The Triple-Whammy 1928-9

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I have previously referred to the triple whammy of 1928-9 - when, within a few months, trans men and masculine women in London and Paris were involved in three much publicised trials which, while they did not lead to legislation about clothes, gender or civil rights, did sent a message to trans men that they should be careful.

Note regarding pronouns: Most of the persons discussed here never stated a preferred pronoun. In addition, Swann, Gluck, Lowther, Carstairs, Radclyffe Hall and Sackville West had considerable inherited wealth, and were therefore less affected by the laws about clothing and gender which the lower orders had to conform to. Swann, Gluck, Carstairs and Barker masculinised their names and wore male clothing. Barker, Wood, and Holtom had to work for a living, and therefore they had to pass. They are close enough to the 21^st century concept of a trans man that anything but male pronouns would be wrong. Pelletier and Morris both kept their female first name, but dressed in male clothing, and worked at a time when women of their class did not, Pelletier as a doctor and Morris in sports and with motors. Morris also had a double-mastectomy (top surgery). But because of their retained first names, Madeleine and Violet, it is difficult to use male pronouns for them.

The biographers of Gluck, Lowther, Carstairs, Morris and Pelletier use female pronouns, but I expect that this will change for future biographies.

Contrariwise to Pelletier and Morris, Radclyffe Hall did take a male name: John, and was so addressed by friends. However her manner of dress was only in-between: usually a skirt topped with a male-style jacket and tie – a style that had been very fashionable for upper-class women through the 1920s. Laura Doan, author of Fashioning Sapphism comments on Radclyffe Hall:

“Her haircut was thought to be the most feminine of all the short cuts popular at the time, and she had her hair done at Harrods — not a barbershop. Even Hall’s famous sartorial choices were on the feminine side of what was known as the ‘severely masculine mode’… Nor did Hall and her partner Una Troubridge dress in a bizarre manner, wearing, as some biographers have claimed, clothing from a costume shop. The couple studied fashion magazines and built their wardrobes not from men’s tailors in Savile Row, but from the most chic of London’s department stores for women. [unlike Gluck who bought suits from the expensive men’s tailors].  Hall always wore a skirt and conducted herself in a completely womanly way - in short, Hall definitely didn’t model her protagonist, Stephen Gordon, after herself.” 

Diana Souhami’s biography frequently refers to Radclyffe Hall as John, but she never uses the pronoun ‘he’. While Radclyffe’s anti-hero Stephen Gordon in the Well of Loneliness is very definitely a trans man, perhaps also intersex, his author was not so. And we should note that Radclyffe Hall uses female pronouns for her protagonist in The Well of Loneliness.

Sackville-West had done soldier drag as part of her affair with Violet Trefusis, and as such the pair had fled to France pursued by their husbands. However she did not persist in such gender expression.

Trans men not mentioned below: Madeleine Pelletier was a doctor in Paris; Camille Bertin and his wife were residing with their three daughters in Juan-les-Pins on the Côte d'Azur.

Radclyffe-Hall, Carstairs, Barker and Morris

1924

Wynsley Michael Swann, Lieutenant-Colonel in the Women’s Army Corps during the Great War, quietly transitioned.

Ernest Wood, cellarman, waiter, died age 24 from consumption, and was found to be female-bodied. He was buried as “Miss Ernest Wood”.

Gluck, now having taken male clothing and appearance, has first one-man show of 56 paintings in South Kensington.

Joe Carstairs bought and developed a secluded estate in Hampshire, which he named Bostwick after his grandfather. He bought a yacht, Sonia, and became so proficient that by 1924 he was winning yachting prizes.

Toupie Lowther had run an ambulance unit that was incorporated into the French Army, 1917-8, and in the 1920s ran a lesbian salon, and Radclyffe Hall and other female writers popular at the time attended. Toupie loved to tell how, while motoring, she was stopped at the Franco-Italian border for masquerading as a man. On the return journey she wore a skirt and was arrested for masquerading as a woman. In 1926, Toupie Lowther was elected a member of the French Academie d’Armes, the only woman to that date to be so.

Mary Weston was the best UK shot-putter 1924- 1930.

Multi-event athlete (put-shot, javelin, football, swimming, cycling, motor-racing) Violette Morris, who had set new records in the 1922 Olympics, opened a car/motorbike accessories shop, Spécialités Violette Morris, at 6, rue Roger-Bacon, Paris, using the inheritance from her mother. The rent was 8,000 francs per annum, and the 41,000 franc valuation was all in the stock. She lived in the flat upstairs.

• Vita Sackville-West. Challenge. George H. Doran 1924. A novel, based on the affair between Vita and Violet Trefusis, with Vita’s male persona, Julian Davenport,  the leader of a revolution on a Greek island. His cousin Eve (Violet) joins him as his lover but becomes jealous of his attachment to the island. The book was published in the States only, for Vita’s father found the portrayal obvious enough to identify his family. In the real world, Julian and Violet broke up because the latter had sex with her actual husband.

1925

Joe Carstairs commissioned the best motorboat that money could buy, a hydroplane from Samuel Saunders of East Cowes, Isle of Wight. Joe named the boat Gwen after his lover, Gwen Farrar. After the boat capsized and came up again, Joe reversed the name to Newg.

1926

Carstairs took part in and won the Duke of York’s International Trophy. On Lake Windermere Joe set a world record of 54.97 mph for a 1½ litre class boat.

Morris had been temporarily suspended for giving performance-enhancing drugs to her football team, for questioning the referees and for doing nothing when the referee was hit by a member of her team. In 1926 Morris was indefinitely suspended from football. She used her name to recruit female athletes for a film. She refused to transfer her licence to another club.

Gluck had an exhibit at the Fine Art Society in London.

Radclyffe Hall wrote a short story, "Miss Ogilvy Finds Herself", although it was not published until 1934. It drew on Toupie Lowther's accounts of her life during the war, her masculinity and her lack of fit in society. Ogilvy, "My God! If only I were a man", who, even as a child had insisted that "her real name was William and not Wilhelmina", finds a role in the war leading an ambulance unit, but afterwards finds that again her masculinity has become absurd. She commits suicide.

• Oscar Paul Gilbert. Men in Women's Guise: Some Historical Instances of Female Impersonation. John Lane The Bodley Head Limited. 284 pp 1926

1927

Wynsley Michael Swann took a wife. Unlike what happened to Victor Barker two years later, this marriage was never challenged.

Victor Barker was the live-in secretary of National Fascisti. After a fracas with dissident members, he was charged with “uttering a forged firearm certificate”. He was found not guilty, but his firearms certificate was cancelled. The Public Prosecution Office did find rumours about a woman masquerading as a man, but did not pursue them.

Joe Carstairs commissioned Samuel Saunders to build three hydroplanes designed to be the fastest craft ever at a cost of £50,000. In a significant lapse of memory, Joe named the boats Estelle I, II and III after his mother Evelyn.

Mary Weston was the best UK javelin thrower.

Anton Prinner , artist, moved to Paris from Budapest taking a male name and from then wearing male clothes, a beret and smoking a pipe. Picasso would greet him as "Monsieur Madame".

The Fédération française de sports féminins (FFSF)  notified Morris that she was suspended for violations, and for wearing male clothes. Her smoking and drinking did not help. The FFSF also banned shorts that were too short, playing without a bra, and costumes that were too tight.

A journalist from Paris Midi who questioned Morris apropos the new regulations thought that he must be meeting her husband or brother, "mais non, c'était bien elle, en chair plus qu'en os, habillée d'un complet veston, avec pantalon - comme vous et moi, monsieur - faux col et cravate (but no, it was her in the flesh, dressed in a full jacket with trousers - like you and me, sir - collar and tie)".

Morris won the motor-racing Bol d'Or against male competitors, and practised boxing, sparring with Raoul Paoli (1887-1960), the male Olympics athlete, champion boxer, wrestler, and rugby player for France.

Morris attended a meeting of the FFSF, and issued a defense of her dress style: "L'habit masculin n'a, à ce que je sache, rien de malséant. J'y suis tenue de par mes obligations professionnelles et tant que les lois de la République française ne m'en empêcheront pas, rien ni personne ne peuvent m'interdire un costume qui, vous en conviendrez, est toujours décent (There is nothing, to my knowledge, unseemly about male clothing. I am bound by my professional obligations and as long as the laws of the French Republic  do not prevent it, nothing and nobody can forbid me to dress in a way that you will agree, is still decent)". However this argument did not convince, and Morris was expelled from the FFSF, and thereby from all French championships and the French team for the Olympics where she was expected to win gold medals.

1928

The novel The Well of Loneliness by Radcliffe Hall was rejected by three publishers, and then accepted by Jonathan Cape, who priced it at 15/-, twice the price of an average novel.

• Radcliffe Hall, with an appreciation by Havelock Ellis. The Well of Loneliness. Jonathan Cape, 1928. The cover page names the author as ‘Radclyffe Hall’, not as Marguerite nor as John.

Plot: Aristocratic parents, the Gordons are expecting a boy and so call the child Stephen anyway. Stephen is narrow-hipped and broad-shouldered, hates dresses, wants short hair and longs to be a boy, and from age seven develops crushes for heterosexual women. The father reads Ulrichs and Krafft-Ebing to understand Stephen, but does not share his findings. After his death Stephen opens his locked bookcase and discovers the concept of ‘invert’. Stephen is an accomplished fencer, tennis player and motorist, and during WWI is in the ambulance unit in the battles at Compiègne, and is awarded a Croix de Guerre. This draws on the life of Toupie Lowther. The book presents inversion as natural, but Gordon’s self-loathing leads him to pretend an infidelity so that his girl-friend will leave him to go with a real man. The word ‘lesbian’ does not appear in the book at all. Radclyffe Hall uses female pronouns for Stephen throughout.

27 July: published. Reviews were mixed. No calls for it to be banned.

28 July-12 August The Olympics were held in Amsterdam. Although only a few women's events were included, Morris was not on the French team.

19 August: Christian reactionary James Douglas’s editorial in the Daily Express: "I would rather give a healthy boy or a healthy girl a phial of prussic acid than this novel. Poison kills the body, but moral poison kills the soul”. Cape sent a copy to the reactionary Home Secretary William Joynson-Hicks who had been supressing alcohol, nightclubs and gambling. Joynson-Hicks replied after two days that the book was "gravely detrimental to the public interest". Proceedings would be brought if publication not stopped. Cape secretly transferred printing to Pagasus Press in Paris.

28 September: Pegasus editions on sale in London.

3 October: Joynson Hicks issued a warrant for shipments of the book to be seized.

11 October: publication of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando: A Biography.  A magic sex-change novel.

"Orlando had become a woman - there was no denying it. But in every other respect, Orlando remained precisely as he had been. The change of sex, though it altered their future, did nothing whatever to alter their identity". 

Based on Woolf’s affair with Vita Sackville-West, imagining Vita as Orlando. Despite the fuss about The Well of Loneliness, no fuss was made about Orlando.

• Virginia Woolf. Orlando: A Biography. Hogarth Press, 1928

19 October : the Chairman of the Board of Customs balked. He had read The Well and considered it a fine book, not at all obscene; he wanted no part of suppressing it. On 19 October he released 250 seized copies for delivery. However police were waiting when they were delivered. Jonathan Cape and the bookseller were summoned to appear at Bow Street Magistrates Court.

9 November: the trial. Havelock Ellis was not willing to testify, his book Sexual Inversion having been previously convicted of obscenity and thus his presence might be counter-productive. Sexologist Norman Haire was to be the star witness for the defence – he argued that homosexuality ran in families and a person could no more become it by reading books than if he could become syphilitic by reading about syphilis. However he and the other witnesses were not called.

16 November : The chief magistrate ruled that the book was obscene.

For a while after the trial, Toupie Lowther took to dressing as a heterosexual woman: skirts, silks etc, and disassociated herself from Radclyffe Hall and her wife Una Troubridge.

• Havelock Ellis. Studies in the Psychology of Sex. Vol 7 Eonism and Other Supplementary Studies. FA Davis 1928. “On the psychic side, as I view it, the Eonist is embodying, in an extreme degree, the aesthetic attitude of imitation of, and identification with, the admired object. It is normal for a man to identify himself with the woman he loves. The Eonist carries that identification too far, stimulated by a sensitive and feminine element in himself which is associated with a rather defective virile sexuality on what may be a neurotic basis.” Perhaps not the very best time to publish this work.
• Anonymous. The Sink of Solitude. 1929. A lampoon in verse by "several hands", satirised both
  
  sides of the controversy over The Well of Loneliness. Its primary targets were Douglas and Joynson-Hicks, "Two Good Men – never mind their intellect". The introduction, by journalist P. R. Stephensen, described The Well's moral argument as "feeble" and dismissed Havelock Ellis as a "psychopath". The Sink itself endorsed the view that lesbianism was innate: “Though Sappho burned with a peculiar flame/ God understands her, we must do the same,/ And of such eccentricities we say/ "'Tis true, 'tis pity: she was made that way”. It portrayed Hall as a humourless moralist who had a great deal in common with the opponents of her novel. One illustration, picking up on the theme of religious martyrdom in The Well, showed Hall nailed to a cross. The image horrified Hall; her guilt at being depicted in a drawing that she saw as blasphemous led to her choice of a religious subject for her next novel, The Master of the House.

1929

January: Victor Barker was arrested after he did not respond to a bankruptcy notice that he did not receive. He was arrested and put in Brixton prison until medically examined. He was then quickly transferred to Holloway women’s prison.

February: using the excuse of fitting into a racing car, Violet Morris publicly had a double mastectomy (what today we would call top surgery) at the clinic of Dr. Cazalis in the suburb of La Garenne-Colombes.

10 March: both Victor Barker and his wife published accounts of their marriage in different newspapers.

• Valerie Arkell-Smith. “The Man-Woman – My Story” Sunday Dispatch, 10 March 1929.
• Elfrida Barker. “My Story: By the Man-Woman’s Wife: Mrs Barker Reveals the Truth”. Sunday Express, 10 March 1929.

27 March: Barker was charged with “wilful and corrupt perjury in an affidavit” re his bankruptcy. Of this he was discharged, but was then charged with having “knowingly and wilfully caused a false statement to be entered in a register of marriage”.

24 April: the second trial. Barker was sentenced to nine months imprisonment.

11-12 May: William Holtom of Evesham, Worcestershire, coal heaver, a cow-man, a road mender, a timber haulier and a navvy, was taken ill, and admitted to the Evesham Poor Law Hospital men’s ward with enteric fever. He was then 42. This led to a discovery of strapping around his chest, and he was hastily transferred to the women’s ward.

Radcliffe Hall wrote: 'I would like to see [Colonel Barker] drawn and quartered. A mad pervert of the most undesirable type'. Radclyffe Hall considered herself an invert and Barker a pervert, but despite what was said at Barker’s trial about passing as male to earn a wage, it was Barker, not Radcliffe Hall who lived full-time as male.

16 June: Claude Lowther, brother of Toupie, died age 59 after a period of illness. He was unmarried but the father of two, and had established a career as a right-wing Conservative. The outing of his sister during the trial cannot have helped.

9 September: The World League for Sexual Reform held its third congress in London in 1929, organized by Norman Haire. The two trials were not on the programme.

Toupie spoke of being the inspiration for Stephen Gordon and some books say that John and Una dropped her for saying so. Una wrote in her life of Radclyffe Hall: “She passed out of our lives when John wrote The Well of Loneliness, and we afterwards heard that she had resented the book as challenging her claim to be the only invert in existence. Later still, when she was growing very old, I was told that she had moreover acquired the illusion that she had served as a model for Stephen Gordon.”

Morris sued the FFSF for reinstatement and 100,000 francs in damages. While her case was against the arbitrary use of power, the trial focused on the right to wear male clothing. Her male lawyer defended the inherent decency of trousers, and questioned why trousers had been okay with the FFSF for ten years, but no longer. He contrasted Morris with Victor Barker in England who had attempted to pass as male. The FFSF had two female lawyers, one of whom, Yvonne Netter, was a noted feminist, divorced and an advocate of planned parenthood. They explained that because of their responsibility to the government (which provided grants) and to parents, they must set good examples. Morris was accused of cross-dressing to attract attention. They noted how female clothing had evolved from the long skirts and corsets of the pre-war era. They portrayed Morris as being a moral danger in female locker rooms, and criticized her in that she had never applied for a permission de travestissement. Morris' lawyer produced a letter from the Commissioner of Police giving assurance that they no longer pursued women in trousers.

The court ruled: "nous n'avons pas à nous occuper de la façon dont se vêt à la ville et dans ses autres occupations Mme Violette Morris, mais nous estimons que le fait de porter un pantalon n'étant pas d'un usage admis pour les femmes, la FFS avait parfaitement le droit de l'interdire. En conséquence, le tribunal déboute Mme Violette Morris et la condamne aux dépens"(we do not have to deal with how Mme. Volette Morris dresses in the city and in her other occupations, but we believe that to wear trousers is not permitted by custom for women, FFSF had every right to prohibit it. Accordingly, the court dismisses Mme. Violette Morris and awards costs)".

• Gladys Mitchell. Speedy Death. Victor Gollancz, 1929. The first (of 66) Mrs Bradley detective novel. Explorer Everard Mountjoy is discovered dead in the bath, and to everyone’s surprise – especially his fiancée – he has a female body. Review. Included the delightful untrue story of Captain Jack Tremain who was part of the British team sent to Khartoum in 1884 to rescue General Gordon. Tremain died of malaria and a post mortem revealed his secret. He was previously Miss Wilhelmina Nash.....who wrote in a diary "to be a woman with ambition beyond that which society will allow is to endure a slow death. I was determined to live a life."
• Joan Riviere. “Womanliness as a Masquerade”. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 9, 1929: 303-313. Analyses how intellectual women in particular practice an artificial femininity as a defensive mask that is put on to hide masculinity. An important contribution to the concept of gender as social construction.

1930

Evan Burtt in a village near Salisbury, Wiltshire, had been declared male at age 29 after examination by a doctor, and supported by Salvation Army solicitors had his birth certificate changed.  Saturday 30 March he married a childhood friend.  This was reported favourably by local and national newspapers.  

Aftermath

The boyette fashion style of a skirt with jacket and tie had, as clothing fashions do, run its course by 1928 and was being replaced by more feminine styles. While Radclyffe Hall’s appearance had been regarded “on the feminine side of what was known as the ‘severely masculine mode’” before 1928, afterwards it came to signify lesbianism, much as effeminacy came to signify male homosexuality only after the Oscar Wilde Trial in 1895.

Despite this, skirt, jacket and tie in later decades became the standard female school uniform – without any suggestions of lesbianism.

1932

• Gerald Berniers writing as Adela Quebec. The Girls of Radcliff Hall. Privately published, 1932. A spoof which featured Berniers, Cecil Beaton and others as lesbian schoolgirls at an institution named after the famous writer. Beaton attempted to have all the copies destroyed and it became a very rare book until reprinted in 2000.

1934

Joe Carstairs had seen an advert in a US newspaper for the sale of an island in the Bahamas. He bought Whale Cay for $40,000, and moved there. He was sensitive to the growing hostility about gender variant persons in the press. He never returned to England.

• Radclyffe Hall. Miss Ogilvy Finds Herself. William Heinemann, 1934.

1935

Bill Allen had a mysterious stay in hospital, and afterwards claimed that he was now a man.

1936

Mark Weston, previously England’s best female shot-putter and javelin thrower, underwent two operations by Lennox Broster at Charing Cross Hospital, and was declared male.  Unlike Violet Morris, he took a male name.  Two months later he married a female friend. Not Britain’s first surgically completed trans man – there had been others operated on by Broster – but the first to garner press attention because Weston was a well-known athlete.

1948

Una Troubridge, Hall’s partner, petitioned the Home Office to reconsider the ban on The Well of Loneliness (as she hoped to include it in the republication of Hall’s major works), all the relevant files were drastically purged and then closed for one hundred years.

1949

Falcon Press brought out an edition of The Well of Loneliness with no legal challenge. It has been in print in the UK continuously since.

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It is ironic that Douglas and Joynson Hicks regarded The Well of Loneliness as dangerous in that it would lead young women into an inversion composed of depression and self-hatred, while they had no problem with Orlando that presented inversion as a high-spirited romp – in fact as gay in the old sense. But experience teaches that those who would censor are rarely consistent.

Both Woolf and Radclyffe Hall seem to be incapable of imagining inverts who are not aristocratic and wealthy. Readers had to wait until the 1950s for invert stories where the protagonists are ordinary people.

Radclyffe Hall’s books give the author’s name as just that, without a given name, and many write as if Radclyffe were her given name (what in the 1920s would be called a ‘christian name’). Radcliffe Hall’s given name was Marguerite and later John. Radclyffe-Hall was a double-barrelled surname. Her father was Radclyffe Radclyffe-Hall.

You could easily argue that Morris’ law case was wrong-headed. It is a pity that Morris did not follow Weston’s example of, after gender surgery, taking a male name and pronoun and leaving female sports behind. However Morris was 13 years older than Weston and had her operation seven years earlier. It is indicative that she did not claim top surgery as gender surgery, but excused it on the grounds of fitting into a racing car. Morris had been sparring with the male Olympics athlete Raoul Paoli, and in motor racing had held her own against male drivers – and actually won the Bol d’Or in 1927. It was time to leave female sports behind – and she was already 36. Neither Morris nor her lawyer nor the FFSF discussed whether a trans man should be involved in female sports. No-one used those concepts in 1929.

Either way, Morris’ trial came immediately after those of Radclyffe-Hall and Barker, and the three together had an impact.

So where are the trans women and female impersonators in this period? Actually there were very few in England and France 1924-9. Once we move into the 1930s it changes significantly. Also of course the situation in Berlin was significantly different and Magnus Hirschfeld oversaw the surgical completion of a few trans women.

Richard Curtis (1967 - ) doctor, yacht racer

Richard Curtis started life as Vanda Zadorozny,  the child of a Polish immigrant who survived a Nazi forced labour camp and became a mine worker in West Yorkshire.

Vanda had medical training at St. Bartholomew’s Medical College and the Royal London School of Medicine, followed by work in various hospitals. Zadorozny also did an MBA and for three years worked in the pharmaceutical industry bringing medical expertise to sales and marketing, before returning to doctoring as a general practitioner.

Zadorozny had developed a passion for sailing while at university and competed at the national level for 15 years winning several championships. Zadorozny had affairs with men, but they did not feel right: he felt that he was “a gay man trapped in a woman’s body”.

He was working as a locum at a general practice in Richmond, London, when he completed transition as Richard Curtis in 2005, shortly after the Gender Recognition Act came into force. He was the first transsexual to be recognised by the General Medical Council under its terms.

Dr Curtis met Russell Reid, and started to sit in with trans clients, and by the end of the year was taking his own patients. He took over the private practice in 2006, when Reid retired facing complaints that he was too willing to be helpful to transsexuals. Curtis was a member of  professional and activists groups: WPATH, Gendys Network, FTM NetWork, FTM London, Gender Trust and GIRES. He aimed to offer a ‘one-stop’ service wherein trans clients can be assessed, diagnosed, given referrals, prescribed and dispensed hormones, given follow-up and health checks, offered counselling and hair removal treatment and even speech therapy. Ruth Pearce describes his reputation at the turn of the decade: 

“The name ‘Dr Curtis’ was widely associated with a more liberal form of care that centres informed consent rather than placing the burden of proof upon trans patients, a factor that was sometimes linked by participants to Curtis’ own background as a trans man. Transhealth patients such as Ben felt more confident that the possible future of transition would eventually manifest, and within a predictable time frame too. They were less worried about encountering cisgenderism or transphobia from Curtis, or having to prove themselves ‘trans enough’.”

However some complaints were made: mainly about his high fees: as high as £240-an-hour. More significantly, a woman, who had presented as a trans man, regretted taking testosterone and having a double mastectomy; it was alleged that Dr Curtis had prescribed to patients under 18 “without the specialist knowledge or skills to do so”; that he failed to follow “accepted standards of care”. In November 2011, the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) imposed a number of restrictions on Dr Curtis’ practice. He "must maintain an anonymised log detailing every case where he prescribes for patients with gender dysphoria and for patients who he refers for gender dysphoria surgery". The panel also ruled: "He must not prescribe hormonal treatment for patients with gender dysphoria, or refer any patients for gender dysphoria surgery, unless those patients have undergone a recent mental health or psychological assessment carried out by an appropriately trained mental health care professional."

In 2013 the General Medical Council opened an investigation into the practice of Dr Curtis. However in February 2015 it announced that the Fitness to Practice hearing originally scheduled for that month would not be going forward.

Curtis maintained the support of trans patients and activists. The Twitter #TransDocFail campaign led to a dossier of over 100 cases of serious and sometimes dangerous mistreatment of trans patients by other doctors. This was formally presented to the GMC, and Jane Fae wrote an article for The Guardian making the same points. However, no action appears to have been taken against a single doctor as a result.

Dr Curtis had made several changes so that his service was more similar to NHS gender clinics, such as requiring a second diagnosis prior to hormone prescriptions, and he stopped accepting patients under 21.

On June 2017 Dr Curtis announced the discontinuance of his practice. This was at the same time as the Welsh physician Helen Webberley who had been offering prescriptions after consultations by Skype, was also investigated by the GMC and put under restrictions.

*not the screenwriter, nor the Washington State representative.

• Luke McEwan. “Laser 4000 Nationals at Dalgety Bay Sailing Club Report”. Yachts and Yachting, 22 Aug 2000. Online.
• Nicki May Reid. Dr Richard Curtis BSc. MB.BS takes over from Dr Russell Reid. Angel News 2 Feb 2006 www.theangels.co.uk/article.asp?id=524 . No Longer available.
• Elizabeth Day. “Richard, the first transsexual GP, was Vanda, the miner’s Daughter”. The Telegraph, 09 Oct 2005. Online.
• Curtis, R., Levy, A., Martin, J., Zoe-Jane, P., Wylie, K., Reed, T. and Reed, B.  Guidance for GPs, other Clinicians and Health Professionals on the Care of Gender Variant People. Department of Health Publications, 2008.
• David Batty. “Doctor under fire for alleged errors prescribing sex-change hormones”. The Guardian, 6 Jan 2013. Online.
• Martin Evans & Andrew Hough. “Dr Richard Curtis: transsexual doctor faces investigation”. The Telegraph, 07 Jan 2013. Online.
• Sam Webb. “Transsexual doctor who charges £240-an-hour investigated over sex-change treatments after complaint by woman who regretted having her breasts removed”, The Daily Mail, 7 January 2013..
• Matthew Jenkin. “Campaign calls for end to trans doctor 'witch hunt'”. Gay Star News, 10 January 2013. Online.
• Jane Fae. “The real trans scandal is not the failings of one doctor but cruelty by many” The Guardian, 10 Jan 2013. Online.
• Nick Duffy. “General Medical Council drops case against transgender doctor”. Pink News, February 27, 2015. Online.
• Tris Reid-Smith. “Is General Medical Council failing trans people as they clear top doctor after four year probe?”. Gay Star News, 26 February 2015. Online.
• Kamilla Kamaruddin. “What it’s like to be a transgender patient and a GP”. British Journal of General Practice, 67 (600) 2017: 313. Online.
• “Dr Curtis is closing his Gender Clinic”. Susan’s Place, June 2017. Online.
• Ruth Pearce. Understanding Trans Health: Discourse, Power and Possibility. Policy Press, 2018: 72, 149-50, 165-7.

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An item I did not put in the bibliography is Sheila Jeffreys’ Gender Hurts. She has a half-page on Curtis. Simply citing David Batty in The Guardian. she puts far too much weight on a statement that Curtis was quoted as saying:  ‘I’ve never wanted children, or a white wedding like most women dream of, or a man to take care of me. Instead, you were more likely to find me fitting a kitchen or tiling the bathroom’.  Jeffreys comments: “Her understanding of gender was very constricting and traditional”. Really! A woman who becomes a yacht-racing champion has a constricting and traditional view of gender! Of course Jeffreys does not mention that Curtis was a yachting champion.

Richard Curtis Gender Specialist - Part 1 from Jay Stewart on Vimeo.

Angelina Mead King (1980–) scion of motel business, car racer.

Ian King was the son of Archimedes King (1953 - 2015), the owner of the Victoria Court chain of motels in the Philippines, himself the son of Angelo King (1927 - ), a Chinese-Filipino who established the Anito Lodge chain of motels.

Ian became a well-known sports car enthusiast, and an executive in his father’s business. In 2006 he was introduced to Joey Mead (1976 - ), the prominent Filipino model of Iranian descent who was raised in Australia. A few months into the relationship he mentioned that he liked to wear female clothes. Joey was supportive, and took him shopping for female clothes.

They were married in the US in 2011. They were open to their families re Ian that is Angelina. Archimedes was initially reluctant to accept it, but came round.

Archimedes died in a helicopter crash in July 2015.

A few months after that King saw an endocrinologist and was started on a prescription for hormones.

image on Istagram

In July 2016, an until-then private Instagram account with the handle @hailtothe_queen_ went public and thereby it was announced to the world that Ian, now to be known as Angelina, was trans. There was general support even from the motor racing community. She owns 20 cars, mainly in Manila, but also in Los Angeles and Germany.

• Aya Lowe. “Shhh...Victoria Court takes on new image”. Rappler, February 17, 2013. www.rappler.com/business/21878-victoria-court-same-face,-new-brand.
• Isabel Roces. “Ian King loves autos, DC shoes, fitted wip caps—and moisturizers”. Inquirer, August 16, 2013. http://lifestyle.inquirer.net/120233/ian-king-loves-autos-dc-shoes-fitted-wip-caps-and-moisturizers.
• “From Ian to Angelina: Motel heir is trans woman”. The Philippine Star, July 4, 2016. www.philstar.com/headlines/2016/07/04/1599365/ian-angelina-motel-heir-trans-woman.
• “How Ian King became the Queen of Joey Mead”. The Philoppino Star, July 6, 2016. www.philstar.com/lifestyle/fashion-and-beauty/2016/07/06/1599820/lifestyle.
• Paolo Reyes, Jerome Gomez, & Pam Quiñones “Sometimes the King is a Woman: The Joey Mead King Tell-All”. Rogue, July 2016. http://rogue.ph/joey-mead-king.

________________________________________________

There is of course a lot of class privilege here.  The ordinary Filipino Bakla or Bayot would not be given the same degree of acceptance, and far from storing part of her car collection in LA, would find it very difficult to even get a visa at all.

Trans in sports 2017

Aaron Stewart , 33, US soldier injured in Kuwait in 2015, who won eight medals including two golds Invictus as a woman at previous Invictus Games, competed at this year’s Invictus Games, Toronto as a man.

Alex Hahn, New Brunswick, played football at St. Thomas University in Fredericton last year, but now has dropped out to transition.

Chloe Psyche Anderson, 24, California, gave up on volleyball

Christina Ginther, 44, Minnesota, never played US football before, rejected by the Vixen team management despite a good try-out, but now accepted on Minnesota Machine .

Hannah Mouncey, 26, Australia, who previously represented Australia in men’s handball, denied a position in Women’s football.

Jacob Roy, 20, at University of New Brunswick in Saint John, dropped sports to transition.

Laurel Hubbard, NZ, 39, who previously held junior male weightlifting records, transitioned in 2012, won three women’s records in 2017, and will represent NZ.

Mark Beggs, 18, Texas, wrestling, obliged by state law to compete against girls, and won girls’ state title.

Pat Cordova-Goff, 17, California, accepted on girls’ softball team after passing of California’s A.B. 1266 law.

Pat Manuel, US boxer, reached Olympic Trials as a female boxer, transitioned 2013-4, 2016 approved by USA Boxing to fight as a man, now ready to fight at age 32.

Savannah Burton, actress from Newfoudland, competed for the 3^rd time at the WDBF Dodgeball World Championships

Tia Thompson, 32, Hawai’i approved after three years by USA Volleyball to play in women’s division.

Tiffany Abreu, Brazil, who has 2 MVP awards for playing in men’s volleyball before transition in 2012. In 2017 she was authorized to play in women’s teams. Early 2017 played in a second divison team in Italy. Now signed a contract with Volei Bauru, in the Superliga.

Vanessa Sites, 31, Pennsylvania, roller derby player tried for Team USA

Jayne Thomas ( 194? – 2002) psychologist

Jay Thomas grew up in a small town in Indiana, and as a teenager was a national swimming champion.

Despite feeling wrong as a boy, Jay married a woman at age 17, however she had great difficulties with her husband’s transsexual inclinations. Thomas moved to the Los Angeles area and worked as a consultant for movie and television productions and as an engineer psychologist for Hughes Industries, an aircraft development company.

A second wife was more supportive of the trans aspects, and they traveled together as two women. Thomas had children with both wives.

When the second wife passed on in 1985, Thomas felt free to transition. Thomas had been working as a consultant at a large Los Angeles banking firm, and was able to continue there as a woman.

Afterwards she gave counseling to other transsexuals, in accordance with the HBIGDA Standards of Care. In 1988 she took a part-time position in the Psychology Department at the Santa Monica College, where she was a well-regarded teacher who shared her background with the students. She also worked part-time at the Los Angeles Mission College.

With Kate Bornstein, Jayne appeared on the Geraldo television program “Who’s Sorry Now” about post-surgical regret. Kate and Jayne were there in contrast as successful and happy transsexuals.

Jayne was a speaker at the first New Women’s Conference in Essex, Massachusetts in 1991: her talk was reprinted in The Journal of Gender Studies.

“I've made the comment on more than one occasion that I'm a hell of a lot more comfortable with the masculine part of myself now, in female form, than I ever was when I was in male form. I couldn't be androgynous as a male. I can now. Because being male doesn't threaten me now”.

Jayne also gave lectures and presentations at other colleges. From this came the VHS tape Gender Identity: Variations of Expression. At one college presentation, after Thomas spoke of her gender history, an Iranian woman said:

"I knew there was something different about you. I knew it! Women don't walk around the way you do. Women aren't as assertive, as bold as you. Women your age wouldn't generally stand here like this and make a presentation."

Jayne’s son, an aspiring thespian had become involved in dance as a form of creative expression. Jayne met his teacher and also took the course, and found it useful in expressing a new gender. She and the teacher wrote this up and it was included in the Gender Blending anthology edited by the Bulloughs and James Elias.

During the spring semester, 2002 Jayne suffered a stroke and went into a coma. Despite medical care, she died a few months afterwards

• Jayne Thomas. “Putting Gender Issues in Perspective: The Whole You”. Journal of Gender Studies, 14,1,Winter-Spring 1992: 3-19. Online.
• Kate Bornstein. Gender outlaw: on men, women, and the rest of us. Vintage Book, 1995: 81.
• Jayne Thomas & Toby Green. Gender Identity: Variations of Expression. VHS Tape, 1995.
• Loren M. Wingert, CPA. “Coming Out: Transitioning Successfully On the Job”. Transgender Tapestry, 78, Winter 1996: D3. Online.
• Jayne Thomas & Annette Cardona. “The Use of Dance/Movement in the Adjustment to a New Gender Role” in Bonnie Bullough, Vern L. Bullough & James Elias. Gender Blending. Prometheus Books, 1997: 405-412.
• Daniel Harju. “Teacher Fights For Her Life: SMC instructor shared perspectives on human sexuality and personal life experiences”. Corsair, 84, 11, 13 November 2002. Online.
• Jeffrey S Nevid & Spencer A Rathus. Psychology and the Challenges of Life, Binder Ready Version: Adjustment and Growth. 13^th Edition. Wiley, 2016:404-5, 407.

Melanie Yarborough

Noor Talbi نور طلبي dancer, model, actress (1969 - )

Noureddine Talbi was born in Agadir, and was raised in Hay Mohammedi, outside Casablanca. Talbi was good at languages and also a teenage athlete and won gold medals in the 110 and 440-metre hurdles at the national level, but was more interested in dancing, which was done at first in the family setting, and in imitation of the dance sequences in Egyption films.

Talbi left for Spain at 18, and then France where she found work on the fashion catwalks. Her name was now Noor (shortened from Noureddine, a unisex name that means ‘light’ in Arabic).

Back in Morocco she founded her own fashion brand … but she still wanted to dance. She studied oriental dance under renowned choreographers. Initially she was snubbed, as are all artists initially, and there were rumours about her gender history. However she persisted, and performed at shows, charity galas, weddings.

Her sister acted as her manager – until she got married. Noor has adopted a child. She sent her mother on the Hajj in 2002, and wants to go herself.

“I am a strong believer; I pray five times a day, I am very close to God."

Noor became one of the best known oriental dancers in Morocco. She also dances the kabuki, the hindi, the woolof and the charqi. She can speak French, English, Spanish, Italian and three Arabic dialects: the Moroccan darija, the Lebanese and the Egyptian. She is 1.85m (6'1"), a full 2 metres in heels. She had surgery in Egypt.

She has starred in films, headlined weddings for the rich, and is a regular at big events such as the Marrakech International Film Festival, run after by the paparazzi. She teaches dance in Rabat and Casablanca, and has performed in the US, Australia and Japan.  However she chooses not to work with LGBT activists despite being asked.

However Morocco refuses to reissue her identity card, and state television continues to ban her.

'If I wasn't such a strong woman, religious, humanly and social, another might have killed herself'.

• “Noor, la danse dans la peau”. Aujourd’hui, September 13, 2002. http://aujourdhui.ma/culture/noor-la-danse-dans-la-peau-20615.
• Yassine Toumi. “Noor. Pourquoi et comment je suis femme”. Telquel.ma, mai 09 2012. http://telquel.ma/2012/05/09/noor-pourquoi-et-comment-je-suis-femme_344_2651
• Paul Schemm. “Morocco's transgender belly dancer courts acceptance”. Associated Press, 22 December 2014. CTV News Daily Mail
• Barbara Sellers-Young. Belly Dance, Pilgrimage and Identity. Palgrave Macmillan, 2016: 123-4.
• Nadine Mazioum. “These trans Arab women challenge social norms in a big way”. StepFeed, 2017-02-19. http://stepfeed.com/these-trans-arab-women-challenge-social-norms-in-a-big-way-1541

FR.Wikipedia       IMDB

Sylvia Rae Rivera (1951-2002) activist - beginnings

Part I: beginnings
Part II:  GAA & Weinstein Hall
Part III: Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries
Part IV:  Other activities to 1973
Part V:  Later years

Early life

Ray José Christian Rivera Mendoza, was three years old when his mother, aged 22, facing death threats from her husband, drank rat poison mixed with milk and gave the same mixture to her children. They would not drink it, but she, after two days of agony, died.

Ray’s Puerto Rican father had already disappeared. He came back only once, and never paid child support. Ray’s Venezuelan-born grandmother, called Viejita (‘old lady’, even though she was only in her forties) took Ray and his younger half-sister to live in Jersey City, where she raised them on less than $50 a week. In 1958 Viejita fell ill for a matter of months, and afterwards sent Ray to live with friends.

He returned at weekends and holidays. By now Viejita was living in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Ray had had sex with an older cousin at age seven, and at age 10 was having regular sex with a married man down the street. He also wore Viejita’s clothes and makeup when Viejita was out. Ray wore makeup at school from the fourth grade, apparently with no-one noticing except for one teacher who seduced him.

Ray was a noted athlete in track and gymnastics. In the sixth-grade there was an incident when a larger classmate called him a ‘faggot’, and Ray won the resulting fight.

However at age eleven, in 1962, Ray discovered 42^nd Street where he had heard that the maricónes were to be found. However a neighbour spotted him, which led to a row with Viejita, a suicide attempt and two months in Bellevue Hospital.

A few months later Ray left and moved in with Gary, a lover that he would stay with for seven years. They both hustled and did drugs, and became well-known around Times Square. Ray was urged to take a new name. ‘Sylvia’ was proposed: “There is no Sylvia around”. So with a formal christening, a white gown and a preacher from a Pentecostal Hispanic church, she became Sylvia Lee Rivera.

By now she had met Marsha P Johnson, who – although only seven years older – acted as a drag mother and showed Sylvia how to survive on the streets. Marsha got her a job at the Childs restaurant chain, first as a messenger. Sylvia was then promoted to billing clerk, and then, working in suit and tie with full makeup, in accounts payable.

Sylvia still did hustling, and after her first arrest she was in the Brooklyn House of Detention for three days. Sylvia was welcomed by Gary’s family, but Viejita was resistant.

“You can’t love another man!”, and later “Why can’t you have a Spanish boy?” – to which Sylvia came back: “Oh, sure, sure – so I can go kill myself like my mother did?”

By the time that she was 15, Sylvia was hustling as a woman. Several times guns were pulled on her, but she never had more than $20 in her purse – the rest was in the hem of her skirt. Sometimes her gender was challenged, but with a wig hair on a tight gaff, she was able to bluff it through. However one night with a trick, her penis did pop out. He beat her hard, she pulled the gun from her purse, and had to use it. After he recovered, the trick toured the Times Square area with two cops in tow until he had her arrested.

Ray called Viejita who did the grandmother act and got Ray released. On a lawyer’s advice, Ray cut his hair, quit the makeup, enrolled in school and appeared in court a model clean-cut teenage boy. “I ask you, your honor; does this look like a street hustler or a transvestite?” The judge agreed, and Sylvia walked.

In Spring 1966, the new New York City mayor, John Lindsay, announced a crackdown on pornography and prostitution. Sylvia, at her usual spot on 9^th Avenue and 44^th Street was one of many caught in the sweep. Sylvia was put in the gay section in Rikers Island prison. It was here that she started doing heroin. She also met a good-looking black queen who went by the name Bambi L’Amour. They threw shade at each other, and then became firm friends.

Back on the streets, Sylvia teamed up with Kim, a cis woman, and they hustled together, often robbing their tricks. Sylvia was sometimes spending $200 a day on heroin, and hustling in a white fox coat. She also paid for hormone treatments. At first she and her friends had gone to a doctor on the Lower East Side until she got a discharge from her right breast, and found that she had been taking monkey hormones. She switched to Dr Stern on 5^th Avenue, who was willing to take bodily contact instead of payment. However she decided to stop the injections.

“I don’t want to be a woman. I just want to be me. … I like pretending. I like to have the role. I like to dress up and pretend, and let the world think about what I am. Is he, or isn’t he?”

One night Sylvia was told that Viejita was ill. Although it was 2am, and she was stoned and in full drag, she hailed a cab and went right over. Viejita opened the door and exclaimed:

“Oh my god, you look just like your mother!” Sylvia replied: “Well, who am I supposed to look like?”

Cohen p146

On her sixteenth birthday, Ray was invited to attend the local draft board. She appeared in high heels, miniskirt, long red nails, the works. Despite her proclamation, “I’m one of the boys”, she was sent with a bunch of women to an induction center in Newark. A psychiatrist asked if there were a problem with her sexuality.

“I know I like men. I know I like to wear dresses. But I don’t know what any problem is.”

She also produced papers from the stay in Bellevue that stated that she was homosexual. The psychiatrist stamped HOMOSEXUAL on the induction notice, and told her that she could go home.  On a roll, Sylvia announced that she hadn’t any money, and needed a lift home. And she got it.

where was Sylvia the night of 27/28 June 1969?

Sylvia was still 17 on this date, five days short of her birthday July 2. 18 was the legal drinking age in New York State at this time. Despite being underage she had a preferred bar: the Washington Square at Broadway and 3^rd Street. It opened at 3 am and catered primarily to transvestites.

27/8 June 1969, of course was the first night of the Stonewall riots. (the following accounts are sorted by date).

Holly Woodlawn, A Low Life in High Heels, 1992: 124-5:

"June 26, 1969, was a hot, muggy Thursday night. The humidity in the air was unbearable because every queen in the city was in tears. Judy Garland was dead. ... When I returned to the Stonewall the next night, there was so much commotion --sirens blaring, people screaming --I thought that a bomb had gone off. The cops were everywhere, and a chill shot up my spine as I drew closer, fearing the worst. I wedged myself into the mob for a closer look and heard a raspy scream, 'Asshole!' A street queen named Crazy Sylvia had just broken a gin bottle over a cop's head!"

Rey “Sylvia Lee” Rivera. “The Drag Queen” in Eric Marcus. Making History: The Struggle for Gay and Lesbian Equal Rights, 1945-1990 : an Oral History. HarperPerennial, 1992: 191-2.

“We had just come back from Washington, DC, my first lover and I. At that time we were passing bad paper around and making lots of money. And I said, ‘Let’s go to the Stonewall,’ So I was drinking at the bar, and the police came in to get their payoff as usual. They were the same who always used to come into the Washington Square Bar.
“I don’t know if it was was the customers or if it was the police, but that night everything just clicked. Every was like, ‘Why the fuck are we doing all this for? Why should we be chastised? Why do we have to pay the Mafia all this kind of money to drink in a lousy fuckin’ bar? And still be harassed by the police?’ It didn’t make any sense. The prople at them bars, especially at the Stonewall, were involved in other movememts. And everybody was like: “We got to do our thing. We’re gonna go for it!”
“When they ushered us out, they very nicely put us out the door. …
“That night I got knocked around a bit by a couple of plainsclothes cops. I didn’t really get hurt. I was very careful that night, thank God. But I saw other people being hurt by the police. There was one drag queen, I don’t know what she said, but they just beat her her into a bloody pulp. There were a couple of dykes they took out and threw in a car.”

Martin Duberman. Stonewall. Plume, 1994: 190-3.

Sylvia and Gary had returned from passing bad checks in Washington, DC. Sylvia also had a job as an accounting clerk in a Jersey City warehouse. There was to be a party at Marsha’s, but Sylvia decided to stay home, until Tammy Novak phoned, and absolutely insisted, would not take ‘no’ for an answer, that they meet later in the Stonewall. When the cops raided, Sylvia panicked thinking that she had forgotten her ID, but Gary had brought it. A cop asked if she were a boy or a girl, and she almost swung at him, but Gary grabbed her in time. The cop told her to get out of the place. She then watched from the park across the street.

Duberman adds in the endnotes p300n40: “At least two people credit Sylvia herself with provoking the riot: Jeremiah Newton (New York Native, June 15, 1990) has her throwing an empty gin bottle that smashed in front of the Stonewall door; and Ivan Valentin (interview July 5, 1991) insists that Sylvia actually jumped a cop and thereby ‘started the Gay Liberation movement’. But I’ve found no corroboration for either account, and Sylvia herself, with a keener regard for the historical record, denies the accuracy of both versions. She does remember ‘throwing bricks and rocks and things’ after the mêlée began, but takes no credit for initiating the confrontation.”

Sylvia Rivera. “Queens in Exile, the Forgotton Ones” in Joan Nestle, Clare Howell & Riki Wilchins. GenderQueer: Voices from Beyond the Sexual Binary. Alyson books, 2002: 77-8.

This account of Stonewall is notable in being in the plural. Sylvia does not say that she actually was there.

“The night Stonewall happened everybody was out partying. People were mourning, even me. We were mourning Judy Garland’s death. Some authors have said that the riot came out of Judy Garland’s death, but that’s not true. Judy had nothing to do with the riot. … We fought back. … So this night was different. This was the start of out talking back, speaking up for ourselves. … they proofed us. We went out the door. But no one dispersed.”

Bebe Scarpinato & Rusty Moore. “Sylvia Rivera Obituary”. Transgender Tapestry, 98, Summer 2002:34.

“She was present and participated in the Stonewall Riots, which became the determining event of her life.”

That is all that they say about Stonewall.

David Carter, author of Stonewall : the riots that sparked the gay revolution, 2004, did not mention Sylvia Rivera even once in his book. He was interviewed by Gay Today, and asked about this lacuna.

“I am afraid that I could only conclude that Sylvia's account of her being there on the first night was a fabrication. Randy Wicker told me that Marsha P. Johnson, his roommate, told him that Sylvia was not at the Stonewall Inn at the outbreak of the riots as she had fallen asleep in Bryant Park after taking heroin. (Marsha had gone up to Bryant Park, found her asleep, and woke her up to tell her about the riots.) Playwright and early gay activist Doric Wilson also independently told me that Marsha Johnson had told him that Sylvia was not at the Stonewall Riots. Sylvia also showed a real inconsistency in her accounts of the Stonewall Riots. In one account she claimed that the night the riots broke out was the first time that she had ever been at the Stonewall Inn; in another account she said that she had been there many times. In one account she said that she was there in drag; in another account she says that she was not in drag. She told Martin Duberman that she went to the Stonewall Inn the night the riots began to celebrate Marsha Johnson's birthday, but Marsha was born in August, not June. I also did not find one credible witness who saw her there on the first night.”

Stephan L. Cohen. The Gay Liberation Youth Movement in New York: 'an Army of Lovers Cannot Fail', 2008: 90.

“Overcoming adversity is but one aspect of their story. Street transvestites were in the forefront of the gay liberation movement—joining those responsible for the Stonewall Rebellion: transvestites and lesbians who resisted inside the bar, street kids protesting outside, including Jackie Hormona reported to have “kicked a cop,” the effeminate gay male “flame queens,” and the “lesbian who fought the police” along with other gays, lesbians, agitators, students, and passers-by. Street transvestite Marsha P. Johnson was seen climbing a lamppost and dropping “a bag containing a heavy object” on a police car windshield, shattering it. Although Sylvia Rivera later explained that she had come down the avenue, turned the corner and joined the protest (this would presumably have been on one of the subsequent nights, as neither Bob Kohler nor Marsha saw Sylvia that first night).”


Cohen adds a footnote: p244n6. “Martin Duberman’s lively, Stonewall account of Sylvia’s participation in the Stonewall rebellion conflicts with Bob Kohler’s understanding: Sylvia privately acknowledged to Kohler that she was not present the first night of rioting (Bob Kohler, interview by author, NYC, July 21, 2003).”

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

It does not matter whether Sylvia was at Stonewall or not; whether she watched passively or joined in.  What she did later, in STAR and in being the public face of transgender in 1970s New York, is what is important.   This we will see in the next part.

Lauren Jeska (1974 - ) fell runner

Jeska, originally from Lancashire, studied physics at Oxford University, and then gender studies at Leeds University. She transitioned in 2000.

Jeska took up fell running, and was the women’s 2010, 2011 and 2012 English champion, and won the British Championship in 2012. She became a familiar winner. It was an open secret among the runners that Lauren was trans, and she had told some officials.

In 2015 she was told that she would not be able to compete and her racing results would be declared null and void as she hadn't provided blood samples to prove her testosterone levels had lowered significantly, and following this UK Athletics was considering a review into her status as female. All athletes were required to take a blood test but Jeska took exception to this and feared being unable to compete. As a result she risked having her championship results declared void.

She twice asked for NHS psychiatric help, but was not referred to a specialist.

Jeska drove more than 100 miles from her home in Machynlleth, Powys, Wales, to the British Athletic headquarters in Perry Barr, Birmingham. She was carrying three knives, including a 13cm kitchen knife. She asked to speak to Ralph Knibbs, UK Athletics human resources and welfare manager (and former rugby player). She walked up to him and stabbed him several times. Two other men who intervened were also injured. This was capturd on CCTV. The presence of a former Royal Navy paramedic helped to stabilise Knibbs. Although he suffered a stroke during the attack, resulting in partial sight-loss.

Jeska plead guilty at a hearing at Birmingham Crown Court in September 2016. After delays waiting for psychiatric reports, Jeska was jailed in March 2017 for 18 years, and an extended licence of five years to be served after release.

• Lydia Willgress. “Fell-runner Lauren Jeska tried to kill British athletics official because she feared the body would revoke her titles over transgender status”. The Telegraph, 22 September 2016. www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/09/22/fell-runner-lauren-jeska-admits-attempted-knife-murder-of-britis.
• “Powys fell running star Lauren Jeska who admitted attempted murder set for hospital order”. News North Wales, 17 November 2016. www.newsnorthwales.co.uk/news/169215/powys-fell-running-star-lauren-jeska-who-admitted-attempted-murder-set-for-hospital-order.aspx.
• Frances Perraudin. “Champion runner jailed for attempted murder of UK Athletics official”. The Guardian, 14 March 2017. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/mar/14/champion-runner-lauren-jeska-jailed-for-attempted-of-uk-athletics-official-ralph-knibbs.
• Richard Spillett. “Champion fell-runner is jailed for 18 years for trying to stab a UK Athletics official to death after it was revealed she was born a MAN and could lose her titles”. The Daily Mail, 14 March 2017. www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4312594/Fell-runner-jailed-trying-murder-athletics-official.html.

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

The newspaper accounts leave much unexplained. Did Jeska merely study at Oxford and Leeds, or did she have a degree (or 2)? What did she do for a living? In a small town in Powys, one would expect a physics graduate to be a teacher, but Machynlleth is only a short distance from the university town of Aberystwyth.

Why, 15 years after surgery, would a trans woman decline a blood test? Yes it would reveal that she had XY chromosomes, but that was admitted. Her testosterone level should be well below the required level.


There was no way that her attack on Mr Knibbs was going to solve the problem

Victor Barker: Part II - husband, actor, manager

Part I: origins: daughter, wife, mother
Part II: husband, actor, manager
Part III: the trial
Part IV: reactions and afterwards


Sir Victor Barker DSO settled in at the Grand Hotel, Brighton. He visited a gentleman’s outfitters and purchased two or three suits, including a dress suit for evening wear, shirts, collars ties, etc. The asset sales from the farm and the sale of his mother’s jewellery, and his small annuity would carry him for the time being. His three-year-old son was cared for elsewhere in Brighton. He participated in tennis, swimming and horse riding with the other hotel residents.

Elfrida Haward arrived on the second day. Barker had explained:

“I told Miss Haward that I was not what she thought I was; I told her that I was a man who had been injured in the war; that I was really a man acting as a woman for family reasons. I made some excuse about it being my mother’s wish, and she believed it.”

The son was explained as with a first wife who had died, and the daughter was of Peace Crouch and his wife from whom he was now separated. Barker did concede though that

“I think that she had some doubt as to my being a baronet. I explained that I had dropped the title while living on my farm, but had assumed it again in the hope that it might help me get a job. I don’t think she swallowed this tale, though she never said much.”

Elfrida would later claim that she did not know that he was a woman until the trial and she understood that Victor could not have 'normal relations' because of an abdominal wound received during the war.

However Victor's previous persona, Mrs Peace-Crouch, had patronized the shop. Victor Barker was able to convince Elfrida's father that he had lived much of his life as a woman because his mother had always wanted a girl and had taken advantage of the death of the father to impose this whim. However he had also been an army Colonel, had served with the British Expeditionary Force in France, and had been awarded a DSO.

However, once this tale was digested, a new problem arose. The young man – albeit supposedly a woman – had spent a night with Elfrida in her bedroom. To avoid scandal they must marry. For Elfrida, this was a good match: a tradesman’s daughter and a knighted military man. However her parents, while permitting the marriage did not care for Sir Victor. They cancelled their plans to settle a sum of money on Elfrida at marriage.

Because the parents did not care to wait through the customary reading of banns on three consecutive Sundays, Victor applied for a marriage license. To do this he had to produce both their birth certificates, and make a sworn affidavit that

“he believeth that there is no impediment of any kindred or alliance or of any other lawful cause, or any suit commenced in any Ecclesiastical Court to bar or hinder the proceeding of the said Matrimony according to the Tenor of such licence”.

The impediment of alliance was not mentioned, nor was his biological sex; and a forged birth certificate was produced. Victor and Elfrida were married 14 November 1923 at St Peter’s, the parish church of Brighton. The ceremony was performed by the curate as the vicar collapsed and died while running for a bus that very morning.

From a meeting at the Grand Hotel, Barker became involved in the Brighton Repertory Company where he was paid 10/- a week. However his lifestyle required more. He opened an antiques and second hand furniture shop in Andover, Hampshire. He also bought a .32 Webley pistol and obtained a certificate for it. He sang in the Andover choir and played with the local cricket club. However he did not know much about antiques, they left town owing £457 to a fellow officer.

Barker did have some success as an actor. Using the stage name of Ivor Gauntlet, he obtained parts in touring productions playing against famous actresses such as Mrs Patrick Campbell and Dolores. However his voice broke down after the strain of singing in a low register.

And Ivor Gauntlet soon had creditors. A tailor in Birmingham was claiming £40/13/-. An actor was public and easy to trace. Victor Barker resorted to paid employment: farm manager (3 months), kennel manager (1 month) and labourer in a brick works where he contracted chicken pox. Elfrida nursed him back to health.

However by this time she had had enough and went back to her parents, and working in the chemist shop. Barker took rooms in Soho.

the boxer

Either because of a misdelivered letter, or on the suggestion of a fellow resident, in late 1926 Barker came into contact with Colonel Henry Rippon Seymour, the leader of the National Fascisti, a splinter group from the British Fascists. He became the live-in secretary of the group and gained the flat above their offices at 5a Hogarth Road, Earls Court. At that time the National Fascisti had a membership of less than 400.

Barker was in his element. He often wore his medals (actually those of Pearce-Crough), gave fencing and boxing lessons to the young recruits, and advised them of the folly of getting mixed up with women.

On 8 March 1927 a small group of fascisti, mainly from the Croydon branch, dissatisfied with Seymour’s usurpation of leadership, burst into the offices. Seymour grabbed his sword, and the Webley pistol from the drawer of the desk and threatened to shoot the first man.

The police arrived. They took possession of the pistol. Seymour appeared at the West London Police Court the next day and pleaded guilty to common assault and possessing a firearm. However the magistrate directed that the second plea be withdrawn when it was clarified that the gun was Barker’s. It was a Webley pistol, but not the same one as on Barker’s certificate from Andover. He was charged with “uttering a forged firearm certificate”.

At the trial in July Barker presented with his eyes swathed. His counsel explained that ‘temporary blindness owing to war wounds’ had flared up. He was found not guilty and discharged.

His firearms certificate was cancelled; he quit the National Fascisti; the Public Prosecution Office wrote to the War Office to ascertain Colonel Barker’s war record; they discovered rumours from Andover about a woman masquerading as a man. However the Prosecutor’s Office dismissed the rumours about a woman, and did not proceed.

Also in July 1927, Tom Barker died of tuberculosis, age 28. He left £1,000 to his sister Valerie. This enabled Barker, and a second Mrs Barker, to rent an expensive flat (£295 per annum) in Mayfair, and employed a valet. His son came to visit regularly, but the current Mrs Barker was always sent away on these occasions.

Barker often held dinner parties for officers whom he had met while in the National Fascisti. From this grew the idea of a fellowship for the British survivors of the Battle of Mons, August 1914. The inaugural dinner was held in Barker’s flat 17 December 1927 with fourteen veterans. However the events proved so successful, that they had to be moved to a hotel.

This was done in association with Colonel Neave, who in fact had been present at Valerie's wedding to Harold Arkell-Smith, but who was completely convinced by Colonel Barker's knowledge of military manoeuvres. Some thought that Barker looked a bit odd, but when he talked about his experiences in the war, he was completely convincing.

With of the success of the Mons dinners, Barker felt that he could run a restaurant. In February 1928, he found one to lease just off Charing Cross Rd, and renamed it Mascot Café. The Daily Sketch received an anonymous tipoff that Colonel Barker was really a woman, and sent a reporter. Twice he engaged Barker in conversation, but was unable to fault his manhood.


However the café did not thrive. He owed a considerable sum in back-rent and the landlady was losing patience. He surrendered the café, moved to cheaper accommodation and found a job as reception clerk at the Regent Palace Hotel.


_____________________________________________________

Rose Collis' biography of Barker, the most reliable source, definitely states that the two guns were Webleys.   However the EN.Wikipedia on the National Fascisti insists it was a colt,   It does not cite Collis at all, but relies on Martin Pugh's Hurrah For The Blackshirts!: Fascists and Fascism in Britain Between the Wars, 2006, but this merely says 'revolver'.  (Pugh, for some reason refuses to be polite, and uses female pronouns throughout). This EN.Wikipedia article summarizes Barker's involvement:  "In 1927 a leading member was "Colonel Victor Barker", who was actually a cross-dresser by the name Valerie Arkell-Smith. Her fellow National Fascisti members did not know she was a woman and treated her as a man and she became secretary to Rippon-Seymour as well as training members in the boxing and fencing clubs."  This of course distorts the issue and misses the point.

Surely Seymour could have pleaded self-defence.

The EN.Wikipedia page on English Fascists includes Valerie Arkell-Smith but not Victor Barker.

Trans & Intersex Sportspersons 2016

IAAF ruled that there to be no no restrictions on trans men in men's activities; surgery no longer required for trans women, but must demonstrate that testosterone level below 10 nanomoles per litre for at least one year.

Kristen Worley, cyclist, successfully challenged rule against artificial testosterone as her body does not produce natural female level.

Lauren Jeska, more former English Women’s Fell Running Champion 2010, 2011, 2012, British Champion 2012, stabbed Ralph Knibbs, head of human resources at UK Athletics, and 2 colleagues, apparently under fear of losing titles after being outed – this despite it being well-known in the fell-running community that Jeska was trans.

Lola Ryan, who rowed for Canada in the Pan American Games in the 1960s, is now teaching dance and theatre at the University of Ottawa.

Amelia Gapin on cover of Women’s Running.

Chris Mosier on US duathlon team, and in Nike advert, and featured in ESPN magazine .

Joanna Harper, runner and medical physicist, advisor to IOC, summarizes arguments re do trans women athletes have an edge. More    more

Caster Semenya became the first person to win all three of the 400m, 800m, and 1500m titles at the South African National Championships. On 16 July, she set a new national record for 800 metres of 1:55:33. The IAAF announced that Semenya was shortlisted for women's 2016 World Athlete of the Year.

Harrison Browne, National Women’s Hockey League player, has come out as trans.

Nattaphon Wangyot, competed in Alaska State Championships.

Ben Christiason, runner, Iowa, on high school men’s track team.

Schuyler Bailar, Harvard swimmer, on men’s team.

Jillian Bearden, cyclist, won women’s Tour de Tucson on first attempt. The Tour de Tucson featured 5 members of the Southern Arizona Gender Alliance (SAGA)/ Trans National Women’s Cycling Team – the first trans women team to be recognized by the IOC. One of whom, Anna Lisk completed the circuit is less time than when she was male 9 years earlier.

Mason Johnson, Quinnipiac University, Connecticut, will delay transition, and continue playing for women’s rugby team.

Catherine McGregor played in Women’s Big Bash Cricket League.

Rio Olympics

IAAF rules re maximum testosterone levels of 10 nanomoles per litre, apply for all female contestants. This rule is challenged and may lapse in 2017. Some cis women exceed this amount. “The IAAF said more than 30 female athletes had so far been caught up by the hyperandgrogenism regulation and that four had already undergone surgery and other treatments in order to lower their testosterone levels to what the IAAF said would qualify them as women. … it is not coincidence that all of the athletes who have so far been caught up in this issue are brown women from developing countries. Globe and Mail”

Despite the supposed advantages that trans women have over cis women, they totally failed to qualify despite being permitted to do so. A few known or rumoured intersex (hyperandgrogenism) women did qualify, but only one won a medal.

María José Martínez-Patiño, CAIS, who was excluded from the 1988 Seoul Olympics after a sex chromatin test: “It’d be easy to believe because of the difficulties of that past that I would be opposed to any rules. That’s not the case. That would not be fair, not be ethical. I understand the positions of other people. I am in favor of rules.” She testified in favor of the IAAF’s upper limits before the arbitration court.

Opening ceremony hosted by model Lea T. ++and the German team was led in by Fabiola.

Caster Semenya won the gold medal in the women's 800 metres with a time of 1:55.28.

Dutee Chand, permitted to run under revised IAAF rules, but eliminated in first heat (50^th out of 64).

Nothando Vilakazi, on South African women's football team, accused on social media of being a man.


It was reported in the Mail on Sunday that there were two unnamed trans women who have competed in a European championship, and were on the verge of being selected for the UK Olympics athletics team. “But worryingly for British sports fans, they have revealed they are so fearful of being exposed and ridiculed under the Olympic spotlight, they would ‘probably drop back’ if they found themselves in a medal-winning position”. If they were selected, it was not confirmed, nor were they outed. The story was based on statements by Delia Johnson, a diversity consultant for Trans In Sport, Northamptonshire Police and England Netball.