Judy Bowen (1944 - ) business woman, activist

Judy Bowen was assigned male and so raised in Virginia and Tennessee despite feeling otherwise.  The family was religious – church three times a week – and Bowen was a teenage reporter for the local evangelical paper, The Daily Beacon.

This led to a journalism scholarship at the University of Tennessee. Bowen became involved with the civil rights movement where she found greater acceptance as a trans woman. There were several transsexuals at a racially mixed party when three white men came in and started stabbing people. Judy escaped through a window. However they could not call the police because racial mixing was then illegal in the State, and those who were stabbed had to be taken to hospital in separate cars.

A male friend was moving to New York to be a teacher, and Judy went with him. They lived on Long Island. Judy started going to transsexual clubs and one night won a contest at the Queen of Hearts club in Garden City, Long island, when it was raided and they were all arrested. As her friend was a teacher, he would have lost his job if seen with her.

She and three others found a third floor studio apartment at Christopher Street and Gay Street in Greenwich Village, a short walk from the Stonewall tavern. In 1967 Judy became a patient of Harry Benjamin. For a while she worked, as a bookkeeper in male guise, always keeping her jacket on to hide her newly grown breasts. Then she found that she could make good money as a taxi-dancer in the Times Square mafia establishments.

“I started in the dance clubs, like the Tango Palace. It was usually 60/40; 60 percent cis female and 40 percent trans. It was a place where lonely men with problems would go, and they would pay to sit with a girl for an hour. They had to buy champagne and we’d drink water. From there, I graduated to a gentleman’s club in the Times Square area. I was the only transgender person, that I knew of, who worked in that place.” 

She also had a wealthy benefactor.

Judy was not at the Stonewall riots in July 1969 because she was working, but she was part of the Christopher Street Liberation Day Parade a year later. Afterwards she organized two short-lived groups. Transvestites and Transsexuals (TAT) was formed in 1970 but lasted only a couple of months. Bowen was quoted as saying that she found the transvestites “too politically radical”. Transsexuals Anonymous had its inaugural meeting in the office of surgeon Benito Rish in early 1971. About twenty attended, the most prominent of whom was Deborah Hart.

“I started Transsexuals Anonymous because we needed to talk and we had to be anonymous or we might be murdered if someone found out. As transsexuals we were motivated to become as close to genetic females as possible. Transsexuals were living, working, and transitioning into female roles. That's what made us different from transvestites. Some transsexuals go through with the surgery, and some don't. In that group [TA] we basically gave each other confidence. We helped each other with jobs and school. That sort of thing. Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson had STAR. They had no desire to become female.” 

Judy had surgery from Drs George T Whittle and John Clarke at the Jersey Shore Medical Center in 1971. There were complications and then litigation that continued for many years. The Jersey Medical Center discontinued transsexual surgery in response.

Judy in 1974

In 1974 the Gilded Grape announced a Miss Gilded Grape Contest. The most sensational contestant was Judy who spoke for ten minutes about her operations. However her operations seemed to count against her. Drag Magazine commented that rules against surgery should be spelt out clearly in advance. The winner was Eddie, a bartender at the Grape, in drag for the first time.

The FBI were going after the mafia dance halls, and Judy was warned by a lawyer to get out. She had been buying property since before Stonewall:

“I ended up owning an Italian restaurant in Queens for 35 years. I added an art gallery. Eventually I had four buildings on the block and started publishing the Western Queens Gazette, a community-based paper which is still going today, and the Long Island City News. I raised money for youth and senior programs and I got appointed to the community board. I worked to get a gymnasium converted into a youth center to keep the kids off the street. I was and am very community minded.” 

During this period she was mainly non-disclosing of her gender history.

In the late 1970s Judy became a regular at Studio 54, and met Andy Warhol, and was an extra in a couple of Woody Allen films. In the mid-1980s she met the man who became her husband.

In 1998 Judy’s mother passed on, and Judy and her husband decided to move to Las Vegas.

Today, in her 70s, she is an active member of The Center in Las Vegas, which supports the needs of LGBTQ people, as well as a champion of the Safety Dorm for transgender individuals at The Salvation Army, which houses and provides professional support for homeless transgender people in Las Vegas.

• “Drag Drops in on New York’s Drag Oasis: Beauty at the Gilded Grape”. Drag: The International Transvestite Quarterly, 4, 14. 1974: 32, 38. 
• “Transsexual nears trial in malpractice suit”. Drag: The International Transvestite Quarterly, 7, 26. 1978: 4. 
• Joanne Meyerowitz. How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States. Harvard University Press, 2002: 236.
• Brendan Zachariah O’Donnell. Definition and Redefinition: Alliance and Antagonism in Homosexual and Trans Communities in the U.S. BA Thesis, Wesleyen University, 2014: 59. Online. 
• Owen Keenen. “Trans pioneer Judy Bowen looks back at community changes”. Windy City Times, 2016-11-30. Online. 
• Zackary Drucker. “Transgender Activist Judy Bowen Recalls the Stonewall Riots”. Vice: Identity, Nov 29 2018. Online.
• Daniel Villarreal. “This trans activist recently shared her memories of the Stonewall uprising and early life in NYC” LGBTQNation, December 2, 2018. Online. 
• Enzo Marino. “Local transgender woman recounts experience during Stonewall Riots”. Fox5Vegas, Jun 28, 2019. Onine. 
• “Judy Bowen: Center Legacy Award”. The LGBTQ Center of Southern Nevada, 2020. Online.

Ernest Marples (1907 – 1978) Minister of Transport, businessman

​Ernest Marples was raised in Manchester by parents active in the Labour Party. In 1941 he was commissioned into the Royal Artillery and rose to the rank of Captain, before being medically discharged in 1944.

He joined the Conservative Party and was elected Member of Parliament for Wallasey in the 1945 election – despite the winning Labour Party surge. Around the same time he became a director in a construction firm. In 1948, with civil engineer Reginald Ridgway he founded Marples Ridgway and Partners which went on to build roads, dams and power stations.

He was appointed Postmaster General in 1957 by Conservative Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, and then Minister of Transport in 1959, where he stayed until the transfer of power to Labour in 1964. MacMillan remarked that Marples was one of only two in his cabinet who was self-made.

Mr & Mrs Marples

Marples had resigned as a director of Marples Ridgway in 1951 when he became a junior minister, but continued to hold 80% of the company’s shares. He still held them in early 1960 when Marple Ridgway won a tender to build the Hammersmith Flyover despite not being the lower bidder. After a kerfuffle in the press, he attempted to sell his shares to his former partner, Ridgway, but the Attorney-General rejected this as he would be able to buy them back. But he was allowed to sell them to his wife instead. Marples Ridgeway, although not the direct contractor, was involved in the building of the M1, Britain’s first motorway.

In 1962 Marples oversaw the Transport Act which simplified the closure of railways, and appointed Richard Beeching to recommend such closures which amounted to 55% of stations and 30% of track.

It was an open secret that Marples engaged prostitutes, however he was not involved in the Profumo Scandal of 1963 wherein the Secretary of State for War was found to be sharing a mistress with a Soviet naval attaché. A senior judge, Tom Denning was appointed to report on the scandal, and also investigated rumours about other ministers.

His investigation was close to its conclusion when on 9 July a woman using the name Mrs Ann Bailey, but sometimes Mrs Smith, came forward. She explained that she was a full-time prostitute and had for a long time been paid by Marples. She described how he bought women’s clothes and wore them when he met her. She described his further tastes of which, she said, ‘whipping was the least sickening’.  Their meetings often took place at Marples' home at 33 Eccleston Square, (map) previously inhabited by Winston Churchill and close to Victoria Station, and Mrs Bailey was able to give a detailed description of the interior of the house. She further testified that even after their relationship ended, a series of ‘annoying, obscene and filthy’ letters signed by the Minister with the initial E were sent to her, describing services and practices he still required.

It was felt that this very much exposed Marples to a risk of blackmail. It was also felt that Bailey had been encouraged to approach the Denning inquiry by a national newspaper so that once her evidence was authenticated and published in Denning’s report, the newspaper would be clear to pay her and publish the story. Denning arranged a meeting in his office of Marples and Bailey. He acknowledged that he knew her, and they shook hands.

On 14 August there was a crisis meeting of Denning with Prime Minister Macmillan - but they did not mention the Marples situation.  Macmillan hinted at a curious compromise, suggesting to Denning that it might be ‘appropriate at a later stage to write confidentially to the Prime Minister drawing his attention to suspicions of discreditable conduct on the part of Ministers in their private lives’.

The slightly expurgated Denning Report was published in September 1963, and very unusually for a judicial report was a best seller.  A few weeks later Macmillan was hospitalised with prostate cancer, and he used this as an excuse to resign.  He was replaced by Alec Douglas Hume who took the Conservative Party to defeat in the election of October 1964.

Marples was not a minister in the next Conservative Government, that of Edward Heath, 1970-4, and he retired at the 1974 general election. Later that year he became a life peer as Baron Marples of Wallesey.

However his business activities were catching up with him. The tenants of a block of flats he owned in Putney were demanding that he repair serious structural faults; he was being sued for £145,000 by the Bankers Trust merchant bank; Inland Revenue was demanding that he pay nearly 30 years of back taxes on his residence in Eccleston Square; and that he pay capital gains tax on other properties.

In early 1975 he fled to Monte Carlo, and the Treasury froze his assets in Britain. In November 1977 he made a payment of £7,600 to the British government and was able to return.  He spent his final years in France, and died in hospital in Monte Carlo in July 1978 age 70.

In 1994 as per standard practice the official archives relating to the Macmillan government were released, but without the archives relating to the Denning Report.  The then Prime Minister John Major questioned this and was invited to read them.  He then agreed that they remain closed to the public until 2048.

In 2020 Denis Bedoya/Tom Mangold obtained access to the diaries of Thomas Critchley, Denning’s secretary. On this basis they were able to reveal the evidence of Mrs Bailey.  They conclude that she was paid off with an amount equal to what she could expect from a major newspaper for the story.

 “Such a deal would have involved taxpayers’ money buying off a prostitute to keep her quiet to save the government of the day. I calculate that the amount would have been equivalent today to about £250,000. Now that really would have been a scandal.”

• Richard Davenport-Hines. An English Affair: Sex, Class and Power in the Age of Profumo. William Collins, 2013: 20-2, 328-9.
• Martin Rosenbaum. “Profumo scandal evidence still secret in 'cover-up' “. BBC News, 1 february 2020. Online.
• Tom Mangold. “How the official report into the Christine Keeler affair covered up a FAR more sensational sex scandal... and Tory Minister Ernest Marples' kinky antics made Profumo look like a choirboy!”. The Daily Mail, 25 January 2020. Online.
• Denis Bedoya. “How report into the Christine Keeler affair covered up a FAR more sensational sex scandal”. Infosurhoy, January 25, 2020. Online.

EN.Wikipedia

​
______________

The reports by Mangold and Bedoya are word-for-word identical including the use of the first person.

John Campbell/Murray Hall (1850 - 1901) business man, Tammany Hall politician

John Campbell and his younger sister Marie, possibly from Govan, on the Clyde, were orphaned  in 1861.  Marie had worn male clothing due to ‘bad usage’ as a child.   John died two years later when Marie was 13.  He advised her to take his name and his clothes as such would ‘probably enable her the better to make her way in the world’.

In 1869 in Kirknewton, east of Edinburgh, the person now called "John Campbell" married Mary Ann, pregnant and already the mother of two.   

Some months later, in May 1870, John deserted his family.   He found work in Renfrew, adjacent to Govan, east of Glasgow, at the forge of a local shipbuilding company, Henderson, Coulborn & Co.   He lodged with a family and became well-liked for his willingness to help in the home.   He began a relationship with a local woman, Kate, and took her on romantic trips to Edinburgh. 

There was a smallpox epidemic 1870-2 in the Glasgow area.   John attended his landlady when she fell ill.   When the doctor called, he insisted that John needed to be admitted to the infirmary.  John agreed only if he were to remain fully clothed.   The doctor pressed, his suspicions aroused, and John admitted that he was Marie Campbell.   In Kirknewton, parish authorities had sought Mary Ann’s husband.  She had admitted that her husband was a woman, but as her children were not John’s her character was questioned and her claim dismissed.   On hearing the news from Renfrew, it was decided that Mary Ann and a Will Waddel, a witness to the marriage, should accompany the Inspector of the Poor to Renfrew.   John, on seeing Will exclaimed: “Is that you Will Waddel; how’s the wife and bairns?”.   

John was charged with contravening the Registration Act.  Shortly afterwards, John disappeared.

He emigrated to New York, where he gave his name as Murray Hamilton Hall.  The name of his first wife in New York is not documented.   She complained about his flirtations and womanizing, and disappeared mysteriously after a few years.  

Hall soon married again, on Christmas Eve to Celia Lowe, in the Presbyterian Church in Lower 6^th  Ave, and they became US citizens together, 20 October 1875. They adopted a daughter, Imelda, but also known as Millie. Celia, also, complained of his womanizing. Murray ran an employment agency for domestic servants, and also became involved with the Tammany politicians, where he was a member of the General Committee, and was a personal friend of New York State Senator Barney Martin.

Murray was known as a man about town. Although slight and with a rather squeaky voice, he came across as very masculine, and drank and fought within the city political in-crowd. He always wore baggy, rather too large, clothes, and an overcoat even in summer.

Celia died in 1898.

In the US Census of June 1900, Hall listed himself as male, age 60 and that he had immigrated in 1846 from Scotland.  His daughter was listed as Millie, age 20 from Maine. 

Murray Hall suffered cancer of the left breast for many years but avoided medical attention – he said that his declining health resulted from having been knocked down by a bicycle on Fifth Avenue. He purchased a considerable library of medical and surgery books, which he used towards self-treatment and to avoid disclosure. Finally, on his deathbed, he allowed his doctor to examine him closely.

On 19 January the body was buried  at night in an unmarked $12 grave at MountOlivet Cemetery, by his adopted daughter, Imelda.  For the first time since he was 13, the body was dressed in woman’s clothes. 

The inquest was held on the 28^th. Two days of testimony were taken from his doctor and from Imelda.  Imelda continued to refer to her father as ‘he’, and when nudged by the coroner to say ‘she’, She replied: “No … he was always a man to me, and I shall never think of him as a woman”. The all-male jury took just seven minutes to find that Hall had died of natural causes, and was a lady.

Alternate stories of Hall’s life were soon in circulation: that he was John Anderson, born Mary, from Ireland; that he had been born Elizabeth Hall in the lower west side of Manhattan; that he had worked the California gold fields in the 1840s. 

John Campbell:

·         “ ’A Woman Married To A Woman’: Shock Revelations and Intrigue In Victorian Scotland”.  A History of Working-Class Marriage, September 30, 2014.  Online.  The accounts of John Campbell.”

Murray Hall:

·         “Woman Long Posed as Man”. New York Times. Jan 18, 1901. Online at: http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5031.
·         “Known as a Man for Sixty Years, She died a Woman: Astounding Life History of Murray Hall, the Sixth Avenue Employment Agent”.  New York Evening World, Jan 18, 1901.  Online. 
·         “Murray Hall Fooled Many Shrewd Men”. New York Times. Jan 19 1901. http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/magic/news/hall.html.
·         “Story of ‘Murray Hall’ told by her adopted daughter: Woman who Masqueraded as a Man for More than Forty Years was Buried Yesterday – Other Similar Cases in History”.  The St Louis Republic, Jan 20 1901.  Online. 
·         “The Murray Hall Case: Possible Solution of New York’s Strange Mystery: The Story of an Old Nurse”.  Goldboro Weekly Argus, Feb 14, 1901.  Online.
·         Havelock Ellis. Sexual Inversion. In Studies In The Psychology Of Sex. Random House. 1936: 246-7.
·         Jonathan Ned Katz, Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A. Avon, 1978: 353-361.
·         Karen Abbott, “The Mystery of Murray Hall,” July 21, 2011, Smithsonian.com, Online.
·         Lydia Nelson. “Reanimating Archiving/Archival Corporealities: Deploying ‘Big Ears’ on De Reigeur Mortis Intervention”.  QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, 1, 2, Summer 2014: 132-159.

__________

The first wife in New York is not named.   There is no reason to assume that she was Kate from Renfrew, but no reason to rule that out either.

Imelda replied  “No … he was always a man to me, and I shall never think of him as a woman”, but only 9 days before had buried him in female clothes.  His sex-gender disparity had come as a shock to her, and she had not had time to think it through.

Imelda ("Story of ‘Murray Hall’ told by her adopted daughter") remembered that her adoptive parents were married on Christmas Eve in the Presbyterian Church in Lower 6^th  Ave, but was not sure which year.   As a variant, Lydia Nelson has a footnote, #55, that they “ were married on Dec. 24, 1872 at the Church of the Strangers on Mercer Street. As of 1901, 'the record [was] on file at the bureau of vital statistics,' according to the Salt Lake Herald, January 27, 1901: 12”.  If this is so, the marriage to the first wife in New York was a matter of months, not years. 

Thank you to Lydia Nelson for discovering the naturalization certificate and the census return of the Halls and including them in her article.   She also worked out where Murray’s unmarked grave is. 

Most writers about Murray Hall take their facts from Havelock Ellis,  Hall was not mentioned in the original 1897 edition of Havelock Ellis’ Sexual Inversion (obviously), but  he was added in the 1915 edition.  Ellis states of Hall: 

“Her real name was Mary Anderson, and she was born in Govan, in Scotland.   Early left an orphan, on the death of her only brother she put on his clothes and went to Edinburgh, working as a man.  Her secret was discovered during an illness, and she finally went to America.”  

He cites the Weekly Scotsman, February 9, 1901 (which unfortunately is not available online).   

This is supported by “The Murray Hall Case: Possible Solution of New York’s Strange Mystery: The Story of an Old Nurse”, cited above in which Mrs Canning, a nurse previously with the Edinburgh Hospital, tells of Mary Anderson whose brother John died and she took his identity.  He went to Govan and there married.   After infidelities and a separation, the wife disclosed that John was a woman, and a warrant was issued for his arrest.  John went to Duddison close to Edinburgh (no such place – did she mean Duddingston?).  Suspected of having smallpox, John was taken into the Edinburgh hospital, and his body discrepancy discovered.  He was arrested on the outstanding warrant.   Edinburgh Hospital had two sections: Hamilton Hall and Murray Hall.   Hence John’s name in New York: Murray Hamilton Hall.  I assume that Canning means the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, established 1729.   However I cannot find confirmation that it had two halls of that name – Google fails to find them, nor are they mentioned in Helen Dingwall’s A History of Scottish Medicine.

John Campbell and John Anderson seem to be two variants of the same tale:

ü  Born Mary or Maria  
ü  Elder brother John who dies
ü  Takes John’s name and clothes
ü  Ellis has John go to Edinburgh; Campbell went to Kirknewton, east of Edinburgh
ü  Wife abandoned, she tells that he is a woman and a warrant is issued
ü  Works in Renfrew or Govan which are only 2 miles apart
ü  John is taken ill in the smallpox epidemic, and his body discovered to be discrepant.

These parallels are almost convincing.   Do we have a claim from 1901 that John Campbell and Murray Hall are the same?  Again Lydia Nelson delivers (p139):  “According to Sir Henry Littlejohn, Edinburgh, Scotland’s Medical Officer of Health, Hall (alias John Campbell) was born an orphan in Govan, Scotland; she wore her dead brother’s clothes to gain employment. (‘Masqueraded in Glasgow,’ Washington Post, January 29, 1901: 1)”.  Littlejohn was Edinburgh’s Medical Officer of Health.   He was also one of the two men who inspired Conan Doyle when he created Sherlock Holmes.  

On the other hand when Murray Hall was registered in the 1900 census he claimed to be 60 (born 1840) and had arrived in the US in 1846 (aged 6).  

Caveat lector!

Dante Gill (1930 - 2003) sex entrepreneur, mobster

Lois Jean Gill was raised in Pittsburgh, and was first arrested at age 18. By the late 1950s Gill was an accomplished horse-rider, was working as a blacksmith.

From 1963 Gill worked as a prostitute, and was arrested for it the next year. Otherwise Gill was a retailer, running a baby furniture shop and a frozen foods store. By 1968 Gill was giving his name as Dante, and explained that he was a man.

He became involved with George Lee, the Pittsburgh mobster involved with pornography and prostitution. Gill’s mother Agnes died in 1973 after a struggle with cancer. Afterwards Gill became manager of one of Lee’s massage parlors (where sexual services were available). Here Gill learned the sex business: how to deal with johns and vice cops, how to run a legitimate cover business.

George Lee was gunned down in 1977, which set off a battle for his assets. Nick DeLucia, a former fireman, took several of the parlors, and for a while Gill was his business partner. However not without a struggle: one employee was murdered at home; a parlor was destroyed by a package bomb received at Christmas and one sex worker was killed. Amidst this, Dante found the time to marry Cynthia from Texas on a vacation in Hawai’i. They lived together in Pittsburgh, although the marriage did not last.

In November, the gay bar in Tampa, Florida run by an associate, Frank Cocchiara, burned down. Gill gave him a job running one of the parlors in Pittsburgh. Cocchiara became a regular at Pittsburgh’s drag balls, befriended local gay activist Herb Beatty and was one of the first to become HIV+.

In 1980 an arson attack destroyed one of Gill’s parlors, killing three men who were sleeping on the top floor. The partnership between DeLucia and Gill had degenerated to antagonism. DeLucia and some associates were even charged with an alleged plot to kill Gill (although due to a key witness’ attempt to extort money from the defense, nothing was ever proven in court).

Dante was tough enough to hold on. He got both his adversaries and the police to refer to him as Mr Gill. He expanded into gay bars, and into supplying anabolic steroids. He dressed expensively, traveled the world and collected rare animals. He was known for reciting Irish poetry.

Dante & Cynthia 1984

DeLucia was jailed for tax evasion in 1981. Then Gill attempted to re-introduce Lee’s old monopoly by chasing the competition out of town. However he claimed to earn only $60,000 for income tax purposes, but the tax authorities were able to demonstrate that he was spending much more than that. They also found that each of his parlors brought in more than $500,000 each year.

In 1984 he was arrested, convicted and jailed for tax evasion. He was sentenced to 7 years, but paroled in 1987. The tax authorities filed a $12.5 million claim against him. However he no longer had much money.

Also he required dialysis. He died in hospital aged 72.

• Torsten Ove. “Obituary: Dante ‘Tex’ Gill / Sexually ambivalent rub parlor owner”. Pittsburgh Post-Gazett, January 09, 2003. Online.
• “The complex and tough Dante ‘Tex’ Gill. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, February 17, 2014. Online.
• “Revealed: The incredible life of transgender gangster Mr Gill who controlled a criminal empire of brothels in 1970s Pittsburgh and will controversially be portrayed by Scarlett Johansson in her latest movie”. The Daily Mail, 6 July 2018. Online.
• Furio_from_naples. “Dante ‘Tex’ Gill vs Pittsburgh Mafia”. Gangsterbb.net, 07/23/18. Online.
• Richard Gazarik. Wicked Pittsburgh. The History Press, 2018: 123-5.

EN.Wikipedia

Angelina Mead King (1980–) scion of motel business, car racer.

Ian King was the son of Archimedes King (1953 - 2015), the owner of the Victoria Court chain of motels in the Philippines, himself the son of Angelo King (1927 - ), a Chinese-Filipino who established the Anito Lodge chain of motels.

Ian became a well-known sports car enthusiast, and an executive in his father’s business. In 2006 he was introduced to Joey Mead (1976 - ), the prominent Filipino model of Iranian descent who was raised in Australia. A few months into the relationship he mentioned that he liked to wear female clothes. Joey was supportive, and took him shopping for female clothes.

They were married in the US in 2011. They were open to their families re Ian that is Angelina. Archimedes was initially reluctant to accept it, but came round.

Archimedes died in a helicopter crash in July 2015.

A few months after that King saw an endocrinologist and was started on a prescription for hormones.

image on Istagram

In July 2016, an until-then private Instagram account with the handle @hailtothe_queen_ went public and thereby it was announced to the world that Ian, now to be known as Angelina, was trans. There was general support even from the motor racing community. She owns 20 cars, mainly in Manila, but also in Los Angeles and Germany.

• Aya Lowe. “Shhh...Victoria Court takes on new image”. Rappler, February 17, 2013. www.rappler.com/business/21878-victoria-court-same-face,-new-brand.
• Isabel Roces. “Ian King loves autos, DC shoes, fitted wip caps—and moisturizers”. Inquirer, August 16, 2013. http://lifestyle.inquirer.net/120233/ian-king-loves-autos-dc-shoes-fitted-wip-caps-and-moisturizers.
• “From Ian to Angelina: Motel heir is trans woman”. The Philippine Star, July 4, 2016. www.philstar.com/headlines/2016/07/04/1599365/ian-angelina-motel-heir-trans-woman.
• “How Ian King became the Queen of Joey Mead”. The Philoppino Star, July 6, 2016. www.philstar.com/lifestyle/fashion-and-beauty/2016/07/06/1599820/lifestyle.
• Paolo Reyes, Jerome Gomez, & Pam Quiñones “Sometimes the King is a Woman: The Joey Mead King Tell-All”. Rogue, July 2016. http://rogue.ph/joey-mead-king.

________________________________________________

There is of course a lot of class privilege here.  The ordinary Filipino Bakla or Bayot would not be given the same degree of acceptance, and far from storing part of her car collection in LA, would find it very difficult to even get a visa at all.

Otto Spengler (1876? – 194?) businessperson.

(I wrote a less detailed version of this in April 2009. This revision incorporates details from sexologists Talmay, Henry and Benjamin.)

Otto’s family were German. Otto was the 13^th of 14 children. The first five died of cholera. The youngest also died young. His father died when he was four, and from then he slept with his mother in her bed until he was 14. He was her Nesthäckchen, the youngest living. He was girlish in appearance and his dressmaker sister used him as a dress model. He often wore girls’ shoes and dresses as a child.

A first experience with a woman at age 18 resulted in a gonorrhea infection. He emigrated to the US at age 19 (1895?).

A casual gift of theatre tickets to a young woman led to him being approved by her mother, and to marriage. They had two daughters and a son. Otto wore female clothing at all opportunities and wore female underwear under his male clothing at other times. He built up a wardrobe of 70-100 dresses. All the family knew of his dressing. He went to many masquerade balls in female dress. The younger daughter called him her papa-lady. He kept his hair long, but pinned up. He did not go to a barber for over twenty-five years, despite his wife’s urging. Nevertheless he became a successful businessman.

Back in Berlin Otto applied to the police for a permit to transvest, but without success. He transvested in public anyway. Magnus Hirschfeld said that he was an inverted lesbian, and he joined a Berlin lesbian club that tolerated transvestites.

He was a member of Hirschfeld’s Wissenschaftlich-humanitäres Komitee (Scientific-Humanitarian Committee), and corresponded with Hirschfeld. In May 1906 Spengler gave a lecture on sexual intermediates to the German Scientific Society in New York – this is the earliest known lecture on the subject in New York.

In 1912 Otto was propositioned by a friend who found him in female clothing. He did not get any satisfaction from the encounter, but found it interesting.

An account of Spengler and a few other transvestites was the first such to be presented to doctors in the US. This was in a lecture by the sexologist Bernard Talmey to the New York Society of Medical Jurisprudence in December 1913, and published the next year in the New York Medical Journal. Spengler is not named, but simply referred to as ‘Mr S” and “first patient”.

In 1916 the five-year-old daughter of Otto’s neighbor was sent out to buy milk and was raped and murdered. The janitress tattled to the police about Spengler’s dress habits and he became the prime suspect. A search found blood-stained clothing (from his wife’s most recent period) and for four weeks he was under constant supervision. He had an alibi from a servant, and the police offered the servant $2,000 to change her story, but she remained loyal. It was established that the blood was menstrual, and the investigation was discontinued. The crime was never solved.

Spengler had corresponded for many years with the Oswego, New York transvestite doctor, Mary Walker, and attempted to secure her collection of pictures and letters when she died in 1919.

He had become a medical patient of Harry Benjamin who in 1928, at Spengler’s request , prescribed the newly developed progynon (later known as estradiol), an estrogenic hormone, and x-ray sterilization of the testicles. This was Benjamin’s first transgender case.

Shortly afterwards, Otto’s wife and son left him. The son had become the youngest press agent on Broadway, but died of tuberculosis at age 21.

Spengler suffered a financial loss in the Depression, but continued with a mail-order business and press-cutting service. He boasted that he had sold to the Prince of Wales, and to the Soviet Government.

In 1931 when Magnus Hirschfeld visited New York, Otto was noted in the audience and was pleased to be referred to as a typical transvestite. Spengler himself quoted Talmey’s article in a letter about himself to the New York Evening Post in 1933.

Spengler is one of the transvestites profiled in George W Henry’s Sex Variants, 1941, where he is given the pseudonym Rudolph von H. Shortly after that Otto was in a street accident, and was taken unconscious to hospital. When his underwear was discovered, the examining physician wrote into the hospital record: “patient is obviously a degenerate".

When George Henry (or one of his assistants) interviewed Otto, he was 64, blind in one eye because of a cataract and glaucoma, and living alone in a small dingy apartment cluttered with figures and portraits of women and with forms to display dresses. There is no record of his passing.

*Not the German political philosopher.

• Otto Spengler. Monatsberichte des Wissenschaftlich-humanitären Komitees, 5, 1906. Reprinted in 151. Jonathan Katz. Gay American History: Lesbians And Gay Men In The U.S.A. A Discus Book, 1978: 575.
• Bernard Simon Talmey. "Transvestism. A contribution to the study of the psychology of sex", New York Medical Journal, 21 Feb 1914, pp.362-368.  Incorporated into his Love, a Treatise on the Science of Sex-Attraction: For the Use of Physicians and Students of Medical Jurisprudence. New York: Practitioners' Pub. Co, 1915: 298-307. Partially reprinted in Jonathan Katz. Gay/Lesbian Almanac. Harper & Row. 1983: 344-8.
• Otto Spengler. Letter to the Editor. New York Evening Post, February 15 1933.
• George W. Henry. Sex Variants: A Study of Homosexual Patterns. New York: Paul B. Hoeber 1948: 487-98.
• Harry Benjamin. The Transsexual Phenomenon. Warner Books Edition 1977/PDF: 51/23,29.
• Harry Benjamin. “Introduction”. In Richard Green & John Money. Transsexualism and Sex Reassignment. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1969: 1-2.
• Leah Cahan Schaefer & Connie Christine Wheeler. “Harry Benjamin's first ten cases (1938-1953): a clinical historical note”. Archives of Sexual Behavior 24:1 Feb 1995: 3. Online at www.helen-hill.com/pdf/hbfirst10cases.pdf.
• Jennifer Terry. An American Obsession: Science, Medecine, and Homosexuality in Modern Society. University of Chicago Press, 1999: 111-2, 259-260,
• Joanne Meyerowitz. How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States. Cambridge, Ma, London: Harvard University Press, 2002: 46, 298n105.
• Pierre-Henri Castel. La métamorphose impensable: essai sur le transsexualisme et l'identité personnelle.Gallimard, 2003: 51, 54, 465, 466, 472.

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

There seems to be no record of Spengler’s birth year. I am using the 1948 edition of George W Henry Sex Variants. However the first edition was 1941. In the undated interview with ‘Rudolph von H’, it is stated that he ‘is now sixty-four years old’. For the book to be published in 1941, the interview cannot be later than 1940. Therefore I have presumed a birth year of 1876.

Various books on homosexuality, more than listed, mention Spengler’s May 1906 lecture in Chicago, and some treat him as a gay-rights pioneer (despite the lack of homosexuality in his life), but do not at all mention his transvestity. Of particular note is Terry’s book which writes about Spengler’s lecture in one chapter, and then about Rudolph von H in another, but does not mention that it is the same person.

Spengler would seem to be the first recorded trans person to take artificial hormones.

Did Spengler have a female name for himself? At a guess, yes. However it is not recorded by Talmey, Henry or Benjamin.

Benjamin discusses Spengler within the section The Fetishistic Transvestite. Except for Progynon, Otto seems to have stayed as such until old age. Like many trans persons in the early 20^th century, the question arises: if modern technology were then available, would he have progressed into womanhood? That could be argued either way, but despite being the first patient to receive external estrogen, he never started living as female, unlike say Danielle O’L also in New York in the 1930s.

Castel says that Benjamin first met Spengler in 1938, Wheeler & Schaefer say that they met in the 1920s, but that HB became his doctor only in 1938; in Sex Variants, Spengler says that he was then 52, which would seem to be 1928. Benjamin in Green & Money, 1969, says the ‘early 1920s’. As Progynon was developed by Adolf Butenandt and his future wife, and was first on the market in 1928, 1928 or 1929 is the most likely date for Spengler’s treatment by Benjamin.

Harry Benjamin, 1965: 51, knows of Talmey’s discussion of Spengler, but does not seem to know of Henry’s.

Wheeler & Schaefer say that Spengler married at age 26, but Spengler interviewed by Henry says 19.

Wheeler & Schaefer say: “Magnus Hirschfeld informed Otto that he, Otto, was in fact also the inspiration for his famous work published in 1910, Transvestism (English translation, 1991)”. They give no page reference. I have looked in both the 1991 translation and the German original and fail to confirm this.

Wheeler & Schaefer say: ” Otto's transvestism was described by Talmay in his medical book entitled Love as a "sexo-aesthetic inversion of a pure artistic imitation, occurring in highly artistic, honorable, moral, inconspicuous, nonoffensive individuals who would never commit wrong when masquerading". Actually, speaking not of Spengler in particular but transvestism in general, Talmay says that it “is a sexo-esthetic inversion of pure artistic imitation. Hence it occurs mostly in artists and in men of letters, i.e., in persons endowed with a highly developed artistic taste. Such persons are, as a rule, disgusted at the sight of the organs of the sex to which the individual by anatomical configuration belongs, while such sights offer to the homosexual individual additional charm and piquancy.”

Books in which one would expect to find at least a mention of Otto Spengler, but is disappointed:

• Charlotte Wolff. Magnus Hirschfeld: A Portrait of a Pioneer in Sexology. 1986
• George Chauncey. Gay New York. 1994

The original version of this article was 18 April 2009. A few weeks later, a blogger by the moniker of Tianewu stole my text and posted it as her own work.

The Financial Times list of LGBT executives

The Financial Times has released its 2015 list of 100 LGBT Executives .   

It is no surprise that there are very few trans women – and no trans men at all – on the list.


4 Martin Rothblatt      CEO at United Therapeutics Corporation

61 Antonia Belcher      Building consultant



And in their Future Leaders  list:

7 Amy Stanning  Shared Services Director at Barclays Bank.



In 2014 The Financial Times List included

47 Margaret Stumpp  at  Quantitative Management Associates, a subsidiary of Prudential Financial,

96 Isabella Segal   Senior partner at accounting firm, Nyman Libson Paul


In 2013 The First Financial Times List included

33 Margaret Stumpp



________________________________________________________________

See also executives, more in the past than current, who have been featured on this site.

Racheal McGonigal (1955 - ) farmer, businessman, sex worker

McGonigal was raised in Gisborne, north-east New Zealand. He cross-dressed from age 7, but also played in the school's rugby first 15 and was head prefect.

At 21 he consulted a doctor about feeling female, and was advised to grow a beard.

He became a farmer and business man who was married for 14 years, and with his wife had two children. He experimented with female hormones even before divorce.

Afterwards McGonigal had relationships with women while also investigating transsexuality online.

His then girlfriend found out and there was a revelation at his daughter's 21^st birthday, and within days all the family knew. His father died 10 days later. Rejected by the children, whom she has not seen since, McGonigal lost 20kg (3 stones) in weight.

Racheal, as she became, had genital surgery and breast augmentation with Dr Sanguan Kunaporn in Phuket, Thailand, February, 2006. The operation was filmed.

Racheal became a prostitute under the name of Storm. With Summer Bardot she escorted across Australia and New Zealand. She later returned to New Zealand and lived in Auckland where she opened a brothel.

She was featured in Rachel Francis &  Michael Larsen's 2012 book about the sex industry in New Zealand.

Racheal has published 6 books: 2 volumes of autobiography, a novel, a book of photographs from Andrew to Racheal; a collection of articles on trans topics and a short guide to transition.

"The only things I'm missing are my kids and a partner. I love my kids and I think about them every day. I'm their father, always was and always will be."

• Racheal McGonigal. "Rachael's story: A minority within a minority". GayNZ, 19^th September 2009. www.gaynz.com/articles/publish/36/article_7920.php.
  
• Racheal McGonigal. Patient testimonial for Dr Sanguan and staff, 26/09/2006. http://www.phuket-plasticsurgery.com/testimonials.html.
  
• Natalie Scarr. "Sex-change dad: I went from a prop to a hooker: After 50 years as a man, this father became a woman". Yahoo, February 11, 2011. http://nz.lifestyle.yahoo.com/new-idea/real-life/article/-/8816024/sex-change-dad-i-went-from-a-prop-to-a-hooker.
  
• Rachel Francis &  Michael Larsen.  Naked truth: lifting the lid on the New Zealand sex industry.  Auckland, Penguin, 2012: 79-97. 
  
• Racheal McGonigal. A Pictorial Transformation - Him to Her (Transsexual Transition). Kindle, 2012.
  
• Racheal McGonigal. Country Boy to City Girl (Transsexual Transtion). Kindle, 2012.
  
• Racheal Storm McGonigal. Summer Storm (Transsexual Transition Book 2). Kindle, 2012.
  
• Racheal McGonigal. The Transgender Guide (Transsexual transition). Kindle, 2012.
  
• Racheal McGonigal. "Misunderstandings: Transsexual vs transgender". Stuff, 11/01/2013. www.stuff.co.nz/stuff-nation/8162944/Misunderstandings-Transsexual-vs-transgender.
  
• Racheal McGonigal. Be Careful What You Wish For. Kindle, 2013.
  
• Racheal McGonigal. Reflections. Kindle, 2013.
  
• http://transgenderstorm.yolasite.com. No Longer available.
  
• http://acquiringavagina.blogspot.com. No longer available.
  

Transgenderstorm    Rachealstorm    Amazon Biography    LinkedIn



_________________________________________________________

Racheal describes herself as a ‘sex-change female', not a phrase that has caught on. 

Top marks to Racheal for her transsexual pride and her willingness to show photographs of her male phase.

Miranda Yardley (1967 - ) accountant, music magazine publisher

++some changes of detail, based on feedback from Miranda.

From Manchester, Yardley completed a degree in Accounting and Finance at Bangor University in 1990.

After moving to London, Yardley qualified as a Chartered Accountant and worked externally for a publishing company. In 2000 Yardley & Co, a small independent accounting business was set up. The publisher considered shedding a couple of titles.

“Early in 2002 the company wanted to remove Terrorizer from their portfolio of titles, and they offered it to me earlier in the year and I politely declined, later on the same year the company’s circumstances changed and when they offered again, I took it with both hands”.

Terrorizer, published every four weeks, specialized in extreme music, and Yardley's takeover was at the time of its first Genre Specials: Punk, Gore and Prog in 2002 and Thrash in 2003. They also arranged live gigs. Yardley incorporated as Dark Arts Ltd.


Terrorizer Online was launched in 2007.  2009 saw the bi-monthly Dominion and the standalone Sick Sounds.

“I made a very difficult decision last year to move from a role as a practising accountant and earning a reasonable amount while part-time managing Terrorizer to taking on these concepts that I had in my head”.

It was also during this period, 2008, that Yardley completed transition as Miranda.

"I am known as being a trans woman who gets along in a world that’s very male dominated, not that I would ever deny the male privilege that got me here."

Miranda is an outspoken woman, and does not automatically accept the new dogmas of the trans movement.

"What are the implications for women of positing the existence of a "female brain" in a society where to be female is to be considered inferior? Should someone be accepted as a woman just because they say they are? Do the rights of a trans woman who has lived as a man for 60 years to not feel intimidated by having to use male facilities trump the rights of women to have a safe space where they do not need to be concerned about voyeurism or sexual violence? "

Others have rushed in to proclaim her to be a TERF, or a 'self-hating trans woman". She labels her own position as 'gender critical' a term proposed by Joan W Scott in 1986, also used by some anti-trans feminists with far less nuance.

On 11 August 2014 BBC's Newsnight attempted to set a discussion re the boxing promoter and UKIP candidate, Kellie Maloney, who had recently come out as trans. They approached some feminists such as Julie Bindel and Sarah Ditum, but based on previous experience none of them would have anything to do with the topic. Therefore Newsnight settled on two trans women and one trans man: Miranda Yardley, Paris Lees and Fred McConnell. Paris took umbrage with the lineup and tweeted that she was “not prepared to enter into a fabricated debate about trans people’s right to exist/express themselves". Fred tweeted that it was a “TERF-filled trap”. Then Newsnight had to inform Miranda that the proposed session was cancelled. The Independent invited both Miranda and Paris to write about the experience. Miranda filed her version, but again Paris pulled out.

• Miranda Yardley. "Burning from the Inside". Ommadusk.tumblr, August 12, 2014. http://ommadusk.tumblr.com/post/94531254797/mirandagate-why-the-bbcs-newsnight-pulled-trans.
  
• Miranda Yardley. "Kellie Maloney, Newsnight and the debate the transgender community refused to have". New Statesman, 18 August 2014. www.newstatesman.com/politics/2014/08/kellie-maloney-newsnight-and-debate-transgender-community-refused-have.
  
• Sarah Ditum. "No-platforming and Newsnight". Sarahditum.com, 12 August 2014. http://sarahditum.com/2014/08/12/no-platforming-and-newsnight.
• Miranda Yardley.  Emails to Zagria, 22-23 August 2014.
  

LinkedIn     SoundSphere      Terrorizer   blog
_______________________________________________________________________________

The prospect of three transsexuals being able to discuss their differences without the balance of others that the media always seem to feel is obligatory was a delightful opportunity squandered.

Miranda Yardley is an admirable example of a trans woman who has done something useful with her life.

We do need to hear from Paris Lees about why she is so terrified of discussing with another transwoman who has different opinions. 

Anna Grodzka (1954–) publisher, entrepreneur, Member of Parliament

Krzysztof Bęgowski was born in Otwock, 24 km southeast of Warsaw, and raised by adoptive parents. Krzysztof graduated in Clinical psychology from the University of Warsaw, where he was active in the Student's Union and the Communist Party. He married and became a father.

In the 1980s he worked in publishing and became an executive at Alma Press. He then ran his own publishing business, and got into radio as an executive. He was active in Socjaldemokracja Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej, SdRP, the successor to the Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza, PZPR (the Polish Communist Party) and stayed with it in 1999 when it was folded into the Sojusz Lewicy Demokratycznej, SLD (the Democratic Left Alliance).

By 2007 their son was an adult, and the Bęgowskis divorced. Krzysztof then transitioned as Anna Grodzka with surgery in Bangkok in 2010.   Changing her birth certificate led to her discovering for the first time that she had been adopted, and to a discovery of three younger sisters.

"I never changed my biological sex, I have only undergone adjustment surgery, because I don't believe you can change your sex. The surgery that trans people go through are adjustment procedures."

In 2008 she was co-founder and then president of Trans-Fuzja which was an activist group for trans persons. She was also vice-president of the Commission for Social Dialogue Committee for Equal Treatment under the President of the Capital City Warsaw.

On 10 April 2010, a Polish Air Force plane on route to Smolensk crashed killing the Polish President Lech Kaczyński and 95 others, many members of the Polish elite. In the aftermath Janusz Palikot founded a new political party, Ruch Palikota, initially named after himself. The party was anti-clerical, pro-pot, pro-EU, pro-gay marriage and in favour of flat taxes. It attracted mainly entrepreneurs as candidates, one of whom was Anna Grodzka, and another was the openly gay Robert Biedroń. In the October 2011 elections the new party received 10% of the vote and 40 seats in the Sejm. Grodzka and Biedroń became list MPs. In 2013 Grodzka was nominated for Deputy Speaker, but the MPs voted to keep the incumbent.

In 2013 she was Grand Marshall at Dublin Pride, the first non-Irish person to be so. 

Her wife has broken off contact, but she is in contact with her son.

++In 2015 the Polish Parliament passed a Gender Accordance Act: 252 MPs voted for, with 158 against, and 11 abstained.   However the President, Andrzej Duda, vetoed it, which left Anna feeling defeated, and in the general election of October 2015, she lost her seat, along with the entire left wing.

• Lee Moran. "Spot the new girl! Europe's first transsexual MP takes her seat in Polish parliament". The Daily Mail, 8 November 2011. www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2059043/Anna-Grodzka-Worlds-transsexual-MP-takes-seat-Polish-parliament.html.
  
• "Transsexual MP won’t become parliament deputy speaker". Polskie Radio DLA Zagranicy, 8.02.2013. www.thenews.pl/1/9/Artykul/126660,Transsexual-MP-won%E2%80%99t-become-parliament-deputy-speaker. 
  
• David Hudson. "Anna Grodzka interview: what's it like being the world's only transsexual MP?". The Guardian, 3 May 2013. http://careers.theguardian.com/anna-grodzka-worlds-only-transsexual-mp. 
• Krystyną Pytlakowską.   "Anna Grodzka wychodzi z szafy".   Polki, 2014.   http://polki.pl/zycie_gwiazd_znaniilubiani_artykul,10026582.html.
• "Anna Grodzka odchodzi z polityki! Będzie tworzyć radio z Ewą Wanat".  se.pl, 31.10.2015.  www.se.pl/wiadomosci/polityka/anna-grodzka-odchodzi-z-polityki-bedzie-tworzyc-radio-z-ewa-wanat_718135.html. 
• Vanessa Gera.  "In right-wing shift, new Polish parliament has no left wing".  Kxan, October 28, 2015.  http://kxan.com/ap/in-right-wing-shift-new-polish-parliament-has-no-left-wing.
  

PL.WIKIPEDIA    HomoPedia

Louise Hannon (1962–) business development manager, photographer.

Hannon was raised in Dublin. In the five years up to 2006, Hannon, self-employed, had worked as a business development manager at First Direct Logistics Ltd, and broke up with wife and children.

In October Hannon disclosed to management that she was transsexual and would be leaving because she did not think that a transport firm "would be comfortable with it". However she was encouraged to stay, but was asked to wait a few months to accommodate a new staff member.

She changed her name by deed poll in March and arrived at the office, but was told to work from home and to maintain her male identity on the phones, and when meeting clients. She was also told not to use the women's toilet at work (despite the fact that the manager often did so if the men's was occupied). Later she was told that a new employee had been hired, and there was no desk for her at the office. In July Hannon was told that the company director was not happy with her work. She left feeling that she had been constructively dismissed.

She appealed to the Equality Tribunal as she was entitled to do under the Employment Equality Act 1998. The Tribunal awarded her €35,422.71, and commented: "requesting Ms Hannon to switch between a male/female identity whenever the respondent felt the need for it constituted direct discrimination on the gender and disability grounds".

Louise has been Co-Chair of Labour LGBT Elected to the Labour Equality Co-ordinating Council, sat on the steering group of the Equality and Rights Alliance, been Vice Chair of Transgengender Equality Network Ireland (TENI).

She currently works as a photographer in Dublin.

• Justine Quinn. "Transgender Employee Awarded €35,000 by Equality Tribunal for Discrimination at Work". EqualJus, 211-4-19. http://www.equal-jus.eu/node/306.
  
• Louise Hannon. "I know I’m a woman, and my gender should be recognised". The Journal, Feb 16 2012. www.thejournal.ie/readme/column-%E2%80%98i-know-i%E2%80%99m-a-woman-and-my-gender-should-be-recognised%E2%80%99-356321-Feb2012.
  
• Louise Hannon. "I was let down by those I trusted and had faith in". The Journal, 26 April 2011. www.thejournal.ie/readme/column-i-was-let-down-by-those-i-trusted-and-had-faith-in-126674-Apr2011.
  
• Louise Hannon, Orlaith O'Sullivan, Lydia Foy. Trans Voices in Ireland. TENI, 2012.
  
• Allison Bray. "Transsexual is awarded €35,000: Firm says sorry in landmark equality case". Independent.IE, 04 December 2012. www.independent.ie/irish-news/transsexual-is-awarded-35000-26724928.html.
  
• "Transsexual wins tribunal payout". Indpendent.IE, 30 November 2012. http://www.independent.ie/breaking-news/irish-news/transsexual-wins-tribunal-payout-26725394.html.
  
• Orlaith O'Sullivan (ed). Equality & Identity: Trans and Intersex Experience in Ireland. Essays by Louise Hannon, Broden Giambrone, Orlaith O'Sullivan. TENI, 2013.
  

http://louisehannonphotography.smugmug.com.

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.