Essays on trans, intersex, cis and other persons and topics from a trans perspective.......All human life is here.
This site is the most comprehensive on the web devoted to trans history and biography. Well over 1800 persons worthy of note, both famous and obscure, are discussed in detail, and many more are mentioned in passing.
There is a detailedIndexarranged by vocation, doctor, activist group etc. There is also a Place Index arranged by City etc. This is still evolving.
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In the early 1950s, the most attention went to Christine Jorgensen as being the first operated-on transsexual. However there were others around the world who were in the news before the Jorgenson story broke, and who even had surgery earlier than Jorgensen did. We know of Marta Olmos in Mexico, Marie Jefferson in Canada and Xie Jianshun in Taiwan (not to mention the sex-change surgeries in Berlin in the late 1920s - early 1930s, and in Switzerland in the early 1940s).
There was also Nagai Akiko 永井明子, a hostess and cabaret singer in Tokyo. She had surgery 1950-1 at the Nippon Medical School Hospital日本医科大学, and in November
1954, in accordance with Article 113 of the Family Register Law, Nagai had her civil status changed.
However, unlike Jorgenson, Olmos, Jefferson and Xie, that is all that we know of her. Not even historians Mark McLelland or Howard Chiang have any more to say - nor is there agreement re her birth year,
Mark McLelland. Queer Japan from the
Pacific War to the Internet Age. Lanham Md & Oxford: Rowman &
Littlefield 2005: 113.
Ishida Hitishi & Murakami Takanori,
translated by Win Lunsing. “The Process of Divergence between 'Men who
Love Men' and 'Feminised Men' in Postwar Japanese Media”. Intersections:
Gender, History and Culture in the Asian Context, 12 January 2006. p8.
Howard Chiang.“Transtopia: A Keyword for Our Century”.
Cupblog.org, 2021/06/01. Online. p3-4.
Eric Seizelet. “Transidentité et droit
au Japon".Revue du droit
public et de la science politique en France et à l’étranger, 2023, 5, pp.4-5.
Croot was raised in small towns in New South Wales, and at 16 was seriously ill with spinal meningitis, and spent a year in hospital.
Croot transitioned to Estelle Maria Croot while at Wollongong University studying science and maths. She also started creating abstract art on large canvases, and was in a music group that played experimental and avant-garde music. Because of discrimination Estelle left university, and studied dance at Sydney Dance Company and also belly dancing with an Egyptian Dance instructor.
As Estelle Asmodelle she worked as a belly dancer in variety shows in Australia and in East Asia. She was detained in Singapore and elsewhere because her passport had an ‘M’ for gender. She, and others, lobbied the Australian and the New South Wales governments that she be allowed to amend her birth certificate. In 1987, she was the first Australian transsexual to get her birth certificate, and then her passport changed. She also lobbied for changes to the anti-discrimination laws and for research into ectopic pregnancies for transwomen. This resulted in a media storm which she was able to ride appearing in hundreds of magazine articles and frequently on Australian and Japanese television.
She took up modelling to promote her dancing, but it became her more important career. She was the first Australian transsexual to appear nude in a mainstream magazine, Australian Playgirl.
She lived in Japan 1988-1992 working as a model. She had a walk-on part in the Japanese film Ai to heisei no iro – Otoko, 1989, a transgender sexual fantasy that mainly played in art galleries. She also did some technology consulting.
In Australia she was in Secret Fantasies, 1992, and the belly-dance instructional film, The Enchanted Dance, 1994 that was controversial purely because Estelle was trans. She also made an appearance as 'girl on beach' in one episode of the television soap opera Home and Away.
In 1998 she published an autobiographical novel, An Aesthetic Dream - an autobiography. Also that year she founded the internet company Ellenet Pty. Ltd.
In 2000, Estelle lived and modelled in Los Angeles, and took acting classes at the Lena Harris Workshop.
She had continued large canvas abstract art, and was exhibited in Tokyo, Melbourne and Sydney, and Los Angeles. Her first art book was Transience, 2010.
Since 2005 Estelle has been composing electronic music, and has released 11 albums.
In 2008 she took a course in Astronomy at the University of Central Lancashire. She was interested in special and general relativity and its relationship to cosmology and time, and published papers in the Journal of the Institute of Science and Technology and the Asian Journal of Physics. In Cosmos Magazine she published "Neptune's day measured to the second", and "The Milky Way is a galactic cannibal", both June 2012. In 2013 she published Cosmology - the Ultimate Introduction. In June 2012 she became a Member of the Australian Society of Gravitation and General Relativity, and in May 2013 also became a Member of the International Society on General Relativity and Gravitation (ISGRG).
In 2016 her internet company Ellenet Pty. Ltd was sold.
In 2018 Estelle started a PhD at the Centre for Quantum Computation & Communication Technology, School of Mathematics and Physics, University of Queensland, working in the field of quantum mechanics and relativity.
Estelle died, age 62, in 2026.
Music albums:
2009 – Electronic Mischief
2010 – Transelectric
2010 – Dark Universe
2012 – Asmelectrix
2013 – Grooveatropolis Vol I
2013 – Electronic Mischief II
2014 – Near Earth Landscape
2015 – Dark Universe II
2015 – Monotonic Meditations
2015 – Improvera - Quite Moments
2016 – Grooveatropolis Vol II
Some of her newspaper and magazine articles:
Cleo (May 1987),
People (Nov 1985 & 1993),
Post (Dec 1988 Sep 1992),
Penthouse Forum (1986 & 1991),
New Idea (March 1986),
She (July 1996),
New Woman (June 1992 & 1998),
Naughty Sydney (Cover – November 1991),
Tomadachi (June 1991),
Wellbeing (May 1989 & 1993),
Nature & Health (November 1997).
In 1962 Claire encountered Yugoslavian immigrant Franz Kolterer who founded Micro Science Associates, a precision etching firm. Claire provided skill in micro-photography, and was manager of the art and photo department and a director of the company until 1967.
Claire in Benjamin's book, 1977
October 3rd, 1963 Claire was admitted to Stanford Hospital with an incarcerated hernia. Her doctor there was Donald Laub (1935-2024), then an intern but who later became known for transgender surgery. She told him that she herself had removed her penis. She also gave him an alternate autobiography:
“She explained it to me. She told me further that she was born in Arabia, the son of a Scottish trader who ran a ship between Arabia and England, and was educated aboard ship by specialized tutors. She was genetically XY, a male born with a grade 3 hypospadias, a birth defect in which the urine comes out just above the scrotum. The mistake was made that Clair was a female because the genitalia resembled a clitoris and labia in appearance. The diagnosis was plausible, since no genetic karyotype was available in Arabia in 1900. When puberty came along she developed an ample penis, which was upsetting to her, having been raised for 15 years as a female. For many years, she sought medical advice but there was no one who would help her. Unable to live as the woman she felt she was, she removed the penis and the rest of the male apparatus with a sharp knife and presented herself at the University of California emergency room. She was taken care of there by urologist Dr. Goodwin, who was sympathetic to her plight and fixed her up as well as possible at the time.” … “I asked her about her body art, and she told me she’d once traveled with a circus as a tattooed lady and sword swallower.”
The surgery to fix the hernia went well. However follow-up tests revealed adenocarcinoma of the kidney cells, and the left kidney had to be removed. Again the surgery went well.
Dr Laub got to know Claire as a person:
“Well, Clair had some idiosyncrasies, as you might have suspected by now. Having been raised Muslim, she had good habits; she abstained from drinking coffee or alcohol. Despite being female, Clair had retained some of her male spirit, owning a motorcycle, a gull-wing Mercedes, and a 300 Savage telescopic rifle. She had a fondness for Japanese architecture. Her profession was photography, which she had been taught on the ship during her schooling years, and during the birth of Silicon Valley she was able to make microphotography negatives of the plans for a computer chip; the manufacturing process utilized silver salts in the negatives of her microphotos to etch silicon into chips.
“Clair was rewarded for her efforts and gained a large number of shares in one of the more prominent laser and computer companies in the Silicon Valley. With her money she built a Japanese home, a five-sided pagoda on the top of one of the highest hills in a most exclusive suburb, Los Altos Hills. She included koi fish tanks where the fish were able to swim from outside the home into the inside for Clair’s pleasure. The five alcoves of the pagoda each had a wind-generated musical organ, insulated so that there was no sound of blowing air during the playing of the pipes.”
Harry Benjamin’s seminal book on Transsexuals came out in 1966. He condensed his three years of meetings and correspondence 1953-5 and described Claire in three paragraphs, but, as she requested, without giving a reference name. No photographs were included in the book, but medical and other professionals could request them if they wrote in on medical stationary. Black stripes were placed over Claire’s face to prevent recognition.
“One patient who is now, several years after the operation, a decidedly masculine-looking 'woman,' with tattoos all over her body, is getting along well in an active business and is unrecognized as a former male. She is merely considered eccentric by her associates.
“Under no circumstances, she assured me repeatedly, would she ever go back to living as a man. 'This way I am at least myself and can relax,' were her own words.
“A couple of times she was arrested under the suspicion of 'impersonating.' When she was taken to a police station, examined and declared to be a woman, the arresting officers apologized and in one instance, bought her a dinner. Not all patients in such situations fared equally well”.
In his introduction to the 1969 anthology, Transsexualism and Sex Reassignment edited by Richard Green and John Money, Benjamin wrote, probably with Claire in mind:
“These few instances of attempted self-castration by definitely non psychotic individuals impressed me greatly. Their desperation as well as the entire clinical history with their vain search for help, often from childhood on, made me realize that the medical profession truly treated these patients as ‘stepchildren’. Educational and medical lectures and scientific publications were urgently needed.”
In 1967 Micro Science had merged with Alloys Unlimited. That was the year that one of the company’s acid tanks sprang a leak in March, and a fire captain had to be rushed to hospital. There was a further incident in October 1971 when there was fire in a tank of nitric acid.
The firm was sold to the British Plessey Group and became Plessey Micro Science Inc in 1974, and then Kolterer set up Koltron Corp. By now Claire was no longer involved, but she had invested in shares of Micro Science Associates, Alloys Unlimited and then Plessey Micro Science Inc, and had become a millionairess.
However, by the end of the 1960s, with age, the many lines in her face made her look more male than female. Laub and his team did a face-lift, which went very well. By this time, Dr Laub had started doing transgender surgeries – his first trans patient (other than Claire) was Ella in 1968. In 1969 Donald Laub founded Interplast to provide necessary reconstructive surgery for persons in developing countries. Claire became the official Interplast photographer, and travelled to central and south America and chronicled surgeries for cleft lip, cleft palate, and burn scar deformities. She was greatly appreciated for the excellence of her photography and her compassion toward patients, even though she was not passing that well. The patients – affectionately – referred to her as “Señor Clair”.
Vernon Gregory, an organist who played the mighty Wurlitzer organ, took over the Avenue cinema in Oakland to install the Wurlitzer that his son had found in Chicago. They moved it to Oakland, installed it and started a program of films accompanied by the organ, but were deeper and deeper in debt until Claire – who played a smaller organ at home – came in to rescue the project in 1972. She also bought a plane that year and learned to fly.
Claire lost most of her money in the recession of the 1970s, and was for a while bankrupt. She developed a working 3-D television and patented it, but it was the alternate model by Matsushita Electric (now Panasonic) that was more successful.
Claire in later years
In 1976, Claire called Dr Laub complaining of severe pain in the rib when she coughed. After a preliminary examination, Claire was admitted to the Stanford Hospital oncology medical service. X-rays showed that her lung cancer had metastasized to the rib. Claire asked how long she had left and was told about six weeks. She asked for a glass of water, and took one of the cyanide pills that she had in her purse.
The next year Benjamin’s The Transsexual Phenomenon was reprinted as a Warner Books Paperback. This time the photographs were included within the book, and the black strips hiding Clair’s face were removed.
Joanne Meyerowitz. How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States, 2002, included 5 short mentions of Claire disguised under the pseudonym of Caren Ecker. These mentions were based solely on documents in the Kinsey archives, mention her auto-castration and surgery in 1953, her contact with Louise Lawrence and with Worden and Marsh, but say nothing about Claire’s subsequent career as a business woman and photographer.
Both Claire’s only son, age 82, and her business partner, Frank Kolterer, age 76, died in 2007.
London was born and raised in London. In 2013 he went to Seoul, Korea to teach English. He took to the South Korean culture and their music, and especially became obsessed with Jimin of the boy band BTS.
London underwent 18 cosmetic surgeries in S Korea, China, Poland and Armenia costing over $150,000 to resemble Jimin. In November 2019 he appeared on the US reality show Botched, and discussed his operations. He was warned that after five rhinoplasties another risked necrosis and the loss of his nose, and they declined to operate on him. By this time London was a famous ‘influencer’ with ‘millions’ of followers on Tiktok and Instagram, and released several KPop style records.
By 2021 London publicly identified as a non-binary Korean – to backlash in Korea where they was criticised as merely using Korea for fame and attention. In August 2022, by which time they had had 32 surgeries, they apologised to Jimin and other Asians that such obsessive emulation was wrong.
By that time London had announced that she was a genderfluid trans woman, and had married porn-actor Danny Richardson. She intended to get surgeries to look like the female Korean singer Rosé. She talked about going to Bangkok for genital surgery and breast implants- but she never started on female hormones.
However by October London had changed his mind, reverted to being male and using male pronouns and divorced his husband. Around the same time he visited a church and started reading the Bible. He has been embraced by conservatives and Christians, has adopted their negative attitude to trans persons, and has a book coming out about his life and his new opinions. He has jumped on the bandwagon of condemming the Scottish self-id law despite similar laws working just fine in Argentina, Ireland and many other countries.
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Of course one cannot detransition if one has not transitioned. A few months of claiming to be trans on social media is not in itself transition. London could have called his book A Change of Mind or even Changeback (a wider term than Detransition) – but he never stuck with it long enough to call it Detransition.
We should note that
while London had extensive homeogender surgery, he had no transgender surgery.
Why is it that so many of those who start on the transgender journey and find that it is not for them, then want to prohibit it for other persons? For other examples click https://zagria.blogspot.com/search/label/changeback, .
“BTS Jimin Superfan Oli London appears on U.S. TV Show E! Botched”. All K Pop, November 13, 2019. Online.
Peter Conte. “BTS fan Oli London's shocking transformation to look like K-Pop idol”. Com.au, Nov 19, 2019. Online.
“Oli London identifies as a Non-Binary Korean and netizens angered as they believe he doesn't really like South Korea or Jimin but he's just using them for attention” Allkpop, June 25, 2021. Online.
Angie Hernandez. “Influencer Oli London Apologizes for Getting Surgery to Look Like BTS’ Jimin”. E! Online, Sep 01, 2022. Online.
Angie Hernandez. “Influencer Oli London Shares He’s Detransitioning Back to Male“. E! Online, Oct 14, 2022. Online.
Oli London. “Oli London: I’ve rejected my trans identity to follow Jesus. Now I want to be baptised”. Premier Christianity, 1 November 2022. Online.
Edie Heipel. “De-transitioner Oli London shares conversion to Christianity”. Catholic News Agency, Nov 4, 2022. Online.
“British Influencer Oli London Files For Divorce After Just 7 Months Of Marriage After Admitting Resemblance to Kpop Star Was An Attraction”. Towleroad, January 16, 2023. Online.
John James. “I spent £250,000 to look like a Korean woman... but I've gone back to being a MAN: 'De-transitioner's journey to the opposite gender and back again”. Daily Mail, 26 February 2023. Online.
Oli London. Detransition: a memoir. Skyhorse Publishing, 2023.
At the beginning of 1964 the then 19-year-old, Brigitte Bond, was signed as a singer by Tom Littlewood of the 2i’s Coffee Bar in London’s Soho which had launched early rock stars such as Tommy Steels and Cliff Richard. Mod, defined by fashionable clothes and modern jazz, was the new thing, and Mod had begun to incorporate the Jamaican music called Ska or Bluebeat. Brigitte had gigs across London with various aspiring musicians, and put out two songs as a 45 rpm single “Blue Beat Baby’ and “Oh Yeah Baby” backed by an impromptu group named the Bluebeats.
25 February 1964, the Jamaican Ska star, Prince Buster, arrived in England. He was met at Heathrow by a crowd of fans including Brigitte who was photographed dancing with him. This photo would later become iconic. The Daily Mirror dubbed her the Queen of Bluebeat. Prince Buster performed that same night at the prestigious May Fair Hotel and Brigitte was again photographed in attendance.
In April the Flamingo Club in Soho began a weekly Blue Beat Night, and Brigitte performed at the second show. Sir John Waller, 7th Baronet of Braywick Lodge, a noted poet and gay, was not able to claim his full inheritance of £250,000 ( £4 million today adjusted for inflation) until marriage and a male heir. He had rejected many women. One day he walked past the 2i’s coffee bar and saw a poster promoting Brigitte. He already knew her manager Tom Littlewood, who was willing to introduce him to Brigitte. He proposed to her on their first date. She accepted. This did not stop her being featured in Tit-Bits magazine in early May, or attending a Mods gathering on the beach at Margate over the Whitsun Weekend. The engagement was in the press 21 May. However she would not be able to give him a baby, and the engagement was quickly called off. This resulted in press articles stating that Brigitte was trans, that were repeated internationally.
However this did not impede her career. She performed for a week at the prestigious Astor Club in Mayfair where royalty and gangsters mixed (and where the next year the gangsters, the Krays and the Richardsons, would clash and start a gang war). Brigitte transferred her management to the Arthur Lowe Agency who advertised her as “The controversial Sex Change girl with the velvet singing voice”. Other advertisements referred to her as “the Shapely French singer”. This was followed by a short African tour: Mombasa, Nairobi and Salisbury.
On return to London, Brigitte performed regularly at the Pelican Club in Soho, until it was raided for its nude dancers who broke the so-called Windmill Rule, that if nude the performer should not move. Brigitte, while not charged, was mentioned as “the worst”.
In 1965 Brigitte did a tour of South Africa and Rhodesia, and returned to headline at La Dolce Vita in Newcastle. She then did a residency In Madrid. Articles in the Spanish press mentioned her gender transition - although Spain was still ruled by Franco, this did not cause any problems.
In June 1966 US establishment preacher Billy Graham was in London for a month, and had denounced the newly fashionable mini-skirt. On 17 June he visited Soho as announced. Brigitte, who was now calling herself Brigitte St John, climbed on Graham’s car to protest his comments about miniskirts. The Sunday Mirror put her on the front page to make her point.
She moved to live in Spain. She claimed that she was in the 1967 James Bond film, Casino Royale, although she is not in the credits - however given the chaotic nature of the film with its many directors and cutting room compromises, she may well have been.
She is in the credits of three films 1967-1969: Herostratus, 1001 Nights and La muchacha del Nilo playing the role of ‘dancer’ in the first two and ‘Brigitte’ in the third.
By the late 1960s Brigitte St John was a ‘supervedette’ in Spain and elsewhere, mainly appearing in cabaret, and even appearing with Coccinelle. In 1974 she appeared at Madrid’s Gay Club, its first GLBT club as la Transición, the change away from Franco’s repression, was starting. She performed with the heterosexual transformista Paco España.
In April 1976 Brigitte was interviewed for a Spanish paper and revealed that she was married and living in Campania, Italy, and that her real name was Giovanna.
After that nothing was heard about her.
There was a revival of Ska in the late 1970s. The Birmingham band, The Beat, wanted a beat-girl logo for their first album and asked the cartoonist Hunt Emerson to create one. He took the 1964 photograph of Brigitte and Prince Buster dancing, and changed the image of Brigitte into an icon that has since then been that of the Beat Girl.
Melody Maker ran a story on the history in 1979, and included the 1964 photograph.
*not Bridget St John, the folk singer
Brigitte Bond and The Bluebeats. “Blue Beat Baby / Oh Yeah Baby” 45 single 1964.
“The King and Queen of Blue Beat meet”. Daily Mirror, 26 February 1964: 26.
David Hunn. “Brigitte Bond: She has a built-in licence to thrill”. Tit-Bits, 9 May 1964: 13.
“I’ll be Lady Waller in 4 Months says Brigitte”. The Evening Standard, 21 May 1964.
“Where Boys Were”. Madera Tribune, 73,20, 10 June 1964, p3. Online
“The Stripper who cried for shame”. Daily Mirror, November 14, 1964: 3.
Brigitte St John. “Sin and Mini Skirts”. Sunday Mirror,June 19, 1966 p1.
John Huston et al (dir). Casino Royal. With Peter Sellers, Orson Wells, Woody Allen etc and possibly Brigitte St John. US 131 mins 1967.
Don Levy (dir). Herostratus. With Michael Gothard as Max and Brigitte St John as dancer. UK 142 mins 1967.
José María Elorrieta (dir & scr). 1001 Nights. With Jeff Cooper and Brigitte St John as dancer. Spain & Italy 92 mins 1968.
José María Elorrieta (dir). La muchacha del Nilo. With Rory Calhoun and Brigitte St John as Brigitte. Spain 81 mins 1969.
Rachel Hebditch. “For Richer or Poorer .. Sir John weds a bride who could give birth to a £500,000 boy”. Daily Mirror, April 4, 1974 p9.
“The Story of Ska”. Melody Maker, May 19, 1979.
Victor Selwyn. “Obituaries: Sir John Waller Bt”. The Independent,21 February 1995. Online.
Tony van den Bergh. “Obituary: Sir John Waller Bt”. The Independent, 4 March 1995. Online.
Lloyd Bradley.Reggae: The Story of Jamaican Music. BBC Worldwide, 2002: 25.
“The Beat Girl - Noted Cartoonist Hunt Emerson Designs a 2-Tone Era Icon”. Marco on the Bass, December 16, 2008.
Der JB. “Who the f*** is Brigitte Bond?”. Over & Over(setter), 28 mai 2011. Online.
Heather Augustyn. Women in Jamaican Music. McFarland, 2020: 87.
Joanna Wallace with Heather Augustyn.Blue Beat Baby: The Untold Story of Brigitte. YouTube
Heather Augustyn. Rude Girls: Women in 2 Tone and One Step Beyond. Half Pint Press, 2022.
Thanks in particular for Joanna Wallace’s 30 minute YouTube documentary in compiling this.
Given the popularity of Brigitte Bardot (same spelling of Brigitte) and James Bond (the 3rd film was soon to be released) in 1964, one can see how she chose her name.
Sometimes it is said that Brigitte was either Maltese or from Marseilles. Sometimes that she had done British military service as a male. National Service required two years between the ages of 17-20. However it was discontinued in 1960 when Brigitte was 15. She may have volunteered - but how to fit in two such years, and then gender transition and surgery all before arriving at the 2i’s club as age 19?
Heather Augustyn’s new book. Rude Girls, on Ska music has a section on Brigitte Bond.
Wallace says that “Blue Beat Baby” came out in March, after Prince Buster’s tour. However it is referred to in the Daily Mirror article 26/2/64.
The Flamingo Club had become well-known after a fight there in October 1962 between lovers of Christine Keeler led to revelations of her affair with John Profumo, the Minister of War, that in turn led to the defeat of the Conservative Government in 1964. For more on the Flamingo Club see Chp 11 in Rob Baker’s Beautiful Idiots and Brilliant Lunatics, 2015. Also online.
Both the Wikipedia entry and the first obituary re Waller in the Independent say nothing at all about John Waller being gay and nothing about Brigitte. Both of them skip from the 1950s to the 1970s. Waller did eventually marry in April 1974, and had a daughter. However, due to the sexist nature of aristocracy, this did not count. He died in 1995 without ever getting the full inheritance.
