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.

Jeanne Hoff (1938 – 2023) psychiatrist

++original September 2013, revised February 2019 to include extra detail from Gill-Peterson's book, and December 2023 to acknowledge Jeanne's passing.

Eugene Hoff  was born in in St Louis.  Hoff did an MD at Columbia University, College of Physicians And Surgeons 1963 followed by a doctorate in solid state chemistry at University College, London (where he also converted to Catholicism), followed by training and a residency as a psychiatrist at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri.

Hoffinitially thought of himself as homosexual, but in exploring homosexuality found out that he was not. He was introduced to the Harry Benjamin practice, possibly by Wardell Pomeroy of the Kinsey Institute.

Hoff was a guest on the NBC television program Not for Women Only where he (as she was still) explained transsexualism from a medical viewpoint referring to trans women as 'men' as was the then practice.

"You can say that you know that you are a woman, therefore you want to be one. But no woman I have ever asked has been able to tell me what that means, and I doubt that transsexuals will be the first to define it."

Harry Benjamin's successor Charles Ihlenfeld resigned the practice in 1976 to begin a psychiatric residency in the Bronx, and Hoff took over.  This was Hoff's first clinical practice other than the residency in St Louis.  The practice was being managed under the aegis of the Orentreich Medical Group, a dermatology and hair restoration practice, which was located at in the same building as the Benjamin practice at 1 East 72nd St. It was then still administered by Benjamin's office manager and assistant Virginia Allen.

Hoff fired Virginia, the nurse, Mary Ryan, and the physician, Agnes Nagy, and pleased Dr Orentreich by moving the practice downtown to a townhouse behind the Chelsea Hotel, at 223 West 22nd Street.

In this period Dr Hoff confronted the homophobic psychiatrist Charles Socarides in a television debate and challenged his reactionary views that homosexuality can be cured by psychoanalysis. 

Hoff was starting her own transition.

 
Her best known patient was the punk musician Jayne County, who wrote in her autobiography: 

"When I walked into the consulting room for my appointment, I nearly fainted: Dr Jean Hoff was a man who was going through the sex change himself. She looked like a woman in man's clothes, she wore men's clothes and no make-up, and she had short hair that was just beginning to grow out. Later on she went through the full change, changed her name to Janine Hoffand got her own practice.   

The best thing about Dr Hoff was that she kept asking me questions about myself over and over again, to make sure that I really knew what I wanted. She'd say things like, 'Do you think you'd ever go back to wearing men's clothes?' and I'd say, Yeah, sometimes I see a jacket I like and think it might be fun to wear.'  At the time I was talking to her about the full sex change, but I was really quite afraid, and I thought it would cut me offfrom all my folks. She said to me, 'Look, there are different degrees of transsexualism. You are a transsexual, but not all transsexuals have a full sex change. Some people are better offjust taking hormones and dressing as a woman. There are some transsexuals who go back to dressing as men. There are so many different degrees, and you shouldn't just assume that because you are transsexual you have to have a sex change. 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.'  That was one of the best pieces of advice anyone ever gave me. Dr Hoff also said that, given the kind of circles I was moving in, there really wasn't much need for me to have a sex change." 

Becoming Jeanne, 1979

Hoff completed her transition to Jeanne with surgery with Dr Granato in 1977. She was interviewed at home by Lynn Redgrave and Frank Fields immediately before surgery and two months afterwards. The resulting television program "Becoming Jeanne" won the prestigious Ohio State Broadcasting award in 1979.

It was now the case that for the first time a trans psychiatrist was in charge of a practice for trans persons. Gill-Peterson comments:

"Though the medical model was still based in gatekeeping and an unacknowledged racialization of gender, Hoff cared deeply about the well-being of her clients to a degree that is viscerally embedded in the archive she gifted to the Kinsey Institute. Her work demonstrates a level of empathy entirely absent from transsexual medicine since its advent—not to mention its predecessors in the early twentieth century— an ethic of care that, although greatly constrained by the material circumstances and history of psychiatry and endocrinology, was also entangled with her situated perspective as a trans woman. It is important to underline that Hoff represents yet another trans person who took an active and complicated role in medicine, rather than being its object."

Gill-Peterson has read Hoff's interview notes in her archive papers at the Kinsey Institute, and comments:

"Because she took the time to interview them without only reducing what they said to standard diagnostic biographies, her notes offer comparatively richer glimpses into trans boyhood than those of her predecessors." 

 

In 1978 Hoff became aware of a young black trans woman, then 30, who had been committed to a psychiatric Institution in New Jersey for 15 years.  Initially labeled  ‘schizophrenic’, her gender identity issues were taken as evidence of ‘delusion’, ‘mental retardation’ and ‘sexual perversion’. Hoff interviewed her, and petitioned for her release.

“Through all the florid language of the [psychiatric] reports there is an unmistakable moralistic disapproval of her effeminacy and homosexuality but not the slightest hint that the diagnosis of transsexualism was suspected, even though it was quite evident from the details provided. . . . She should be placed in the community, preferably living by herself” and “she should be permitted to explore the various problems that arise from cross-gender living, hormonal therapy, and surgical gender reassignment.” (quoted in Gill-Peterson)

However by 1980 there were few patients left in the practice, and Hoff had already taken a job in a psych ward in Brooklyn. The next year she sold the building on West 22nd St and moved away, first to Massachusetts and then California.

She became a psychiatrist at San Quentin prison. She was in the news in April-May 1998 when she was the only one of three psychiatrists to testify that murderer Horace Kelly might be competent to be executed, and the defense attorney attempted to impeach Hoff.

She retired after being assaulted during a counseling session by a death-row inmate.

In 2013 she donated her archives to the Kinsey Institute.

Jeanne Hoff died at age 85. 

• "Masculine, Feminine or Androgynous?" Not for Women Only. WNBC 1976  hosted by Polly Bergen and Frank Fields, produced by Madeline Amgott.  Archive 
  
• Becoming Jeanne…A Search for Sexual Identity. NBC 30 June 1978. Jeanne Hoff interviewed by Lynn Redgrave and Frank Fields.
  
• Kathleen Casey.  "Gay Catholics Hear Transsexual's Story".  Asbury Park Press, October 10, 1978: 23. 
• Jeanne Hoff. "Multiple personality disorder?" The Journal of clinical psychiatry, 48(4), Apr 1987. 
• Jayne County with Rupert Smith. Man Enough to be a Woman. London: Serpent's Tail, 1995: 99-100.
• Michael Dougan. "Killer's mental records turn up". SFGate, April 17, 1998. Online,
  
• Maria L LaGanga. "Killer Understands He Faces Execution, Prosecutor Says". Los Angeles Times, May 01, 1998. Online.
  
• Michael Dougan. "Sanity trial outcome rests with minutiae". SFGate, May 5, 1998. Online.
  
• Sara Catania. "The Alienists: Where experts divide, jury must decide". LAWeekly, May 13 1998.  Archive.
  
• Andy Humm. "Socarides, Leading Anti-Gay Shrink, Dies". Gay City, 4,52 Dec 29-Jan 4, 2005. 
  
• "Jeanne Hoff Archive". The Kinsey Institute. Online. 
  
• SJ Parker. Emails to Zagria, 15,17 September 2013.
• Julian Gill-Peterson. Histories of the Trangender Child. University of Minnesota Press, 2018: 159-160, 171, 174, 192-3, 248n105, 251n32, 252n45, 253n79-82, 254n84-5.
• Andy Humm.  "Jeanne Hoff, first trans psychiatrist to serve trans people, dies at 85".  Gay City News, December 5, 2023.  Online. 

____________________________________________________________________________

Although Horace Kelly's lawyer subpoenaed Hoff's prison personnel file in an attempt to impeach her, he presumably hadn't heard rumours that she was transsexual, didn't find it in the file and didn't read her.   Otherwise he probably would have used it to defame her.   She had been in the 1978 television special under the same name, but that was 20 years earlier.   Before the Internet it was much more difficult to make connections.

Jeanne was also, in effect, outed in Jayne County's 1995 autobiography, but presumably the lawyer didn't read punk biographies.  

+++ Other sources led me to write that Hoff left New York in 1981, having sold her building at 223 West 22nd Street.  Gill-Peterson writes that she stayed in practice through the 1980s.  ??

Eleanor Schuler (1936 - ) chemical engineer, spy, entrepreneur

John Huminik, Jr was born and raised in Washington, DC by immigrants from the Soviet Union. He married, at 20, the only woman he ever dated, and they had four children.

He was, at 23, vice-president of an engineering firm and working on high temperature coatings for rockets, a subject on which he later published a book.

He was also a second lieutenant in the Army Reserves for twelve years: he received a commission in the Chemical Corps Reserve and commanded the 312th Chemical Company and the 419th Chemical Biological and Radiological Center. In 1960 he was approached by Soviet agents at a scientific conference. The FBI asked him to play along, and for six years he delivered selected documents.

In 1963 Huminik became president of Chemprox. He served as chairman of the Washington chapter of the American Society for Metals (1965-66) and of the American Welding Society ( 1961-62) , was awarded the Welding Society's meritorious certificate in 1963, and was listed in Who's Who in Commerce and Industry (13th edition).

In 1965 he was involved in the US support of a right-wing coup in the Dominican Republic. In 1966 he was outed as an FBI asset, in the events leading to the expulsion of Valentin Revin, the Soviet embassy's third secretary and science officer. Huminik gave evidence to the Committee on Un-American Activities and published an autobiography of his years as a spy.

His wife had by now become aware of his cross-dressing, but he didn't go beyond dressing in private.

In the early 1970s Huminik was president of General Industrial Corp. and General Enterprises Corp. which in December 1975 were sued by the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) for alleged defrauding of investors. Huminik agreed, without admitting or denying the SEC's allegations, to a permanent injunction barring him from making untrue statements, and otherwise defrauding investors, in the future.

However once the espionage phase was over the inner feeling of being female became more insistent. He was diagnosed as having 'gender reversal', and the Huminiks divorced in 1975, and as Eleanor Schuler she had surgery the next year with Dr Roberto Granato, and took a job as a medical secretary.

She wrote a second autobiography and a general book on sex-change surgery (she contended then that gender reversal occurs in the fetus, but in 1996 would contend that the reason was that her mother had taken fertility drugs), but they were never published.

By 1989 Schuler was chairman of Printron based in Albuquerque which was pioneering a pollution-free process for manufacturing printed circuit boards. She brought together scientists and engineers, and apparently raised over $7 million to float the company. Several patents were filed, one of which included Schuler's name.

In 1991 the SEC filed suit in that Schuler had been brought into the company by Karl Huber, a convicted felon and disbarred lawyer. Without admitting or denying the allegations, Schuler and Printron settled the charges by agreeing to a consent decree barring them from future securities law violations.

In 1992 Printron was chosen as one of 23 new companies on its Emerging Company Marketplace (ECM) most of which would subsequently fail. One of the companies that was to make a flame retardant was run by a convicted arsonist. The blue-ribbon panel that chose the 23 companies knew about the 1991 filing but not the 1975 one. The central registry of the National Association of Securities Dealers listed John Huminik and Eleanor Schuler as two separate people.

Printron's share price declined from $14 to 22¢. Business Week published a story in September 1994 focused on the inadequate vetting by SEC. One investor who had lost $217,000 sued claiming that the company was a fraud with himself as the target. The company was forced into bankruptcy.

Schuler sued Business Week for libel and invasion of medical privacy, and maintained that the story caused Printron to go bankrupt. However the court granted Business Week's motion to dismiss on all counts, pointing out that Schuler had, in 1975, given interviews to The Washington Post and to People Magazine. It held that the references to her being transsexual were neither false nor defamatory:

"If, however, the Business Week story could have been fairly read as implying that Schuler changed her sex to escape recognition as the person the business world knew as Mr. Huminik, she arguably would have had a plausible false light action. It is one thing to point out that a sex change can have career advantages but something else to imply that a sex change was prompted by an unethical and perhaps pathological desire to gain those advantages."

• John Huminik. High Temperature Inorganic Coatings. NY: Reinhold, 1963
  
• Drew Pearson & Jack Anderson. "Spy Cases Broken Suddenly by FBI". The Washington Post, Sept 26, 1966. Online at: http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Subject%20Index%20Files/F%20Disk/FBI/FBI%20to%201967/Item%2010.pdf.
  
• John Huminik, Jr. Testimony to the Committee on Un-American Activities. April 6 and 7, 1967. Online at: http://archive.org/stream/conductofespiona00unit/conductofespiona00unit_djvu.txt.
  
• John Huminik. Double Agent. New York: New American Library, 1967.
  
• Judy Bachrach. "From Super-Macho to 'Pure Femininity': Eleanor Schuler, Now a Demure, Middle-Aged Writer, Used to be a Scientist, a Double-Agent, and a Man". Washington Post, December 19, 1977. Online at: http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Subject%20Index%20Files/F%20Disk/FBI/FBI%20Informants/Item%2047.pdf.
  
• Bob Gatty. "John Huminik's Sex Change Has Made Eleanor Schuler the Spy Who Came Out of the Closet". People, 9,13, April 03, 1978. www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20070525,00.html.
  
• Gary Weiss & Michael Schroeder. "Did The Amex Turn A Blind Eye To A `Showcase' Stock?". Business Week, September 11, 1994. www.businessweek.com/stories/1994-09-11/did-the-amex-turn-a-blind-eye-to-a-showcase-stock.
  
• George Rush & Joanna Molloy. Gossip, New York Daily News, February 16, 1996. http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/gossip/moore-dolled-aids-charity-article-1.718062.
  
• "Eleanor Schuler, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. the Mcgraw-Hill Companies, Inc.; Business Week, a Part of or Subsidiary of Mcgraw-Hill Inc., a New York Corporation Doing Business in New Mexico; Business Week Online; Gary Weiss and Michael Schroeder, Individually and as Employees of the Mcgraw-Hill Companies, Inc., Defendants-Appellees., 145 F.3d 1346 (10th Cir. 1998)" Justia US Law, 1998. http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F3/145/1346/470622.
  
• James Grant. The Trouble with Prosperity: The Loss of Fear, the Rise of Speculation, and the Risk to American Savings. New York: Times Books, 1996: 253.
  
• Ez Ed. "Printron's Ex-Chief Sues McGraw-Hill, Charges Defamation". Microcap & Penny Stocks, 2/3/1999. www.siliconinvestor.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=7628255.
  
• Anita L. Allen. "Privacy Torts: Unreliable Remedies for LGBT Plaintiffs". University of Pennsylvania Law School, Faculty Scholarship, 335, 2010: 132-4, 142, 152 . Reprinted in William Aspray & Philip Doty. Privacy in America: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Lanham, Md: Scarecrow Press, 2011: 48-9, 55, 76-7, 79, 83.

____________________________________________________________

I suppose that after the events of recent years that few of us are surprised that the SEC’s punishment for defrauding investors is to get the accused to promise not to do it again.

The Business Week story is not intrinsically a transsexual story.  A name change for any other reason: family, marriage, religion would have produced the same lack of a match in the central registry of the National Association of Securities Dealers.

Roberto C. Granato, Sr (1926 - 2014) urologist.

Dr. Granato received his medical degree from the University of Buenos Aires Medical School in 1954. He trained as an emergency room surgeon in Argentina and had a private practice there as a surgeon from 1956 to 1959.

He then moved to the United States and pursued further training in urology from 1959 to 1963. In 1961, he completed his qualifications for practicing in the United States from the Educational Council for Foreign Medical Graduates (ECFMG). He pursued further training at New York Polyclinic Medical School and Hospital, which he completed in 1964. As part of his advanced training, he did clinical and laboratory research in urological cancer at the Institute of Cancer Research from 1963 to 1964 at Columbia University.

Dr. Granato is a clinical and surgical urologist who has been licensed in New York since 1964 and certified by the American Board of Urology since 1971. From 1972 - 1985 he did about 800 vaginoplasties and phalloplasties. He trained his son, Roberto E. Granato, in the techniques, but the latter did not adopt that speciality.

Patients include: Diane Kearny, Renee Richards, Eleanor Schuler, Jeanne Hoff.

• Roberto C. Granato. “Surgical approach to male transsexualism”. Urology. 1974 Jun;3(6):792-6. PMID: 4836347
• Andrea James. “Vaginoplasty with Roberto C. Granato, Sr”. Transsexual Road Map. www.tsroadmap.com/physical/vaginoplasty/roberto-granato.html.

Diane Kearny (1940 - ) HBS activist.

Revised 4 Dec 2009, September 2013.

See also A short History of (Harry) Benjamin Syndrome.

Kearny was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, and as a teenager corresponded with Virginia Prince – who told her that anyone wanting a sex change was delusional.

Diane was a friend of the pioneering transsexual and prostitute, Patricia Morgan, and knew some of the drag performers at the 82 Club. She was down the street when the Stonewall riot erupted in 1969.

Later, as Diane, she was a patient of Harry Benjamin and Charles Ihlenfeld. She had only one psychiatric interview, and then had surgery with Roberto Granato Sr in 1972 in Brooklyn.

Being Catholic, she then successfully applied to have the name and gender on her baptismal certificate amended.

In 1984 she married.  They were married for 22 years before she was widowed. Diane ran her own business.

In 2004 Diane set up WATS, a transsexual forum.  In 2006 she encountered  Charlotte Goiar on the Australian WOMAN forums, and adopted Goiar's concept of Harry Benjamin Syndrome. Goiar participated in her forum, and she  and others set up harrybenjaminsyndrome-info.org, (which became derelict around 2008), and then harrybenjaminsyndrome.org (which also became derelict in 2010). Goiar and Kerny separated and each maintained a web site and a forum. Kearny's site contained material from Goiar’s www.shb-info.org, with small changes, and included a very similar Standards of Care.  Her Yahoo forum differed from Goiars in admitting only post-operative women, and harrybenjaminsyndrome.org, unlike www.shb-info.org, was in English only. The site defined HBS:

"Harry Benjamin's Syndrome (HBS) is a congenital intersex condition that develops before birth, involving the differentiation between male and female. It is believed that every 1/30,000 is born with this condition. Therefore a girl with Harry Benjamin's Syndrome would have a females brain sex but her genitals would appear male. The boys born under this condition have female genitalia even though their brains are male. So far it’s impossible to diagnose this condition at the moment of birth causing the babies to be raised in the wrong gender role. There are figures that confuse the rarity of HBS by including in the numbers those under the transgender umbrella who are not HBS or even true transsexuals but are better aligned with fetishists who 'went all the way' such as the autogynephilic thereby making it seem that the number of 1/2500 might be better applied."

Despite Diane’s Catholicism, the site had a religion tab that was heavily Protestant in that it cites the Bible but no Popes or theologians.  " In this way God is pleased for He sees a lessoning of suffering in His name by all who feel that in His eyes they did right and not a wrong".

Diane wrote to the American Psychological Association (included on the web page), and the press in general. In 2007, she and the others made a presentation at a WPATH Symposium in Chicago.


*Not the Diane Kearney who argued that Thomas Pynchon was Wanda Tinasky; nor the Hollywood costume and wardrobe person.

Diane, sometimes using the surname Logan, commented on various websites:

• Diane Logan.  "transgender Confusion".  San Francisco Bay Times.  Aug 31, 2006. www.sfbaytimes.com/index.php?sec=article&article_id=5465.  "Most transsexuals I know are not a result of being a crossdresser or a fetishist. They are people who knew from a very early age that something was wrong and bore the pain of that truth until relief was attained in the form of surgery. They did not link up with transgender behavior, which is obviously a satisfying sexual release, but had to bring their body and brain into harmony in order to simply survive. That is what transsexual actually is and so far removed from all of those transgenders I came across during my years before and since my surgery in 1972. Transgenderism has become farcical and in no way should be seen as being in any way, shape or form somewhat like the medical condition of transsexualism, or as we prefer to call it, Harry Benjamin Syndrome"
• Diane Kearny. Comment on “Transgender Folly”. The Jewish Press. Nov 15 2006. http://www.jewishpress.com/page.do/19917/Transgender_Folly.htm."Direct your angst toward those who use the confusion of transgenderism to further their forced imposition upon society. This proposal, if one looks closely, is a gay/lesbian/bi/transgender law. It allows people to simply identify as the opposite sex when not that sex at all. It will confuse the issue and even permit deceptive same sex marriages."
• Diane Kearny. Letters to the Editor. Salon.com. July-Sept 2007. http://letters.salon.com/8405f1978f69d63678799623f1e75cdd/author/.   "I had my corrective surgery in a Brooklyn, N.Y. hospital over 30 years ago. Of course I was considered to be in medical need whereas now with the influx of so many under the transgender umbrella we too are falsely listed as having some sort of dysphoria. Does this sound like someone suffering a mental disorder: graduated from college, legally married to the man I met 30 years ago, opened and ran my own business for 20 yrs, built up a comfortable circle of friends and had been certified physically and mentally a female in a County Hospital which was the requirement of the Health Dept. Board before they would change my birth certificate. All that is done so how then am I thrown under the transgender umbrella with fetishists and sex deviants as if I might be cousined to them? No, I refuse to accept that and will fight it to my dying days. I am not a trans anything...I am a woman."
• Diane Kearny. Comments on “Roman Catholicism And Harry Benjamin Syndrome (HBS)”. TS-Si. 18 Dec 2007. http://ts-si.org/the-discussion/2798-briefing-roman-catholicism-and-harry-benjamin-syndrome-hbs.html. "This is simply one of the area's where the TG's and our forced attachment to their banner has hurt many who have had surgery. Remember please that McHugh comes from a long line of radical functionaries at Johns Hopkins where the issue of gender has been placed in the pot of confusion not the least of which is exampled by the likes of Money who believed much like McHugh that brain sex is pliable. ".
• Diane Kearny. Comment on “With Apologies to Radical Feminists”. The Transadvocate. Feb 9, 2008. www.transadvocate.com/with-apologies-to-radical-feminists.htm#high_1."I have been attacked before and by the ignorant who take out of context things I have said and things doctors have advised me as facts on the one hand and possibilities on the other. I ignore their ignorance for I truly understand their need to demean all of us who might suggest they have no affinity with us in their attempt to use our medical legitimacy as cover for their own fetishism. That bothers them for they know deep down their masking deception has no connection with our reality."
• Diane Kearny. Comments on “Uh oh". The Billerico Project. May 5-13, 2008. http://www.bilerico.com/2008/05/uh-oh.php.   "Let the fetishists and the week-end thrill seekers keep transgender. I will not accept that term unless every other woman on the planet does as well."
• Diana.  Profile.  Creative Loafing Tampa. http://tampa.creativeloafing.com/gyrobase/Profile?oid=oid%3A354758.  "Those of us who had corrective surgery did not change our gender, it was inborn"
• Diane L. Logan.  "Few facts ignored about health care bill".  Lewistown Sentinel.  Sept 25, 2009. http://mobile.lewistownsentinel.com/page/wap.home/?id=515436.  "I am continually amazed that so many of the radical liberals attack everyone who is opposed to the Obama health care boondoggle. Recently argued by a reader were the so-called lies being perpetrated by Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Beck, Newt Gingrich, Hannity and the very long list of those who are vocal in addressing opposition to a plan that is falsely labeled as a “HEALTH plan” when, in fact, it is, but a political means to place power in the hands of the socialists in our government. Some like one of the czars, Van Jones, are even admitted communists."

See also the two comments below that are emails received from Diane after the first tentative draft of this article.

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I believe that the Catholic Church never reissues baptismal certificates for transsexuals any more. After all, their official position, as advised by Paul McHugh, is that there is no such thing as changing sex.

Back in 1960, Jacqueline Dufresnoy was required to be re-baptised.

Diane insists that she never changed her gender although she lived as male for three decades.  She is of course failing to distinguish between 'gender' and 'gender identity'.  

Prince's reply to a teenaged trans girl was, obviously, rude and insensitive.  However Diane is still referring to Prince as "Charles (Virginia) Prince" apparently assuming that "Charles Prince" was Virginia's male-name (it was merely a temporary pen name) and falsely crediting her with coining 'transgender' .  I gather that Diane has not read either Richard Docter's nor my accounts of Prince, nor either my or Cristan Williams' accounts of the history of the term 'transgender'.   There are several serious criticisms of Virginia Prince, but Diane neither contributes to the criticism of Prince nor helps her own case by repeating  misinformation.  As I wrote here: "One can see why Yvonne Cook-Riley and Kimberleigh Richards wanted to credit Prince with something that she never did, and never could have. It is an irony of note that Diane Kearny, Suzan Cooke, Jenifer Usher and Cathryn Platine all want to support Cook-Riley and Richards in this endeavor.