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Showing posts with label nun. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nun. Show all posts

23 August 2013

Angelo Tornebeno/Mario Martino (1937 - 2011) nun, nurse, activist.

Angela was born to Italian immigrants in the US Midwest. The father was a macho cop who sometimes beat his wife and child. Angela was criticized for being too much like the father, especially after the mother died when the child was 12, and the father remarried.

At 15 Angela was sent to a boarding school run by nuns, and the next year transferred to an aspirancy, a training school for girls who aspired to be nuns, but was sent home after trysts with a classmate were discovered. Angela trained as a nurse, and with the encouragement of a favorite nun did enter a convent as Sister Mary Dominick, but after further love involvements, had to leave.

Angela then left a first lover who was a lesbian, Angela feeling rather that he was a man who wanted a male-female relationship. While working as an operating-room technician, Angelo found a pregnant woman who accepted him as a man, but she died in childbirth.

Angelo's next girlfriend, Rebecca, had religious objections which were not quieted by the copy of Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness that he gave her to read, but did finally accept that Angelo was becoming a man.

When Christine Jorgensen's autobiography came out in 1967, Angelo (and many other transsexuals) attempted to contact Harry Benjamin.
"And scared was the word. No other word adequately described my feeling as I picked up the phone and put in a long-distance call to the man I wanted most in the world to see, Dr Harry Benjamin. His amiable secretary explained that the doctor was away. She would, however, refer me to a most reputable physician in the city where I was working. 'He can advise you,' she said, 'and make recommendations.' I thanked her and placed the call. That secretary said the doctor had just left on vacation and she had no recommendations to offer. I phoned the county Medical Society and was given three names, among them that of Dr Patterson. My fourth call was to his office.(p143"
Dr Patterson answered his own phone and told Angelo to come right over. After a physical and one session with the psychiatrist in the next office, Angelo was approved as transsexual and started taking testosterone. The physical transition caused a rift with Rebecca who again raised her religious objections. Dr Patterson was apparently stringing Angelo along with assurances that referrals were forthcoming, but eventually Angelo realized that Patterson has no such contacts.

However he became friends with Nick, another patient of Dr Patterson. an East European immigrant who had already had a mastectomy and hysterectomy. Nick found Dr Lake in an out-of-town hospital who was willing to did a mastectomy for high fees. Angelo and Rebecca made up, Angelo had his first phalloplasty as the first-ever such patient of a Dr Fogle, which however became infected and had to be removed.  He did not attempt phalloplasty again for another four years, this time with Dr Robertson in the Midwest.  Again complications set in and he lost the tip.

He tried without success to reconcile with his father. Even when the father was dying after a stroke and heart attack, they were not able to make peace.

Angelo legally changed his name, and he and Rebecca were married. He was employed as a nursing supervisor in Lake's hospital.

Using the name Mario Martino they, assisted by Dr Lake, founded The Labyrinth Foundation Counseling Service in Yonkers, New York for male-to-female transsexuals, and provided a post-operative half-way house.

As Mario he published his autobiography, the first such in the modern sense by a trans man, in 1977. The book is dedicated to Harry Benjamin and to Rebecca, and includes a short Foreword by Benjamin.

Angelo studied for a PhD in counseling psychology which he completed in 1979. Sometime in the early 1980s he dropped out of sight, and wasn't heard of again.

It is rumored that he married a second time, moved to Florida and passed on in 2011.

*Not Mario Martino the Italian photographer, nor the Puerto Rican journalist, nor the character in The Godfather.
  • Mario Martino with harriett - Emergence: a Transsexual Autobiography. New York: A Signet Book 1979.
  • "Personal Profiles: Mario Martini". Gender Review, 4, March 1979: 5-6.
  • Pat Califia. Sex changes : the politics of transgenderism. San Francisco: Cleis Press 1997. Second edition by Patrick Califia 2003: 38-47.
  • Judith Halberstam. Female masculinity. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1998: 154-5.
  • Joanne J. Meyerowitz. How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States. Cambridge, Mass. ; London: Harvard University press, 2004: 94-5, 152, 158, 162, 163, 165, 184, 227, 228, 236-7, 275.
  • Emily Nelson. FTM Trans Theory VS. Trans Narratives: Working to an Updated Trans Theory. Masteruppsats at Upsale Universitet, 2011. http://uu.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:461938/FULLTEXT01.
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Tornebeno/Martino was insistent that he was not and had not been a lesbian, and conceived of FTMs as heterosexual men.   As Califia notes: “It would be interesting to see his reaction to the FTMs with gay male identities who are becoming more vocal today(p46)”.

Another group that Martino did not identify with was trans women:  “But the male-to-female patients were another story.  Too few of them acted like any other female, either in speech or in manner.  The extroverts among them referred to each other as closet queens, shrilled out their demands, showed their newly constructed vaginas to anyone who’d look, and used language that I’d never heard from a woman (p209-210)”.

Was Emergence the first autobiography by a trans man?   Several of the 18th and 19th century trans men wrote auto biographies of a kind, but the assumptions and social constructions are quite different from those of the 1970s.   However Robert Allen’s But for the Grace: The True Story of a Dual Existence London: W.H. Allen 1954 surely counts as a modern trans man autobiography.
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20 April 2010

Janice Raymond (1943 - ) feminist professor.

++ Name of Raymond's 1980 paper corrected.

Raymond did a BA in English Literature at Salve Regina College, 1965, and an MA in Religious Studies at Andover Newton Theological School, 1971. She was then for a short time a member of the Sisters of Mercy, but left and did a PhD in Ethics and Society at Boston College, 1977. Raymond’s PhD thesis supervisor was Mary Daly of Boston College. Daly was writing Gyn/Ecology at the same time. Raymond’s dissertation became The Transsexual Empire, 1979, and it and Gyn/Ecology cite each other, and both were published by Beacon Press which is associated with the Unitarian Church. In 1978, Raymond became Professor of Women’s Studies and Medical Ethics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

Raymond’s position is that transsexual women are not women, and she uses male pronouns for trans women throughout. The Transsexual Empire enthusiastically draws on Thomas Kando’s Sex Change; The Achievement of Gender Identity Among Feminized Transsexuals, 1972, and on Jan Morris’ Conundrum, 1974. Kando restricted his sample to recently-transitioned transsexuals, and Morris wrote within two years of surgery, and so Raymond was easily able to find examples of the gender enthusiasm of new women which she insisted was typical of transsexual women of whatever duration. Raymond says that she supplemented these with 13 direct interviews and found highly stereotypical notions of gender roles, and without the “role strain of normal women”. However Angela Douglas claimed that all the quotes from these 13 are in fact from a letter that Douglas wrote to Raymond. Raymond retells several of the transsexual tales that were in the US press in the 1970s: Angela Douglas’ notorious polemical letter that was a reaction to lesbian separatism; the fuss that some lesbians made about Sandy Stone being the sound engineer at the feminist Olivia Records; Paula Grossman being fired.

She takes the position that sex is determined by the chromosomes and that if XY one is always male, and if XX always female, and secondly that the historical experience of being raised as a girl and menstruating determines a woman. A constructed-woman has only a history of wishing to be a woman. The primary cause of transsexualism is the sex stereotyping of patriarchal society (no biological, psychological or existential causation is considered), and the secondary cause is the professionals, the surgeons, psychiatrists, counselors, electrologists etc who provide services and persuade foolish persons to change (the opposition of the vast majority of male doctors to the first transsexuals is not considered). She never considers that transsexuals themselves regarded the gender-stereotyped requirements of the gender clinics as a problem. Transsexual men are “the tokens that save face for the transsexual empire”, and are barely considered. The patriarchy has introduced sex changes as a means of controlling gender stereotypes, which act in the interests of men. Once extra-natal conception is introduced, biological women will become redundant.
“All transsexuals rape women’s bodies by reducing the real female form to an artefact, and appropriating this body for themselves. [...] Transsexuals merely cut off the most obvious means of invading women, so that they seem non-invasive”.
In various places she compares gender surgery to foot-binding, clitoridectomy and infibulation, corset mutilation, unnecessary hysterectomies and radical mastectomies. Several times she suggests but just stops short of saying that transsexuality was associated with the Nazis, and the death camps.

Whilst Raymond maintains that male-to-constructed-females are more gender stereotyped than biological woman, worse still are those who attempt to be lesbian-feminists:
"Transsexually constructed lesbian-feminists show yet another face of patriarchy. As the male-to-constructed-female transsexual exhibits the attempt to possess women in a bodily sense while acting out the images into which men have molded women, the male-to-constructed-female who claims to be a lesbian-feminist attempts to possess women at a deeper level, this time under the guise of challenging rather than conforming to the role and behavior of stereotyped femininity”.
Raymond’s call to action:
“I contend that the problem with transsexualism would best be served by morally mandating it out of existence” .
The book was endorsed in a review by Thomas Szasz which is quoted on both its front and back covers (“Raymond’s development and documentation is flawless”).

Raymond also wrote a paper, Social and Ethical Aspects of Transsexual Surgery, for the US Government. This paper, which is less contentious and inflammatory in its language and thus more superficially plausible, resulted in the removal of US federal and some state aid for indigent and imprisoned transsexuals, and provided an example for insurance companies who were pleased to have a feminist telling them that transsexuality should not be covered. This non-coverage included breast or genital cancer where it could be deemed to be a consequence of transsexual activity.

Carol Riddell wrote the first detailed and critical review of Raymond’s book, and it has been frequently reprinted, which I have drawn upon above.

Through the 1980s gay academics endorsed Raymond’s book. It was admired by Wayne Dynes (“Impassioned radical-feminist critique”) and Jonathan Katz (“The most profound, extended critique of the medical concept of ‘transsexualism’ ”).   Liz Hodgkinson’s Bodyshock: The Truth About Changing Sex, 1987, while being pro-transsexuals, repeatedly returns to Raymond’s book for explanation.

Along with Peter Ackroyd’s Dressing Up, also 1979, Raymond’s book became a de rigueur entry in the bibliography of any 1980s book on trans topics, even though many authors did not actually seem to understand what she was saying.

In 1988, Sandy Stone wrote a manifesto defiantly responding to Raymond.

Unlike the concept of autogynephilia, very few actual transsexuals identified with Raymond’s position, the one exception being Rachael Webb, a lorry driver cum London Councillor who regarded herself as a radical feminist and as a constructed woman.

Raymond’s books in the early 1990s attacked sexual liberalism, contraception in the form of RU486, and the new reproductive technologies.

In 1996, The Transsexual Empire was reissued by Teacher College Press, without any changes although by that time the excessive gender conformity required by gender clinics that she had initially criticized was largely a thing of the past. She expands her criticism in the new Introduction using the new word, ‘transgenderism’, she dismisses gender transgression as a new type of gender conformity, and has specific criticisms of RuPaul, Leslie Feinberg and k.d. lang. So non-surgical gender solutions are not acceptable either as some might have assumed from her book.

In the late 1990s and 2000s there have been a number of trans writers who have used Raymond’s book as if it referred to other transsexuals whom they don’t seem to like, often referred to as ‘autogynephiles’ or ‘transgender’ or ‘men’, although there is no basis for this in Raymond’s writings: she is as critical of the lesbian-feminist constructed female as she is of the gender-stereotyped constructed female. Notable examples are by Margaret O’Hartigan and Cathryn Platine.

From 1994-2007 Raymond was the Co-Executive Director of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW) and is still on the Board. She retired as a professor in 2002, and is Professor Emerita. In CATW she is strongly against decriminalization of prostitution which has led several sex worker activists to take issue with her. She talks about prostitution as if trans women and men are never sex workers.

*Not Janice Raymond, Playmate of the Month for December 1974.
______________________________________________________________________

Raymond has kept her personal life quiet.   Her Wikipedia page has a ‘personal life’ section which says that she is a former Catholic and an open lesbian.  There is no mention of her having a wife.  There are two rumours relating to her private life.  I did not include them above because I could not confirm them, but they are very germane to her writings:  that she had a passion for a trans woman but was rebuffed (Denny, 2002);  and that she and Daly were lovers.  Both suggestions partially explain the intensity of her transphobia.

My husband was raised a Catholic and is a graduate of the Jesuit Boston College.  On reading this, his major comment was to explain that many ex-Catholics and lapsed Catholics emphasize the one issue that affects them personally – with Raymond it is the non-ordination of women ( Johnson, 1973) – but continue to agree with the Church on other issues.  Raymond’s position is remarkably congruent with the Church of Rome:  trans woman are not women; abortion is wrong; the new reproductive technologies are wrong.

For all her concern with the “role strain of normal women”, Raymond is indifferent to the role strain of those born male.  Other than feminist  consciousness raising, she rules out – this is made clear in the introduction to the 1994 reprint - any solution that such male-born persons may wish to try: in addition to her proscription of surgical gender change, she also condemns androgynous gender mixing for both men and women.  She denies that women wearing trousers is transvestity  and at the same time denies men any clothing freedom at all.    Like Virginia Prince and some of the HBS people she is insistent that other persons should follow her prescription only and is not interested in what they might think, or in allowing them to be themselves.

I am a woman, therefore I am a feminist.  This is so obvious to  me.  The great expansion of opportunities and freedoms for all women, trans and cis, over the last 50 years is one of the great achievements of the 20th century.  Raymond attempts to present her flavour of feminism as Feminism, as if there were no others.  But of course there are many feminisms.  One of the best statements of how Raymond is an embarrassment to feminism is found in Califia’s book.   As a feminist I also find Raymond embarrassing.  But there are also trans women who say things that I do not like.
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27 April 2008

The Convent Of Radegunde.

The Frankish writer, Gregory of Tours, tells of a revolt in the convent of Radegunde, outside Poitiers, in the sixth century.

The nuns charged the abbess with keeping a man dressed as female and pretending that he was a woman. It was common knowledge, they claimed, that he 'was most plainly of the male sex, and that this person regularly served the abbess'.


An investigation did find this man. He justified himself in that he was unable to do man's work. As for the abbess, he lived forty miles away and had never met her. A physician came forward and explained that the male nun, even as a boy, had a disease of the groin. On the instructions of Radegunde herself (who had founded the convent), he had castrated the boy to cure him. As far as he knew, the present abbess was ignorant of the issue.

Unlike the many tales of female transvestites who lived as men in monasteries and were later canonized, it was assumed that there is only one reason for a man to impersonate a nun, and that is to have sex with the other nuns. Radegunde (who was later made a saint) had founded the convent after escaping from an enforced marriage with the Frankish king Chlotar I. The convent possessed a relic of the true cross, and the little finger of the right hand of the Cappadocian martyr, St. Mamas of Caesarea. Radegunde had a close friendship with the poet Venantius Fortunatus, who acted as her chaplain.

Radegunde is the patron saint of Jesus College Cambridge, which was founded on the site of the twelfth-century nunnery of Saint Mary and Saint Radegund.
  • Donald Attwater. The Penguin Dictionary of Saints. Penguin Books 1965 under Radegunde.
  • Vern L. Bullough. “Transvestism in the Middle Ages”. in Vern L. Bullough & James Brundage (eds) Sexual Practices & the Medieval Church. Prometheus Books 1982: 45-6.
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