Rupert Raj (1952 - ) activist, counsellor.

++ Updated April  & September 2014

Amal Chandra Ghosh born 1918, MSc Calcutta, 1947, PhD McGill, 1961, was a physics lecturer at Carleton University, Ottawa.  He had met his Polish wife in Stockholm where he was working at the Nobel Institute for Physics.   They had moved to Ottawa after the birth of their first son, and had four other children. Both Mr and Mrs Ghosh were killed in a car accident in 1968.

Their second child was just starting to talk about gender. At age 18 Nicholas started transition with an appointment with Charles Ihlenfeld, in Harry Benjamin’s office in New York, who gave him a prescription for testosterone, and his first injection. His elder brother went along to give consent as Rupert was still then under 21 (as required by New York law). He had his top surgery the next year with Dr David Wesser, also in New York. He had his hysterectomy in Calgary in 1978.

Nicholas Ghosh moved to Toronto in 1979. He founded The Foundation for the Advancement of Canadian Transsexuals (FACT) which was later taken over in a contentious manner by Susan Huxford, and also the Metamorphosis Medical Research Foundation for trans men. He was a frequent correspondent with Lou Sullivan in the 1980s, and Sullivan contributed to his publication, Metamorphosis.  Increasingly Ghosh used the name Rupert Raj for his activism.

Rupert worked for several years for the Aids Committee of Toronto. He married a trans woman in the late 1980s. For most of the 1990s, he was burned out as an activist, and worked at an office job.  However, he gained a Masters in Counselling  from the Adler School of Professional Psychology, 2001, and became employed at the Sherbourne Health Centre in Toronto, which acts as an alternative to the CAMH GIC. 

Rupert has also worked with queer South Asians, and has appeared in the videos: Rupert Remembers, 1999, and episodes of Skin Deep, 2000/1. He was honoured with a Toronto Pride Award in 2007, in 2010 was awarded the Steinert & Ferreiro Award at Community One Foundation’s 30th Anniversary Celebration and in 2013 was inducted into the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives. The Wikipedia article on Rupert was deleted in 2012.

He finally had metoidioplasty at age 60.  He was the secondary editor of  Trans Activism in Canada: A Reader, 2014, $69.95 (review) is working on his memoirs and has recently married a second time.

• Rupert Raj.  "My Male Metamorphosis: Personal memoirs of a female to male TS" TV-TS Tapestry, 43, 1984: 41-3.   Online  
• Rupert Raj. “Metamorphosis: Man in the Making (A Personal and Political Perspective)”. In Bonnie Bullough, Vern L. Bullough, James Elias (eds) Gender Blending. Prometheus Books 1997: 480-4.
• “Rupert’s Story”. FTM Australia. http://www.ftmaustralia.org/library/03/rupert.html. No Longer Available.
• Rupert Raj.  “Towards a Transpositive Therapeutic Model: Developing Clinical Sensitivity and Cultural Competence in the Effective Support of Transsexual and Transgendered Clients”.  The International Journal of Transgenderism.  6,2  2002.  www.iiav.nl/ezines/web/IJT/97-03/numbers/symposion/ijtvo06no02_04.htm
• Julia Garro.  “Tranny Pride: Ten ways to Celebrate”.  Xtra.  May 11, 2006.  http://www.xtra.ca/public/Toronto/Tranny_Pride-1632.aspx
• “Dan Irving poses four crucial questions to three of Canada’s most politically engaged trans activists: Jamie Lee Hamilton, Rupert Raj, and Trish Salah”.  Canadian Dimension.  July 1, 2009. 
• “Rupert Raj”. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Deleted February 2012.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Rupert_Raj. Available at www.thefullwiki.org/Rupert_Raj.
• Dan Irving & Rupert Raj (eds). Trans Activism in Canada: A Reader. Women's Press, 2014.  

CGLA    PsychologyToday    

M. T. (193? - ) wife.

M. T. had always considered herself female, dressed as female from age 14, and had always dated men. In 1964 she met J.T. With his encouragement and finance she had surgery arranged by Dr Charles Ihlenfeld in 1971, and she had her New York birth Certificate revised. The next year, M.T and J.T married in New York State and lived in Hackensack.

Two years later he left, and she filed for support. J.T. replied that M.T “was a male and that their marriage was void”.   The trial judge determined that plaintiff was a female and that defendant was her husband, and there being no fraud, ordered defendant to pay plaintiff $50-a-week support.

At the appeal in 1976, the plaintiff produced Dr Ihlenfeld, Charles Annicillo from the Johns Hopkins Gender Identity Clinic and psychologist Dr Richard Samuels explained to the court about transsexualism, and that M.T. was now no longer male.   The defense called the adoptive father of J.T. , a medical doctor, who argued that his daughter-in-law was not a woman in that she did not have or had a uterus and ovaries.

The judges ruled that plaintiff was of the female psychic gender all her life and that her anatomical change through surgery required the conclusion that she was a female at the time of the marriage ceremony. They stated:

It is the opinion of the court that if the psychological choice of a person is medically sound, not a mere whim, and irreversible sex reassignment surgery has been performed, society has no right to prohibit the transsexual from leading a normal life. Are we to look upon this person as an exhibit in a circus side show? What harm has said person done to society? The entire area of transsexualism is repugnant to the nature of many persons within our society. However, this should not govern the legal acceptance of a fact.

They considered the English case of Corbett v. Corbett, but concluded that they could not join its reasoning.

They ruled in agreement with the lower court and M.T. was legally female.

• M.T. v. J.T., 140 N.J.Super. 77, 355 A.2d 204, 205 (1976). http://scholar.google.ca/scholar_case?case=16151905477157446342&hl=en&as_sdt=2&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr
• M.T. v. J.T.,364 A 2d
• Joanne Meyerowitz. How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States. Cambridge, Ma, London: Harvard University Press. 363 pp 2002: 250-2.

____________________________________________________________

Annicillo is spelt “Annicello” in the legal write-up of the case and in Joanne Meyerowitz’s book, but is spelt Annicillo  in Johns Hopkins sources.

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.

____________________________________________________________________

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.

Paula Grossman (1919 - 2003) music teacher

++updated 15/4/11, 7/8/16.


Paul Monroe Grossman was born in Brooklyn, NY. He grew up in New Jersey,  graduated with an A.B. in 1941 from the University of Newark (now called Rutgers), and spent the Second World War in the U.S. Army.  He then went to Columbia University where he earned an M.A. and a Professional Diploma in Music Education (S.M.E.) in 1947. In 1949 he married Ruth Keshen, and he spent the next 21 years as a music teacher in public schools in North Dakota, Montana, upstate New York and in 1957 he finally returned to New Jersey to teach at Cedar Hill Elementary School in in the town of Basking Ridge (map).

In 1971 Paul became Paula, and was suspended as a teacher. She sued, and lost. She fought the dismissal to the US Supreme Court, which refused to hear the case. However since she had been declared to be 'disabled', she eventually won a disability pension. She did stay in the same small town, and was well known as a transsexual. During the years of litigation, she became something of a celebrity, appeared on television, the guest of Johnny Carson and David Frost. She gave lectures all over the eastern United States. She supplemented her income playing as a musician in night clubs.

When it was over, she wrote A Handbook for Transsexuals, which is long out of print.

She was never allowed to teach in a school again. She stayed with her wife until she died in 2003.

Legacy

Here is a summary of Paula's book:

• 'A transsexual has his sex changed to correct a medical condition which will kill him if he doesn't. And for absolutely no other reason whatsoever.'
• Transvestites never should; the naturally small and feminine should not either.
• If you cannot stand the agony, then do the change.
• Stand up for yourself; don't be shunted aside as an outcast.
• 'Don't let non-transsexuals formulate rules for you.'
• If you want to keep the same job, fight for it.
• If you want to stay with your wife and children, then do so.
• Don't bother with electrolysis: 'Thousands of extra dollars and a couple of years of suffering is a lot of money and extra pain for the usually inaffluent transsexual to absorb. A few extra minutes a day [to shave] isn't all that ghastly.'
• Don't be persuaded to live a year in the guise of a woman - you probably won't be able to get a job in your field.
• Don't be persuaded to move to another town and throw away your career. Stay and fight. Work out in advance whether you can keep your job. If you cannot, figure out what you can do instead.
• Find a good lawyer. For your name change. For a will. For a spouse's consent to the operation - needed if you do not divorce. For litigation especially in fighting to keep your job.
• Choose the right doctor. Do not go to a psychiatrist expecting any kind of cure. Avoid bigoted and insensitive doctors.
• Don't let other transsexuals down by being a 'slob' e.g. by becoming a stripper.

Grossman's case against her employer, Grossman v. Bernards Township Board of Education, became caselaw in the US and is frequently cited result in transsexual employment law discussions. Drs Charles Ihlenfeld and Robert Laidlaw testified on behalf of Grossman, and Dr Charles Socarides on behalf of the schoolboard.  It was ruled that she was not discriminated against as a woman, and therefore the dismissal was legal.

In Janice Raymond's diatribe of hatred, The Transsexual Empire, there is a mention of Paula Grossman. She is quoted via a newspaper article gushing about having one's hair done, cosmetics and clothes. It is typical of Raymond's sloppy research that she did not find Paula's Book. This is probably just as well.

In 2007, one of her ex-pupils wrote a sympathetic article for the St Petersburg Times.

++In 2016,  Meryl Streep revealed that she had been one of Paula's students.  

• Paula Grossman. A Handbook for Transsexuals. Broadview Enterprises Inc. v,67 pp 1979.
• Janice G. Raymond The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-male. Boston: Beacon Press. 1979: 78-9.
• Jillian Todd Weiss. “Law: The first Title VII transgender case”. “Law: When is dismissal based on ‘sex reassignment’?” Transgender Workplace Diversity. http://transworkplace.blogspot.com/2006/06/law-first-title-vii-transgender-case.html
• Richard Green. Sexual Science and the Law. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1992: 109-110.
  
• Scott Keeler. “A generation ago, my music teacher had a sex change”. St Petersburg Times. March 4, 2007. www.sptimes.com/2007/03/04/Opinion/A_generation_ago__my_.shtml. 
• Levi Chambers & Daniel Reynolds.  "How Meryl Streep's Trans Music Teacher Opened Her Eyes to LGBT Acceptance".    Advocate, Aug 05 2016.   www.advocate.com/arts-entertainment/2016/8/05/how-meryl-streeps-trans-music-teacher-opened-her-eyes-lgbt-acceptance.