US Post Office, censorship, sex and gender - Comstockery

First published March 2013.

Most countries use their postal systems to censor correspondence and publications.   This is in addition to censorship though the court system.  The usual excuse is that of security, but once censorship is in place it often extends to sex and gender topics.   And of course this censorship means that somebody at the post office opens your parcels to check inside.

Anthony Comstock

This article is just about the US.

1872.  Post Office Act, §148 made it illegal to send any obscene or disloyal materials

1873.  The Comstock Law.  An amendment to the Post Office Act of 1872 made it illegal to send any "obscene, lewd, and/or lascivious" materials “or any drug or medicine, or any article whatever, for the prevention of conception, or for causing unlawful abortion, or shall advertise the same for sale, or shall write or print, or cause to be written or printed, any card, circular, book, pamphlet, advertisement, or notice of any kind, stating when, where, how, or of whom, or by what means, any of the articles in this section…can be purchased or obtained, or shall manufacture, draw, or print, or in any wise make any of such articles”.  The law was named after Anthony Comstock who became postal inspector,  He was also head of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice.  He prohibited the sending of anatomy books to medical students.  Comstock bragged in 1913, two years before his death, that he had been responsible for the criminal conviction of enough people to fill a 61-coach passenger train -- over 3,600 people.  He was responsible for the destruction of 160 tons of literature and pictures.

1876. A pamphlet by Edward Bliss Foote, inventor of the rubber diaphragm, was the first US publication on birth control to run afoul of the Comstock law. Foote was fined $3,000 for publishing his pamphlet, Confidential Pamphlet for the Married; Words in Pearl for Married People Only.  Birth control information went underground: even in medical textbooks, contraception was unmentionable.

1895. The English playwright, George Bernard Shaw wrote an editorial for the New York Times making fun of Comstock's rules, and mocked them as 'Comstockery'.

1897.  Henry Addis and Abner J. Pope, publishers of a Portland, Oregon anarchist newspaper, Firebrand were arrested and their paper closed for sending an allegedly obscene poem by Walt Whitman through the mail.

1901.  Lois Waisbrooker of Home, Washington (an anarchist colony) was fined $100 for The Awful Fate of a Fallen Woman.  The postmistress for Home, was also charged for mailing it, but was acquitted.

1902.  Discontent: Mother of Progress also printed in Home, Washington, an article written by James W. Adams defending free love and criticizing formal monogamous marriage as hypocritical. Federal officials charged the editor, James E. Larkin, the printer, Charles L. Govan, and Adams with mailing obscene literature.   However the judge deemed the article to be, though radical, not obscene.

1903.  Home, Washington, being ‘a settlement of avowed anarchists and free lovers, the members of which society on numerous instances, with the apparent sanction of the entire community, have abused the privileges of the post office establishment and department’ lost its post office and did not get it back until 1958, but even then was not allowed its traditional name.

1911.  A report by the Chicago Vice Commission, headed by Dean Summer of the Episcopal Church, was banned from the mails.

1915.  Architect William Sanger was charged under the New York law against disseminating contraceptive information.  Anthony Comstock, at the height of his power, appointed by President Wilson as the International Purity Congress delegate in San Francisco, testified at his trial. Sanger died shortly after on September 21st.

1916. Ricardo Flores Magón, anarchist and Latino activist, arrested on charges of defamation and sending indecent materials through the mail. He was sent to USP Leavenworth. In 1922, he died in his cell, maybe murdered by a guard.

1918. Sanger’s wife, Margaret similarly charged.  On appeal, her conviction was reversed on the grounds that contraceptive devices could legally be promoted for the cure and prevention of disease.

1920.  The US Post Office seized and burned four issues  of The Little Review, edited by Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap, that contained excerpts from James Joyce’s Ulysses. The next year, they were tried and found guilty of obscenity, fined $100 and forced to discontinue serializing the book.

1921.  William Hays appointed new Postmaster General.  He was quoted in The New York Times:  “It is no part of the primary business of the Post Office Department to act as censor of the press. This should not and will not be”.  Mary Ware Dennett met with Hays who implied that he would recommend to congress that contraceptive information be removed from the definition of what is obscene.

1922.  William Hays quit as Postmaster General without keeping his promise to Mary Ware Dennett.  He became president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America.

Mademoiselle de Maupin by Théophile Gautier, a tale of a cross-dressing woman,was cleared of obscenity in the 1922 case Halsey v. New York.

Mary Ware Dennett’s pamphlet, The Sex Side of Life-An Explanation for Young People, after having been in circulation over four years, was declared unmailable as obscenity.

1927.  The Post Office and the Customs Bureau issued a list of 739 books and pamphlets to be banned by department officials. The arbitrary list included many foreign books that had been published in the US in English for years without prosecution. “Other volumes were passed in the English version and excluded in the French or Italian; or excluded in Spanish while being passed in French or Italian.”  However the list was withdrawn in 1930 after pressure from a New Mexico Senator.

H.L. Mencken, editor of The American Mercury was arrested for selling obscene literature. His April contained “Hatrack”, a chapter from an upcoming book about a prostitute by Herbert Asbury, and “The New View of Sex”, an editorial essay by George Jean Nathan. Mencken was tried and acquitted two days later. The day after the trial and after all the April issues were mailed to subscribers, the Solicitor of the U.S. Postal Service Department, Horace J. Donnelly, decreed the issue obscene and unmailable.

1928.  Mary Ware Dennett was fined $300, for distributing her pamphlet. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), appealed her conviction and won a reversal, in which the judge ruled that the pamphlet's main purpose was to "promote understanding".

1929.  Radclyffe Hall’s pioneering trans man novel, The Well of Loneliness, was published in the US after already having been banned in the UK. It was seized in New York.  This was successfully challenged in court.

1930. Ex-Postmaster General, William Hays, introduced the Motion Picture Production Code, known as the Hays Code, which removed most adult representation of sex and gender for the next few decades.

1932.  Margaret Sanger arranged for a shipment of diaphragms to be mailed from Japan to a sympathetic doctor in New York City. When U.S. customs confiscated the package as illegal contraceptive devices, Sanger helped file a lawsuit. In 1936, a federal appeals court ruled in United States v. One Package of Japanese Pessaries that the federal government could not interfere with doctors providing contraception to their patients.

1933. The Nudist was banned even though genitals were airbrushed.  The US Supreme Court disagreed.

1935.  Ban on contraceptives declared unconstitutional.

1938.  A Catholic Group, The National Office for Decent Literature, was founded with a list of topics including homosexuality and transvestism that were to be proscribed. To avoid trouble most publishers and editors engaged in self censorship, and avoided such topics.

1953.  The August issue of ONE Magazine, a homophile publication, was confiscated by the Los Angeles postmaster.  However the Federal Solicitor General determined in 3 weeks that the issue was not obscene, and the confiscated copies were returned.

1954.  ONE Magazine October issue was seized because of “Sappho Remembered”, an advertisement for a Swiss magazine, Der Kreis “with beautiful photos”, and a poem about homosexuality in England.

1957.  Samuel Roth’s American Aphrodite, containing literary erotica and nude photography was convicted.   The Supreme Court upheld the ruling.

Attorney Eric Jilber refused help from the ACLU, and lost ONE’s case in the Court of Appeal.  The three judges deemed the issue “morally depraved and debasing”

520 copies of Allen Ginsberg’s poem Howl, being imported from a printer in London, were seized by US Customs.  Then the manager of City Lights Bookstore and publisher, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, were tried for publishing and selling the book. The ACLU  supported the defendants and nine literary experts testified on the book’s behalf.  It was acquitted on appeal.

1958. The US supreme Court ruled, re One Magazine, in its first ever case involving homosexuality, that the Post Office was discriminating and denying equal protection.  Hence homosexual content is not obscene simply because it is homosexual.

1959. The US publisher of D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover won his case and its appeal against the US Post Office’s censorship.

1960. Nan Gilbert in New England, a publisher of petticoat-punishment fantasies, had his mail stopped and was fined $500.

1961. H Lynn Womack, gay erotica publisher, successfully sued the post office for confiscating Grecian Guild magazine.

Susanna Valenti was summoned by postal officials. Two of her correspondents had been charged with mailing obscene materials, and Susanna’s name had come up. Tito, her male persona, pleaded respectability and denounced the obscenities.

Virginia Prince was actually arrested re personal correspondence to another transvestite, thought to be a woman, who was already under investigation. Prince pleaded guilty in a plea bargain to sending obscene material through the mail. With a five-year probationary sentence, he was liable to be imprisoned if caught cross-dressed in public. However his lawyer persuaded the court to include educating the public about cross-dressing as part of the probation order.

1963.  Sanford Aday & Wallace de Ortega Maxey, mail-order erotica publishers, both of the homophile Mattachine Society, indicted on 18 counts of Interstate Transportation of Obscene Material, convicted of 5.  Of the 8 books named, only Sex Life of a Cop was found obscene. They were fined $25,000 each and sentenced to 25 years in prison (although the conviction was reversed by the US Supreme Court a few years later).  There is now a Sanford Aday collection at California State University, Fresno.

1965. The U.S. Supreme Court case Griswold v. Connecticut struck down one of the remaining contraception Comstock laws in Connecticut and Massachusetts. However, Griswold only applied to marital relationships.

1972. Eisenstadt v. Baird (1972) extended its holding to unmarried persons as well.

1973.  Abortion became legal under privacy laws

1996.  The Comstock Act was revived into Title V of the Telecommunications Act.

2023.  Mifepristone, an abortion pill was subject to litigation, and the never-repealed Comstock laws were cited to ban its mailings.  If the right wing succeed in banning mailings of  mifepristone, will viagra, the drugs used by gay men and hormones for trans persons be likewise banned?

• Darrell Raynor. A Year Among the Girls. New York: Lyle Stuart, 1966. New York: Lancer Books, 1968: 74.
• Lori Klatt Maurice.  Stamping Out Indecency: The Postal Way. March 8, 2004.   Online
• Richard F Docter. “Battles with the Postal Authorities”.  Chp 12 in From Man to Woman: The Transgender Journey of Virginia Prince. Docter Press, 2004: 109-112.
• Jed Birmingham. “Obscenity and the Post Office”.  Reality Studio, 18 May 2006.  Online.
• Lillian Faderman & Stuart Timmons. Gay L. A.: A History of Sexual Outlaws, Power Politics, and Lipstick Lesbians. New York: Basic Books, 2006: 116-120.
• Susan Stryker.  Transgender History. Berkeley: Seal Press.  2008: 52-3.
• Stephen J Gertz.  ““Sex Life of a Cop” Chows Down Big Donuts at Paperbacks Show for Record $”.  Seattle PI, 2010/03/22.  Online.
• Tanya Lewis. "This 19th-Century Obscenity Law Is Still Restricting People's Reproductive Rights". Scientific American, April 28, 2023.

EN.Wikipedia(Postal_censorship.  Comstock_laws)

Trans Italy 1971-85

Trans Italy

1960-70

1971-85

1986-2000

In this period, trans activism expanded and after lobbying and street demonstrations, the 1982 Act of Parliament led to rights for post-op trans persons. 

Also in this period a good number of trans persons managed to get parts in Italian movies, both EuroTrash and art films:  Marcella Di Folco (screen name Marcello di Falco); Giorgia O’Brien, Dominot, Ajita Wilson, Eva Robin's and Giò Stajano Starace. 

1971

Giò Stajano Starace, Italy’s most famous queer, became director of Men, the fashion and gossip magazine.

FUORI. (Fronte Unitario Omosessuale Rivoluzionario Italiano) founded in Turin. Fuori! is also Italian for Out! The full name was a clear reference to the French FHAR (Front homosexual d’action révolutionnaire). It was based on the work of gay groups in Milan, Padua, Rome and Turin that had previously met as “Associazione di Studi PsicoSociali”. Founding members included Mariasilvia Spolato, Mario Mieli, Angelo Pezzana and the French writer Françoise d’Eaubonne. Its approach was Marxist, placing the homosexual question in the context of the class conflict.

The Fronte di Liberazione Omosessuale (FLO) was also founded.

• Mario Monicelli (dir). La Mortadella starring Sophia Loren with Candy Darling in a small part. Italy/France 97 mins 1971. IMDB.
• Dino Risi (dir). In nome del popolo italiano, with Ugo Tognazzi, and Marcello di Falco as secretario de Santenocito and Giò Stajano as Floriano Roncherini (uncredited). Italy 103 mins 1971.

1972

Activist Mariasilvia Spolato became the first woman in Italy to come out in public as a lesbian, losing her teaching license as a result.

First queer public protest in Italy as activists from Fuori! and the French group FHAR demonstrated at the first International Congress of Sexology in San Remo close to the French border, where they protested against the psychiatric treatment of homosexuality as a disease and, especially, against the use of aversion therapy to "convert" homosexuals to heterosexuality.

Fuori! magazine was started and continued publication for 10 years. Circulation went as high as 8,000 copies.

Roberta Franciolini lived in Turin and founded a trans group there.

Trans woman, La Romanina, was finally allowed to change her legal gender and released from the semi-confinement of a village in the south.

Robertina Manganaro, still only 14, was already taking female hormones, and was even permitted, at her private school, to wear a skirt.

• Mino Guerrini (dir). Decameron n° 2 - Le altre novelle del Boccaccio, with Marcello di Falco as the Abbot. Italy 98 mins 1972.
• Flavio Mogherini (dir). Anche se volessi lavorare, che faccio? With Marcello di Falco as the museum keeper. Italy 99 mins 1972.
• Steno (dir). Il terrore con gli occhi storti, with Marcello di Falco as gangster. Italy/France 93 mins 1972.
• Gianfranco Parolini (dir). Sotto a chi tocca! with Marcello di Falco as the eunuch servant. Italy/Spain/ West Germany 93 mins 1972.
• Lucio Russo (dir). I racconti di Canterbury N. 2, with Marcello di Falco. Italy 95 mins 1972.

1973

• Jacques Demy (dir). L'Événement le plus important depuis que l'homme a marché sur la Lune/ Niente di grave, suo marito è incinto/ A Slightly Pregnant Man, with Marcello Mastroianni, Catherine Deneuve. France/Italy 92 mins 1973. IMDB Wikipedia. A driving instructor becomes pregnant, and hormones in chickens are deemed to be the reason. He becomes a model for paternity clothing.
• Sergio Citti (dir). Storie scellerate, scr: Pier Paolo Pasolini & Sergio Citti, with Marcello di Falco. Italy/France 93 mins 1973. Two condemned prisoners tell each other bawdy tales.
• Federico Fellini (dir). Amarcord, with Marcello di Falco as Prince. Italy/France 123 mins 1973. IMDB. 

1974

First gay club in Italy opened in Florence.

Fuori! Allied with the Radical Party, thus becoming reformist rather than revolutionary. Mario Mieli and others left the group.

• Fernando di Leo (dir). Il poliziotto è marcio, with Marcello di Falco as the killer. Italy/France 94 mins 1974.
• Alberto Sodi (dir). Finché c'è guerra c'è Speranza, with Alberto Sodi. and Marcello di Falco as Jepson. Italy 116 mins 1974.

1975

Andy Warhol’s Ladies and Gentlemen (The Drag Queen Paintings) series, was based on an idea by Italian art dealer Luciano Anselmino, using polaroids of trans women recruited at New York’s Gilded Grape which were then silkscreened onto a canvas and painted over. They were first shown in September/October 1975 at the Palazzo di Diamente in Ferrara, region of Emilia Romagna. Online.

February 15: Lou Reed concert at the Pallazzo dello Sport in Rome. Reed was supported by his then spouse Rachel Humphreys who was good in a fight – which was useful when the concert turned into a riot.

• Gualtiero Jacopetti & Franco Prosperi (dir). Mondo candido, with Marcello di Falco as cavaliere. Italy 107 mins 1973.
• Sergio Corbucci (dir). Di che segno sei? with Albert Sodi, Paolo Villaggio as the pilot, and Marcello di Falco as Cosimo. Italy 130 mins 1975. Four episodes: in the first a pilot has decided to become a woman.
• Lucio Dandolo (dir). Quant'è bella la Bernarda, tutta nera, tutta calda, with Marcello di Falco as Arturo. Italy 92 mins 1975.

1976

The Radical Party included Fuori! Activists as list candidates for the 1976 elections – the first time in Italy that openly gay persons ran for public office.

Brigitte Bond was interviewed for a Spanish paper and revealed that she was married and living in Campania, Italy, and that her real name was Giovanna.

A biography of La Romanina was published.

Now post-op, New Yorker Ajita Wilson arrives in Italy, and starts a prolific film career. IMDB.

Mario Mieli with the theatre troupe, Collettivo Teatrale Nostra Signora dei Fiori, put on the play La traviata norma: vaffanculo, ebbene sì (The Corrupted Norm: Go away) in Milan, and then Florence and Rome.  A theatrical pastiche debunking anti-gay stereotypes through a satire of heterosexuality and an ironic deconstruction of straight masculinity.   Mieli's stage persona was Maria M. 

• R. Cecconi. Io, la ‘Romanina’. Perche´ sono diventata donna. Florence: Vallecchi, 1976.
• Vincente Minnelli (dir). A Matter of Time, with Liza Minnelle, Ingrid Bergman, Isabella Rossellini and Dominot. Italy/US 97 mins 1976. Aging and beauty in an old Rome hotel. Dominot is the hotel porter.
• Salvatore Samperi (dir). Sturmtruppen, with Dominot. Italy/France 110 mins 1976. A war satire.
• Cesare Canevari (dir). La Princessa Nuda, with Ajita Wilson as Princessa Mariam. Italy 94 mins 1976. IMDB. Loosely based on a prominent exile from Idi Amin’s Uganda – with added pornography.
• Alberto Sordi (dir). Il comune senso del pudor, with Giò Stajano as direttore studio fotografico (uncredited). Italy 123 mins 1976.
• Fernando di Leo (dir). Gli amici di Nick Hezard (Nick the Sting), with Lee J Cobb and Giò Stajano as Jeweller Steffen. Italy/Switzerland 97 mins 1976.
• Elio Petri (dir). Todo modo, with Marcello Mastroianni, and Marcello di Falco as Sacca. Italy 130 mins 1976.
• Mauro Severino (dir). Tutti possono arricchire tranne i poveri, with Marcello di Falco as friend of countess (uncredited). Italy 90 mins 1976.
• Mino Guerrini (dir). Vinella e Don Pezzotta, with Marcello di Falco as Tony. Italy 95 mins 1976.

1977

Eva Robin’s had become a model and a singer. In 1977, using the name Cassandra, she recorded the disco classic, Disco Panther.

Mario Mieli, himself a gay transvestite, published his theoretical classic, Elementi di critica omosessuale.  He argues that each person is as potentially the other gender as potentially bisexual, were they not conditioned, from childhood by a certain type of society which, through what Mieli called educastration, forces us to consider heterosexuality as "normality" and all the rest as perversion. Mieli uses the term transessualità, but does not mean what is meant today, that is one who seeks permanent changes via hormones and surgery, but rather for the innate polymorphic and "perverse" trending of all people. 

• Mario Mieli. Elementi di critica omosessuale. G Einaudi, 1977.   English translation by David Fernbach: Homosexuality and Liberation: Elements of a Gay Critique.  Gay Men's Press, 1980.  
• Guido Zurli (dir). Gola profondo nero (Black Deep Throat), With Ajita Wilson as Claudine. Italy 83 mins 1977. Claudine, a reporter, investigates an exclusive sex cult.
• Roberto Montero (dir). La sorprendente eredità del tontodimammà. With Ajita Wilson. Italy 88 mins 1977. A sex comedy about two young girls about to receive a huge inheritance on marriage.
• Amasi Damiani (dir). Amori morbosi di una contessina. With Ajita Wilson. Italy 89 mins 1977.
• Roberto Montero (dir). La bravata, with Ajita Wilson. Italy 87 mins 1977.
• Amasi Damiani (dir). D'improvviso al terzo piano, with Ajita Wilson. Italy 1977. 
• Mario Castellacci & Pier Francesco Pingitore (dir). Nerone, with Pippo Franco as Nero and Giò Stajano as his involuntary sex-change wife Sporus. Italy 105 mins 1977.

1978

Fuori! activists were able to meet with the mayors of Turin and Rome, and the directors of the national broadcaster RAI.

Robertina Manganaro had moved to Milan with her divorced father, where she was known as his daughter. She became a model for the avant-garde artist, Enrico Baj. At age 20 she had genital surgery at a private clinic in England.

US actor Ajita Wilson having appeared in various French and Italian porno-films, made a crossover into Euro-trash such as women-in-prison flics.

• Mauro Severino (dir)  Travolto dagli affetti familiari, with Giorgia O’Brien. Italy 100 mins 1978.
• Claudio Giorgi (dir). Candido erotico, with Ajita Wilson as sex-show performer. Italy 94 mins 1978.
• Joe D’Amato (dir). Le notti porno nel mondo nº 2, with Ajita Wilson as stewardess. Italy 88 mins 1978.
• Luigi Batzella & Derek Ford (dir). Proibito erotico, with Ajita Wilson as Julie. Italy 66 mins 1978.
• Erwin C Dietrich (dir). Adolescenza morbosa, with Ajita Wilson. Italy/Switzerland 95 mins 1978.

1979

The first Italian Gay Pride Parade in Pisa with about 500 people, as a protest against homophobic violence.

A small group of trans women organised a protest in Milan, in order to raise public attention to the issue of trans people’s right to be recognised as their preferred gender. They went to a swimming pool wearing only their bikini bottoms as men do not have to wear tops even if they have breasts.

Roberta Franciolini, Marcella Di Folco, Gianna Parenti and Pina Bonanno, founded Movimento Italiano Transessuali (MIT) in Rome in 1979. Working with civil rights activists, but Roberta as the main animatrice, they struggled for Law 164 ‘Norme in materia di rettificazione di attribuzione di sesso’, which was passed in 1982 and provided legal recognition of a person's acquired gender.

• Nello Rossati (dir). Una donna di notte, with Ajita Wilson in the ‘lesbian’ scene. Italy 90 mins 1979.
• Luigi Russo (dir). Pensione Amore - SerVizio completo, with Ajita Wilson as Karina. Italy 85 mins 1979
• Raniero di Giovanbattista (dir). Libidine, with Ajita Wilson as Mary the maid. Italy 87 mins 1979. 
• Ron Wertheim (dir) Eros Perversion, based on Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, with Ajita Wilson as Antonia. Italy 66 mins 1979.
• Antonio D’Agostino (dir) La cerimonia dei sensi, with Franco Pugi as Messia, and Eva Robin’s as Eva. Italy 90 mins 1979.
• Bruno Corbucci (dir). Squadra antigangster, with Marcello di Falco as man at funeral. Italy/US 90 mins 1979.
• Tinto Brass (dir), Caligula. Scr: Gore Vidal, Malcolm McDowell & Masolino D’Amico, with Malcolm McDowell, Peter O’Toole and Helen Mirren, and Marcello do Falco as orgy master. Italy/US 156 mins 1979. IMDB.

1980

The first nucleus of what later became Arcigay was formed in Palermo on December 9, 1980 as ARCI Gay. It was later renamed Arcigay, and became one of Italy's most prominent LGBT rights organizations.

Marcella Di Folco had completion surgery with Dr Burou in Casablanca. Her film career was now over.  On return Marcella worked as an intercontinental operator for Italcable. She continued as an active participant in Movimento Italiano Transessuali.

Collette Goudie from TAO in Miami visited Rome.

After the murder in Paris of Brazilian travesti Elisa, many rivalries, envy, scandals, and threats surfaced among the immigrant travesti sex workers themselves. At the same time, the pressure from the French authorities grew: between 1980 and 1984, expulsions were multiplied because of irregularities in their visas. Migration of Brazilian travestis to Italy commenced.

• Giuseppe Bertolucci (dir), Oggetti smarriti, with Giorgia O’Brien. Italy 110 mins 1980).
• Edoardo Mulargia (dir) Femmine infernali (Escape from Hell), with Ajita Wilson as Zaira. Italy/Spain 93 mins 1980. Escape from a tropical women’s prison. This film was edited with Hotel Paradise and released in the US as Savage Island,
• Edoardo Mulargia (dir). Orinoco: Prigioniere del sesso (Hotel Paradise), with Ajita Wilson as Muriel. Italy/Spain 101 mins 1980. Slave women in an emerald mine rescued by revolutionaries. This film was edited with Escape from Hell and released in the US as Savage Island,
• Lucio Fulci (dir). Luca il contrabbandiere, with Ajita Wilson as Luisa. Italy 97 mins 1980. Gangster film set in Naples.
• Antonio D’Agostino (dir). Eva man (Due sessi in uno), with Eva Robin’s as Eva and Ajita Wilson as Ajita. Italy 75 mins 1980.
• Jacques Orth (dir). Pensieri morbosi, with Ajita Wilson as prostitute. Italy 76 mins 1980.
• Federico Fellini (dir). La città delle donne, with Marcello Mastroianni, and Marcello di Falco as slave. Italy/France 139 mins 1980. IMDB.

1981

The offence of plagio (under which Aldo Braibanti had been convicted in 1968 for having a man in his 20s as a lover) was declared unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court with decision no. 96 of 8 June 1981.

• Zacarias Urbiola (dir). Pasiones desenfrenadas, with Ajia Wilson as Enrica. Italy/Spain 1981.
• Francesco Massaro (dir). I carabbinieri, with Marcello di Falco as Aroldi. Marcello Di Folca never worked again in movies after her completion surgery. This was her last film.

1982

Roberta Franciolini struggled against police repression and AIDS.

Norme in materia di rettificazione di attribuzione di ssesso [Norms regulating changes in sex attribution]; Legge 164, 1982, Text. A new law (N. 164/82) regulating the legal possibility of changing sex, resulting from the lobbying by Movimento Italiano Transessuali.

Art. 1 states “The sex change, as per article 454 of the civil code, is made possible by a definitive rulingof the judge attributing to a person a sex different from that declared at birth, after the occurred modification of her/his sexual characteristics” (Gazzetta Ufficiale 1982: 1), and Art. 3 specifies: “If competent experts prove that a person needs to undergo medical and surgical treatments in order to modify her/his sexual characteristics, the judge authorizes this intervention with a ruling. After the surgical operation, the judge allows the rectification of her/his personal data in identity documents”.

The law institutionalised the process through which trans people could transform their gender, and identified medical science as the authority that can carry out a legitimate change in the gender status of trans people. This enabled public hospitals to offer psychiatry, hormones and surgery within the Italian national health system for small fees. The Act mentions neither chromosomes nor hormones, and the legal sex change is permitted only after genital surgery. However its does give legal recognition to the medical authorities as the competent agents in managing a sex-change transition process, thus taking for granted and confirming the perceived pathological nature of the trans condition. Although it does not say so, one of the reasons for the Act is to protect doctors from accusations of mutilating physically sane persons.

• Dario Argento (dir). Tenebrae, with Eva Robin’s as girl on beach. Italy 101 mins 1982.
• Zacarias Urbiola (dir). El regreso de Eva Man/El pitoconejo, with John Saxon, and Eva Robin’s as Eva and Ajita Wilson as Ajita. Italy/Spain 88 mins 1982.

1983

Giò Starace transitioned and became Maria Gioacchina Stajano Starace, Contessa Briganti di Panico, although she still used 'Giò' in her public life. Her first interview was with Il Borghese for which he had written as ‘Pantera Rosa’, mainly about Roman aristocracy.

David Tolu was ejected from the women's toilets at age 14, and started using the men's.

Mario Mieli died by suicide, age 30. He had written another book, Il risveglio dei Faraoni (The awakening of the Pharaohs), partly autobiographical, partly religious. He anticipated an adverse reaction. A pirated edition was later published, but his family brought legal action and had all copies destroyed. The book remains the subject of speculation.

The civil rights group, Circolo di cultura omosessuale Mario Mieli, was named in his honour.

• Zacarias Urbiola (dir). La doppia bocca di Erika, with Ajita Wilson as Erika. Italy 71 mins 1983.
• Luigi Cozzi (dir). Hercules, with Lou Ferrigno as Hercules, and Eva Robin’s as Daedalus. Italy/US 98 mins 1983.

1984

Tracy Norman, from New York, had been seeking modelling work in Milan, but there was not much, so she returned to New York.

• Gianni Siragusa (dir). Perverse oltre le sbarre/Hell Behind the Bars/Hölle im Frauengefängnis, with Ajita Wilson as Conchite. Italy 82 mins 1984.
• Gianni Siragusa (dir). Detenute violente/Hell Penitentiary, with Ajita Wilson as Erica Thompson. Italy 90 mins 1984. 

1985

Lucy Salani made trips to Paris and met trans women there. In the 1980s she accompanied two trans friends to London where they had transgender surgery, and later she also had the operation. 

Dominot ran a bar in Rome, Il baronato quattro bellezze, where he performed in drag singing the French chanteuses from Edith Piaf to Juliette Greco.

• Teit Ritzau (dir). Paradiset er ikke til salg (Paradise Is Not for Sale). With Giorgia O’Brien and Christine Jorgensen. Denmark 60 mins 1985.
• Luigi Cozzi (dir). Le avventure dell'incredibile Ercole, with Lou Ferrigno as Hercules, and Eva Robin’s as Dedalos. Italy/US/NL 88 mins 1985.

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

Trans actors in movies:  Some seem to think that now, the 2020s, is the golden age of trans women getting acting gigs in films.  However if we count the persons and the films, I think that we will find more of both in the late 1960s and the 1970s. 

The Norme in materia di rettificazione di attribuzione di ssesso of 1982 had been preceeded in Sweden by its Lag om fastställande av könstillhorighet i vissa fall, 1972, and in Germany by Gesetz über die Änderung der Vornamen und die Feststellung der Geschlechtszugehörigkeit in besonderen Fäalen, 1980, both of which provided legal recognition for post-operative trans persons.  All three would be criticised later for imposing sterilisation by not providing for trans persons who did not or were not able to take the surgery path.   However this is a full 20+ years before Britain's Gender Recognition Act, 2004, and there were many of us in Britain in that period who would have benefited from a law like the Italian - not to deny that the British Act was better when it arrived. 

Victoria Dolling (192? - ?) meat porter, British Railways clerk

Victor Dolling, who worked at Smithfield meat market as a porter, and Constance, both of Walworth, London, were married in 1950, and they had a child a year later. Shortly afterwards, Victor increasingly felt female, and twice, in 1952 and 1954, consulted psychiatrists at Guy’s Hospital. The endocrinologist Dr Peter Bishop prescribed female hormones. Dolling quit the job at Smithfield to live full time as female, found work as a clerk at British Railways, and left Mrs Dolling in 1957.

In May 1958 Constance Dolling applied for a divorce decree on the ground of cruelty. Her husband signed a court document as Victoria Dolling, and did not contest the suit. However the judge dismissed the suit saying 

“But it is utterly impossible to say that his consent to be treated this way for what is a mental illness is cruelty on his part. He cannot help it any more than any other illness.” 

He also pointed out that if Mrs Dolling waited until May 1960, she could apply for divorce on the ground of desertion. She appealed, but the appeal was dismissed.

Kenneth Robinson, Member of Parliament for St Pancras North (and Minister of Health 1964-8), asked the Attorney General, Reginald Manningham-Buller (noted for his 1959 unsuccessful prosecution of D H Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover), if his attention had been drawn to the legal difficulties arising in Dolling v. Dolling, and if the law of divorce could be amended to enable marriages to be dissolved when either spouse changes sex. The Attorney General gave a written reply: 

"I am not aware of any legal difficulties. The Court of Appeal held on the particular facts of this case that the conduct of the respondent did not amount to cruelty. I do not think that there is any need to amend the law by seeking to specify what acts constitute cruelty for the purposes of the law of divorce or by making express provision for the type of case mentioned in the question."

Victoria Dolling’s subsequent life is unrecorded.

• “Man Wanted to Become a Woman”. Manchester Evening News, 22 May 1958.
• “When a husband wants to be a woman”. Daily Mirror,23 May 1958,
• “Sex Changes and Divorce: Question by M.P.”. Birmingham Post, 26 November 1958.
• Richard Collier. Masculinity, Law and the Family. Taylor & Francis, 2002:115.
• Zoë Playdon. The Hidden Case of Ewan Forbes: And the Unwritten History of the Trans Experience. Scribner, 2022: 92-3.

Mariela Elcira Muñoz (1943 - 2017) tarot reader, mother of 23

The Muñoz family came from Lules in the northern Argentinian province of Tucumán, but moved to Quilmes, south of Buenos Aires where the father was able to get construction work.

By age 13 Muñoz declared her name to be Mariela, and was already taking care of her three brothers and the children of a neighbouring Italian couple. She endured teasing, bullying and a gang rape, but never backed down. Her father took her to psychiatrists and prostitutes, but finally accepted her and even considered mortgaging the house to pay for completion surgery.

Mariela and her mother

In her twenties Mariela was making a living as a tarot reader, and was already helping children and single mothers. The first child she took in was the son of a prostitute who could not take care of him. Next were three sisters abandoned by their mother. She found 16-year-old Yolanda in front of the train station. She had fled home with her baby when she was told to prostitute herself to feed the baby. Mariela invited Yolanda to live with her. 14-year-old Enrique arrived in Buenos Aires after fleeing from the brick kiln where he had worked since the age of 9. He was rescued by Mariela. Eventually she became mother to twenty-three children, and then 30 grandchildren. She was always honest with the children about her own condition and how she intended to become a woman.

She had completion surgery in Chile in 1981 with Dr Guillermo Mac Millan.

Mariela's worst year was 1993. A woman had given her three children. Later she repented and then without even talking to Mariela made a legal complaint. The judge convicted Mariela of kidnapping the children. Furthermore he sentenced her to a year in jail, suspended. This did lead to a discussion in the Argentinian media re trans women raising children. Dr Mac Millan spoke up in her support: 'Her attitude as a woman, her feeling as a mother, her noble readiness for adoption, which is one of the most sublime feelings in the world, they comfort me. It is the answer that we always seek in all the cases that we operate. '

The media coverage enabled Mariela, in May 1997 to became the first Argentinian to get her name and gender corrected on her national identity card. This was 15 years before Argentina’s Ley de Identidad de Género, 2012, which gave the same rights to trans persons in general.

Later that year she ran in the primaries to be a candidate for mayor of Quilmes. In 2003 she ran to be a provincial deputy for the Justicialista Party with the slogan 'A different woman'. In 2009 she ran as a candidate for provincial deputy for the Renewal Party,

In 2013 Mariela had a stroke. A judge awarded her and four other trans women "extraordinary and reparatory" subsidies for the discrimination to which the country, the law, and neglect had subjected them.

The French-Argentinian filmmaker Maria Audras made a film about Mariela’s life which won the best feature film award at the LGBTAQ Asterisk film festival, 2017. Audras had heard tell of Mariela from a friend in the 1990s. She went to Buenos Aires and phoned every Mariela Muñoz in Buenos Aires, and still did not find her in that she was in Quilmes. When they finally met, Audras was so impressed by the love expressed by Mariela’s children that she scrapped the fiction film she had in mind and made a documentary - which she worked on for three years. By this time Mariela had suffered three strikes and was dependent on the care of her children.

Mariela died age 73.

• Maria Audras (dir & scr). Amor a paso de gigante, with Mariela Muñoz. Argentina 53 mins 2016.
• “Murió Mariela Muñoz, la primera transexual en conquistar un DNI femenino”. Clarín, 07/05/2017. Online.
• “Murió Mariela Muñoz, la primera madre trans de la Argentina”. Latfem, mayo 7, 2017. Online.
• “La ‘gigante’ Mariela Muñoz, pionera transexual y madre de 17 hijos”. El País, 11 Nov 2017. Online.
• Lucas Garabento. “La lucha, el dolor y las conquistas de Mariela Muñoz, la mujer trans que crió 23 hijos”. Infobae, 17 de Noviembre de 2018. Online.

ES.Wikipedia          IMDB

The court judgement against puberty blockers for under 16s

 

Queens Liberation Front (QLF)

The post-Stonewall activist organizations:

While QLF and STAR were run by trans women, trans women also played significant roles in GLF and GAA. 

Queens Liberation Front (QLF)
StreetTransvestite Action Revolutionaries. (also Part III of Sylvia Rivera)
Gay Liberation Front (GLF) - New York
Gay Activists Alliance (GAA)
Gay Liberation Front (GLF) - London

See also The Five Years Following Stonewall - A New York Timeline

The Queens Liberation Front was the major New York social and activist group for trans persons in the 1970s. It was founded in 1970 by the future Barbara De Lamere (using her stage name of Bunny Eisenhower – she was a member of the Ridiculous Theatrical Company), Lee Brewster (who later ran Lee’s Mardi Gras transvestite boutique), Bebe Scarpinato (a teacher), Vicky West (artist) and Chris Moore (a Jewel Box Revue performer).

Vicky, Chris and Lee met as members of the New York branch of the homophile Mattachine Society. Lee had been organizing drag balls as fund raisers for Mattachine, but had become dispirited given the Mattachine’s disinterest in drag and trans issues. Following the Stonewall riots in June 1969, it was time for a specifically trans group. Bebe joined soon afterwards.

Initially the group was called just Queens, and issued a prospectus declaring two goals.

1. RIGHT TO CONGREGATE;

In New York the license for a drag ball or rather dance permit stated that men dressed in the female attire were not to be permitted on the premises of said dance.

2. RIGHT TO DRESS AS WE SEE FIT …………………………………

We feel that the wearing of a particular article of clothing doesn't make one a criminal. We hope to get a ruling adopting the law presently used in the state of Hawaii. It has been interpreted to mean that one may wear the clothing of the opposite sex as long as he does not deceive others. If one wears a button stating that one is a male it takes away all criminal aspects of cross-dressing.

Shortly afterwards the name was changed to Queens Liberation Front.

The QLF participated in and contributed financially to the first Christopher Street Liberation Day Parade in June 1970 - the world's first gay pride march. They were advised by the parade committee that the police might arrest them if they were in drag. However as their raison d’etre was to change the law on that very issue, this was the best time to start doing so. As it went, the police were friendly and no-one was arrested.

Shortly afterwards they published the first issue of their magazine Drag, a magazine of Transvestism, which would run for over 10 years, reach a circulation of over 3,500, and was much more political than Female Mimics, Transvestia or the by then defunct Turnabout. The first edition opened with a call to arms:

“Each day, as I'm propagandizing the plight of the drag queen, I run into the attitude that drag or as the heterosexual transvites call it, dressing, will never be legalized here in the United States. Even the transvestite and drag queen, himself feels that way. What they don't realize is, that this was the exact attitude towards the legalization of homosexuality, 15 years ago. Today, with the legalization of homosexual acts between consenting adults in England, it is now a possible dream here in the States.

We are in our infancy, in gaining acceptance in that department. We hope to gain a lot from our homosexual brothers, who have unashamedly paved the way for us. Now, heterosexual, homosexual, part-time or full-time drag queen, it's time for us to come down off our 'queenly’ throne and go out amongst the 'common' people and let them know that we're really people, with very REAL feelings.

WE WANT OUR RIGHTS GIVEN US AS CITIZENS OF THESE UNITED STATES AND REFUSE TO BE MADE CRIMINALS ANY LONGER!

We ve got a long way to go, baby, until it's a possible dream for us; but we have to start sometime and somewhere.' Now is the time, as most attitudes are being challenged and we're getting onto the bandwagon and hope to have all of you jump on it with us. . … we're coming out! …' Fighting ..

Of course, the same issue also contained a discussion about the difference between ‘drag queen’ and ‘transvestite”; the Christopher Street Liberation Day Parade; John Hansen, the cis-het actor who played Christine Jorgensen in the film about her; the drag queen picket of the opening of John Osborne’s play, A Patriot for Me, on Broadway; photos of queens; and cartoons.

Vicky was the art director, and drew the cover pictures. Lee had been the initial editor, but as he became bored, Bebe took over. Linda Lee became the West Coast Editor.

In the mid-1960s, the New York State Liquor Authority had it in for bars that catered to gays and/or trans persons. A victory had been won on appeal by the Julius Restaurant, 159 West 10^th Street in Greenwich Village, in 1966-7 with a ruling that having its licence suspended for serving homosexuals violated equal protection rights in the state and Federal constitutions. However problems remained as noted by Mattachine and Stonewall lawyer, Enid Gerling. Under city ordinances a bar or club could be closed and patrons arrested, simply because a single person, deemed to be cross-dressed, was present. In addition, Section 250.15 of the 1965 Anti-Mask: New York Penal Law (which is still in effect) criminalizes "the wearing of mask or disguises by three or more persons in a public place” however it is permitted “when it occurs in connection with a masquerade party or like entertainment if … permission is first obtained from the police or other appropriate agency.” However the application for the license specifically stated that “males dressed in female attire” were not to be admitted.  The QLF  and its lawyers pressed the city authorities on the matter. They also reminded them of a declaration by Mattachine a few years earlier:

“Drag queens and transvestites assume, quite rightly, that they will be welcome at any function given by a homosexual organization. Even if we wanted to exclude them, as the law says we should, we wouldn’t know how to. Most drag queens and transvestites, when they choose to mimic women, do it so well that it is impossible to know their genital sex without making a physical examination. Obviously, we cannot ask every apparent female who attends our parties to submit to a check of their genitalia.”

The ordinance that the bar be closed, and the anti-drag clause on the masquerade application were both struck. Furthermore the words "homosexuals, lesbians, or persons pretending to be ..." were also removed, thus decriminalising gay clubs and parties.

This was announced in Issue 6 of Drag Magazine. (Online) The first goal from the 1969 prospectus, the Right to Congregate, was declared achieved.

Lee Brewster announced that the 30 October 1970 QLF Halloween Ball was therefore the first ‘legal’ drag ball in New York.

Lee appeared at a Gay Activists Alliance meeting 18 November 1971, to complain that ‘straight homosexuals’ were willing to drop transvestites in their lobbying to outlaw discrimination in the hiring of homosexuals by city agencies. QLF testified before the New York City Council's General Welfare committee. The Gay Activist reported:

" 'Bebe' Scarpi, a transvestite in male attire, gave testimony on the minority group, he pointed out that transvestites used the men's room because they 'd been warned they would be subject to arrest if they entered the ladies room. And even transvestites had to heed the call of nature. Bebe, a student at Queens College, gave what amounted to a short course on the lifestyle and problems of transvestites with such charm, ready wit and intelligence, that even the Councilmen appeared beguiled. … Chairman Sharison seemed unable to comprehend that some transvestites were heterosexual. He wanted to know whether Bebe believed transvestites would be protected by Intro 475. 'Only as a homosexual, not as a transvestite', Bebe explained, and perhaps the councilman would care to enact legislation protecting the transvestite." (Quoted in Cohen p 150)

In 1973 the committee was still blocked in its attempt to pass a bill to ban discrimination against homosexuals in employment, housing and public accommodation. To get it passed, an amendment was proposed that nothing in the definition of sexual orientation “shall be construed to bear upon the standards of attire or dress code". Bebe, as QLF director, was put in the uncomfortable position of submitting to this wording or seeing the bill fail.

For the Christopher Street Liberation Day in June 1973, Bebe went to the 82 Club and got the showgirls, in full regalia to march behind an 82 Club banner. QLF and Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) were adjacent in the march. Sylvia Rivera’s impassioned speech for Gay Power was followed by Jean O’Leary of Lesbian Feminist Liberation who asserted biological sex, and that Sylvia was “a genital male”. She read a statement on behalf of 100 women that read, in part,

"We support the right of every person to dress in the way that she or he wishes. But we are opposed to the exploitation of women by men for entertainment or profit."

She was booed, and MC, Vito Russo, the film historian, asked the crowd to let her continue. Lee Brewster jumped onstage and responded,

"You go to bars because of what drag queens did for you, and these bitches tell us to quit being ourselves!”

The situation was calmed only when performer Bette Midler took to the stage and sang.

                                                               ---

The balls arranged by Lee and QLF were held at the Diplomat hotel on West 43^rd Street and became so fashionable that the final one, in 1973, was attended by the real Jacqueline Susann, Carol Channing and Shirley MacLaine.

By 1980 Drag Magazine was including explicate photographs.

Lee Brewster continued his business Lee’s Mardi Gras, the largest retail concern in the US aimed at trans and drag persons. The business continued for over 30 years at various locations around Manhattan. It carried a large stock of clothes, prosthetics and books. In addition to individual clients, the shop supplied costumes for Broadway, television and movies, in particular To Wong Foo and The Birdcage.

Brewster continued to answer to ‘Mr’ in the style of old-time drag performers. He died in 2000 age 57 after a battle with cancer.

The thespian referred to as Bunny Eisenhower, who had previously been in a long-term gay relationship, gave up acting for a heterosexual marriage, but afterwards she completed transition in 1982 as Barbara de Lamere, and continued as an LGBT activist into the 1990s.

Chris Moore was a constant at QLF parties, but after a few years she was diagnosed with cancer. She was able to fight it for over five years. Lee Brewster put on a special ball for Chris so that she could perform and be the star, and Vicky drew her for the cover of Drag Magazine 3.11. She died in 1975.

Vicki West continued to work as a man in the art department at the publisher Henry N Abrams rising to be Executive Art Director. She contributed to Morris Louis: The Complete Paintings, The Art of Walt Disney, Windows at Tiffany’s, The History of Modern Art, Impressionism. She became a friend of photographer Mariette Pathy Allen and is featured in Allen’s 1989 book, Transformations. Vicky retired in 2000, died in 2005 age 70 and is interred at the US Military's Arlington National Cemetery.

Bebe Scarpinato worked as a school teacher and principal. She was also a stripper, and later worked at Lee’s Mardi Gras. She died in 2019, age 68. In addition to being director of the Queens Liberation Front (QLF), she was on the founding board of the National Gay Task Force and was active in planning the fourth Christopher Street Liberation Day, and was active in Gay Activists Alliance and Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries.

• “Hail to Queens”. New York Mattachine Times. Nov 1970, 1,2,. Reprinted in Marc Stein (ed). The Stonewall Riots: A Documentary History. New York University Press, 2019: 240.
• “Transvestite and Transsexual Liberation”. Gay Dealer, Dec 1970, 9. Reprinted in Marc Stein (ed). The Stonewall Riots: A Documentary History. New York University Press, 2019: 212.
• Guy Charles. “Intro 475 Controversy: Won’t Be Sacrificial Lambs, Drags Vow” The Advocate, 22 Dec. 1971, 12. Reprinted in Marc Stein (ed). The Stonewall Riots: A Documentary History. New York University Press, 2019: 212: 260.
• Arthur David Kahn. The Many Faces of Gay: Activists Who Are Changing the Nation. Praeger, 1997: 3, 15-20, 266-9.
• Holly Brubach. Girlfriend: Men, Women, and Drag. Random House, 1999: 133-8.
• Jack Nichols. “Lee Brewster Dies at 57: Pioneering Transvestite Activist”. Gay Today. 2000. Online.
• Douglas Martin. “Lee Brewster, 57, Style Guru For World's Cross-Dressers”. New York Times May, 24, 2000. Online.
• Stephen L. Cohen. The Gay Liberation Youth Movement in New York: An Army of Lovers Cannot Fail. Routledge, 2007: 9, 91, 94, 95-6, 142-5, 149, 150-2, 160, 246n28, 254n251,
• JD Doyle. “Lee Brewster’s Mardi Gras Ball Ball 1972”. Queer Music Heritage. Online.
• Marc Stein. Rethinking the Gay and Lesbian Movement. Routledge, 2012: 83, 87, 103, 113.
• Marc Stein (ed). The Stonewall Riots: A Documentary History. New York University Press, 2019: 5, 187, 212-3, 240-2, 260, 296, 328n13.

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

There is no apostrophe on Queens Liberation Front, presumably because it was initially simply called Queens. There is no connotation of or reference to the New York borough called Queens – which also has no apostrophe.

Some books about Stonewall and its effects make no mention at all of the Queens Liberation Front: Stonewall (Duberman), Stonewall (Carter), In Search of Stonewall (Schneider – review), The Stonewall Reader (Bauman – review – This book totally ignores several other New York trans activists in addition to QLF, but finds room for Virginia Prince, from Los Angeles, to discuss being divorced by wife no 1, and marrying wife no 2).

There are two significantly different accounts of the Julius Bar court actions:

a) Duberman’s Stonewall p114-116, presents it as a Mattachine initiative. Three members tried several bars on 21 April 1966, announcing that they were homosexual and requesting alcoholic drinks. Several bars served them anyway, but the barman at Julius did not. Mattachine then filed a complaint with the State Liquor Authority (SLA), and announced that they would pay Julius’ legal fees. The SLA quickly announced that it would take no action, but the case was picked up by the Commission on Human Rights, and in 1967 an Appellate court ruled in their favor.

b) Crawford’s The Mafia and the Gays, p27-9, says otherwise. The Julius had been subjected to a NYPD visit 11 November 1965 with an officer reporting in very stereotyped and derogatory terms that a homosexual crowd frequented the bar. This resulted in a suspension of the Julius' liquor license on 1 April 1966. The bar management contested this as requiring them to violate equal protection rights in the constitution. The 1967 decision was an agreement with the argument put forth by the Julius management – which incidentally had supported the Mattachine ‘sip-in’ 21 April 1966.

Michelle-Lael Norsworthy (1964 - ) convicted of murder

​After high school, as Jeffrey, Norsworthy became a police informer, joined the army national guard, ran around town inebriated, and carried a loaded gun.

“I was an extremely aggressive, non-thinking person. I did anything I could to suppress my femininity”. 

One night in 1984 Norsworthy, then 20, encountered a man in a bar in Fullerton (close to Los Angeles) whom he had helped bust in a drug deal years before.  They argued, first in the bar, then in the parking lot, and Norsworthy got a gun from his car.  It went off three times, nicking the man’s femoral and carotid arteries.  Norsworthy began dressing his wounds as help was summoned. The man died six weeks later.

Norsworthy was sentenced in 1987 to 17 years to life in prison for second degree murder. Norsworthy takes full responsibility for the murder –

“the crime I committed I’m responsible for. I’m not trying to mitigate that in any way”. 

Most of Norsworthy’s 28 years incarceration was spent in Mule Creek state prison in Ione, California. Most of the first years were violent: fights, self-mutilation, etc. It was not until 1994 that Norsworthy was able to put a name to various feelings. A prison psychiatrist, or maybe the priest, used the term ‘transsexual’. Norsworthy looked it up in a dictionary and it clicked.

She came out and started expressing as female – she now declared her name to be Michelle-Lael. However it took many years of agitation before she was transferred to Vacaville, the only California prison with a Gender Clinic.  She was diagnosed with gender dysphoria in 1999, and it was another year after that before she was allowed female hormones. She requested a bra, was denied, appealed and was so allowed.

In 2009, again in Mule Creek, she was gang-raped with the prison guards doing nothing. This left her with broken teeth and Hepatitis C – for the latter she was not allowed any treatment.

Finally in 2012 her psychologist recommended gender-affirmation surgery – however he was quickly transferred to another prison. In 2013 Norsworthy was again denied parole as “a danger to society”.

In 2014 she filed a lawsuit, arguing that denying her surgery was cruel and unusual punishment. In addition one doctor added that, without surgery, her already damaged liver would suffer from the high dose of hormones – after surgery they could be reduced.   In April 2015 U.S. District Court Judge Jon Tigar agreed, ordering California to provide her transition surgery. This was a groundbreaking decision. Norsworthy was the first person incarcerated in California to get such a ruling.

Michelle-Lael in prison, 2015

All of a sudden she was returned quickly – two years early - to the parole board because of  "a change in circumstances or new information” and parole was granted – officially this was recognition of Norsworthy’s model behaviour: she hadn’t been written up for a disciplinary infraction for years. The same day the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation filed a motion to toss out Judge Tigar’s opinion, arguing that since she’d been paroled, the ruling was moot. The Transgender Law Center, who were representing her, went back to court, arguing the state was trying to make the precedent (not to mention the cost of surgery) go away by releasing her.

In August 2015 the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation agreed with Shiloh Quine, 56, also suing for transgender surgery, that it would pay, but only if all parties agreed that no precedent was being set.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals did rule that the timing of Norsworthy’s release implied “there was at least some chance that the defendants influenced the parole process.” Norsworthy’s case was allowed to set legal precedent for other inmates.

After release Michelle-Lael, aged 52 after 28 years in prison, initially lived in a halfway house in San Francisco for female drug addicts. Although she had been sober for more than 20 years, it was the only place that would take her. She was then able to receive treatment for Hepatitis C. She is sort of cured but has permanent damage to her liver.

She had affirmative surgery in 2017 provided by Medi-Cal. She has been attempting to setup a charity to help trans persons and other women in San Francisco.

The California Department of Corrections & Rehabilitation announced a new policy in 2015 re trans prisoners, and a few were even granted surgery, but most were not.  A 30-page guidance document was released in March 2020 that aligns more closely to WPATH criteria, and permits primary care doctors to prescribe hormones.

• Ed Pilkington. “'Prison within prison': a transgender inmate's years-long battle for treatment”. The Guardian, 26 July 2015. Online.
• “Transgender convicted murderer, 51, seeking sex-reassignment surgery whilst in jail will now be RELEASED from prison after serving 28 years of her sentence”. The Daily Mail, 7 August 2015. Online.
• Bob Egalko. “Transgender pioneer out of prison, on a new path”. San Francisco Chronicle, March 19, 2016. Online.
• Annie Brown. “Michelle’s Case”. The California Sunday Magazine, May 17, 2016. Online.
• Jacob Anderson-Minshall. “This Trans Ex-Con Helped Make History” Advocate, March 07 2017. Online.
• Chris Johnson.  “Calif. prison system updates policy on trans inmates as scrutiny grows”.  Washington Blade, March 11, 2020. Online.

Eleno de Céspedes (1545–?) surgeon

The child was born in Castile but the initial name is not recorded. The father was Pero Hernández, a Castilian peasant and the mother an African slave. The child inherited her mother’s slave status, and was branded on both sides of her face.

At age twelve, Elena de Céspedes, the owner, died, and the child was freed and given the owner’s name. The new Elena de Céspedes was married at 16, to a stone mason. He left after three months, and she received news that he had died.

However she was pregnant. As she reported later, the childbirth was unusual. During labour, a penis also emerged: “with the force that she applied in labour she broke the skin over the urinary canal, and a head came out”. Céspedes gave away the baby, and had surgery to further reléase the member.

Elano – as he now was – was able to have relations with women. He moved from town to town, working as a tailor, a hosier, a soldier. Finally he lodged with a surgeon, who taught him the trade. He worked in the Hospital de la Corte, and built up a library of 24 medical texts.

Céspedes was known for his affairs with women. In 1586, that is after over twenty years of living as male, he proposed to marry Maria Del Caño. The vicario (archdeacon) of Madrid, suspecting that he was a capon (eunuch), required an examination. The lead examiner was Dr. Francisco Díaz de Alcalá, a prominent urologist, and surgeon to the King. Diaz determined Céspedes’s identity to be male and not hermaphrodite:

“It is true that he has seen Eleno’s genital member, and having touched all around it with his hands and seen it with his eyes, he made the following declaration: That he has his genital member, which is sufficient and perfect, with its testicles formed like any other man. . . . And he thus said and declared that in his opinion Eleno does not bear any resemblance to a hermaphrodite or anything like it”.

The marriage went ahead. However a year later, just after injuries suffered while riding a horse, combined with a bout with cancer, he was arrested and charged in secular court with sodomy and ‘contempt for the sacrament of marriage’.  He explained that there had been changes:

"At present I have only my woman’s nature. The male member that emerged from me has just recently come off in jail, while I was a prisoner in Ocafia. It only now finished falling off, after more than fifteen days. What happened is that before last Christmas I suffered a flow of blood through my woman’s parts and through my rear end, which caused me great pain in my kidneys. I’d hurt myself while riding horseback and the root of my member became weak. The member became spongy and I went cutting it bit by bit, so that I’ve come to be without it. It just finished falling off about fifteen days ago, or a little more, as I’ve said."

Céspedes was examined by midwives who determined that he had a vagina, but was a virgin. The charges were changed to bigamy and the case was transferred to the Inquisition.

Dr. Díaz changed his testimony, now believing that the defendant’s male genitalia had been a deception:

“an art so subtle that it sufficed to fool him by sight and by touch”.

Céspedes asserted that he was a hermaphrodite.

“I never made any pact, explicitly or tacit, with the devil, in order to pose as a man to marry a woman, as is attributed to me. What happens is that many times the world has seen androgynous beings or, in other words, hermaphrodites, who have both sexes. I, too, have been one of these, and at the time I arranged to be married the masculine sex was more prevalent in me; and I was naturally a man and had all that was necessary for a man to marry a woman. And I filed information and eyewitness proof by physicians and surgeons, experts in the art, who looked at me and touched me, and swore under oath that I was a man and could marry a woman, and with this judicial proof I married as a man.”

He insisted that the women whom he had had relations with had no knowledge of his female organs. He was convicted of bigamy and sentenced to two hundred lashes. He was then put to work without pay in the Toledo hospital to use his medical skills, but was obliged to wear female clothing. The hospital administrator complained:

“The presence of Elena de Céspedes has caused great annoyance and embarrassment from the beginning, since many people come to see and be healed by her”.

Thus Céspedes became the first female surgeon in Spain. There would not be another for some centuries afterwards. 

Céspedes was mentioned in Jerónimo de Huerta’s 1599 annotated translation of Pliny’s Natural History (as a transgendered mulatta criminal lesbian) and Antonio de Fuentelapeña’s 1676 El ente dilucidado: Tratado de monstruos y fantasmas.

• Vern L.,Bullough & Bonnie Bullough. Cross Dressing, Sex, and Gender. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993: 94-6. (the Bulloughs never mention that Céspedes was born a slave; refer to him throughout as ‘she’ and refer to the Archdeacon as ‘vicar’. )
• Israel Burshaton. “Elena alias Eleno”. In Sabrina P. Ramet (ed). Gender Reversals and Gender Cultures: Anthropological and Historical Perspectives. Routledge, 1996.: 105- 122.
• Elizabeth Krimmer. In the company of Men: Cross-Dressed Women Around 1800. Wayne State University Press, 2004: 75.
• Leila J Rupp. Sapphistries: A Global History of Love between Women. New York University Press, 2009: 95-6.
• Sherry Velasco. Lesbians in early modern Spain. Vanderbilt University, 2011: 7, 11, 68-9, 75-8, 81-3.
• Richard L Kagan & Abigail Dyer. “Sexuality and the Marriage Sacrament: Elena/Eleno de Céspedes“. Inquisitorial Inquiries: Brief Lives of Secret Jews and Other Heretics. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011: 36-59.
• Von Christof Rolker. “„I am and have been a hermaphrodite“: Elena/Eleno de Céspedes and the Spanish Inquisition”. Männlich-weiblich-zwischen,  27/11/2016. http://intersex.hypotheses.org/2720.

ES.Wikipedia    Butch Heroes

__________

So what do we make of this.   His penis was maybe a large clitoris, and was later damaged.  But why would the midwives, having found a vagina, then declare that Céspedes was a virgin?   Elena had previously given birth.

Rolker makes the point: "At the same time, this in my view clearly demonstrates that Elena/Eleno was not ‚accused‘ of hermaphroditism. Rather, hermaphroditism in sixteenth-century Spain (as in medieval France, for that matter) was a defence strategy. Eleno/Elena’s story of first gradually changing from woman to man and later from predominantly male to predominantly female hermaphrodite may be mind-boggling, but given the very real danger of being condemned for sodomy, the story in the end was live-saving."

Case of Sheffield and Horsham v. The United Kingdom, 1998

Rachel Horsham (1946 - )

Horsham was raised in a small village in Surrey, with a father who had been born in India, and a mother from Ireland. Horsham knew from an early age that she was not really male. As Rachel she emigrated to the Netherlands in 1974 because that country recognised trans women as women at a time when the UK did not.

She became a patient of Professor Dr Louis Gooren at the Vrije Universiteit (Free University) of Amsterdam, wrote the first version of her autobiography in 1991, and completed transition in 1992.

She applied to the UK Consulate for a re-issued UK passport in her new name and gender:

“During an interview with the Consul, I was informed that it was not possible to be issued with a new passport reflecting my current status, at the time. Nor would they accept a letter of Deed Poll from a Solicitor for a change of forenames. Their reasoning: that the issuing of passports to transsexuals in the United Kingdom, showing their female status, on production of a letter of Deed Poll from a Solicitor, and a letter of acknowledgement from a qualified doctor, that the bearer was a transsexual, was not legal outside of the United Kingdom.” (Plaintiff’s Observations)

She was told that she needed an order from a Dutch Court. This was obtained and the passport re-issued. She became a Dutch citizen in 1993, and obtained a ruling in a Dutch court that her UK birth certificate should be amended. As this did not happen she initiated legal proceedings in the UK. This was appealed to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in 1994.

Kristina Sheffield (also born 1946)

Sheffield was a pilot with Brittania Airways, and had 34 years experience when she transitioned in 1986.

Kristina divorced from her wife as was almost always required in the 1990s (in retrospect she felt that she had been coerced into it underhandedly), and a judge also granted an injunction banning Kristina from seeing her daughter as “transsexuals are not suitable company for children”.

She applied to every UK airline, but was always obliged to show her birth certificate which said that she was born male, which resulted in her not getting employment.

While her passport was re-issued in her new name, she was still unable to obtain a US visa, and twice in court to stand surety for a friend, was obliged to reveal her previous name. A misunderstanding with the police with regards to a replica firearm indicated that they were aware of her gender change although the topic had not come up. A request under the Data Protection Act 1984 would have required her to state all previous names.

She also appealed through the UK court system and then to the ECHR.
 

And then

 
Both cases were initially accepted by the ECHR in 1994. Kristina met with Rachel in Amsterdam. Following advice from Rachel, Kristina revised the statement of her case. This made the two cases rather similar although the circumstances were different, in that Rachel wanted to marry and Kristina to find employment. The ECHR decided to couple both appeals.

Rachel, with Kristina’s assistance researched the Ewan Forbes-Sempill case and the Corbett divorce case. They obtained the birth certificates for April Ashley, Roberta Cowell, Michael Dillon and Georgina Turtle, and the marriage certificates for Georgina Turtle and April Ashley. Only April had not had her birth certificate amended re her name and sex. From this they were able to conclude that the Corbetts’ divorce trial could have been quickly concluded in that April was still legally male and thus the marriage was invalid according to the law at that time. There was no need for the detailed medical examinations that were done. Unless, of course, something other than an annulment of marriage was being enacted.

The original birth certificate for Ewan Forbes-Sempill proved impossible to obtain, however a copy specifying his male sex and name was available. The Sempill and Corbett cases had been more about establishing the boundaries of aristocratic privilege than of determining the best governance of transsexuals.

“It was also found, that there had been prior knowledge of these birth certificates by the plaintiffs of former cases that had gone to the ECHR. They were the cases of Rees and later Cossey. None of the fact that it was possible to amend a birth certificate, within existing statute law, was ever presented to the ECHR in those cases. They were based on a demand that the UK government must change the law. The court in those cases was not prepared to demand that a government must restructure its laws. Both cases lost and this created a case law in the ECHR upon which any further cases from the UK would be accepted and judged. The ECHR works on the basis of creating its own case law upon which to judge a case presented to them and where they have none they create it. If a case challenges existing case law, then the court can examine the situation.” (Rachel Horsham .4)

In May 1996, Rachel wrote an anonymous article that was published in The Independent, "Trapped in a man's body with a woman's mind". She detailed the then lack of human rights for transsexuals in the UK; explained how HRT and reconstructive surgery have a 97% success rate and attributed the condition to an incongruence of pre-natal hormones (a theory that was accepted in the late 1990s). She rightly points to the 1970 Corbett v Corbett divorce case as the point where things went wrong.

“All that is required is for government to accept a return to the pre-1970 status quo, a move that is supported by medicine, a large section of legal opinion and many parliamentarians. There is no need for new legislation or new administrative systems; the Birth Certificate still contains a column where errors at registration can be corrected as they were before 1970. Time has shown that there were no practical complications with those corrections, and thus there is no realistic argument for not reinstating the practice. Indeed, there is every reason for regarding it as an urgent necessity.”

The ECHR gave its judgement 30 July 1998. By 11 to 9 it voted that the Article 8 right to respect for a private life was not violated (although the court noted “no steps taken by respondent State to keep need for appropriate legal measures in this area under review despite Court’s view to that effect in Rees and Cossey judgments — Court reiterates that view”). By 18 votes to 2 it voted that the Article 12 right to contract lawful marriage was not violated. Unanimously it voted that Article 14, the right not to be subjected to difference in treatment was not violated. The judgment does not address Horsham’s argument that Corbett vs Corbett was a bad judgment and a simple reversal would solve the problems.

As Rachel summarises the result on her home page:

“The United Kingdom rejected [the plaintiffs’ plea] on the grounds that under British law a person’s sex is fixed at birth and cannot be amended or changed and argued that the Court of Human Rights had given two Judgments in their favour upholding this contention in two previous cases, Rees and Cossey. The plaintiff, in her submissions, proved that the government had lied to the court in those previous cases, and that English Statute law did have the required legislation to amend a person's birth certificate, in such cases. In 1998 the court decided to uphold its case law based on Rees and Cossey and the case of Rachel Horsham was never judged on the facts presented to them.”

Rachel expanded her autobiography to include the appeal to ECHR, and published it, also in 1998.
Kristina won an employment discrimination case in 1998 at an industrial tribunal in that she was unable to obtain even an interview with Easyjet to be a pilot despite her 34 years’ experience.

Context

In 1997, after 18 years of homophobic Conservative misrule, the Labour Party became the new government. Initially it continued the Conservatives’ homophobic policies, one of which was to oppose appeals such as that by Horsham & Sheffield. The GLBT censorship known as Section 28 was not repealed until 2003.

While government lawyers were in Strasburg arguing against the petitions of Horsham and Sheffield, Petra Henderson, British but resident in Germany, had completed surgical transition and wished to be recognised legally as female, which the government quietly permitted. She had threatened to go to the ECHR and the Government wished to keep her out of the newspapers. It was insisted that this was a one-off exemption and did not set a precedent. There were some other similar one-offs, such as the UK citizen in Paris who was able to obtain a similar result with Petra's assistance. Prime Minister Tony Blair spoke of ‘joined-up government’, but this was one area where it was definitely not so.

Press for Change had been founded in 1992. It engaged with lawyers and Members of Parliament. Inevitably a slow process. A private member's bill was introduced in 1996, but as the then Conservative Government refused to endorse it, it was without success. In 2002, another appeal to the ECHR finally met with success, and two years after that the Labour Government passed the Gender Recognition Act – not perfect, but the best in the world at that time.

Comments

Rachel’s book is not listed in either Amazon or Abebooks. It is on the Dwarf Empire web page.












In recent years Rachel has self-identified as HBS, although independently of the two major strands thereof.   In 1998 the only Benjamin Syndrome movement was the Association du Syndrome de Benjamin in Paris run by Tom Reucher, Diane Potiron, Hugues Cariou, and which was inclusive unlike the HBS movement which developed after 2005.

• "Trapped in a man's body with a woman's mind", The Independent, 1 May 1996. Online.
• Rosa Prince. “Transsexuals in test case”. The Independent, 22 February 1998. Online.
• “British Pilot Wins Discrimination Case”. NewsPlanet, June 1, 1998. Online.
• Case of Sheffield and Horsham v. The United Kingdom. European Court of Human Rights, 30 July 1998. Online.
• “UK Transsexuals lose court case”. BBC News, July 30, 1998. Online.
• Christine Burns. “Court Judgement Criticises UK Government's Lack of Action”. PFC, 9^th August 1998. Online.
• Rachel Horsham. Release of the Dove. Dwarf Empire, 1991 and 1998.

Rachel Horsham’s Home Page