about Leonard Wheeler.

*Not the football player.

• Leonard Wheeler, as told to Jack Jardine writing as Larry Maddock, with an introduction by Albert Ellis. Sex life of a Transvestite. K. D. S. Publ. Co 1964.  Online 
• H. Taylor Buckner. “The Transvestic Career Path”. Read at the American Sociological Association annual meeting. San Francisco, September, 1969. Psychiatry. Vol.: 33, No. 3. August,1970: 381-389. Online at: www.tbuckner.com/TRANSVES.HTM.

Vaughn Bodé (1941 - 1975) artist.

Vaughn Bodé was born in Syracuse, New York. His father was an unpublished poet and frequently drunk, and his mother worked at General Electric. From the age of five, Vaughn was drawing. At the age of 16 he first drew what would become his major creation, Cheech Wizard.

He served one year in the US army, and then ran away but received a honorable discharge on a psychiatric basis. He married Barbara at 20.

His self-published Das Kampf, 1963, was one of the first underground comics. He was editor of Gothic Blimp Works, the first weekly underground comic in the 1960s. His Deadbone was featured in Galaxy Magazine 1969-71, his Cheech Wizard in National Lampoon 1971-5, and his Junkwaffle comics were published by Last Gasp 1971-4. In 1969 he won a Hugo Award as best fanzine artist, and in 1975 a Yellow Kid Award.

Much graffiti art is based on templates pioneered by Vaughn. He pioneered putting sexual content in comics and cartoons, and inspired others such as Ralph Bakshi.

He was a heterosexual swinger, participating in group sex. He boasted how he had had sex with four women in four different cities in four days. He made Barbara submit to S&M practices such as being locked in a trunk for six hours.

By 1970 his interest in transvestity had developed from looking at pictures to dressing in private. As he continued to desire women, he believed that he must be a unique ‘unisexual’, a forerunner of humans to come. He started wearing female slacks, blouses and boots, grew his nails long, and began carrying a shoulder bag. He was encouraged by fellow cartoonist, Jeff, later Catherine, Jones, to move on to skirts and shaving his body. In 1971 they shared a studio in Woodstock, New York, and did transvestity together.

He met Guru Maharaj Ji (Prem Rawat) in New York in 1971, and felt that he had received his holiness. He chose to attain full enlightenment by the fast track of using autoerotic asphyxiation to induce mystical experiences.


Barbara was granted a divorce in 1972 on the grounds of cruel and inhuman treatment. He responded by saying that he loved her.

Bodé and Jones continued to dress femme together. He found a female partner with whom he could be submissive. He started a relationship with a male drag performer. He took female hormones for six weeks but stopped because he still wanted his erections.

In his last work, Schizophrenia, he included a confessional running below a collection of Cheech Wizard strips. He describes himself as “auto-sexual, heterosexual homosexual, mano-sexual, sado-sexual, trans-sexual, uni-sexual, omni-sexual..”. In 1974 Vaughn moved to San Francisco. He did lots of drugs. It was said that he was looking for a woman who would kill him, who would sacrifice herself to a life in prison by doing a ritual murder.

He had found god by means of autoerotic asphyxiation successfully four times, but on the fifth, the strap became entangled with some necklaces.

His son Mark, who was twelve when his father died, has continued drawing in the style of his father.

• Vaughn Bodé. Schizophrenia. Last Gasp Eco Funnies 1973
• Bob Levin. “I See My Light Come Shining”. Volume 5 of The Comics Journal, March 2005. Also at The Official Bode Site: www.markbode.com/site/article_2.html
• Angela Frucci. “Following a Wiz to a Far-Out Oz”. The New York Times. May 31, 2004. www.nytimes.com/2004/05/31/books/31BODE.html
• Mark Bodé. Vaughn Bodé. www.markbode.com/site/vaughnbode.html.

EN.Wikipedia.

____________________________________________________________________

Some online sites describe Vaughn Bodé as homosexual. This is odd as he was obsessively heterosexual. If we use the Kinsey Scale, he would probably be a 1.

Note that he thought that being a heterosexual transvestite made him unique. Many histories of Virginia Prince and her movement exaggerate its importance. In the late 1960s/early 1970s both Vaughn Bodé and Charlotte Bach had not heard of it.

The obvious speculation is how Vaughn Bodé would have moved if he had not died at 33. He may have moved to a Kinsey 3. Would he have restarted hormones? I have known trans persons who also said that erections were too important, but who, a few years later, did complete a transition. However this is but speculation.

Anthony Storr (1920 – 2001) psychiatrist.

Anthony Storr was the youngest child, 10 years younger than his closest sibling, son of the Sub-Dean of Westminster Abbey who was 51 when Anthony was born –his mother was 44. Anthony was lonely and miserable at boarding school, partly because of his inability at sports. He was bullied and had only average marks. He suffered all his life from asthma and depression.

He went up to Christ's College, Cambridge, where his moral tutor was C.P. Snow. After two years he was given a wartime courtesy degree without taking a tripos.

He studied at Westminster Hospital and qualified as a doctor in 1944, and subsequently specialised in psychiatry. His asthma precluded his having to do military service. He gained a Diploma in Psychological Medicine in 1951, and then trained in the Jungian school but was not a strict adherent. In 1942, he married Catherine Cole, who subsequently became a children’s novelist.

In 1964 Storr published a book called Sexual Deviation which sold quite well, and strongly influenced thinking in the English-speaking countries. Quite possibly, from the internal evidence, Storr thought that he was writing a liberal book, an intelligent mix of common sense and psychoanalysis, a plea for compassion rather than condemnation of the poor perverts. However looking from 45 years later, the book comes across more as a compendium of heterosexist prejudices and untested assumptions. A particularly dubious technique of Storr's is to give one, that is only one, anecdotal example as the basis of his generalisations. There are no footnotes or other references to evidence, or refutations of alternate positions. One is expected to accept his wisdom.

His standard in deciding what is sexually deviant is 'emotional maturity', a concept on which 'there is so much agreement' that it can simply be defined as 'the ability to form a stable relationship with the opposite sex which is both physically and emotionally satisfying, and in which sexual intercourse forms the main, though not the only, mode of expression of love'. He does acknowledge that there are homosexuals who are stable, balanced and mature, and that there are immature heterosexuals: 'Nevertheless, it is still true to say that heterosexuality is a more mature form of sexual behaviour'.

He admits that ‘minor degrees of fetishism can be detected in every man, and there is no point at which one can say that normality ends and pathology begins’. He also thinks that fetishes have their origin in very early childhood. Only men are fetishistic; women have no such need ‘because they do not have to achieve or sustain an erection’.

His chapter on transvestity follows immediately on his chapter on fetishism, and it is presented as a variation thereupon. He also repeats the common misconception that transvestites dress usually to masturbate. He gives no reason to assume that masturbation is more common among transvestites than among other men. This false premise also leads to his conclusion that there are no female transvestites and that female cross-dressing is of a completely different nature. He gives the standard psychoanalytic interpretation of transvestity as follows:

“The homosexual man replaces his love for his mother by an identification with her: the fetishist refuses to acknowledge that a woman has no penis. The male transvestite assumes both attitudes simultaneously. He fantasies that the woman possesses a penis, and thus overcomes his castration anxiety, and identifies himself with this phallic woman.”

He adds to this that the transvestite is imagining a “seductive courtesan” and identifying with her as a phallic woman. This phallic woman need not be his mother for such images are easily found, e.g. witches and mother goddesses, both of which come with many phallic symbols. To a small child women in general appear threatening and powerful. Therefore a transvestite gains masculinity rather than loses it by identifying with such a masculine and powerful woman. Such an identification argues a “fairly complete failure” in the normal separation of a boy from his mother in growing up, and also “a failure to relate emotionally to any person other than the mother”.

He does note that for ’normal’ men, the desire to dress as female is widely catered for vicariously in public entertainment.

He discusses that there are also men who seek an operation to “change their sex”. This is possible for anatomical hermaphrodites, but “this is very far from changing the sex of an individual with normal organs, and such an operation is of course impossible”. This was written in 1964, a decade after Christine Jorgensen’s operation had received extensive media coverage. The word “transsexual” is not used at all – although he is writing a full decade after Cauldwell, Benjamin and Ed Wood had put the word into circulation. Such men are submitting to “castration” because they have “given up all hope of competing with other males on anything approaching equal terms”. Those who express the “delusion” of becoming the opposite sex “are invariably psychotic”. In such a schizophrenic the patient's ego “is overwhelmed, so that he is no longer able to exercise conscious control, and is at the mercy of phantasy and unconscious contents”.

Female cross-dressing is merely a part of lesbianism which is merely the normal schoolgirl crush for another female extended into adulthood because of a shortage of men or because of emotional immaturity. Such lesbianism is of course always “faute de mieux”, although it may be better than nothing. Female cross-dressing is on the decline.

“Thirty years ago England seemed peculiarly apt at producing a stalwart breed of commanding women clad in collars and ties, tweeds and boots, striding manfully through life with hair cut short and faces innocent of cosmetics. Increasing psychological sophistication has diminished the numbers of those who display their adoption of the masculine role so blatantly.”

He also wrote books on depression, the psychology of music, gurus and charismatic leaders, and the value of solitude. He also served on the Parole Board and a Home Office committee on obscenity and film censorship.

He had three daughters with his first wife, Catherine Storr. They divorced in 1970, and he married again.

He died aged 80 of a heart attack.

• Anthony Storr. Sexual Deviation. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. 1964.
• Anthony Stevens. “Obituary: Anthony Storr, formerly Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist, Oxford Health Authority”. Psychiatric Bulletin. 2001, 25:365-6. http://pb.rcpsych.org/cgi/content/full/25/9/365.
• Christopher Lehmann-Haupt. “Anthony Storr, 80, Psychiatrist and Writer”. The New York Times. March 28, 2001. www.nytimes.com/2001/03/28/world/anthony-storr-80-psychiatrist-and-writer.html. 

EN.WIKIPEDIA   

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For the female fetishism that he does not acknowledge see the references in my article on Autogynephilia. For the sexuality of female-to-male cross-dressing see Lou Sullivan.

There is very little that is original in Storr’s book, but, as a Penguin, it was widely available, for many in the 1960s it was the only book that they read on the subject. It was on the reading list for my first year psychology course at university. Almost all his ideas had been previously proposed by psychoanalysts.

These psychoanalytic ideas are fortunately not as common now as they were in the 1960s. However they were largely and uncritically accepted by Kurt Freund and Ray Blanchard and have been incorporated into their concept of Autogynephilia. They are also being recycled in a simplified and mean-spirited way by many of the HBS people.

Storr got indifferent marks at school, and got into Cambridge anyway. The British class system at work.

Pierre Molinier (1900 - 1976) painter, photographer.

Molinier, the son of a house painter, lived most of his life in Bordeaux, France.


As early as sixteen his sisters took him to a ball dressed as a girl. At age 18, when his sister died, he allegedly had sex with her corpse when left alone to photograph it.

Many of his paintings were of erotic images featuring sphinxes, sirens and chimeras.

In his late fifties he became involved with the Surrealists. In his sixties, he turned to erotic photographs, often featuring himself as female, that focused especially on images of black stockings. He was primarily a leg fetishist; the gender of the body connected to the leg did not matter as long as the leg was blackstockinged and hairless. He attached great importance to satisfying himself anally with dildos, which he referred to as 'godmiches', made from silk stockings in a condom. This was more important to him than regular intercourse. He associated the godmiches as closely as possible with high heels, as part of making them into feminine phalluses. The problem with a natural penis attached to a man was that it lacks ambivalence and therefore it cannot play any female part in his psychological projection as a transvestite. The implicit auto-sexualism of all this came to its acme in that Molinier has the body subtlety of being able to do auto-fellatio.

In 1967 he met Hanel Koeck, a German sadomasochist who was a leg and shoe fetishist. She became the model in many of his paintings and photomontages. Jean-Pierre Bouyxou made a film Satan bouche un coin, 1968 which included Molinier in drag. In 1975 he photographed the Swiss painter Luciano Castelli in drag. The next year he photographed Thierry Agullo, a Bordeau painter, also in drag.

He committed suicide at age 76 when his health was in decline

• Peter Gorsen & Pierre Molinier. Pierre Molinier, Lui-Meme: essay über den surrealistischen Hermaphroditen. München: Rogner & Bernhard 1972.
• Peter Gorsen, (English translation by Heidi Grundmann). “Pierre Molinier, Lui-Meme”. File Magazine. Spring 1982.
• Pierre Molinier. Le chaman et ses créatures, Bordeaux : William Blake & Co. 96 pp 1995
• Pierre Petit. Molinier, une vie d'enfer. Paris: Editions Ramsay/Jean-Jacques Pauvert 267 pp 86 ill 1992.
• “Pierre Molinier”. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Molinier.
• “Pierre Molinier”. Gay for Today. gayfortoday.blogspot.com/2007/04/pierre-molinier.html
• “Pierre Molinier”. Citizendium. en.citizendium.org/wiki/Pierre_Molinier

Pierre Molinier
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