Shelley Ball (1953–) sex worker, inmate.

Original: May 2011. 

William Ross Ball was raised, one of four children in Chilliwack, British Columbia. Their alcoholic father killed himself when the child was eight, followed by the mother having a nervous breakdown two years later.  The children were then raised in group and foster homes.  Shelley later said: "I wanted to be a woman since I was a kid, as far back as I can remember".  At 13 she was committed to a mental institution near Vancouver for dressing in female clothes.  Ball's teenage years were spent in reformatories and institutions across Canada, and even for a while at a boys' school in Washington State - he was kicked out for attempted arson.  Whenever Ball ran away, she survived as a female sex worker, selling her body to heterosexual men who very well knew what she was.  This fed a heroin addiction. She admitted robbing some of her customers, and had been stabbed several times. One night she was beaten, robbed and left for dead on a railway track in Vancouver. 

In 1977, Shelley, now 24, was working at a house for ex-mental patients in Edmonton.  In February, she met a trick in Edmonton's skid row section, and went to his hotel room with him.  Either: when he admitted that he had no money, she claimed to be a member of the police moraliy squad, he got nasty, she slapped him, and it escalated.  Or: the client became enraged when he realized that she was trans.  She ended up stabbing him 17 times.  

There was some confusion at the trial in February 1978 about which pronouns to use.  Edmonton psychiatrist Donald Milliken testified that Ball was transsexual, and already on female hormone therapy.   He said that she would be more confortable in a women's penitentiary.  Shelley, in male clothing, at first refused to testify in that there was a group of 14-15 year-old school children present in the court in pursuit of a language project.  The court accepted her contention that the case was not suitable for such young children and they were withdrawn,

Mr Justice Tevy Miller "with a great deal of trouble and soul-searching" found Shelley guilty of second-degree murder, and imposed the mandatory life sentence - which ruled out parole for the first ten years. Unusually, the judge also recommended a sex-change operation.  The chief of medical services for the federal corrections service approved the operation in that Ball would be molested in a male prison, and that the operation would likely decrease his violent tendencies.

This was the first such surgery for a convict in Canada, and is in marked contrast to how all other trans prisoners were treated until Synthia Kavanagh won her appeal in 2000.

Ball, who already had breasts, but was 1.88 m (6'2'') and 73 kg (162 lb.) did time in three different male institutions, and had no trouble. "In Prince Albert (Saskatchewan), I think I went out with nine different guys while I was there. I had more husbands than Zsa Zsa Gabor."

Shelley in 1984

Shelley had partial (no vaginoplasty) genital reassignment surgery in 1980 and was then transferred to Kingston Penitentiary for Women.  It was reported that the operation cost $250,000 - which led to cries of outrage.  Vancouver trans activist Stephanie Castle wrote to The Province newspaper pointing out that "The $250,000 is enough for 30 such surgeries. ... Doing SRS in Canada currently costs about $8,000."  She was given the reply that "Ancillary security costs to guard Ms Ball during repeated hospital visits pushed up the costs". 

 She was initially treated badly by the other women inmates, and attempted suicide several times. However she had an affair with an inmate and decided, after a lifetime of having sex with men, that she was a lesbian.  She took a  a hairdressing course while in Kingston, and later a Queens University psychology course.

There were two attempts at parole.  On one she made an unauthorized trip to Vancouver to see her mother, but the mother was too drunk to recognize her, which prompted Shelley to go back on heroin. Both the trip and the heroin led to the parole board revoking her privileges, and her hoped-for release in 1990 did not happen. 

She accepted that her life is in prison, and became chairperson of the prisoners' committee, pushing for more services for the other prisoners. 

She was in the news again in 1998, still in Kingston Penitentiary, when she attempted to slash her own throat.

Toronto Star 1979.8.12 p2

*Not the Canadian football player, not the insect ecologist.

• "Trans-sexual trial sparks confusion".  Red Deer Advocate, February 15, 1978: 2. 
• Dick Schuler. "Prostitute gets life for stabbing death". Edmonton Journal, February 15, 1978. 
• Isabel Miller.  "Not in Front of the Children".  Letter, Edmonton Journal, February 21, 1978: 5. 
• Peter O'Neil. "Sex-change operation proves less than blessing". The Vancouver Sun, Aug 5, 1989: B3.
• Beth Gorham.  "Transsexual is content in prison". Calgary Herald, February 5,, 1989: 29.
• Holly Horwood. "A female 'eunuch's' cry for help". The Province, Jan 29, 1995: A2.
• Stephanie Castle. "Hurts transsexuals". Letter in The Province, Fenbruary 6, 1995: 17. 
• "Inmate slashes throat". Kingston Whig Standard, Sep 29, 1998: 3.

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

Kingston Penitentiary for Women was closed in 2000. From 1995 to 2000 its inmates were transferred to other federal correctional institutions.

I was unable to find any mention of what happened to Shelley Ball after this date.

Georgina Beyer (1957 - 2023) actress, sex worker, politician.

++Original version posted January 2013.

George Bertrand was a Maori of Te Ati Awa, Ngati Mutunga, Ngati Raukawa, and Ngati Porou descent.  A second child was adopted out.  The father quickly disappeared, and the elder was at first raised on the mother's parents farm. He became George Beyer when his mother Noeline remarried in 1962 to Colin Beyer, a lawyer who later became a Securities Commissioner, and they moved to Wellington.

From 1969-71 George attended the all-boys Wellesley College where he was a few years behind Claudia McKay who was an activist with the trans group Agender (archive).

Noeline and Colin separated in 1971. Young Beyer began acting while at school, and left at 16 intending to be an actor.

A year later Georgina started living as female. She worked as a drag queen, stripper and prostitute in Wellington and in Sydney, Australia. At one point she was beaten and gang-raped. However she persevered and completed transition in 1984.

She acted on stage and in several television productions, and was nominated for best actress in the New Zealand Gofta Awards for her part in Jewel's Darl, 1985.

She moved to rural Carterton (map) and found work as a radio host and social worker. She was quite open about her gender history:

"Children would say to me, 'Are you that queer that's moved into town?' I would say 'Yes, I'm a transsexual. I used to be a man, but I'm a woman now.'"

Georgina was elected to a local school board, and lost in an attempt for the town council by only 14 votes. She was elected mayor in 1995, and then in 1999 ran as the Wairarapa Labour candidate for Parliament. As a left-wing Maori trans woman it was not expected that she would win in such a traditionally conservative district. However, her opponent's negative campaign strategy backfired, and Beyer won the seat. In her maiden speech she said:

"Mr. Speaker, I can't help but mention the number of firsts that are in this Parliament. Our first Rastafarian [Nándor Tánczos]… our first Polynesian woman… and yes, I have to say it, I guess, I am the first transsexual in New Zealand to be standing in this House of Parliament. This is a first not only in New Zealand, ladies and gentlemen, but also in the world. This is an historic moment. We need to acknowledge that this country of ours leads the way in so many aspects. We have led the way for women getting the vote. We have led the way in the past, and I hope we will do so again in the future in social policy and certainly in human rights."

In 2003 she helped to pass the Prostitution Reform Act, which made New Zealand laws on prostitution a liberal model. She opened her speech:

"Madam Speaker, I shall take the liberty of assuming that I am the only member of this House with first-hand knowledge of the sex industry".

In 2004 she was a proponent of the Civil Union Bill, which gave the rights of marriage to same-sex couples. She also attempted to introduce a private members Bill to add 'Gender Identity' to the Human Rights Act of 1993, but found herself alone when the acting Solicitor General opined that trans people were already covered by the Act, and the amendment was unnecessary. However she did persuade both the Solicitor General and the Attorney General to sign a statement to that effect, thereby putting that interpretation into law.

She has been a Justice of the Peace since 1997. She was also named Supreme Queer of the Year in 2000. In 2005, she stepped down as a representative for Wairarapa because of a conflict with her identity as a Maori with respect to the Seabed and foreshore legislation. She became a list Labour MP until 2007.

There had been a series of murders in Wairarapa in the early 2000s, and and she worked as a member of Violence-Free Wairarapa. Unlike other ex-MPs she was unable to get a position on any government boards despite Labour still being in power. She considered returning to show business, but without success.
 
Beyer was a Keynote speaker at the First International Conference on LGBT Human Rights in Montreal, 2006, the Asia Pacific Outgames Human Rights Conference in Melbourne, 2008, and at the Second International in Copenhagen, 2009, and at Egale Canada's Human Rights Trust in Toronto, 2010. A film based on her life, Girl, was made in 2008.

In 2010 there was talk of her running for mayor of Masterton, which lost her her job at a local jewellors. In 2011 she was living on unemployment benefits, and had been obliged to sell her house.

++

In 2013 Georgina was diagnosed with end stage renal failure, required dialysis four times a day, seven days a week.  Despite this she ran, albeit unsuccessfully, in the 2014 general election for the Mana Party in the Te Tai Tonga constituency.  However she was critical of Mana’s alliance with the Internet Party which was dominated by Kim Dotcom.

In 2017 She received a kidney transplant, and, no longer needing dialysis, was able to resume public appearances.

In 2020 Georgina was  appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to LGBTIQA+ rights.

Georgina Beyer died in a Hospice in Wellington in March 2023.

• Georgina Beyer with Cathy Casey. Change for the better: the story of Georgina Beyer. Auckland: Random House New Zealand, 163 pp 1999.
  
• Peter Wells & Annie Goldson (dir) Georgie Girl. With Georgina Beyer. NZ 2001.
  
• Matt & Andrej Koymasky. "Georgina Beyer". The Living Room, March 12^th 2004. Online.
  
• Ryan Brown-Haysom. “Beyer Beware”. Critic Magazine. 2005 www.critic.co.nz/showfeature.php?id=3329.
  
• Matt Akersten. "She'll be right - Georgina Beyer keeps it Kiwi". GayNZ, 23^rd November 2008. Online.
  
• Jack Barlow. "Former MP Georgina Beyer unemployed". Stuff, 17/12/2011. Online.
  
• Joseph Romanos."Georgina Beyer : From drag queen to Member of Parliament". New Zealand's Top 100 History-Makers. Wellington: Trio Books, 2012.
  
• “Georgina Beyer: First transsexual in the world to be elected deputy”. Trans.Ilga. Online.
  
• Danya Levy. "Boys' school with two 'old girls' ". Stuff, 22/03/2012. Online.
•   “New Zealand: World’s first trans MP suffering kidney failure”.  Pink News, May 05 2013.  Online. 
• David Herkt.  “Georgina Beyer: From boy to woman to warrior”.  NZ Herald, 12 Oct, 2018.  Online.
• Bess Manson. “Georgina Beyer is back and ready for some fighting talk”. Stuff, Oct 13 2018.  Online.
• “Trailblazing MP Georgina Beyer dies aged 65”. 1News, 6 Mar 2023.  Online.
•  “World’s first openly transgender MP, Georgina Beyer, dies in New Zealand aged 65”,  Australian Associated Press, 6 Mar 2023.  Online.

EN.WIKIPEDIA    IMDB   GLBTQ    TRANS.ILGA

Albin Pleva (1912 - 194?) dancer

 Albin Pleva was a travelling travesti dancer, who occasionally supplemented her income by some sex work.  She was arrested by the Czech authorities subservient to the Nazi occupation for being "irredeemable" and was interned at a concentration camp, a huge pig farm at Lety.  

There is no further information about her, and so it is assumed that she died there.

• Jan Seidl.  "Legal Imbroglio in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia" in Régis Schlagdenhauffen (ed) Queer in Europe During the Second World War.  Council of Europe, 2018: 59.
• "Homosexuel.le.s en Europe Pendant la Seconde Guerre Mondiale". Mémoire des sexualités.   Online.
• "Albín Pleva, imitátor žen, 30. léta". www.queerpamet.cz.     Online.  

Henriett B. (1908 - ?) maid, sex worker

B., raised in Hanover, Germany, had worn women's clothes exclusively since the age of 17 and worked as a maid, in one job for as long as seven years. Also in 1925 she had sexual contact with a man for the first time and considered self-castration because "he felt as a woman and wanted to be one”.

In 1939 B. had become engaged to a workmate and claimed that she was pregnant by him, even sending a picture of an infant and wrote that it was his child.

In July 1941, a few weeks after the start of Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union and its support mobilisation, B. moved to Vienna where she was arrested on suspicion of "commercial fornication”. The discovery that she was male-bodied led to immediate charges for “draft evasion”, and also questions about homosexuality. B. admitted sexual contacts with men but "firmly denied in his interrogation that he had consorted with homosexuals. His partners had always been of the opinion that in B. they had a woman in front of them".

Henriett

Chief Inspector of Criminal Investigation Hans-Heinrich Huelke accepted this reasoning, and further wrote in his report: 

“While the social harmfulness of the homosexual lies primarily in the fact that he supports other persons in acting out their degenerate sexual instinct, [...] this danger is not present in the case of the accused. His sexual partners believed that he was a woman and were not homosexuals. The accused thus did not have a degrading effect on his surroundings due to his female attitude and therefore appears less dangerous to the community than a homosexual appearing in male clothing.”

B. was sentenced to six months in prison for non-registration for the Wehrmacht, § 5 War Special Criminal Law Ordinance, by the Vienna Regional Court . 

At the end of her sentence she requested castration. The health department went further and, as a matter of eugenics, did a penectomy. After returning to Hanover B. applied to change her first name from Hinrich to Henriett. No objections to this were raised.

Chief Inspector Huelke wrote up the case in 1949 when WWII was over.   In 1955 he wrote a textbook on criminology.    

• Hans-Heinrich Huelke. “Ein Transvestit (Der Fall Hinrich B.)”. Zeitschrift für die gesamte kriminalistische Wissenschaft und Praxis, 3, 1949: 91- 92.
• Annette Runte. Biographische Operationen: Diskurse der Transsexualität. Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1996: 400-2.
• Rainer Herrn. “Transvestitismus in der NS-Zeit – Ein Forschungsdesiderat”. (Transvestitism in the Nazi era - a research desideratum). Zeitschrift für Sexualforschung, 26,2, 2013: 363.

----

Compare this to what happened to Liddy Bacroff. Which police officer and which doctor processed your case could make a lot of difference.

Henriett had pretty much the same operation as Christine Jorgensen 10 years later, but without the enhancing of hormone therapy.

Liddy Bacroff (1908 - 1943) sex worker

 Heinrich Habitz from Ludwigshafen in Rheinland-Pfalz, across the river from Mannheim, was raised by the grandparents, and spent a year in a correctional home for being difficult to raise. Early employment in office work and as a messenger boy did not work out. She was then a circus dancer.

Habitz obtained a Transvestitenschein, a permit to dress female, but was convicted in 1924 under her male name, and sentenced to six weeks for ‘unnatural’ and ‘commercial fornication’, but the sentence was remitted. In 1929 the Mannheim district court gave her a two month jail sentence for ‘unnatural sex acts’ under §175. In November that year Habitz left the family home for good and moved first to Berlin and then to Hamburg. She renamed herself Liddy Bacroff, and did some performance work.

In 1930 in Hamburg, Liddy was sentenced to two months for having stolen clothing from a female roommate, and then a month for trespass. In 1931 she was sentenced to four months for ‘unnatural sex acts’ under §175. While in prison she wrote two pamphlets about her life: Freiheit! (Die Tragödie einer homosexuellen Liebe) (Freedom! :The Tragedy of a Homosexual Love) and Ein Erlebnis als Transvestit. Das Abenteuer einer Nacht in der Transvestitenbar Adlon! ( An experience as a transvestite. The adventure of a night in the transvestite bar Adlon! ).

In 1935 the Nazi government amended Paragraph 175. Under a new section 175a, the law introduced harsher penalties for male prostitution, sex with a man younger than 21, or sex with a student or employee. The change in the law was not publicized for fear of spreading knowledge of homosexuality. Most Germans were unaware the law had changed and many of those arrested under the new law had no knowledge they were committing a crime. The law was also applied retroactively.

Later that year a sailor had gone to the police and reported a prostitute for theft. Police investigations led to Liddy. She was arrested in January 1936, and made the following statement: “I admit to the theft of 20 ReichMarks in the Herrenweide. Its my opinion that the man did not know that I am also of the male sex. Rather he will have assumed that intercourse was with a woman. Since my release I have lived from unnatural sex acts. I did not have stable employment and I also didn’t receive any help from public funds. I met my punters in St. Pauli. I usually received 2 to 3 RM for each job. On average this meant my daily earnings were around ten Reichsmarks. I lived in different places, usually only for a day or two. I also went there with my punters. I don’t know the names and addresses of the people any more.”

The assistant police investigator wrote in his report: “On the homosexual disposition of Habitz it should be said that the seeds of his abnormality can already be observed in his youngest years. He preferred to play with dolls, as his behaviour matched just that of a girl. Lipstick was indispensable to him in his ‘vanity’. At the age of 16 his homosexual nature was awakened. His emotional life can be compared to that of a woman. He never had the urge to live his sexual life as a man. The description of ‘Mann-Weib’ [‘man-woman’] aptly characterises him.”

Libby was sentenced to 2 years in prison and 3 years forfeiture of honour (loss of civil rights) for commercial unnatural fornication and theft, and served her time in the Bremen-Oslebshausen prison, where a Nazi SA official had been installed as director.

Liddy was released in January 1938, and changed address without registering with the police. This led to a police search for her. On 25 March she was denounced by an onlooker while sitting in a bar with a customer. The man insisted that he thought that he was with a woman. In the police report Liddy is quoted:

“I was given permission for it by the police authorities. So I could move about in women’s clothes. But at the same time I was watched by the vice squad. […] My passion for men ultimately drove me to prostitution. I find sexual satisfaction, where there is love for my partner, through anal intercourse. […] Up to today I have earned a living through prostitution. […] In the period after serving my sentence until my arrest, i.e. from 15.1.38 to 25.3.38, in these 9 weeks I had around 3 men per day. On average they paid me 3 RM. Sometimes I would even get as much as 10 RM from a punter. In most cases I met my gentlemen on the street (St. Georg), rarely in a bar. Sometimes I would approach the men, sometimes the other way around. After we had agreed on the price we would go to the Kucharsky guesthouse, on the corner of Hansaplatz and Bremerreihe. The guesthouse owner knew that I was a Mannweib.’”

In August Liddy was sentenced to three years in prison A few months into the sentence, Liddy applied for "voluntary castration" in order to be cured of the "morbid passion that led me down the path to prostitution". She was forensically examined by medical councillor Wilhelm Reuss who described her as an incorrigible "transvestite", "feminine, infantilistic, eunuchoid in voice", a "passive pederast" who was to be considered a "dangerous habitual criminal" due to the "now dangerous and permanently fixed form of his sexual perversion". Reuss saw little prospect of "improvement" and recommended subsequent preventive detention.

In 1943 Liddy Barcroft complete her prison sentence, again in the Bremen-Oslebshausen prison. She was then transferred to the Mauthausen concentration camp where she was murdered.

• Liddy Bacroft. Freiheit! (Die Tragödie einer homosexuellen Liebe), 1930. (Freedom! :The Tragedy of a Homosexual Love)

• Liddy Bacroft. Ein Erlebnis als Transvestit. Das Abenteuer einer Nacht in der Transvestitenbar Adlon! 1931. ( An experience as a transvestite. The adventure of a night in the transvestite bar Adlon! )

• Rainer Herrn. “Transvestitismus in der NS-Zeit – Ein Forschungsdesiderat”. (Transvestitism in the Nazi era - a research desideratum). Zeitschrift für Sexualforschung, 26,2,2013: 339-340.

• BLATTER zum land nr. 86: Eine lange queer Geschichte in Rheinland-Pfalz: 7, 10. Online.

• Renée Adele Grothkopf & Tamara Loewenstein,“Liddy Bacroff: Persecuted as homosexual and transgender”. Arolsen Archives: International Center on Nazi Persecution, 31 August 2021. Online.

• Bernhard Rosenkranz & Ulf Bollmann, translated by Joanne White. “Liddy Bacroff (Heinrich Habitz)1908 - 1943” The Deceased of the Mauthausen Concentration Camp. Online.

DE.Wikipedia

Michelle Confait (1945 – 1972) sex worker

Confait, born in the Seychelles, but living in London, had been raised with the name Maxwell but preferred Michelle.

Michelle

In the early 1970s she was working as a trans prostitute, and in 1971 was arrested for importuning and served five months in HMP Wormwood Scrubs (a men's prison) where she was protected by and provided sexual favours to Douglas Franklin.

On release she frequented the Black Bull Pub (later the Fox and Firkin) in Lewisham High Street where she met Winston Goode, an occasional transvestite. Goode had broken up with his wife although she and their children still lived in the same house in Doggett Road, Catford. Michelle became a lodger in the house at £2.50 a week.

A fire started in the early morning of 22 April 1971. Goode awoke, evacuated his wife and children and ran to Catford Bridge railway station, almost next door, to dial 999. The Fire Brigade arrived and extinguished the fire within ten minutes. They also found a body, later identified as Michelle Confait. Unusually the police surgeon did not take a rectal temperature to establish time of death as the senior policeman remarked that the body was a ‘possible homosexual’ and he did not wish to destroy any evidence of recent sexual activity. It was established that Confait had been strangled and there was no struggle.

The first suspect was Goode – for example why was he in his day clothes rather than his night clothes when he ran to ring the fire brigade? He was held at the police station all day and medically examined. He mentioned that Confait planned to move out, and admitted jealousy, but also denied that they were lovers. The Detective Chief Superintendent later commented that he was such a weak individual that he would have confessed under interrogation if guilty. A few days later Goode was admitted to Bexley Psychiatric Hospital, apparently unable to remember the previous few days.

There were a few other fires in the area in the next few days. An 18-year old with the mental age of eight, and two younger boys were arrested and interrogated without either their parents or a social worker being present. They were tried at the Old Bailey. Mr Justice Chapman described the victim as “an odd creature, and indeed it may be your view that he has been no great loss to this world”. The three boys were found guilty of manslaughter, despite having alibis for the estimated time of death, and claims of being hit by the police. Nor was it explained why they would kill Confait, and having done so, then wait several hours before setting the house on fire.

In May 1974 Goode swallowed cyanide and died – several publications had hinted that he was involved in the crimes. The next year Mrs Goode was quoted in the media that her husband had once tried to kill her, and she was certain that he had started the fire and murdered Confait.

Also in 1975 the new Labour Home Secretary Roy Jenkins referred the case to the Court of Appeal with the result that all three boys were found not guilty and freed. The judge particularly criticised the police for not putting more emphasis on the fact that there had been no struggle.

The house in Murder Houses of South London

In 1976 Douglas Franklin and Paul Pooley were sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment, partly as a result of Franklin informing on Pooley. Pooley attempted to appeal but Franklin declined to give evidence. The two men were increasingly at odds, and other inmates said that Franklin was fearful of being incriminated for the Confait murder. Pooley was later quoted (with typical misgenderings):

“I tagged around with Doug and he took me down to Confait’s house in Catford. We both had a lot to drink by the time we got there and Doug was fooling around with Confait. Max put a record on and Doug started dancing with him. He was twisting a scarf around his neck. I Don’t know where it came from but suddenly I realised that a bit of fun was ceasing to be a joke. Max went blue in the face and fell to the ground.” 

In 1980 a high-level police report identified Franklin as the killer. It also confirmed that the time of death was 48 hours earlier than stated at trial. It had been assumed that rigor mortis started after the discovery of the fire. In fact, Confait had been dead for 48 hours and rigor was wearing off. The report concluded that had the boys not been arrested, Douglas Franklin would probably have become a suspect at an early stage of the original murder enquiry. Franklin committed suicide shortly afterwards.

27 Doggett Rd in Google St View

In the late 1970s and early 1980s there were other flagrant miscarriage of justice cases, Birmingham Six, Guildford Four, Cardiff Three etc, and following a report by a former High Court Judge, the government set up the Royal Commission of Criminal Procedure which ultimately led to Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE), 1984,  and the Crown Prosecution Service under the Prosecution of Offenders Act 1985 – which decides independently of the police whether a prosecution will proceed.

• Satish Sekar. “Failure”. Fitted In: Social Justice, Legal Issues, July 2, 2014. Online.
• Satish Sekar. “Douglas Franklin”. Fitted In: Social Justice, Legal Issues, July 1, 2014. Online.
• Satish Sekar. “Paul Pooley”. Fitted In: Social Justice, Legal Issues, July 1, 2014. Online.
• Jan Bondeson. Murder Houses of South London. Troubador Publishing, 2015: 171-7.
• Kate More. “Testimonies of HIV Activism” in Kate More & Stephen Whittle (eds) . Reclaiming Genders: Transsexual Grammars at the Fin de Siecle. Routledge, 2016: 137.
• “The Maxwell Confait Muder”. Lewisham Heritage, 25 August 2018. Online.
• Jon Rogers. “INJUSTICE FIGHT What happened to Maxwell Confait and was his murder case ever solved?”. The Sun, 23 Oct 2019. Online.
• Jon Robbins. “Cases that changed us : Maxwell Confait”.  Justice Gap, 21 November 2019. Online.
• Paul Rock. The Official History of Criminal Justice in England and Wales: Volume II: Institution-Building. Routledge, 2019: 253-308, 290nn88, 94.

EN.Wikipedia       LGBTArchive

Kimberley Elliot (1953 – 1980) TAO, Neo-American Church

TAO and Angela Douglas

Angela Douglas (1943 - 2007) musician, activist

History of TAO: part 1: to 1971. USAF, music, GLF

History of TAO: bibliography

History of TAO: Part 2: 1972-80. TAO in Miami Beach

History of TAO: Part 3: aftermath

Kimberley Elliot (1953 - 1980) TAO, Neo-American Church

More on Angela Douglas

In July 2019 a Gender Critical Reddit thread  linked to the original 2007 posting.  Apparently some anti-trans women think that a letter, be it satirical or whatever, from 42 years ago, written by someone who died 12 years earlier, and who never worked well with other trans activists, is a relevant document in discussing trans activism today!!!!                         My Reply.

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

Kimberley Elliot

Kimberly's story is told from two sources: Susanna Pena's history of TAO and Art Kleps' history of the early years of psychedelism.   Putting the two together we get the following.   However see also the discussion below.



Along with Colette Goudie and Tara Carn, Kimberly Barreiro – originally from Cuba – was one of the original members of the Transsexual Action Organization after Angela Douglas moved it to Miami. They joined in 1973, became officers of TAO and were a major part of its public face. Kimberly served as director for the town of Miami Beach.

Douglas described Kimberly in 1974 when she was 21 as “tiny, bubbly”. She was one of the first in the group to have transgender surgery, and apparently did a full transition in less than a year. In the TAO newsletter Mirage for Autumn 1974, Kimberley is quoted: ‘I don’t regret it all. But the pain was incredible. I don’t know if I could go through it again’.

She married Steve Elliot, and took his surname.

They were both into psychedelic drugs, and having heard of Art Kleps and his drug-based Neo-American Church, decided to drive up to New York state to visit. In his book, Kleps refers to Kimberly Harrison and Stove (“Ah is all stoved in, man”).

Kleps: “Stove and Kimberly had a strange story to tell. They were both from Miami, where Kimberly, a classic blonde beauty, plied her trade as a Miami Beach hooker. She had met Stove after he had freaked out on the most colossal and one of the weirdest bummers I had heard about up to the time. It involved hordes of fleas appearing in his house on some crazy but exact schedule, not being able to take a shower because the water wouldn’t touch his skin, and aimless wanderings during which he was pursued by flocks of blackbirds and was picked up on the road by kindly spades driving white cars who knew all about him even though he had never seen any of them before in his life. 

Kimberly …, had driven Stove up to be cooled out, paying all the bills along the way, in the ancient and honorable tradition of the whore with a heart of gold. She loved every variety of psychedelic drug, and never had anything but splendid and happy experiences while stoned.”

Kleps regarded Stove as as a “well-defended” paranoid in that he did not, “most of the time, do anything particularly bizarre or fail to handle the routines of ordinary life in an acceptable manner”.

Kimberly had to sell the air-conditioner and the radio out of her car for the journey back to Miami. She stopped for a few days in Millbrook and intrigued Timothy Leary who wanted to know more about her.

In 1980 Kimberly was found dead from a drug overdose at Miami Beach’s Midtown Plaza. Angela Douglas considered her death as suspicious. Several of the old TAO people attended her funeral.

• Susana Pena. "Gender and Sexuality in Latina/o Miami: Documenting Latina Transsexual Activists". Gender & History, 22,3,2010: 763. Reprinted in Kevin P. Murphy & Jennifer M. Spear (eds). Historicising Gender and Sexuality. Wiley-Blackwell, 2011.
• Art Kleps. Millbrook: A Narrative of the Early Years of American Psychedelianism. Original Klepian Neo-American Chuch, 1975: 85-91. Chp 13 Online.  

Is this True?

Pena says in her footnote 50: “Reportedly Kimberly Elliot and her husband are mentioned in Art Kelps’s Millbrook: A Narrative of the Early Years of American Psychedelianism ... under the pseudonyms Kim and Steve Newell.” Which is why I included a mention of Kleps and the Neo-American Church in my History of TAO: Part 2.

Pena is wrong in identifying Steve Newell with Steve Elliot.  Kleps introduces Kimberly thus: “Then Kimberly Harrison and Stove (“Ah is all stoved in, man.”) arrived, followed by Steve Newell and then Mike and Gai Duncan. It was an entertaining group.” Therefore Kimberly is with her man Stove who is not the same as Steve Newell. Kimberly Harrison and Stove do appear to be Kimberly and Steve Elliot in that both couples are from Miami Beach, both are into drugs. Pena, following Angela Douglas, does not say how Kimberly made a living, but sex work in the context of TAO does seem plausible.

There is no mention in Kleps of Kimberly being trans. Good we say – it is good not to be read. However on page 87 he says: “I had a private trip with Kimberly a couple nights later, or at least she had a trip and I just smoked a lot of hashish while she told me the story of her life, which hadn’t been all that bad, really”. So she told the story of her life while on LSD and did not mention her transition and the painful surgery. Indeed!  The CIA had pioneered LSD as a truth drug.

Kleps is not good at giving dates – at least not in the book version. What jarred for me was the mention of Kimberly stopping in at Millbrook to see Timothy Leary.  I quickly assertained that he was not there after 1968 when LSD was made illegal. In the online version of the book, the section about Kimberly is in Chapter 13, and the Contents Page specifies that Chapter 13 is 1965-6, not 1974-5.

Thus Kimberly Harrison cannot be Kimberly Barreiro Elliot.  To regard them as one is a false positive. 

Cristina Ortiz Rodríguez (1964 - 2016 ) sex worker, singer, prisoner.

++I originally wrote about Cristina Otiz in May 2008.  A lot has happened to her since then.

Cristina was born José Antonio Ortiz Rodriguez, the fourth of six children, in Adra, Almeria, Andalusia. Jose became known as Joselita.  From an early age Joselita showed talent in fashion design.  She was never accepted because of her gender expression and was attacked and mistreated, but as a man was considered to have good physique and was awarded the title Mister Andalusia in 1989 at the age of 24.  Still as José Antonio, Ortiz entered a competition on television in 1991 and won a trip to Thailand.

Ortiz had been secretly dressing as a woman, and in January 1992 she went to Madrid and began  transition.

Cristina was working as a prostitute in 1996 when she was discovered by television host and journalist Pepe Navarro who was doing a story on trans people. He hired her, and she became famous on his television shows Esta noche cruzamos el Mississippi and La sonrisa del pelícano, and with a music single ‘Veneno pa tu piel’ (Poison in your skin). She became known as Cristina La Veneno (the poison).

There was a plan to make a film about her life, but it did not happen. She starred in two porn films:  El secreto de la Veneno and La venganza de la Veneno, both 1997.  She toured Spain as a singer, and in 1998 was on television in Buenos Aires for a month.

In 1999, Cristina was arrested in an insurance scam, accused of arson, after an anonymous denunciation by her Italian ex-boyfriend. Investigation uncovered other crimes and she was sentenced to three years in a men’s prison, 2003-6, where she was frequently attacked and raped, and was incommunicado to her family for many months. Her weight doubled from 60 to 122 kg, and she suffered obvious physical deterioration.

After release she appeared on television gossip shows, complaining about her treatment in prison. The Instituciones Penitenciarias denounced her statement as calumny, but later in 2006 the Socialist Workers Government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (no relation) introduced a new policy of respecting a prisoner's gender and changed name, and placing trans women in women's prisons.

She was confronted by other trans activists in that she gave a bad image to the trans community.   In 2010 she was challenged on television to lose the weight that she had gained in prison, and some months later had lost 35kg.  But she was still suffering from bulimia and depression. 

In 2013 Cristina presented her 23-year-old boyfriend.   However he disappeared with her savings of €60,000.   But she was hired as one of the stars of the show Que trabajo Rita. From the end of 2013 to 2014, La Veneno made stellar appearances in some of the concerts of the tour.

In October 2016 her long-promised memoirs, ¡Digo! ni puta ni santa, appeared.  It was co-written with Valeria Vegas, a friend, and self-published through the Bigcartel web site.  She gave the initials of many famous politicians and footballers who had had sex with her.    This resulted in death threats.

In November that year she was found at home with bruises, unconscious and with a serious bruise on her head.  She was rushed to hospital, put into an induced coma, and died a few days later.  She was 52.  Officially she was deemed to have suffered a fall after massive consumption of pills, but there are suspicions that one of the death threats was acted on. Her family attempted to re-open the case in 2017 to show that it was murder.

A plaque has been mounted in Cristina's Honour in Madrid's Parque del Oeste where she worked as a prostitute.

In 2019, Cristina's sister attempted to again re-open the case with the support of Dr Luis Frontela, a prestigious forensic doctor, who pointed out defence wounds on Cristina's hand.  However the attempt was without success.

*Not the  University professor.

• "Los buenos modales son Veneno". Perlas ensangrentadas. Online.
• "La Veneno pasa factura".  Interviu, 24/04/2006.  Online. 
• "La Veneno, su infierno en la cárcel" Entrevista en “Qué me dices”, 3 de abril de 2006. Archive. 
• "Prisiones denuncia a «La Veneno» por decir que sufrió abusos en la cárcel" ABC, 21 de abril de 2006. Online. 
• «La Veneno, perdida por los hombres de mal vivir». El Mundo. 12 de noviembre de 2016. Online. 
• CristinaOrtiz & Valeria Vegas. ¡Digo! ni puta ni santa: las memorias de la Veneno. Roi Porto DL, 2016.
• "La Veneno murió por una caída accidental".  El Periodico, 10/11/2018.  Online.
• " 'La Veneno' pudo ser asesinada, según un nuevo análisis forense".  La Opinion de Tenerife, 09.01.2019.  Online.

  ES.WIKIPEDIA    IMDB     

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

The ES.Wikipedia page on Adra does list Cristina among its citizens of note.

Skippy LaRue (1921-2003) sex worker, performer

Skippy LaRue was born in Port Arthur, Texas. His father was a boilermaker and bootlegger; his mother ran a house of prostitution where they all lived. His mother beat him frequently.

He was drinking whiskey from age 5; having sex with boys from age 9. He was expelled from school at age 11 for hustling merchant seamen.

He discovered the whorehouses across the tracks and was introduced to a madam called Evelyn Hardtimes. He lived there a couple of years. He tended bar and did other chores, and when a customer wanted a boy there he was. He was able to charge 50¢, while the girls charged only 25¢. He was also the only one giving fellatio. His customers included judges, lawyers, police, doctors, military, executives.  He was frequently taken as a girl, even in boys clothes. 

He was 18 before he was introduced to the gay scene.

As he grew older Skippy tried straight jobs: retail and delivery. However he kept drifting back into working as female. Skippy (as such) worked a roadhouse serving customers in their cars, and then as a carhop. She went with men but French (oral) only unless they were in the know.

During WWII, LaRue was excused military service because of an ear injury from his mother’s beatings. He moved to Seattle and worked at Boeing for 72¢ a hour, and then on a ferry lunch counter. He met Jackie Starr, first at a party, and then because they lived in the same building.

When Skippy started going to the Garden of Allah, Jackie and others encouraged her to perform, and helped with costumes, makeup and how to a do a gaff.  She sometimes performed as Madame Fifi.

Skippy supplemented the income from performing with running an after-hours bottle club where

Jackie and Skippy, 1946

customers pretended that they had brought their own drinks to get around the licensing laws.

Later Skippy went on the road with Hotcha Hinton and Jackie Starr working carnivals, performing in girlie shows. The other carnies knew what they were, but not the customers. In addition to the show they had a blowoff (sideshow) act where they did a striptease and even, being very confident of their gaffing, they had men pay to touch their genital area.

They were busted in Oxnard, California and had to prove their male sex to the police chief. However word got out, and the chief simply told them to get out of town.

In later years, Skippy lived in a mobile home in south Everett, north of Seattle, and worked at a gay bathhouse in Seattle, where he was known as Seattle’s oldest female impersonator. He kept in touch with others, and when Don Paulson was researching his book on the Garden of Allah, Skippy acted as a major resource.

He died at age 82.

• Don Paulson & Roger Simpson. An Evening at the Garden of Allah: A Gay Cabaret in Seattle. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996: Chp 7.
• Gary L. Atkins. Gay Seattle: Stories of Exile and Belonging. University of Washington Press, 2003: 63.
• Mara Dauphin. " ‘A bit of Woman in Every Man’: Creating Queer Community in Female Impersonation”. Valley Humanities Review, Spring 2012.: 11, 14. Online.
• Don Paulson. “South End Steam Baths”. Seattle Gay News. Online.

Obituary

Don Paulson and Skippy LaRue photograph collection, 1903-2000

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

The 1930s were rather different.  On p126 of Paulson & Simpson, Skippy says "a twelve-year-old boy was no different than a a twelve-year-old girl.  At that time, many girls became prostitutes at twelve or thirteen,"

 72¢ a hour does not sound much, but at that time one could rent an apartment for $10 a week.

La Bella Otero (187?–?) performer, sex worker

Luis D, from Madrid, sometimes said that he became homosexual after being seduced by a neighbour. On arrival in Buenos Aires at the end of the 19^th century, she took the name La Bella Otero after the celebrated Spanish actor-dancer.

However in the life history that she wrote for Dr Francisco de Veyga she said that she always considered herself a woman, and had worn female clothing all her life. She had married a man and borne two children before being widowed. De Veyga commented:

“Only exceptionally does he wear male garb, preferring feminine accoutrements, which he wears with ease and even elegance. He leaves his house seldom and generally in a carriage, to avoid tiresome street incidents that would be impossible to evade, given the relative notoriety among the aficionados of the genre”.

Her account was published by de Veyga separately from that of Aurora and Rosita. He commented that Otero did not

“hide very well his desire to figure as a case history in the book on sexual inversion that we are preparing”.

• Francisco de Veyga, "La inversion adquirida-Tipo profesional:' Archivos de Psiquiatria y Criminologia, II, 1903: 493-4.
• Francisco de Veyga, "La inversion sexual congenita:' Archivos de Psiquiatria y Criminologia, I, 1902.
• Jorge Salessi. “The Argentine Dissemination of Homosexuality, 1890-1914”. Journal of the History of Sexuality, 4, 3, Jan 1994: 356-8, 361.
• Jorge Salessi & Patrick O’Conner. “For Carnival, Clinic and Camera: Argentina’s Turn of the Century Drag Culture Performs ‘Woman’”. In Diana Taylor & Juan Villegas Morales (eds). Negotiating Performance: Gender, Sexuality, and Theatricality in Latin/O America.Duke University Press, 1994: 266-8.
• María Belén Ciancio & Alejandra Gabriele. “El archivo positivista como dispositivo visual-verbal. Fotografía, feminidad anómala y fabulación”. Mora (Buenos Aires), 18,1, ene/jul 2012. Online.

Aurora (1873? - ?) hairdresser, sex worker

Aurora arrived in Buenos Aires, from Paraguay, in the late 1890s.

He quickly drifted into prostitution, however was arrested only when found brawling in cafes, or when dressed as a female. He was persuaded to become a women’s hair stylist, and as such found work in bordellos. He was arrested several times, but there was never enough evidence for a conviction.

One time Aurora was placed in ‘preventative arrest’ after clients at a costume ball in a bordello became angry in that she was too realistic as a woman.


Aurora’s life history was taken by Dr Francisco de Veyga, and published in 1903. In it she asserts that she was born a marica. De Veyga avoided referring to Aurora as a prostitute: he called her a ‘professional’. He regarded Aurora as having an acquired mental disorientation caused by a misunderstanding of female sexuality.

• Francisco de Veyga. "La inversión sexual adquirida. Tipo de invertido profesional. Tipo de invertido por sugestión. Tipo de invertido por causa de decaimiento mental", Archivos de Psiquiatría y Criminología aplicadas a las ciencias afines. Medicina Legal. Sociología. Derecho. Psicología. Pedagogía, año 2, 1903: .193-208.
• Donna J Guy. Sex and Danger in Buenos Aires: Prostitution, Family, and Nation in Argentina. University of Nebrasca Press, 1991:86.
• Jorge Salessi. “The Argentine Dissemination of Homosexuality, 1890-1914”. Journal of the History of Sexuality, 4,3,Jan 1994: 356, 359-363. .
• Osvaldo Bazán. La historia de la homosexualidad en la Argentina: De la Conquista al siglo XXI. Marea, 2006: 127.
• Kristen Loehr. Tranvestites in Buenos Aires: Prostitution, Poverty & Policy. MA Thesis, Georgetown University, 2007: 30.
• Matthew J Edwards. Queer Argentina: Movement Towards the Closet in a Global Time. Palgrave Macmillan, 2017: 13-7.
• María Belén Ciancio & Alejandra Gabriele. “El archivo positivista como dispositivo visual-verbal. Fotografía, feminidad anómala y fabulación”. Mora (Buenos Aires), 18,1, ene/jul 2012. Online.

________________________________________

Francisco de Veyga writing in 1903, several years before Hirschfeld's Die Transvestiten, 1910, uses the word 'travestida' (tranvestite). 

Karla Avelar (1978 - ) activist

Avelar was born  in Chalatenango Department, in the north of El Salvador, just before the Civil War,. From an early age, despite being dressed as a boy, she came across as a girl, and most in the neighbourhood called her Karla rather than Carlos.

By the age of 10 she had been raped twice by one cousin, and another would shoot at her, and said that he would kill her as there were only machos in the family. She left without money.

In the capital, San Salvador, she spent the first six months sleeping in the bus station or on the street, begging and finding whatever to eat in the trash. She was taken in by a woman who made her work hard at domestic chores. She was raped by the woman’s son. One of her chores was to buy tortillas, but the tortillería was in a neighbourhood run by the Mara Salvatrucha (MS 13) gang.They decided to gang rape her. After 15 men, she seized an opportunity and was able to escape.

Homeless again she met a trans woman, Diana, who showed her how to survive by sex work. The more established trans whores resented newcomers. They bullied her, they called her la machorra (the dyke) because of her short hair, and they stole her money, until she learned to fight back.

While the civil war raged, the capital was comparatively peaceful. Over 80,000 were killed in the country, the vast majority by the forces of the US-backed Junta. In 1992 the UN brought the two sides together and enforced peace accords. However criminal gangs such as MS-13, reinforced by members deported from the US, tightened control.

Many – including prostitutes – emigrated to the US if they could. The term transgeneros was not yet in use. One of the terms used for trans women was locas (literally: crazy women).

There was a serial killer in San Salvador who would drive by and shoot at trans women. He became named Matalocas. It was said that he had an artificial leg. One night in 1992, 14-year-old Karla was in a john’s car giving head when she realized that he had an artificial leg. He hit her with his gun, but she was able to grab the wheel and forced a crash. She grabbed his gun as she escaped the car and threw it away. However he had a second gun and shot her nine times.

She went into a long coma, but the hospital doctors saved her. They also informed her that she was HIV+. Officials could not find her next of kin while she was unconscious, so a television station broadcast her picture, and her grandmother came to sit with her in the hospital.

Karla was the first of Matalocas’ victims to survive and who could identity him. The police had retrieved the gun which was registered. Further the man, a high-ranking military official, went to reclaim his firearm. However he was never charged with anything.

Karla was approached by William Hernández who had just founded an LGBT rights group, Entre Amigos. Karla was willing to go public. She and Entre Amigos held a press conference and gave the real name of Matalocas. The only result was that they received death threats.

After recovery, Karla returned to sex work. She and Paty Hernández organized a trans-rights group, El Nombre de la Rosa. Those working as prostitutes gave a portion of their earnings – almost like a union. At first the government refused to register the group as a non-profit, saying that its aims were “contrary to morality”.

In 1996 Karla was working near the national monument, Monumento al Divino Salvador del Mundo, when three gay men taunted her and another trans woman. They removed their belts as if to whip her and she stabbed one of them as the other trans woman fled. She alone was arrested, and sent to the notorious Sensuntepeque prison where she was gang-raped on the first day.

While the prison had a Sector 2 for gay and trans prisoners, the gang inmates were free to come and go in Sector 2 as they pleased. They treated Karla and the others as personal slaves for housekeeping tasks and for sex. She was also tortured by the guards.

The first pride march was in 1997 – this was followed by a new wave of violence. Trans women were vanishing. Between the late 1990s and 2003, the number of adult trans women known to Entre Amigos and El Nombre de la Rosa dropped from around 200 to 40. Some emigrated (mainly to the US), some died of AIDS, other were murdered.

Karla was released in 2000, suffering from being HIV+, and having lost a lot of weight. Even so, she went back to sex work. In 2006 she started antiretroviral therapy, but was shot five times for refusing to pay ‘rent’ while working on gang turf. She survived the shooting and also being stabbed twice in the back by the same gang the next year.

Karla’s friend Diane was killed, also in 2007, by her lover, a police officer. El Nombre de la Rosa had evolved into ASPIDH-Arcoiris, but Karla was not welcome, having been too pushy before. She started a new group, COMCAVIS Trans. At first it was funded by sex workers' contributions, but Karla taught herself how to do paperwork to incorporate the organization, and how to do Excel accounting. It got a USAID grant in 2011.

In 2010 COMCAVIS filed a first complaint against Sensuntepeque prison, and then others in 2011 and 2014. They won the trans inmates the right to wear female clothing, and then a partition was put up to separate Section 2, the same year that gang members were removed to a separate prison. Then condoms were made available. Karla visits the prison regularly to speak up for the trans inmates.

Tania Vásquez, a trans activist was murdered in 2013, and no one was ever arrested. Karla filed a complaint. The Attorney’s General Office responded with the threat to arrest Karla, a search warrant and a confiscation of the technical equipment of COMCAVIS TRANS.

However that year, Karla became the first trans woman to appear before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) and to denounce the State of El Salvador for discrimination and hate crimes. Paty Hernández, emigrated in 2014 after 20 years of activism. In 2015, Karla participated in the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, which submitted an alternative report, which resulted in the first UN recommendation to the state of El Salvador on LGBTI matters.

Karla frequently travels abroad to speak for trans rights to international bodies. Now about to turn 40, she is one of only a few trans women in El Salvador over 35. She is constantly receiving death threats, and has had to move seven times in the last two years. In 2017 she was announced as a finalist for the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders, quickly followed by extortion attempts to seize whatever prize money she might get.

• J Lester feder & Nicola Chávez Courtright. “Meet The Trans Sex Worker Who Transformed A Gang-Controlled Prison”. BuzzFeed, February 08, 2015. www.buzzfeed.com/lesterfeder/meet-the-trans-sex-worker-who-transformed-an-el-salvadoran-p.
• Brian Dooley. “Karla Avelar's Life Of Constant Threats”. Huffpost, 05/13/2017. www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/karla-avelars-life-of-constant-threats_us_591783b9e4b02d6199b2effe.
• “Karla Avelar, 2017 Finalist”. Martin Ennals Award. www.martinennalsaward.org/hrd/karla-avelar.

________________

In a country where soldiers and death squads working for the junta killed 70,000 people, where serial killers go free, criminal gangs have impunity and young women are regularly raped on the street, an organization to protect trans women is refused registration on the grounds that it is  “contrary to morality”.