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.

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Showing posts with label post-surgical regrets. Show all posts
Showing posts with label post-surgical regrets. Show all posts

10 September 2023

Latina Seville (1940 - ) performer

The boy who later grew up to be Latina Seville was pretty and grew neither body nor facial hair, and because of this was called ‘fruit’ or ‘queer’ at school, often by the same bullies who made passes when they were alone. 

Age 16 having dropped out of school and gone to New York, she became Latina Seville, found work as a female impersonator, and lived fulltime as female. She was recruited by the Jewel Box Revue, and with them travelled across the USA. As also happened at Le Carrousel in Paris, conversation among the Jewel Box performers often drifted to discussions about sex changes, especially with Dr Borou in Casablanca. 

She often felt lonely and had difficulties relating to men, and thought that it would be easier as a completed woman. She wrote to Dr Burou giving a complete medical history. He accepted her and gave her a date in July 1963 – she was then 22. She saved up, got a passport and went. 

The bill was $2,500. She was told no sex for six months after the operation. She recuperated at her mother’s, and practiced Flamenco dancing. Under the impression that being post-op she could no longer work as a female impersonator, she became a stripper with a Flamenco opening. This went well and her salary doubled and then tripled. But she could not handle the men who were pushy about making passes. 

After six months she had a close male friend make love to her, but experienced no pleasure. She thought that perhaps she still thought like a man, and started seeing psychiatrists who advised that she adjust to herself.

At age 25 she wrote an account of herself for the National Insider, saying that she wanted to be a man again. As they often did, the National Insider recycled her article in a book later that year as a supplement to Abby Sinclair’s autobiography and an essay by Carlson Wade mainly about eunuchs and castratos.

She was not heard of again.

  • Latina Seville. “I Want to be a Man Again”. The National Insider, 6,7, Feb 14 & 6,8 Feb 21, 1965.
  • Latina Seville “I Want to be Male Again” in Abby Sinclair, George Griffith, Carlson Wade & Latina Seville. I Was Male. Novel Books. 95 pp 1965.
  • Liam Oliver Lair. Disciplining Diagnoses: Sexology, Eugenics, and Trans* Subjectivities. PhD thesis, University of Kansas, 2016 : 147n95.
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Remember this is 1963-5.   The amount of information available to prospective trans women was miniscule compared to what we have today.  Obviously she did need advice from someone who had already transitioned.   She also needed advice from women (cis or trans) on how to handle pushy men.  

Do women think differently than men do?  She writes: "Maybe this is because I still think like a man.  I know what they are thinking, I know what they want from me.  Many guys have asked me how I got so hip, how I know just what they're going to say before they say it."  This is learned anticipation.  There are many cis women who can do it - especially prostitutes, but not only prostitutes.

If you are not the party type, or not good at socializing, and end up feeling lonely, a gender change will not change that.

$2,500 in 1963 is almost $25,000 today.
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10 October 2018

RT has to go to Arizona to find 3 regretting trans persons

RT (Russia Today) sometimes produces intriguing documentaries well worth thinking about.   This is not one of their best.  They interview three persons, raised as boys, who transitioned to female, and live in Arizona.  Two, Billy Burleigh and the perennial Walt Heyer, have reverted, and the third, Rene Jaz (who continues to present as female) has written a book Don't get on the plane: Why a sex change will ruin your life.  Jaz and Heyer were patients of Dr Biber.

The documentary also includes a brief interview with a sex-change surgeon.   As they actually went to Arizona, the expectation would be that they would interview Drs Toby Meltzer and Ellie Zara Lay, both well regarded surgeons in Scottsdale, Arizona.   However the documentary goes to Belgrade instead to interview Dr Miroslav Djordjevic (or is it recycled footage from another program?).   Again a well-regarded surgeon, but why go to Serbia when making a film about Arizona?

There are several points that can be made.   Nowhere is it stated that the vast majority of trans (97% or so) persons who have surgery are pleased and remain pleased with what they have achieved.  On the other hand Heyer is allowed to spout his dubious statistics claiming that 40% of trans suicides are post-transition.

The infrequency of reversion is demonstrated by the repeated use of the same few persons, in this case Walt Heyer.  Neither the narration nor the final credits say so, but I suspect that the RT film-crew went to Heyer who introduced them to the other two.   Heyer actually says that he was in contact with Billy previously, and in this article  by Heyer discusses Jaz and her book.   Heyer has been in so many programs of this type.


Let us return to Jaz's book,  Don't get on the plane: Why a sex change will ruin your life.   The summary on Amazon contains an enormous clunker:  "medicine is operating in the same ignorance and arrogance as it did when Magnus Hirschfeld killed Einer Wegener (The Danish Girl) with his experimental surgery in 1930".    As we know, but apparently Jaz does not, Lili Elvenes (whose pen name was Lili Elbe) was a patient of the Dresden Doctor Kurt Warnekros, not of the Berlin Doctor Magnus Hirschfeld.   Also Hirschfeld was not a surgeon.  The three trans women who were patients of Hirschfeld, Carla van Crist, Toni Ebel and Dörchen Richter, all survived their operations and two of them lived into the 1960s.  Bad fact checking like this makes one think that the book is not worth reading.

It is important to read one's enemies.   If you are building up to gender surgery, it may be useful to watch this documentary to know what one is not.   There is much diversity among trans women, and you will probably be aware of how different you are from these three.





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26 July 2015

Maritza/Mark Cummings (1964–) Part II: serial monogamy and dissent

Continued from Part I. 

In 2012 Mark met his second wife female partner, Jessica Lynn (1974 - ), in a transgender show girl bar. Jessica transitioned in her 30s with the help of a therapist after two failed suicide attempts and a few years as a gay man. She took Mark's surname even before though they were married never registered their relationship. They had each others name tattooed on their bodies.
"In spite of our differences, Aries and Cancer, I have never loved anyone as much as I love her".
They started the internet program Transition Radio, which featured extensive video interviews with various US trans persons and others. A recreational vehicle was purchased, they set up a new blog Transgender Highway and traveled around the US. Mark published a health guide for travelers.
In 2013 their relationship was featured in both The New York Post and The Daily Mail.
Mark and Jessica

In 2014 Mark was interviewed in LGBTQIA where he spoke about how he felt
"honored to be part of the many great inspirational Trans men that [Lynn Conway] has showcased on her site. Success is a very personal word and means many different things to many people. I personally believe that being successful means being happy with who you are and what you have accomplished." and "“I believe being transgender is a gift a Spiritual awakening that is manifesting in physical form … We as transgender individuals have a major responsibility to enlighten the world. Instead we are blending in and doing much of the same, this solves nothing and that is why we continue the hamster wheel".
Later that year, Mark was told that he had been selected for the 2014 GLAAD Trans100, (a list that seems to have been removed from the internet).  However he made critical statements about Janet Mock and her interview by Piers Morgan. He was then deselected. On his Facebook page he wrote:
"I am seeing a very strange twist in our community, and why are we all of a sudden admiring individuals who have recently come out as advocates with little to no experience in that role. One is an actress, the other stealth for many years working at Peoples magazine behind a cubicle and now decides to write a book and is identifying as a fierce advocate? Both trans woman of color, which seems to be a very prominent twist these days as if they are the only ones in the trans community who have suffered and constantly harp on how bad they have it, leaving behind the rest of us. Separating themselves, creating their own groups and associations and hijacking the community at large."
For this he was denounced as prejudiced against persons of color. In July Mark and Jessica sympathetically interviewed Cathy Brennan, the Maryland attorney associated with antagonism towards trans persons. Shortly afterwards they broke up as a couple.

Mark's third wife is Lynna Lopez who also took his surname when they married in June 2015.
Lynna & Mark
“Falling in love for the first time in my life has allowed me to feel my true nature, which
is my feminine self".
Lynna is now co-host on Transition Radio, which has changed its message. Mark now denounces the therapist and surgeon who enabled him to transition:
“I went on Testosterone, and 5 months later, I had my precious breast and my amazing reproductive organs ripped out of me, all in a quest to be a ‘man’. What sane person does this, and what medical professional who swears to do no harm goes along with this diabolical plan? I am sorry but now that I have come to my senses and see what this vile community has become, I see the reason for the vileness and the darkness in its intent.”
Transition Radio lost all its sponsors, and Lynn Conway removed Mark form her Successful Trans Men site. Mark/Maritza is also now speaking out against supporting trans kids and especially against prescribing puberty blockers to them. The New York Times gave him a platform where he argued that no-one should transition before their mid-20s.  He has said: "And it’s usually a Munchausen by proxy-driven mother and it’s always a kind of wimpy dad-kind of thing going on, mom wears the pants in the family.”

 Transition Radio featured DirtyWhiteBoi, who in return published an interview on her blog with Matitza:
"I always felt different but never the typical programed response the community harps on. In my opinion there is no such thing as being born in the wrong body. It’s a neurological impairment, behavioral and mental issue, nothing wrong with the body. … I think much different now. But unfortunately, the changes are so deep, that it is hard to go back. I do identify as a female, I will never deny my truth. … I regret all my surgeries, they are butchery and not necessary. Hysto and top surgery. … I got sick of the trans community and how they badger people. I saw the vile behavior, the lies, I could not longer be part of that. They have deeper issues than gender problems and are in denial about it. Its time the gender specialists stepped up and did their job and looked at the deeper issues."
When Dawn Ennis writing for The Advocate asked Mark to nominate a sponsor or well-known public figure to speak on his behalf, he suggested Cathy Brennan.  Mark still chooses to be addressed by male pronouns as that has been the case for the 12 past years.  He says that  he and Lopez now identify  as “two-spirit” or “gender-variant,” saying, “We all have this duality".
TransitionRadio    Vidensbanken     TransgenderHighway
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With each wife, Cummings discovers love for the first time!!   A gentleman would not take that attitude to his previous wives.

"And it’s usually a Munchausen by proxy-driven mother and it’s always a kind of wimpy dad-kind of thing going on, mom wears the pants in the family.”  This is of course a return to Robert Stoller, the 1950s and the sexist idea that homosexuality, transgender and many other psychoanalytic conditions are caused by a weak absent father and a dominant mother.

Whether or not Cummings is racist, to denounce him as prejudiced against 'persons of color' is problematical as he himself is Hispanic.

Whilst not aligning with Cummings' position, some of the issues that he has raised should be getting more discussion within the trans community: 
  • The issue of the increase in numbers of trans persons over the last 50 years as due to the toxic chemicals in the environment has the virtue of being the only theory that explins the increase in numbers.   The classic account is by Christine Johnson, 2004.  PDF.   It is summarized in Deborah Rudacille's The Riddle of Gender, 2006, Chp  7.
  • the increasing practice of adulating trans persons when they step out of the closet or from stealth and shunting aside the activists who have been working for years or decades.  Cummings was rather careless in naming only black celebrities.  He should have paid more attention to what happened to Peter Tatchell.   There is no shortage of white celebrities who could have been mentioned: Bono, Beck, Maloney, Jenner.

 ______________________________________________________________________________

Dawn Ennis' article on the Cummings includes "Brennan’s statement, however, contradicts a February finding by researchers at the Boston University School of Medicine who concluded 'there is increasing evidence of a biological basis for gender identity'."   As Gender Identity Watch was delighted to point out, this sentence is not to be found in the journal article in question.   The claim was not needed for Ennis's article, and it was a sloppy error to make. 
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12 August 2010

International Chrysis (1951 – 1990) performer.

Revised January 2014.

Billy Schumacher was raised in Brooklyn. A performer noted for her beauty, Billy became Chrysis from the age of twelve, and was soon entering pageants and performing. She took up with Kim Christy. They shared an apartment in Manahattan below Houston Street. They met sex magazine pioneer and editor of Exotique magazine, Lenny Burtman, who arranged photo-shoots and other favors. Chrysis and Kim appeared together in Female Mimics.  They had uncredited mufti cameos in the chorus line of the film, The Queen, 1968.

By the mid-70s Chrysis was a drag celebrity, and had performed at the Jewel Box Review and other major venues, including in Europe, especially Berlin and she was a long-time friend of Salvador Dali.   In 1976 she was on the cover of Whitehouse, the UK magazine named antagonistically after the anti-porn crusader. Despite the claim on the cover that "This Woman is a Man", that was the first time that an out trans woman was on a magazine cover.

In 1982 she was the woman in the Van Halen video to their cover of "(Oh) Pretty Woman".  She reveals herself herself as a non-standard women by taking off her wig.  It played a few times on MTV but was pulled after complaints about the non-consensual fondling by little people.



Many accounts mention that she was a sexual top with the New Jersey college boys that she liked to pick up.

She headlined in Jesus Chrysis Superstar and The Last temptation of Chrysis. She was in the drag acting troupe, Hot Peaches, was to be found at the Pyramid Club and performed at Wigstock.

Her best-known movie role was as a witness to be eliminated in Q & A, which was released in 1990, a month after she died, at age 39, from cancer caused by the seepage of silicon from her breasts. Her friend, the singer Pete Burns, named one of his groups, International Chrysis, after her.

The documentary Split was actually proposed by Chrysis herself, but not completed until after her death.

*Not the powerboat racer.
  • "This is Chrysis". In George Alpert. The Queens. New York: Da Capo Press, 1975.  
  • Ellen Fisher Turk & Andrew Weeks (dir). Split: William to Chrysis: Portrait of a Drag Queen. Scr: Dan Chayefshy. US 60 mins 1992. Special Jury Award at the Berlin Film Festival.
  • Laurence Senelick. The Changing Room: Sex, Drag and Theatre. London & New York: Routledge xvi, 540 pp 2000: 433.
  • “International Chrysis”. Endless Night.  Online. 
  • Jim Beaux.  "International Chrysis".   The Transsexual Erotica Archive of Magazines and Films, 05 August 2013.  
EN.WIKIPEDIA       IMDB    FACEBOOK      BACKINTHEGAYS    

 ____________________________________________________________

Jim Beaux' article contains: "Kim Christy's commentary points out that when she was in hospital dying, she hated the fact that the staff used her male name. She had a couple of roles where she portrayed a woman, who at the end would pull her hair off to reveal a man, and she disliked the endings both times."   This raises the question: what was her female name, as opposed to her performance name?  As with Sir Lady Java, we have a male name and a performance name.  But the female name, the one that was presumably on her driving licence and tax return, that is, her real name, remains unknown.
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11 March 2010

Danielle Berry (1949 - 1998) game designer.

Dan Bunten was born in St Louis, Missouri and later raised in Little Rock, Arkansas. He completed a degree in Industrial Engineering in 1974.

He became a computer game designer for the Apple, Atari and Commodore platforms. He created M.U.L.E.,1983, and The Seven Cities of Gold, 1984.

Dan was married to women three times and had three children with them, but became androphilic after transition in 1992.

Three years after transition Danielle wrote a note combining various emails that she had sent that advise others not to follow her path:
”You lose control over most aspects of your life, become a second class citizen and all so you can wear women's clothes and feel cuter than you do now. Don't do it is all I've got to say.”
“Being my 'real self' could have included having a penis and including more femininity in whatever forms made sense. I didn't know that until too late and now I have to make the best of the life I've stumbled into. I just wish I would have tried more options before I jumped off the precipice. I miss my easy access to my kids (unlike many TS's I didn't completely lose access to them though), I miss my family and old friends (I know they 'shouldn't' have abandoned me but lots of folks aren't as open minded as they 'should' be ... I still miss them) and finally, I hate the disconnect with my past (there's just no way to integrate the two unrelated lives). There's any number of ways to express your gender and sexuality and the only one I tried was the big one. I'll never know if I could have found a compromise that might have worked a lot better than the 'one size fits all' sex-change. Please, check it out yourself before you do likewise.”
She was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Computer Game Developers Association, 1998.

A chain smoker from teenage, Dani died of lung cancer shortly after.
 EN.Wikipedia
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03 November 2008

Claudia (1958 - ) opera singer, drag performer.

As a boy in Glasgow, he was bullied because of his androgynous looks. At 18 she started dressing as female, and was accepted and complimented on her appearance.

Whilst at hairdressing college she found her boyfriend. He was from a family of musicians and got her started as an opera singer. She had some success, for example playing support to Marc Almond. She was also a drag performer.

After being beaten by a Dutch border guard who took exception to the discrepancy between her appearance and the ‘male’ in her passport, they decided it was time to complete the change. She was prescribed female hormones by a psychiatrist in Glasgow in 1985. She had surgery in 1986, rushing it so that she could have a specific surgeon before he retired. She was referred by Russell Reid.

Her boyfriend left her in 1987 when she developed a hair-ball in her vagina. Other prospective boyfriends left when she told them of her past. She lost her confidence to face an audience. She suffered a breakdown, that was made worse by transphobic response from the Glasgow police after she was raped.

She now regrets that she had the change. While reading The Silence of the Lambs, she decided that she should have been rejected when she applied for a sex change. She is pursuing a civil claim against Russell Reid.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Julie Bind is of course the cause of an outcry from transsexuals etc because she has been short-listed by Stonewall UK for an Award as Journalist of the Year. She has issued a statement in reaction to this outcry in which she cites the case of Claudia again. I, and I think most transsexuals, feel that Bindel is incapable of understanding us, and wish that she would stop writing about us. Her current statement contains reactions from transsexual and intersex persons, some of whom are well known activists. The statement is worth reading, but do continue on through the comments, and notice that initially Bindel responds, but then doesn't. Many of the most salient points elicit only silence from her.

My second declaration of interest is that I went through Russell Reid only two years later, and he passed me onto James Dalrymple, FRCS. In those days UK surgeons were Mr, not Dr. I understood quite well that Reid was acting as a gatekeeper. That he was deciding whether I was suitable, and that there was no question of the session being therapy. At the price that he was charging, I did not want to stay for therapy.

I am intrigued by Claudia's rush to get a specific surgeon before retirement. Neither Batty nor Bindel name this surgeon. My guess is that it was Peter Philip, who mentored James Dalrymple. Why Claudia thought that Dalrymple would not do is not explored.

Thomas Harris' The Silence of the Lambs, whilst a fairly good thriller, is however badly researched on the issue of applying for a sex change. Some readers, with reason, regard the book as transphobic. Notice the sentence in the Wiki summary: Lector "explains that Bill isn't actually a transsexual, but only thinks he is".

Both Batty and Bindel hold back Claudia's surname. This is odd in Batty's case as the print edition in the Observer Magazine included a full page photograph of Claudia. Is her privacy being respected or not? Ironically I learned Claudia's surname in an article about Bindel. However I see no reason to print it. Indeed I suspect that 'Claudia' is also a pseudonym. If you have had an international career as a drag performer and have sung opera as an opening act to Marc Almond, we should be able to google something.

There is an apparent discrepancy in Bindel's account. She says that Claudia started living full-time only after starting hormones in 1985. But she was crossing a border as female when she was assaulted, and Batty implies that she had started at age 18. The discrepancy may be only an artifact of journalistic style.

Bindel opens her new statement by being 'angry' at Vancouverite Kimberly Nixon for suing a rape crisis centre after it rejected her for being trans. The treatment that Claudia got after being raped in Glasgow shows just how essential it is that all rape crisis centres should have transgender counsellors for those who need them.

It is of course ironic that Bindel, who condemns transsexual surgery as something imposed upon us by heterosexual men, then condemns Reid for not adhering precisely to the Standards of Care Guidelines.

Claudia's case is of course a sad one. However Batty interviewed her 17 years after her boyfriend left and Bindel three more years after that. She does not seem to be attempting to de-transition, nor rebuilding her life after the common female experience of being abandoned by a boyfriend. She also waited 20 years before suing Reid.
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