More on Angela Douglas

 I have previously discussed Angela Keys Douglas:

• “Angela Douglas (1943 - 2007) musician, activist”. June 2007.
• “A History of the Transsexual Action Organization (TAO) and some associates”. July 2015.
• "Revival of an old bogey-person", August 2019.

There is a new biography on Morris Kight, the long-time gay activist in Los Angeles (EN.Wikipedia) which contains extra information on Angela Douglas.

• Mary Ann Cherry. Morris Kight: Humanist, Liberationist, Fantabulist. Process, 2020: 152, 161-4, 227, 294-6.

Kight did pioneering work in gay activism from the late 1950s onward, and was a co-founder of several enduring organizations. However he did tend to exaggerate his work. As Cherry reports:

“In 1994, Kight said: 'Transgender is very real. Whatever that may be, that’s transvestites, cross-dresser, male/female trans—female to male. And there’s transvestite heterosexuals, male to male, female to female. I created "transgender." I’ve been recreating the language, and that’s one of the terms. First, I tried "transpeople," and that didn’t fly. Then I created "transgender," and that flew, and it’s now in the language. I think that’s appropriate.' Kight frequently took credit for the creation of nomenclature." (p162)”

       (See my 6-part series on the history of the word 'transgender' which does not mention Kight at all). 

By 1970 Kight was acquainted with Angela Douglas, who was then using the name Douglas Key and was a writer for the Los Angeles Free Press. Comments from activists described Key: 

“I remember one member named Doug who was an attractive, masculine, muscular young man who always wore a dress to the meetings. Sexual attraction was always a feature of these get-togethers." (p161)

And 

“A pre-op trans white guy who was very male and loud. A royal pain in the ass—had male privilege written all over him. The women did not want him in their group. He was upset that Morris made some funny comment about ‘transsexuals need to learn how to keep their seams straight,’ referring to Key’s inability to keep facts straight." (p161)

Cherry: 

“Key, a pre-op transsexual, was still writing under the name ‘Douglas Key’ in 1970 and may have had a hormonal reaction to gay lib. Key reported thoroughly on GLF meetings, gatherings, schedules of upcoming events, and wrote eyewitness accounts as well as editorials. Key, who was not homosexual, pushed for the inclusion of ‘trannies’ in the gay movement; it was not an automatic love-fest. Transsexuals and transvestites were not guaranteed the understanding and acceptance in a room full of out-of-the-closet gays and lesbians." (p161)

In February 1970 Los Angeles was hosting the Western Homophile Conference. Key wrote: 

“Attempts to obtain the use of the Masonic temple were crushed when temple officials discovered ‘homophile’ was not ‘hemophilia’ and rejected the WHC request.”

Key was generally considered disruptive and difficult. Key’s reports almost always mentioned ‘transvestites’ within the movement, and often violent reactions from ‘gaylibbers’. She also made it news when Virginia Prince spoke at GLF.

Cherry writes that Kight:

“respected the way Key used his byline to advance his personal agenda. Key compared gender re-identification issues with homosexuality. Most homosexuals did not agree that the two were the same, acknowledging that transsexual is not homosexual. The gay movement had never before embraced gender issues—role-playing, yes. But not gender. . . Key instigated what was perhaps the largest 'ripples of discontent' in the early movement when he reported that 'transvestites and transsexuals have come to the conclusion that the Gay movement is not valuable to their manifestations.' Key pushed it at GLF meetings for quite a few months and the tension mounted on both sides of the 'discussions'.”

GLF member Craig Hansen spoke with Connie Vaughn, a transsexual member of the Metropolitan Community Church (MCC) who expressed an opinion that Key was not a real transsexual but did have a severe gender identity problem complicated by paranoid fantasies.

Key spoke of the end of GLF, and several times published that she was quitting the organization, but was back the next week, until one week she was not. The Advocate reported: 

“Sunday was orderly and amiable. Key was not present”.

Cherry says that Kight recognized that Douglas was a pioneer in her cause, that of transgender rights, which was a difficult battle, but that 

“Angela probably did not possess the right temperament to achieve the goal”.  

Shortly afterwards Douglas left Los Angeles, and via Chicago, New York and Atlanta ended up in Miami. She frequently wrote to Kight. In an early letter, Douglas wrote that she had befriended the local MCC pastor for 

“desperately needed assistance … I am a physical wreck—horrid leprous sores on my feet and legs. The sun, air and cleanliness of the city is curing me quickly.”

She had ups and down: “I am really quite the lesbian now, very well accepted as such by most gay sisters and I am most happy about this” but later ““No money and I’m living on the street. Where are the so-called brothers and sisters? Bullshit....”

Later she wrote:  

"It is so hard to be a woman, so hard, & I am proud to be even a partial one. Inside me, I am a woman; my exterior is beginning to match the inside. It seems you understand me better now—I miss all of you, of course, very much. You are all such a big part of my life. Yes, freedom, Morris, freedom to be a man or a woman, to be gay, to be straight whatever.”

Cherry mentions Douglas’ surgery with Butcher John Brown – although she gives the year as 1976. 

Afterwards Douglas returned to Miami and mailing and phoning Kight. Cherry says 

“She had become more mentally unhinged; her letters demonstrate a constant emotional pendulum swinging from lonely and distraught to sociable and manic”. 

The phone calls degenerated into death threats. According to Cherry, by 1984 Kight had become aware that Douglas using the birth name of Douglas Czinki was communicating with the Secret Service and had named Kight as a Libyan agent. 

After Douglas won a substantial sum on the Florida lottery in 1991, Kight heard no more from Douglas, not even after she squandered the money was again impoverished.

---------------------

As I have mentioned before, as Douglas was gynephilic, why did she not attend meetings of Virginia Prince's organization?

Cherry’s book is based on a personal acquaintance with Morris Kight and access to his papers. Her end notes do include Douglas’ writings for the Los Angeles Free Press, but offer no way to connect the quotes in the main text to a particular piece.

In addition to my own writings, The major writings about Angela Douglas are:

• Kay Brown. "Angela Keyes Douglas". Transsexual, Transgender, and Intersex History. 1998. Archive. 
• Joanne Meyerowitz. How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States. Harvard University Press. 2002: 236, 237-241, 257, 271, 333.
• Mark Hinson. "Angela's ashes: Farewell to a wild pen pal". Tallahassee Democrat, August 24, 2007. Reproduced.
• Susana Pena. "Gender and Sexuality in Latina/o Miami: Documenting Latina Transsexual Activists". In Kevin P. Murphy & Jennifer M. Spear (eds). Historicising Gender and Sexuality. Wiley-Blackwell, 2011: 755-772.

Cherry apparently consulted none of these. There is no mention of Douglas as a musician; no mention of the controversial letter to Sister magazine in 1977.

The letter was just after her unsatisfactory surgery with John Brown. Every other source gives the date as 1977. Cherry say 1976 but gives no reason for disagreeing with the others.

Twice in Cherry’s book there is reference to an anonymous source: Douglas “was described by a prominent Professor of Gender Studies as ‘A really important figure in the gay lib history of Los Angeles’ “ (p181) and “One prominent historical researcher also described her as ‘a really important figure in the gay lib history of Los Angeles’ “ (p294). The end notes contain a letter from Susan Stryker, PhD, so she is presumably the ‘prominent’ source – why not just name her in the text?

Stryker’s 2008 “primer text” for undergraduates, Transgender History, contains one and a half pages on Douglas, but also is not referenced, even though it is one of the very few sources to mention Kight and Douglas together.

Kimberley Elliot (1953 – 1980) TAO, Neo-American Church

Kimberly's story is told from two sources: Susanna Pena's history of TAO and Art Kleps' history of the early years of psychedelism.   Putting the two together we get the following.   However see also the discussion below.



Along with Colette Goudie and Tara Carn, Kimberly Barreiro – originally from Cuba – was one of the original members of the Transsexual Action Organization after Angela Douglas moved it to Miami. They joined in 1973, became officers of TAO and were a major part of its public face. Kimberly served as director for the town of Miami Beach.

Douglas described Kimberly in 1974 when she was 21 as “tiny, bubbly”. She was one of the first in the group to have transgender surgery, and apparently did a full transition in less than a year. In the TAO newsletter Mirage for Autumn 1974, Kimberley is quoted: ‘I don’t regret it all. But the pain was incredible. I don’t know if I could go through it again’.

She married Steve Elliot, and took his surname.

They were both into psychedelic drugs, and having heard of Art Kleps and his drug-based Neo-American Church, decided to drive up to New York state to visit. In his book, Kleps refers to Kimberly Harrison and Stove (“Ah is all stoved in, man”).

Kleps: “Stove and Kimberly had a strange story to tell. They were both from Miami, where Kimberly, a classic blonde beauty, plied her trade as a Miami Beach hooker. She had met Stove after he had freaked out on the most colossal and one of the weirdest bummers I had heard about up to the time. It involved hordes of fleas appearing in his house on some crazy but exact schedule, not being able to take a shower because the water wouldn’t touch his skin, and aimless wanderings during which he was pursued by flocks of blackbirds and was picked up on the road by kindly spades driving white cars who knew all about him even though he had never seen any of them before in his life. 

Kimberly …, had driven Stove up to be cooled out, paying all the bills along the way, in the ancient and honorable tradition of the whore with a heart of gold. She loved every variety of psychedelic drug, and never had anything but splendid and happy experiences while stoned.”

Kleps regarded Stove as as a “well-defended” paranoid in that he did not, “most of the time, do anything particularly bizarre or fail to handle the routines of ordinary life in an acceptable manner”.

Kimberly had to sell the air-conditioner and the radio out of her car for the journey back to Miami. She stopped for a few days in Millbrook and intrigued Timothy Leary who wanted to know more about her.

In 1980 Kimberly was found dead from a drug overdose at Miami Beach’s Midtown Plaza. Angela Douglas considered her death as suspicious. Several of the old TAO people attended her funeral.

• Susana Pena. "Gender and Sexuality in Latina/o Miami: Documenting Latina Transsexual Activists". Gender & History, 22,3,2010: 763. Reprinted in Kevin P. Murphy & Jennifer M. Spear (eds). Historicising Gender and Sexuality. Wiley-Blackwell, 2011.
• Art Kleps. Millbrook: A Narrative of the Early Years of American Psychedelianism. Original Klepian Neo-American Chuch, 1975: 85-91. Chp 13 Online.  

Is this True?

Pena says in her footnote 50: “Reportedly Kimberly Elliot and her husband are mentioned in Art Kelps’s Millbrook: A Narrative of the Early Years of American Psychedelianism ... under the pseudonyms Kim and Steve Newell.” Which is why I included a mention of Kleps and the Neo-American Church in my History of TAO: Part 2.

Pena is wrong in identifying Steve Newell with Steve Elliot.  Kleps introduces Kimberly thus: “Then Kimberly Harrison and Stove (“Ah is all stoved in, man.”) arrived, followed by Steve Newell and then Mike and Gai Duncan. It was an entertaining group.” Therefore Kimberly is with her man Stove who is not the same as Steve Newell. Kimberly Harrison and Stove do appear to be Kimberly and Steve Elliot in that both couples are from Miami Beach, both are into drugs. Pena, following Angela Douglas, does not say how Kimberly made a living, but sex work in the context of TAO does seem plausible.

There is no mention in Kleps of Kimberly being trans. Good we say – it is good not to be read. However on page 87 he says: “I had a private trip with Kimberly a couple nights later, or at least she had a trip and I just smoked a lot of hashish while she told me the story of her life, which hadn’t been all that bad, really”. So she told the story of her life while on LSD and did not mention her transition and the painful surgery. Indeed!  The CIA had pioneered LSD as a truth drug.

Kleps is not good at giving dates – at least not in the book version. What jarred for me was the mention of Kimberly stopping in at Millbrook to see Timothy Leary.  I quickly assertained that he was not there after 1968 when LSD was made illegal. In the online version of the book, the section about Kimberly is in Chapter 13, and the Contents Page specifies that Chapter 13 is 1965-6, not 1974-5.

Thus Kimberly Harrison cannot be Kimberly Barreiro Elliot.  To regard them as one is a false positive. 

Revival of an old bogey-person

Those of you who pay attention to my sidebar may have noticed a surge in visits to my June 2007 article on Angela Douglas. In fact there have been 450 visits in the last week. I am not always able to find where such surges come from, but in this case I was able to find that it came from a Gender Critical Reddit thread. The first line in my article suggests that visitors also read my July 2015 History of Tao. I can see from my statistics that very few of the Reddit visitors did so.

I assume that the participants in the thread are youngish. Their older sisters would have been quite aware a long time ago of Douglas’ ‘scandalous’ letter, which was published in Sister magazine Aug-Sep 1977. That is 42 years ago. The infamous Janice Raymond published a selection from it in her The Transsexual Empire, 1979.

"Free from the chains of menstruation and child-bearing, transsexual women are obviously far superior to Gennys in many ways .... Genetic women are becoming quite obsolete, which is obvious, and the future belongs to transsexual women. We know this and perhaps some of you suspect it. All you have left is your 'ability' to bear children, and in a world which will groan to feed 6 billion by the year 2000, that's a negative asset."

Now again this is being used to justify negative emotions. One of the Reddit contibutors writes:

“These dudes are so full of rage that they will never be us. They KNOW they are just men with fetishes in bad wigs. I used to think HSTS trans weren't AGP, but I've since been disabused of that myth. This is only further proof.”

There are various adjectives that could describe Douglas’ letter: satirical, ill-advised, arrogant, foolish, counterproductive. The editors of Sisters magazine in 1977 had enough sense of humour to print it, and their readers laughed at it, and that should have been the end of it. However two years later Raymond was looking for things said or done by trans women that she could pretend to be scandalized by, and as her book is still read by anti-trans people, the tale of Douglas’ letter gets repeated again and again.

The Reddit thread suggests that one foolish person can bring an entire movement into disrepute. That game goes both ways. Here is a list of lesbian serial killers. Here is review of a book about the suffragettes pointing out that some of them went way too far, e.g. bombing unoccupied houses (unoccupied meant that only the servants were there).

In fact all non-fascist social movements contain good and bad, wise and stupid, eccentric and otherwise. This encyclopedia features all kinds. Here is a pointer to trans persons convicted of murder – to balance the lesbian serial killers link.

Douglas did good in organizing TAO in Miami. Douglas did bad in sending trans women to Dr John Brown.

All of Raymond’s books are aligned with dogmas of the Catholic Church. In addition to transgender, she is also against abortion, contraception, reproductive technologies and the decriminalization of prostitution. In the early 1980s she campaigned against medical care for trans people, and both federal and private insurance care was thus denied to those who needed it. It must be the case that some died as a result.

Women in the US and elsewhere have their rights under attack. Serious issues like the right to choose, access to contraceptives, access to medical care, misogynist murders etc. Real issues! And these women on the Reddit forum are spending their time getting worked up about a letter written 42 years ago that perhaps deserved momentary attention, but not four decades of people saying the same thing again and again.

________________

Kay Brown’s early comments on Angela Douglas, part of her Transsexual, Transgender and Intersex History, long unavailable is again available courtesy of the Wayback Machine. Read it here.

​

History of TAO: Part 3: aftermath

Part III: aftermath

Part 1: to 1972. USAF, music, GLF
bibliography
Part 2: 1972-82. TAO in Miami Beach
Part 3: aftermath

1981
Douglas returns to South Miami Beach and lives in the budget Drake Hotel. She dislikes the post-Mariel changes: "the Beach was dying. Cuban refugees by the thousands had moved in and had turned ratty South Miami Beach into a Cuban slum ...Italian and Jewish stores and restaurants had been taken over by Cubans, one by one. Lovely Lincoln Road had been transformed into a pathetic cheap-goods shopping mall run by Cubans. The Beach had deteriorated so badly I was horrified. …. a group of very idiotic, offensive young gays lived there, all prostitutes, and a bunch of Cuban drag queens lived there".

Douglas visits Goudie and has dinner with her and her mother. By now Goudie has had surgery, been to college, and visited Paris and Rome.

1982

Goudie has become a born-again Christian and breaks with Douglas. She tapes the phone calls. Douglas claims to report Goudie and her mother to FBI as Castro agents.

Douglas returns to living as a man.

1983
Douglas' autobiography: Triple Jeopardy. "After getting a copy of the book, Chris Craig of MCA's Lord Tracy did songs advocating violence against transsexuals, and in 89, kin to him, Jean Craig, did a TV commercial having the Daihatsu Charade set fire to a sign for a town named Euphoria, with power to burn." (GuitarSite, 10/15/04)

1986
Douglas accuses the film Top Gun of stealing her life story (although there are no transsexuals in the plot)

Tallahassee Democrat reporter Mark Hinson later reported that Douglas "settled in dinky Grand Ridge near Sneads [north Florida] and lived in impoverished conditions. This made her very bitter and she often lashed out at gays and blacks when she called me with another rant".

The television news magazine Inside Edition does an investigative story on The Worst Doctor in America. Dr John Brown actually co-operates with the film crew. In transsexual circles Brown comes to be known as 'Butcher Brown', but patients still come. After the broadcast of the Inside Edition program, the San Diego District Attorney’s Office launches an investigation that leads to Brown spending 19 months in jail for practicing medicine without a license.

1990
Layla of Birmingham TAO had reverted to living as man and moved to Liverpool. He marries a woman, and drops out of his college course. (Whittle in Ekins & King: 192)

Catherine Millot. Horsexe: Essay on Transsexuality repeats Raymond's selective quotation of Douglas' letter to Sister magazine.

1991
Douglas wins $232,567 in the Fantasy Five lottery game. After taxes, the lottery gives him a check for $186,000. Returns to being Angela. She moves to Key West, buys a guitar and a red Corvette.

Douglas' then landlord comments: "I escorted her on cruises where she loved to gamble. She was more comfortable under the cover of darkness so most of our activities were at night. I remember she still had to shave, would not be caught dead in a dress, and made cat-calls to pretty Latina women on the streets of Miami from the corvette that we cruised in (bought with her lottery winnings)".

1992
Douglas' second book: Hollywood's Obsession. Claims that most representations of transsexuals in the media are plagiarizations of her life.

The lottery money quickly runs out, especially when Douglas suffers a stroke. He returns to living as a man.

Members of the UK TAO group, especially Stephen Whittle, become involved in Press for Change, which would be very involved in achieving the 2004 Gender Recognition Act. (Stryker & Whittle: 6)

Ken Forssi, bass player in the band Love, who had recorded with Doug Delain in 1967, is also living in northern Florida, unemployed and obsessed with political conspiracies.

1996
Arthur Lee, leader of band Love, sentenced to 12 years for negligent discharge of a firearm.

1997
Douglas writes a twisted little novelty song called "Andrew Cunanan" and it ends up on Dr. Demento's nationally syndicated radio show.

1998
"I showed up at a music festival in Blountstown, FL with two guitarists I'd met who thought I was a man, told them I am 'Lee Douglas,' did a dozen songs-first real performance since 1968! Went over great, and I then fooled around at some redneck bars around Panama City with them and others, got standing ovations" Performed as Last Drop Douglas.

Ken Forssi, dies of a brain tumor at age 54.

1999
Dr John Brown, out of prison, lives and works in Tijuana. He removes the healthy leg of an apotemnophiliac who desired to have it removed. The man dies two days later of gangrene in a motel in California. Brown is arrested and tried by the San Diego authorities, even though the operation had been done in Tijuana. He is tried and convicted of malice murder. He is sentenced to 15 years to life.

2001
Arthur Lee, leader of band Love released from prison. Douglas maintains he was released because Douglas lobbied the new President George Bush, POTUS 43.

2003
Last Drop Douglas. Solo CD Cosmo Alley.

2006
Arthur Lee dies in Memphis of myelois leukemia.

2007
Douglas dies of complications from heart trouble. Obituary by Mark Hinsen in the Tallahassee Democrat.

2010
Dr John Brown, still in prison, aged 87, dies of health problems including pneumonia.

2015
Death of Douglas' ex-wife, Norma Czinki.

History of TAO: Part 2: 1972-80. TAO in Miami Beach

Part II. 1972-82. TAO in Miami Beach

Part 1: to 1972. USAF, music, GLF
bibliography
Part 2: 1972-82. TAO in Miami Beach
Part 3: aftermath

1972
Douglas and TAO move to Miami Beach. Publishes Moonshadow and later Mirage Magazine over next three years. Douglas: "Year of the Transsexual in Miami Beach: hundreds were there, from all over the nation, and many Puerto Ricans and Cubans. … the cha-chas became as thick as tourists; the Latin transsexuals were referred to as 'cha-chas'."

Transvestites are still no longer welcome as members.

Douglas and Colette Goudie meet during the protests against the Presidential conventions in Miami Beach.

Kilo, 22 and pre-op, is a TAO member and also a popular performer who had appeared at the Stonewall club in a production of Wild Side Story.

Miami Beach's anti-cross-dressing ordinance is declared unconstitutional and police threaten to rewrite it. Kilo calls for street protests. The police continue to enforce the old ordinance nevertheless.

Canary Conn has stage-one surgery with Dr Barbosa in Tijuana (named as Dr Lopez in her autobiography).

1973
Collette Goudie joins TAO, as do Kimberly Barreiro and Tara Carn, Puerto Rican-born, New York-raised. Douglas: Goudie and Carn were ‘both very beautiful and wild and hated each other with a hot passion. Getting them to work together was nearly impossible’.

Kimberly fully transitions with surgery in less than a year. She marries Steve Elliot and they became involved in Art Kleps' psychedelic Neo-American Church at Millbrook, New York.

Goudie & Carn are arrested on Twenty-first Street beach for disorderly conduct. Surprisingly they are well treated by the police.

TAO sets up a 'security force' to stop police and public abuse of 'transsexuals and gays'.

After a raid and arrests at the Stonewall Club on Twenty-first Street, Douglas files suit for discrimination.

Article in Mirage objects to the emphasis in mainstream media on the medical aspects of transsexuality. There are more severe problems including exploitation by surgeons, psychiatrists and gender identity clinics, as well as extortion and persecution by the police.

After the American Psychiatric Association announced that homosexuality would no longer be considered a mental illness, TAO called for transsexualism to be likewise removed (although technically it was not even added until the 1980 version of the DSM).

1974
Douglas steps down as president. Barbara Rosello becomes president of TAO: "Tao is an organization for transexuals only … We have many goals which can only be accomplished by our own efforts."

Rosella resigns due to family pressures and nerves. Goudie becomes 3^rd president in September.

Carn was to have her photograph in Mirage. Her boyfriend was terrified. Carn: 'I'm proud of what I am, and I want to help anyway I can.' She is also quoted saying that that she is lesbian, and likes girls and other transsexuals.

Carn passes well. However the Miami Beach police follow her around and tell men that she is a 'fag in a dress'. "To retaliate, the beautiful Tara sometimes went to a crowded beach, started dancing topless to music from a radio and after a crowd of applauding people surrounded her, would take off her bikini panties, display her male genitals and cause a near riot. Police would arrive and she’d shake her genitals at them, screaming ‘you say I’m a man’ ...She was taken to jail, fined, and sometimes went back and repeated the performance."

Goudie and 2 other TAO members appear on Marsh and Adams Show on WKID in Fort Lauderdale, and discuss housing discrimination, police harassment, difficulties receiving proper medical attention and difficulties with getting identification.

During June, the Miami News published a series on transsexual issues. Four trans women are featured including two TAO members: Tara Carn and Colombian-American Crystal Gresham.

Crystal Gresham is TAO Miami Beach director. She ‘lives fully as a female except when teaching ballroom dance to elderly women in Miami Beach’.

Douglas first meets surgeon Dr John Brown. ‘He wanted to help aid me and came up with several thousand dollars cash to help publish Mirage Magazine. In exchange, I promoted him considerably’.

Canary Conn publishes her autobiography, followed by appearances on television.

TAO had increasingly bad-mouthed the Erickson Educational Foundation, which indeed never mentioned TAO or other militant organizations in its newsletters. Despite this Zelda Suplee on behalf EEF offers $20,000 to 'place the TAO within the EEF's framework'. Douglas declines, in that 'every cent would have strings attached'.

A TAO press release suggests that the CIA is behind the transsexual program at Johns Hopkins University Hospital, and that Donald Laub at Stanford's Gender identity Clinic was connected with a plot to transplant the brains of transsexuals.

1975
In February issue of Mirage Jennifer Otera 'third place winner in the Miss [Gay?] Universe contest held in Caracas’ reports on intense police harassment in Venezuela.

In the same issue, Goudie is asked about transvestites: "I have nothing against them. Some transsexuals say they are transvestites because it’s easier for the world to comprehend. But it’s not the same. A transvestite is a man who dresses up like a woman for a little while and then becomes a man again. A transsexual, like you and me and so many others, live as we are all of the time. It is so different ...I don’t think it’s good for both TVs and TSs to belong to the same groups, as the values are so different, the laws and problems are so different. In some ways the problems overlap, but not completely."

However units or associate memberships were set up for non-transsexual members. Lesbian and transvestite units were created. The police did not observe any distinction between transvestites and transsexuals, and Moonshadow and Mirage continued to report harassment of both groups.

Intersex persons were offered full membership.

"TAO also strongly relates to the problems and efforts of transvestites, gay men and women and feminists. However, we consider transexualist values of paramount importance and are not subject to the values of other sociosexual liberationist movements, such as the feminist and gay liberation movements. We prefer to meet members in person."

Goudie on August cover of Moonshadow. Contains article by Douglas & Goudie on trans Santaria deities, especially Santa Barbara/Shango.

Kilo dies in a house fire.

Gay Action Alliance – Miami sue the police in Miami Beach for brutality, but refuse to include transsexuals in the lawsuit, even though they were more often targeted. This leads to TAO breaking off relations.

A network of UK trans activists loosely affiliate themselves with TAO. The group in Birmingham was run by Brooklyn (ftm) and Leyla (mtf) who were a couple. They urged an "anarcho-transformative, transsexual-separatist agenda" such as protesting a National Front march. Stephen Whittle, for a short while ran a London TAO group. (Whittle in Ekins & King: 192).

Birmingham TAO put out a leaflet: "The T.A.O. is a national organization which is open to all transsexuals (whether they are presently undergoing sex change treatment or not) irrespective of their race, religion, politics or sexual orientation. The T.A.O. has no official membership at present and is not structured. All decisions as to the running of the organization are taken collectively."

Moonshadow reports that TAO has had chapters in San Francisco, Philadelphia, Chicago, Atlanta, Orlando and Jacksonville as well as Miami Beach. Abroad it has chapters in Canada, England and Northern Ireland. Almost a thousand members in all.

++In this year, trans man Joe Carstairs sells his home, Whale Cay in the Bahamas, and buys a house in Miami.   There is no reason to assume that he ever contacted TAO.

1976
Canary Conn reportedly killed (reported by Douglas, however Kay Brown says that she met Canary at a later date).

TAO disbanded? Douglas travels in California and Hawai'i. Carn also leaves Miami, and has gender surgery. They meet again in Hawai'i, but Carn is unfriendly. Later she is arrested on a prostitution charge.

1977
Douglas has vaginoplasty with Butcher John Brown and paid around $600. She describes him as one who "fed, housed, paid and helped hundreds, and gave free or nearly free surgery to at least two hundred of us". Brown has his California license revoked later that year. Later Douglas claimed that she "helped get him arrested twice".

Goudie joins Douglas in Berkeley, they fall out, and Douglas sends Goudie back to Miami on a plane.

Angela Douglas in San Francisco becomes upset at the vitriolic, absurd, and transphobic comments broadcast on listener sponsored station KPFA and letters published in the feminist journal Sister. Especially the attack on trans woman Sandy Stone donating her skills at the feminist Olivia Records.

Douglas meets Kay Brown who is with her when she writes a letter. Brown attempts without success to dissuade her from sending it. It is published in Sister Aug-Sep, p7. As quoted by Raymond p xvii it goes: "Free from the chains of menstruation and child-bearing, transsexual women are obviously far superior to Gennys in many ways .... Genetic women are becoming quite obsolete, which is obvious, and the future belongs to transsexual women. We know this and, and perhaps some of you suspect it. All you have left is your 'ability' to bear children, and in a world which will groan to feed 6 billion by the year 2000, that's a negative asset."

The letter is generally regarded as satire, but in her 1997 email to Kay Brown, Douglas insisted: "The l997 letter as for women becoming obsolete is valid, not whimsical or tongue in cheek, women are becoming obsolete as evidenced by Islamic treatment of women, etc. The future of humanity is male homosexual. Women are becoming irrelevant. I despise all lesbians anyway, and applaud when they get killed. I don't give a shit about feminists."

photo by Kay Brown

Next day Brown and Douglas march in the SF Pride Parade, where leaders had demanded that 'drags should stay home'. They are welcomed to ride with the Mattachine Society. Douglas writes up the event for the Berkeley Barb.

1978
Douglas appears in a porn mag with pre- and post-op photographs of her genitals.

TAO formally dissolved.

Douglas reported to be participating in US Nazi politics.

1979
Janice Raymond. The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-male: xvii quotes part of the letter to Sister out of context attributing it to 'one transsexual' and giving Douglas' name only in the end notes. Douglas later claimed that the 13 direct interviews cited in the book were actually quotes from a letter that Douglas had written to her.

1980
Dave Potter, formerly of Euphoria, (and 86 others) dies in fire at MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas.

Kim Elliot is found dead at Miami Beach’s Midtown Plaza due to a drug overdose.  She is buried in North Miami Beach, and TAO people attend her funeral.

The Mariel Boatlift exodus from Cuba adds many trans women to the Miami population.

History of TAO: bibliography

Bibliography

Part 1: to 1972. USAF, music, GLF
bibliography
Part 2: 1972-82. TAO in Miami Beach
Part 3: aftermath

The two major sources that I have used for this are Joanne Meyerowitz and Susana Pena, both of whom read the two inaccessible books by Angela Douglas and the various issues of Moonshadow and Mirage, the TAO publications. Quotes via these two are not individually cited because of their unavailability. See Meyerowitz' and Pena's end notes for page references.

Mark Hinson's obituary was very useful for the later years.

The fourth major source are the emails and postings, some would say rants, by Angela Lee Douglas. These are URL linked, although only a few are still online. I did keep copies from eight years ago.

There were also a lot of articles written by Douglas for community papers.  With only a few exceptions, I was not able to find these.

• Sleevenotes on Euphoria. A Gift From Euphoria (LP) with William D. Lincoln (bass, vocals), Hamilton Wesley Watt (vocals), Doug Delain (guitar), Dave Potter (drums). 1967
  
• Angela Douglas. "Panthers Still Biased Against Gays, Women". The Advocate, November 11-24, 1970.
  
• Donn Teal. The Gay Militants. Stein & Day, 1971: 210, 212.
  
• Angela Douglas (ed). Transsexual Action Organization Publications 1972-5.
  
• R. Fabricio. "Suit Charges Beach Harassment of Homosexuality". Miami Herald, 27 May 1973.
  
• Canary Conn. Canary: The Story of a Transsexual. Nash, 1974: 202
  
• Angela Douglas. "Gays March in S.F". Berkeley Barb, August 1977.
  
• Angela Douglas. Letter. Sister Aug-Sep 1977: 7.
  
• Janice G. Raymond. The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-male. Boston: Beacon Press. 1979: xvii.
  
• Angela Douglas. Triple Jeopardy: The Autobiography of Angela Lynn Douglas. Sneeds, Floria: Angela Lynn Douglas, 1983.
  
• Catherine Millot translated into English by Kenneth Hylton. Horsexe: Essay on Transsexuality. Paris: Point Hors Logne, 1983. NY:Autonomedia, 1990: .
  
• Angela Douglas. Hollywood's Obsession. Angela Lynn Douglas, 1992.
  
• Vernon Joynson. Fuzz, Acid And Flowers. "Euphoria". Borderline Productions, 1993.
  
• Art Kleps. A Narrative of the Early Years of American Psychedelianism. Neo-American Church of Texas, 1994. Kimberley Elliot and her husband appear under as Kim & Steve Newall.       Turns out to be a different Kimberly. 
  
• Pat Califia. Sex changes : the politics of transgenderism. San Francisco: Cleis Press 1997. Second edition by Patrick Califia 2003: 98-9.
  
• Kay Brown. "Angela Keyes Douglas". Transsexual, Transgender, and Intersex History. 1998.    Archive. 
  
• Douglas Carl Czinki email to Kay Brown- no date - included on Brown's site.
  
• A.L. Douglas posting on Sympathy on Milli Vanilli, Jul 7, 2000.
  
• Rodger Stretmatter. Voices of Revolution: The Dissident Press in America. Colombia University Press, 2001: 250.
  
• James T. Sears. Rebels, Rubyfruit, and Rhinestones: Queering Space in the Stonewall South. Rutgers University Press, 2001: 129.
  
• Joanne Meyerowitz. How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States.  Harvard University Press. 2002: 236, 237-241, 257, 271, 333.
  
• Angela Lynn Douglas posting on dev.greenspun.com November 10, 2002.
  
• Last Drop Douglas. Cosmo Alley (CD) 2003.
  
• Angela Douglas 2 postings on "Transsexuals allowed in Olympics" Amorous Propensities May 21, 2004 and October 21, 2004.
  
• A.L. posting on band family tree.com 5/28/2005.
  
• Angela Douglas (Tanglehead) posting on Messageboard for Love Fans 16/11/2005.
  
• Angela Douglas posting on Arthur Lee Tribute June 27, 2006.
  
• Angela Douglas (Tanglehead) posting on Yellow Swordfish>>Arthur Lee and Love 2006-08-26.
  
• Angela Douglas posting on the Cindi Lauper web page. 14 March 2007.
  
• Angela Douglas (Tanglehead) posting on ufowatch no date.
  
• Mark Hinson. "Angela's ashes: Farewell to a wild pen pal". Tallahassee Democrat, August 24, 2007. Reproduced.
  
• Stephen Whittle in Richard Ekins & Dave King. The Transgender Phenomenon. London: Thousand Oaks; California: Sage. 2006: 192-3.
  
• Susan Stryker & Stephen Whittle. The Transgender Studies Reader. Routledge, 2006: 6.
  
• Susan Stryker. Transgender History. Seal Press, 2008: 88-9
  
• Suzan Cooke."Early Frauds, Predators and Self-Agrandizers". Women Born Transsexual, 05/27/2009. http://womenborntranssexual.com/2009/05/27/early-frauds-predators-and-self-agrandizers.
  
• Susana Pena. "Gender and Sexuality in Latina/o Miami: Documenting Latina Transsexual Activists". Kevin P. Murphy & Jennifer M. Spear (eds). Historicising Gender and Sexuality. Wiley-Blackwell, 2011: 755-772.
  
• Tom De Simone, Teresa Wang, Melissa Lopez, Diem Tran, Andy Sacher, Kersu Dalal, Justin Emerick. Lavender Los Angeles. Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia Pub, 2011: 118.
  
• Philip Zonkel. "Gay History: Los Angeles’ pioneering transgender activists to be discussed Sunday at ONE Gay & Lesbian Archives". Out in the 562, April 11, 2014. http://blogs.presstelegram.com/outinthe562/2014/04/11/gay-history-los-angeles-pioneering-transgender-activists-to-be-discussed-sunday-at-one-gay-lesbian-archives.
  
• Brendan Zachariah O'Donnell. Definition and Redefinition: Alliance and Antagonism in Homosexual and Trans Communities in the U.S. BA thesis, Wesleyan University, 2014: 61-2, 69. PDF
  

AllMusic    Discogs    RateYourMusic    GuitarSite

History of TAO: Part 1: to 1971. USAF, music, GLF

A History of the Transsexual Action Organization (TAO) and some associates

See also Angela Douglas (1943 - 2007) musician, activist

Part 1: to 1971. USAF, music, GLF
bibliography
Part 2: 1972-82. TAO in Miami Beach
Part 3: aftermath


Douglas Carl Czinki became Angela Douglas. Therefore when I write 'Douglas' alone there is ambiguity whether that is his forename or her surname. Up to 1969 it is the former. Douglas is not the only trans woman to use her boy name as her new surname, but I will not name the others.

While Angela Douglas is the dominant and central character in this history, there are several others who contribute significantly to trans history.

In quoting Douglas I have corrected spelling and punctuation, and sometimes added [words] to make it more readable.

Part I: to 1971. USAF, music, GLF

1943
Douglas Carl Czinki born in Detroit, of Hungarian descent. Raised on USAF bases. Father was in AFOSI, Air Force Intelligence; mother employed by AEC, CIA and DEA.

1947
Colette Tisha Goudie, born in France of French-Cuban descent.

1949
Danny O'Connor born in San Antonio, Texas.

1953
Kimberly Barreiro born in Cuba.

1957
The Czinki family moves to South Florida neighborhood of Hialeah, which had a large Latino population. Douglas meets Norma Rodriguez.

1959-61
Douglas at high school in Japan.

1962
Against his family's opposition, Douglas marries Norma

1962-4
Douglas plays in Charades, a roadhouse band in Oklahoma City; he also says that he was in USAF in this period.

1965
As Doug Delain, Czinki plays guitar with band Euphoria with William D. Lincoln (bass, vocals), Hamilton Wesley Watt (vocals), Dave Potter (drums).

1966
Virginia Prince rents a house in Laurel Canyon around the same time as Frank Zappa and many other musicians. There is no recorded interaction of Prince with the musicians.

1967
Delain tries to form a band, Motorcycle Abilene, with Warren Zevon, and records songs with Love's Ken Forssi and Alban Pfisterer. Releases LPs: Trapped, C'est Dommage.

LP cover

LP A Gift From Euphoria - but without Doug Delain on guitar, although he is mentioned on the
sleeve.

Delain has a cameo in Roger Corman's LSD film The Trip in Laurel Canyon. "There are two scenes in The Trip filmed there. [Peter]Fonda, [Bruce] Dern drive up, bikers in front including Roland God Barnett of The Barons, I painted "LOVE" on the street, did some of the art on the film. [Dennis] Hopper is passing joints around. I am in that scene, so is young future billionaire Paul Allen, a wanna be bass player then, hung out now and then there, helped me set up Hendrix's gear for a promo film Hendrix made there in 68."

Czinki's wife, Norma Rodriguez, pregnant, leaves him for a woman.

Danny O'Connor marries and they have a child.

1968
Delain plays last music gig as a boat party for Steppenwolf in Hawai'i.

Jimmy Hendrix television special is filmed at Delain's home in Laurel Canyon.

Danny O'Connor wins nationwide contest "Super Teen: The Sounds of '68".

1969
Czinki becomes Angela Douglas, and is active in LA GLF. There is no indication that she even considered Virginia Prince's FPE. "I was not gay and knew nothing of them prior to l969. I became a writer for The LA Image and communists and gays sought me out to promote their actions. I did, and got involved with the Gay Liberation Front, took part in a few protests, then formed the Transsexual Action organization with Canary Conn." (email to Kay Brown)

Lavender Los Angeles p118

Colette Tisha Goudie starts living as female.

Singer Danny O'Connor releases two 45 rpm singles: "If I Am Not Free" and "Can You Imagine." (Click to listen).

1970
Douglas and trans singer attacked when supposed to perform at LA gay lib dance.

Frustrated by 'antitransvestic' attitudes of some gay men, and that GLF ignored the push for a clinic in Los Angeles, Douglas founds Transvestite/Transsexual Action Organization (TAO).

Douglas and one other demonstrate at a showing of the newly released Myra Breckinridge, denouncing it as exploitative and objecting that a non-transsexual, Raquel Welsh, played Myra.

TAO protests when Los Angeles welfare officials discontinue aid to 'men' who dress as women.

TAO persuades the Californian Peace and Freedom Party to include in its platform "The right to determine the uses of one's body, as in sex changes operations and others" and gets the Socialist Party to call for an end to arrests for 'cross-dressing'.

Douglas writes to Harry Benjamin: "As I progress as a transsexual, I find myself more attuned to Women's Liberation, in particular, the demands and ideas of gay women".

In a published letter to Playboy, Douglas explains that TAO supported "both gay liberation and women's liberation: we believe that all victims of prejudice and discrimination must work together to change this society".

Czinki senior murdered in Maryland.

Douglas on a visit to New York as part of investigating father's death, meets with Zelda Suplee of the Erickson Educational Foundation, and passes on a leaflet for a demonstration in Sheridan Square for 'transvestite and transexual liberation'. However only Suplee and one organizer turned up.

1971
TAO is renamed to Transsexual Action Organization. Transvestites no longer welcome.

Danny O'Connor, who has left wife and child and become Canary Conn, answers an ad in the Los Angeles Free Press for TAO and attends: "The TAO advertised itself as 'a transsexual action organization' but turned out to be a gathering place for a bunch of drag queens who were mostly interested in running pink flags up poles and picketing college campuses as well as having sex with anyone who walked by, male or female. It was a fiasco." (Conn: 202)

____________________________________________________________

There is an excellent book on the Los Angeles music scene in the 1960s: Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon, Headpress, 2013 by David McGowan. It points out that most of the noted musicians associated with Laurel Canyon had fathers in either the military or in intelligence: Frank Zappa, Papa John Philips, Stephen Stills, Gram Parsons. Jim Morrison's father, George Morrison, commanded the US warships in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964 in the incident, false flag or not, that led to the escalation of the US-Vietnamese war.

Carl Douglas Czinki/Doug Delain fits right into this pattern, but is missing from McGowan's book.

There is an idea that Jim Morrison of the Doors survived his death and became Angela Douglas. Yeah right. Douglas commented on this in 2004: "Never even met The Doors, but they got signed with Electra by Arthur Lee. I am not James Douglas Morrison who apparently died in Paris in l97l (not l969.) The Doors, family think he faked his death. Incredibly, we were both born in 43, he in Florida, me in Michigan, I grew up mostly in Florida in the Air Force, he in the Navy, he left Tallahassee in 63-64 for LA he had attended FSU, I left Miami in 65 for LA and got Lee's new band hired at Bido Lito's (see on web), a club helped get open, sang with him a bit, cut two of my songs later with Love members. I was born Douglas Carl Czinki, he was born James Douglas Morrison, so there are some incredible similarities with our lives I can't explain, supernatural. I can sound very much like him when I sing, however, despite the sex change." (Amorous Propensities May 21, 2004 and October 21, 2004.)

Douglas says, GuitarSite 10/15/04: "I found out that Jim Fouratt (now an A and R man with Mercury NYC in a 1993 gay history book, Stonewall, falsely claims he removed firebombs I planted at NYU in 70 and is a big fucking hero. I was briefly in NYC in 70 and he assaulted me and a TV news team interviewing me, stalked me later in Miami and may have been involved in many tries to kill me". I checked Martin Duberman's Stonewall, 1993. There is no entry for Douglas, Czinki or Delain in the index. Fouratt is in the book, but I could not find anything resembling this claim.

Douglas married a woman, was later sexually attracted to other members of TAO, and in 1991 is reported as cat-calling pretty women on the street. In short was gynephilic, and could be said to be a heterosexual male who temporarily became a woman. Thus it is reasonable to ask why he did not simply join Virginia Prince's FPE, which was active in Los Angeles in 1969, before starting a new group? There would have course have been ego-conflicts.

Gift from Euphoria is on sale at Amazon. I cannot find the other albums for sale.

Douglas claims Canary Conn as a TAO co-founder because of her fame as a singer, while, according to her book, she attended only once and was horrified.   Compare her attitude to that of Lili Elvenes (Elbe) who was equally horrified when she met the other trans women at Hirschfeld's Institute.  

Angela Douglas (1943 - 2007) musician, activist

See also: A History of TAO.

In July 2019 a Gender Critical Reddit thread  linked to this posting.  Apparently some anti-trans women think that a letter, be it satirical or whatever, from 42 years ago, written by someone who died 12 years ago, and who never worked well with other trans activists, is a relevant document in discussing trans activism today!!!!                         My Reply.

---------------------

Unlike some of the persons whom I have featured in this series, Angela Douglas had, before her recent death, been recently posting on the web, and has a new CD out. The last item may surprise those who have read the account of Angela Douglas either on Kay Brown's now defunct Transsexual, Transgender and Intersex History site, or in Joanne Meyerowitz: How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States, neither of which mentions her musical career.

As an exercise, I am going to write a sketch of Douglas taking facts only from Brown and Mayerowitz, and then again from Douglas' web postings. The two versions are radically different.

Brown and Mayerowitz version:
Born: Carl Czinki. A hippie and aspiring rock musician who came out as transgender in 1969. She became the radical transy leader in Transsexual Action Organization (TAO)--the major US transgender group other than Reed Erickson's EEF at that time-- in Los Angeles in the early 1970s, and then in Florida. She emphasized the importance of working with both Women's Liberation and Gay Liberation groups. She deplored the medical model and pathologization of transgenderism, and called on the American Psychiatric Association to remove transsexuality from its list of mental disorders. She was antagonistic to the Erickson Education Foundation which she found patronizing and too close to the medical establishment. Satire that Douglas wrote about the exclusion of transies from the lesbian community was recycled misleadingly and out of context by Janice Raymond in The Transsexual Empire, and also by Catherine Millots in Horsex. She later won a lottery prize, obtained surgery, and moved back to Florida.

The contentious writing quoted in Raymond and Millots was originally published in Sister Aug-Sep 1977, p7. As quoted by Raymond p xvii it goes: "Free from the chains of menstruation and child-bearing, transsexual women are obviously far superior to Gennys in many ways .... Genetic women are becoming quite obsolete, which is obvious, and the future belongs to transsexual women. We know this and, and perhaps some of you suspect it. All you have left is your 'ability' to bear children, and in a world which will groan to feed 6 billion by the year 2000, that's a negative asset."


From Douglas's own postings we get a certainly different slant:

Born: Douglas Carl Czinki in Detroit in 1943 to Hungarian immigrants. Raised on US Air Force bases. He completed his education in Tokyo where he was in his first rock band. Served in the US Air Force. In the late 1960s, using the name Doug Delain, he briefly played guitar with Arthur Lee and Love, with Euphoria and then with Warren Zevon. He had a cameo as a pot smoker and did art work for the 1967 film The Trip. Provided his home for a Jimi Hendrix television special. His Cuban wife left him in 1967. Began transition in 1969. She ran TAO which had over 1000 members in 5 countries. She was frequently attacked, and was beaten unconscious 6 times. She dismisses the idea that the letter sent to Sister was satire, and has made comments that are homophobic, misogynist and anti-feminist. She has been an FBI informant since 1972. She had surgery courtesy of John Brown in 1977, which left her mutilated. She helped to get him arrested. She dissolved TAO in 1978. Douglas has lived as a man since 1982, homeless and celibate, except for two years after winning a lottery in 1991. The money ran out when he had a stroke. He also has diabetes. In 1998 he returned to performing as a man, Last Drop Douglas, and and issued a solo CD, Cosmo Alley, in 2003.

Emails and postings consulted:

Douglas Carl Czinki to Kay Brown- no date - included on Brown's site.  Archive. 

A.L. Douglas posting on Sympathy on Milli Vanilli Jul 7, 2000.
Angela Lynn Douglas posting on dev.greenspun.com November 10, 2002.
Angela Douglas 2 postings on "Transsexuals allowed in Olympics" Amorous Propensities May 21, 2004 and October 21, 2004.
A.L. posting on band family tree.com 5/28/2005.
Tanglehead posting on Messageboard for Love Fans 16/11/2005.
Angela Douglas posting on Arthur Lee Tribute June 27, 2006.
Angela Douglas (Tanglehead) posting on Yellow Swordfish>>Arthur Lee and Love 2006-08-26.
Angela Douglas posting on the Cindi Lauper web page. 14 March 2007.
Tanglehead posting on ufowatch no date.


Angela Douglas died in 2007.

Here is an obituary by Mark Hinson in the Tallahassee Democrat on August 24, 2007. It is no longer available on the original site:



Angela's ashes: Farewell to a wild pen pal

LET'S GO BLOG WILD: My mail box is a lot emptier now that self-described "notorious transsexual," rock musician, lottery-winner, lottery-squanderer and prolific letter-writer Angela Douglas has died.
Douglas, who lived in Sneads in Jackson County, died of complications from heart trouble earlier this month. She was 64. As she said in one of her last communiqués: "I am 64 and Paul McCartney doesn't care."
In the above photo are Stuttering John, left, from "The Howard Stern Show" and, right, Angela Douglas. The picture was taken in Panama City Beach, circa 2000.

When I was a young reporter in the '80s, Douglas used to phone me in the newsroom of the Tallahassee Democrat and launch into wild, rambling monologues that were part performance art and part paranoid fantasy. She was always convinced someone had stolen her life story.
When "Top Gun" became a monster box-office smash in 1986, Douglas wanted to sue Tom Cruise for pilfering her self-published autobiography "Triple Jeopardy" from 1982. (I don't remember many trannies flying fighter jets in that pic, unless Goose wasn't telling us something, do you?) Famous musicians such as Warren Zevon, she claimed, had stolen her songs without payment.
Mostly, I just let her vent. As I learned long ago in bartending class, you let the customer talk while you just wipe the bar with a rag and keep saying, "Yep, I know what you mean."
Getting flaky phone calls in a newsroom is nothing new. For a few months, a caller identifying himself as God would phone up to predict the day's weather. And, you know, most of the time he was more accurate than the professional meteorologists we paid to do the same job. (God says it's going to be hot this weekend, by the way.)
I was prepared to write Angela off as just another kook. But then I did a little research and found out she really had worked on the fringes of the music and movies industries in Los Angeles during the '60s and early '70s. She'd worked with Arthur Lee before he formed Love and really did know Zevon (in his starving-artist days). Jimi Hendrix may or may not have recorded one promo at her home in L.A. That house was also used as a set for Roger Corman's 1967 acid-dropping classic "The Trip" with Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper.

Douglas started life as Carl Czinki - and played guitar under the name Doug Delain in the L.A. band called Euphoria - but decided to switch sexes in 1969. The transformation was complete by 1977, when Douglas had become an outspoken writer/journalist for the transgender community. This is the same time period she became convinced television and movie producers were stealing her life story.
I have no idea how or why Douglas ended up in rural Jackson County in the late '80s.She settled in dinky Grand Ridge near Sneads and lived in impoverished conditions. This made her very bitter and she often lashed out at gays and blacks when she called me with another rant.
When her phone calls from pay phones suddenly stopped, they were replaced by a stream of letters. I still have stacks of the things. Some are coherent, some are funny, some are hand-scrawled screeds that are impossible to read.
Then, in the summer of 1991, Douglas had a rare stroke of good fortune. She won $232,567 in the Fantasy Five lottery game. After taxes, the lottery cut her a check for $186,000.
In a newsletter published by the lottery, Douglas crowed that she was going to buy an electric guitar, a used red Corvette, tell everyone in Grand Ridge to kiss her you-know-what and move to Key West.
And that is exactly what she did.
A few months later, she was back in Jackson County living in poverty. Again. She'd found plenty of friends in Key West who were more than happy to help her spend her free money.

Occasionally, I'd get good news from Douglas. In 1997, she wrote a twisted little novelty song called "Andrew Cunanan" and it end up on Dr. Demento's nationally syndicated radio show. (She also penned parody tunes with titles such as "Ghost Eunuchs in the Sky.") In 2003, she released a CD called "Cosmo Alley" under the name Last Drop Douglas. She even played a few live shows at festivals around North Florida and drove to Panama City to meet Stuttering John from Howard Stern's radio show. Douglas both loved and hated Howard Stern.

Most of the Douglas letters, however, were depressing. Naturally, the FBI was after her. She railed against doctors (many of whom I knew personally in Marianna) who were allegedly conspiring against her by denying her treatment. Her surgery from the '60s and '70s had left her with many medical complications, which she discussed at length and I won't repeat. It wasn't pretty, I'll tell you that. I hope sexual-reassingment surgery has gotten a little better since the '60s.

Earlier this year, Douglas sent me a tape she'd recorded while she was in the hospital. It starts with the chilling intro: "This Angela Douglas and I am dying." The rest of the message is classic Douglas - nutty accusations, bold claims, too much personal information about her medical conditions, crazy tales of her musical past. All classic Angela.
As I listened to the tape, it suddenly dawned on me: "Hey, her life story really would make for an interesting movie or play. Wonder why anyone hasn't done it before?"

-----

PS The British actress Angela Douglas, whose first fame was in several Carry On films, is a different person.

PPS Kay Brown's page includes stories, "probably apocryphal" she says, about Douglas as a transactivist at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, and at the Stonewall riot in 1969. These do seem implausible, and in writing the above, I have ignored them.


There was a British branch of TAO. Amazingly Stephen Whittle was involved in it. For details see p192-3 of Ekins & King The Transgender Phenomenon, 2006.


I certainly agree that someone should write a book about Angela Douglas and TAO.