Kim Christy (1950 - ) performer, editor, adult film producer

Kim was raised in the Bronx, New York. By age 14 he was going out in semi-drag. He took up with the young Billy Schumacher (later to become International Chrysis). They were photographed fooling around outside the Astor in Manhattan when Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton were staying there, and the picture appeared in a Life Magazine article on teenage delinquents.

The photograph in Life Magazine: Kim with back to camera, Chrysis at front

Kim and Chrysis each left home and shared a tiny apartment in the area that later became New York's SoHo. They met sex magazine pioneer and editor of Exotique magazine, Lenny Burtman who arranged photo-shoots and other favors. Kim had a boyfriend who worked with her to soften her Bronx accent. She got to know New York female impersonators such as Tammy Novak, and performed at Club 82 as a stripper and as a showgirl. Her song was the theme music from A Man and a Woman. She toured North America as a female impersonator.


Kim and Chrysis had uncredited roles in the chorus line in the 1967 contest that became the film, The Queen. In 1968 a photograph of Kim and Chrysis appeared in Female Mimics. By 1969 Kim was being kept by an oil tycoon.

Kim with her mother

She also starting doing photography for Eros Publishing Company, which published Eros, Mode Avantgarde, Hooker and Exposé. When Female Mimics was relaunched in 1973, the first issue featured Kim winning a Los Angeles beauty contest. In 1979 Kim became editor of Female Mimics,which was owned by Jennifer Jordan, one of Lenny Burtman's ex-wives, and the name was changed to International Female Mimics. The transsexual content was increased and eventually explicit photographs were introduced. Kim also became editor of Exotique, a revival of Burtman's pioneering fetish magazine from the 1950s.

Also in 1979 Kim was in Los Angeles doing a photo-shoot when he discovered Sulka in the audience. The next year he put her in the film Dream Lovers, and then after her surgery, in The Transformation of Sulka, 1981, and Sulka's Wedding, 1983. He became a major producer of she-male and fetish porn – spanning 8mm, VHS and DVD. He also made straight porn.

In FMI, 11,1, 1980

++Kim had reverted to male as Ken Olsen.  He met and married a woman. Their marriage has lasted: they now have grandchildren.

In 1998 Kim/Ken won an award as Best Fetish Producer. The same year he edited the original run of Exotique in book form. In 2001 he edited The Christy Report, a historical survey of sex and fetish images. He was inducted into Adult Video News (AVN) Hall Of Fame in 2004, the first transgender person to be so.

“I am married to my wife. I am with her. Something I learned from all my years working with clients all over the world: Men and women can both be very fluid in their sexuality. Plus things like certain sexual scenarios can engage a person deeply for a time. Sometimes it’s same-sex activity. Some people stay attracted to one gender or another all their lives. I was with men — when I lived as a woman — who never would have called themselves gay, but they were not unhappy about my extra parts at all. Like I said, back then we did not name things so much. I never thought of any of the things I did as who I was. They were things I liked. Things I did.”

*Not the horse exhibitor.  Not Ken Olsen the sound engineer.

• James Mills.  "The Detective:  a good cop fights for law but the deck is stacked against him". Life, 3 Dec 1965: 90d-132.  http://bit.ly/1cJ6A0B.
• "These are the twins - Kim and Bobbie".  Final section in George Alpert. The Queens. New York: Da Capo Press, 1975. 
• "Kim Christy".   Guys in Drag, 1,4,1977: 3-4.
• "Meet your Editor: 'Kim Christy's' Personal Photo Album".  Female Mimics International, 11,1, Winter 1980: 6-11.  Online.   
• Kim Christy (ed). Letters to Kim Christy. North Hollywood, Calif: Leoram Productions, 1986.
  
• Kim Christy (ed). The complete reprint of Exotique: the first 36 issues, 1951-1957. Köln: Taschen, 1998.
  
• Kim Christy & John Quinn. The Christy Report. Taschen, 2001. Review.
  
• Christopher Harrity. "Kim Christy's Lost World". The Advocate, February 12 2011.http://www.advocate.com/arts-entertainment/photography/2011/02/12/kim-christys-lost-world.
  
• Ms Bob. "Female Mimics Magazine — Part 1, The Early Years". TG Forum, Jan 16, 2012. www.tgforum.com/wordpress/index.php/female-mimics-magazine-part-1-the-early-years.
  
• Jim Beaux. "Leonard Burtman, 1921 – 1994", "Jennifer Jordan 1938 - ????", "Kim Christy" The Transsexual Erotica Archive of Magazines and Films, May 2013. http://www.hungdevils.com/index.php?/topic/18134-the-transsexual-erotica-archive-of-magazines-and-films-we-need-your-help/page-2.
  
• www.kimchristy.com.
  

IMDB   IAFD
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The Internet Adult Film Database (IAFD) entry on Kim is a bit dubious.   See Jim Beaux’ comments.  The image supposedly of Kim is actually of Carnal Candy in a 1984 film.  It lists Kim’s years active as performer: 1984-2001 – except that Kim never performed in any adult films.

Ms Bob wrote a 3-part history of Female Mimics for TG Forum.  Bob lists Kim as appearing in the magazine, but says nothing at all about Kim becoming the editor.

I couldn’t find any photographs of Kim after the early 1970s. 

In the Advocate  article, Kim says that her aunt and then her mother recognized her in the Life Magazine photograph.  As she has her back turned, how could they be sure?

Jean Lessenich (1942 - ) artist

Lessenich, from Remagen, was educated in graphic design in Cologne. After a failed marriage and a period as a prostitute, she completed transition in 1973 with surgery from Dr Burou in Casablanca.

This was at a time when advertising was trendy and sexy and Jean obtained work as art director for advertising agencies in Dusseldorf and Frankfurt, and later as a freelance illustrator for magazines in Hamburg and Munich.

Through friends she was able to make extended trips to Japan and to visit Native Americans. In 1985 she returned to living as a man so that she could marry her Japanese lover and obtain for her permanent residency in West Germany. Her lover died in 1996.

Jean returned to being female. Now in her seventies, she continues to participate in art exhibits.

She does not identify with the idea of a female soul in a male body, or say that she always was a woman, although she did want to be a girl when young. She chose Jean as a name in that it is male in French and female in English.

• Jean Lessenich. Nun bin ich die ewig junge Hirschkuh oder der Ajilee Mann. Edition Suhrkamp 1988.
• Jean Lessenich. Mit den Zähnen am Zweig. Selbstverlag 200.
• Jean Lessenich.Die transzendierte Frau. Eine Autobiografie. Gießen 2012, Psychosozial-Verlag.
  
• Andrea Bronstering. "Die transzendierte Frau: Eine Autobiografie: Amazon.de". Transgenderradio Berlin, 2012. http://am-toerichten-bach.de/blog-2/index.html.
  
• I Am a Woman Now. Michiel van Erp (dir) with April Ashley, Marie-Pierre Pruvot, Colette Berends, Jean Lessenich, Corinne van Tongerloo. Netherlands 80 mins 2011.
  
• Am törichten Bach: Die Stimme des Tales ist Buddhas weite und lange Zunge. http://am-toerichten-bach.de.
  

DE.WIKIPEDIA

Fatime Ejupi (1926–?) peasant, soldier, councillor.

Fatime was the fourth daughter of a Muslim peasant family in Kosova. Lacking a son, the parents deemed the child to be a boy, Fetah.

Widowed at an early age, the mother was left the difficult task of guiding her son through the rites of boyhood. This was essential in that a widow with only daughters had no right to retain her husband's house and land. She managed to avoid the synét (circumcision) and postponed the search for a bride indefinitely.

In 1944 the 18-year-old Fetah was recruited by Tito's People's Liberation Army to fight the Axis occupation. Only after two years in the army was he examined by a doctor, who declared that he was a woman, and he was discharged.

Back in his village he was appointed to the revolutionary community council where he campaigned for rights for Muslim women, in particular the ending of veils and seclusion.

The village became aware that Fetah was a 'woman'.  In 1951 Asllan Asllani decided to marry Fetah. He was still in male clothing and resisted. Asllan 'seized' Fetah and made her his bride. At the wedding she returned to the name Fatime and changed to wearing the wide harem trousers.

They had a son and two daughters. Fatime later claimed to a journalist that she was content. The mother died without granting forgiveness for the loss of her only son.

• René Grémaux. "Mannish Women of the Balkan Mountains". In Jan Bremmer (ed). From Sappho to De Sade: Moments in the History of Sexuality. London & New York: Routledge,1989:162-3. Reprinted as "Woman Becomes Man in the Balkans" in Gilbert Herdt (ed). Third Sex, Third Gender: Beyond Sexual Dimorphism in Culture and History. NY: Zone Books, 1994: 270-1.

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Fetah was not a typical sworn virgin in that he was raised as a boy from birth.  Grémaux suggests that Fetah switching back to Fatime indicates that the Sworn Virgin tradition was already in decline by the 1950s, however Fatime’s untypicality means that her case does not support the suggestion.

Note that the gender changes are both initiated by men, the father and then Asllan.  Fetah’s only time of choice was that he chose to stay a man after being discharged from the Army.

Ricardo (196? - 1995 ) sex-worker, evangelist.

Ricardo was a Cuban émigré, who migrated to the US on the Mariel boat lift in 1980.

He became a transy prostitute in New York, using the name Sara, living with other, mainly Hispanic, transy prostitutes in the city salt-storage site.

She regretted her move to the US and longed to return to Cuba. Sara and others spent their nights trolling in Manhattan’s meat district near West 14th Street, and spent much of their earnings on crack cocaine.

In the early 1990s, already HIV+, Sara was contacted by a born-again Christian organization, and Ricardo went to live in Dallas, Texas, as a man, with a heterosexual wife and a job.


He repeatedly appeared as a witness in evangelical gatherings discussing and showing photographs of what he was before. Later Ricardo returned to New York to attempt to convert his old companions, but with no success.

Dying from AIDS-related illnesses, he reflected that if he were to live his life over, he would still want to be a woman.

• Susana Aikin & Carlos Aparico (dir) The Salt Mines US 47 mins 1990.
• Susana Aikin & Carlos Aparico (dir) The Transformation. US 58 mins 1995.
• Robert McRuer & Michael Berube. Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability. New York: NYU Press 283 pp 2006: 117-131.

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The DVD and VHS of the two documentaries are priced high to discourage individual purchase. Worse than that, despite their short length, they are separate DVDs when they could easily be combined on one disc.