The Game of Typology

 There are Typologies of this and that. In particular there are Typologies of being Trans. Four years ago, I listed a Miscellany of Typologies.

The best known Typology of course is that proposed by Harry Benjamin. In 1954 he proposed 6 types grouped into 3 Groups:

1. The principally psychogenic transvestite. “He is miserable when dressed as a man and immediately comfortable and relaxed in the clothes of a female. He has become an expert in cosmetic make-up, yet is occasionally in social or legal difficulties. He assumes a female first name and wants to be referred to as 'she.' … In fighting his peculiarity he sometimes over-emphazises masculinity and becomes known as a ‘tough guy.’ ”

2. The intermediate type. “ .. he inclines at times toward transsexualism, but is at other times content with merely dressing and acting as a woman. He wavers between homo- and heterosexual desires usually according to chance meetings.”

3. The somatopsychic transsexualist. “Feminine appearance and orientation is often striking in these people but masculine features are compatible with full transsexualism. The conviction of these endocrine males that they are really females with faulty sex organs is profound and passionate.”

This he expanded in his 1966 book in what is referred to as the Benjamin Scale, which I reproduce below.

Of course the problem with any Typology is human beings are idiosyncratic, they are human. Some appear to fit into one of the boxes of the Typology; others are re-interpreted until they appear to fit; others read the Typology as an instruction manual; and many just do not fit in any way at all.

As Kris Kirk wrote in 1984:

"If there is any one lesson to be learned from studying this field it is that the individual is individual. People define themselves and the self-definition must always takes priority over the received wisdom. I have met self-defined draq queens whom others would describe as TV either because they enjoy 'passing'; or because they 'dress' so often that it could be seen as a compulsion; or because they wear lingerie, either to turn men on or to make themselves feel sensuous. I have met drag performers who have grown to dislike drag, and men who insist on being called 'cross-dressers' because they dislike what the word 'drag' stands for, and men who wear part-drag in order to create confusion and doubt amongst others, but who would never wear full drag because that would defeat their object. I know self-defined TVs who are gay or bisexual or oscillating, some of them having learned to cross this sexuality barrier through their cross-dressing. I have met TVs who dress like drag queens and drag queens who dress like TVs, and TVs whose cross-dressing has encouraged them to question their 'male role', which in turn has made them examine their idea of 'femininity'. And perhaps most important of all, I have learned how marshy a terrain is the middle ground between our earlier clear-cut distinction between transvestites and transexuals."

Anyway, as an experiment, as a game, I took the Benjamin Scale and revised it.

1. I added Group 0, Cis persons, and divided them into 4 kinds: Gender Play, Homeovestism, Involuntary, Narrative/Literary Transvestity.

2. I removed the differnt Kinsey Scale numbers. Benjamin in effect erased gynephilic “True Transsexuals” and gay Transvestites. Instead I write: “Androphilia, gynephilia and any degree of bisexuality are found with any Cis-Trans type”. I must admit however that I cannot think of any Anne Vitale G3 Gender Deprivation Anxiety Disorder (GEDAD)/Autogynephile who are androphilic - although such can be theorised.

3. Benjamin had three types of Transvestites: Pseudo, Fetishistic and True. I regard the Pseudo as a type of Cis. Fetishistic is a problematic term: a) various groups, including the Princian tranvestites, use it as an insult b) there is a Fetish subculture which Benjamin’s usage does not reflect at all. Instead of Fetishistic I have placed Cross-dreamer as defined by Jack Molay. I know that some regard ‘Cross-dreamer’ as merely a euphemism for either fetishistic transvestite or autogynephilic - this is polemical and unfair. I and many others do not see it that way.

4. Benjamin’s type IV has always been confusing. Some took it to be Nonsurgical but living as female full-time, but Benjamin’s only example in his 1966 book was a person who oscillated, sometimes presenting as male, sometimes as female.

5. So I have moved “Nonsurgical but living as female full-time” into Group 3 as a third type of Transsexual. I posit two types in Group 2, using Benjamin’s word ‘Wavering’: the Oscillators of course, and also the GEDAD)/Autogynephiles. Either of these two types can grow over time and become Nonsurgical or Moderate Intensity Transsexuals - but never High Intensity.

6. I have also added a Type which I call “Desister/Changeback”. This includes not only such as Walt Heyer, but also Jennie June who gave up transvesting and became a well-known male writer.

So as a reminder, here is the Benjamin Scale:

And here is my tentative revision. Please remember that I am doing this as a demonstration that Typologies never actually do what they claim. You, probably, will think of many trans person who just do not fit anywhere on this chart.

The 1953 symposium at the New York Academy of Medicine

Emil Gutheil (1889-1959) was born in Czerlany close to Lviv, which was originally in Poland, but then part of Austria-Hungary and now is in the Ukraine. He was educated at the University of Vienna. He became a neuro-psychiatrist at the university Psychiatric Clinic, and was mentored by psychoanalyst Wilhelm Stekel (1868-1940), who is credited with coining the term ‘paraphilia”.

We met him previously in the early 1920s when a trans man then 34-years old, whom Gutheil refers to only as ‘Elsa B’ came to Gutheil, seeking help to gain a transvestitenschein. He subjected B to 33 sessions of psychotherapy during which he continued to refer to B as ‘she’ and as a ‘woman’.

Gutheil became director of the Active-analytic Clinic in Vienna, but emigrated with his wife to the United States in the late 1930s in anticipation of the the Anschluß Österreichs, the Nazi takeover of Austria.

In 1939 in New York he founded the Association for the Advancement of Psychotherapy and in 1947 the AAP started publishing the American Journal of Psychotherapy. Gutheil remained loyal to the ideas of his deceased mentor Wilhelm Stekel (and, working with Stekel’s widow, edited his autobiography), in particular the idea that trans conditions had an environmental cause and successful therapy would dissuade patients from the pursuit of medical options. This of course would require many sessions of psychoanalysis. Gutheil had no examples of patients successfully ‘cured’.

Harry Benjamin wrote in The Transsexual Phenomenon (p29-30 in the Warner edition; p12-3 in the PDF version):

“Following the sensational Jorgensen publicity in 1952, I was asked to write an article on the subject for the now no longer existing International Journal of Sexology. In this article, which appeared in August 1953, 1 chose the term transsexualism for this almost unknown syndrome. I did the same in a lecture (as part of a symposium) at the New York Academy of Medicine, before the Association for the Advancement of Psychotherapy in December, 1953, discussing male transsexualism” [i.e. trans women] “only. … In the years following the Hamburger et al. publication in the A.M.A. Journal and my own in the American Journal of Psychotherapy in 1954 (constituting the lecture of the previous year) there were hardly any references to transsexualism, in the American medical literature. ”

The symposium had been suggested by Gutheil and was held 18 December 1953. Benjamin read his paper, "Transsexualism and transvestism as psychosomatic and somatopsychic syndromes", and Gutheil and two others responded from their respective experiences and standpoints. This was the second time that Benjamin used the term ‘transsexual’.

All four papers were published in Gutheil’s American Journal of Psychotherapy, 8,2, 1954 without any editorial comment, but with “Transsexualism and Transvestism” added to each title.

• Harry Benjamin. “Transsexualism and Transvestism as Psycho-Somatic and Somato-Psychic Syndromes”.

This is twelve years before Benjamin's The Transsexual Phenomenon.  It shows how his ideas were developing.   Some but not all of what he says here will be retained in the later book.

Benjamin reviewed the various terms proposed by his predecessors. Then he writes:

“Naturally not every act of ‘cross-dressing’ is transvestitic. Only if it occurs in an atmosphere of emotional pressure, sometimes to the point of compulsion and is accompanied by a more or less distinct sexual satisfaction can the term be applied . Otherwise it would be simple masquerading of a non-affective nature .”

[Editorial comment: this is in line with Hirschfeld’s Die Transvestiten but not his later works such as Sexualpathologie, 1919. ]

“While the male transvestite, enacts the role of a woman, the transsexualist wants to be one and function as one, wishing to assume as many of her characteristics as possible, physical, mental and sexual.”

“Transsexualism as well as transvestism are decidedly more frequent among men than women, like most other sexual deviations. Due to the more permissive fashions in women, female transvestism is less conspicuous, but naturally can involve for the individual the same frustrations and often tragic situations as in men.”

[Editorial comment: In 1953 the evidence did point to this conclusion. However the relative proportions are quite different in the 21st century - as also they were in Weimar Germany.]

“The transsexualist is always a transvestite but not vice-versa. In fact, most transvestites would be horrified at the idea of being operated.”

Sexuality:

[Transsexuals] “consider the fact that they are attracted to men natural because they feel as women and consider themselves of the female sex. … Transvestites on the other hand are in the majority heterosexual, although their principal sexual outlet seems to be auto-erotic.”

[Editorial comment: This is retained in The Transsexual Phenomenon of 12 years later when Benjamin assigns Kinsey scale numbers to each of his types. The Transvestites are Kinsey 0-2; The True Transsexuals are Kinsey 4-6. The erasure of gay transvestites is in this early paper. Benjamin had been introduced to Virginia Prince by Louise Lawrence a few years earlier. Certainly he accepted some of her ideas. Hirschfeld had also erased gay transvestites in his 1910 work Die Transvestiten, but reversed this in Sexualpathologie, 1919 - the former but not the latter in the bibliography at the end of the paper.]

On etiology, Benjamin writes:

“The effeminate male may look and behave as he does on a purely psychosomatic or psychological basis (imitating his mother, for instance) but he may also be the product of a somato-psychic mechanism originating in his chromosomes. It is often impossible to distinguish between the two.

Havelock Ellis has this to say in regard to etiology : "Early environmental influences assist but can scarcely originate Eonism. The normal child soon reacts powerfully against them. 'We must in the end seek a deeper organic foundation for Eonism.' "

Benjamin proposed three types:

1. The principally psychogenic transvestite. “He is miserable when dressed as a man and immediately comfortable and relaxed in the clothes of a female. He has become an expert in cosmetic make-up, yet is occasionally in social or legal difficulties. He assumes a female first name and wants to be referred to as 'she.' … In fighting his peculiarity he sometimes over-emphazises masculinity and becomes known as a ‘tough guy.’ ”

2. The intermediate type. “ .. he inclines at times toward transsexualism, but is at other times content with merely dressing and acting as a woman. He wavers between homo- and heterosexual desires usually according to chance meetings.”

3. The somatopsychic transsexualist. “Feminine appearance and orientation is often striking in these people but masculine features are compatible with full transsexualism. The conviction of these endocrine males that they are really females with faulty sex organs is profound and passionate.”

Benjamin retained this 3-part typology in his The Transsexual Phenomenon of 12 years later where his six Types were still sorted into three Groups:

Type 2 here became Group 2 and thus Type IV on Benjamin’s scale, 'Nonsurgical Transsexual, Kinsey 1-4'. Just what this is became confused: sometimes a Virginia Prince ‘transgenderist’ ( a term which would also include Sylvia Rivera); sometimes a true transsexual who chose or had to put up with being non-op; but also a waverer such as Benjamin’s one example, Peter/Irene, a rather well-known musician from Oregon, married for twenty-five years, who apparently never did transition.

He comments on psychotherapy.

“All therapy, in cases of transsexualism—to the best of my knowledge—has proved useless as far as any cure is concerned. I know of no case where even intensive and prolonged psychoanalysis had any success. If we are dealing with a constitutional deviation, we can hardly expect to influence it .”

And then again 2 pages later: 

“In my opinion, psychotherapy for the purpose of curing the condition is a waste of time . A basic conflict would be too firmly anchored in the constitution. All that the psychiatrist can possibly do is to relax tension, to develop and reinforce realistic thinking, and to supply guidance. That, of course, is not a cure.”

 

• Emil Gutheil. “The Psychologic Background of Transsexualism and Transvestism”.

Gutheil accepts Benjamin’s proposed use of the term ‘transsexual’.

Like Benjamin he refers to Hirschfeld’s Die Transvestiten, but not his later Sexualpathologie, 1919, and includes the former but not the latter in the bibliography at the end of his paper. He does not erase gay transvestites in the way that Benjamin does, but in the very different way of insisting that all transvestism is a type of homosexuality, even though this is unknown to and denied by the patients themselves. He cites one of Hirschfeld’s patients: “I never felt attracted to men. However, dressed as a woman, I liked to flirt and joke with them. I felt flattered to be mistaken for a woman.” A behaviour that Virginia Prince also admitted in her sessions with Robert Stoller.

He rejects Benjamin’s etiology:

“The neurosis of the transvestite is frequently considered as a sequel of the existing "biologic error. " Since the biologic component cannot be established satisfactorily , such a concept must be accepted only as a hypothesis. However, closer psychiatric exploration of the transvestite reveals to all who are familiar with the methods of psychiatric investigation that the patient's neurosis is due to specific pathogenic factors, most of which are accessible to scientific inquiry . The most important finding of the psychiatric investigation is that the patient's desire to be a woman is a symptom of this neurosis and is imbedded in a setting of other neurotic mechanisms of contributing value.”

He continues:

“In my opinion, transvestism is the result of six psychopathologic factors. They are : (1) latent (or manifest) homosexuality with an unresolved castration complex; (2 ) the sadomasochistic component ; (3 ) the narcissistic component; (4 ) the scoptophilic; (5 ) the exhibitionistic , and (6) the fetishistic component. In every case all six tributaries are represented in varying degrees. In some cases, the homosexual component is conscious and manifest; in others the fetishistic, or sadomasochistic features predominate.”

He concludes:

“What about psychotherapy? Hasn't psychotherapy been unsuccessful in so many of these cases! My answer is—that as far as the evaluation of the pathogenesis of transsexualism is concerned, it does not matter. Poor therapeutic results do not necessarily prove that the etiologic concept is wrong. If our therapy does not succeed, we must investigate the causes of our failure, learn from our mistakes and improve our approach. In most of the unsuccessful cases the patients' uncooperative attitude may be considered as the main source of failure . … I think, however, that to do justice to the transvestites we must also educate the patients themselves. We must show them how, while fantasying a future physical metamorphosis, they are, in reality, harking back to their neurotic past, to their infantile fears and pleasures, and point out to them how futile it is to try solving one's sexual problems—in effigy.”

• Danica Deutsch. “A Case of Transvestism”.

Deutsch from the Alfred Adler Consultation Center in New York presented a single case study which was regarded as a ‘cure’.

A patient is referred to as “O.R.” and is a man in his early 30s, married four years who had dabbled as a child and after marriage in cross-dressing. He had tried a psychiatrist, but stopped because of the cost. He went to the Center. They interviewed O.R. and then his wife, who then worked on his lack of self-confidence and even shared cross-dressing with him. Deutsch, of the Center, concludes:

“This case represents a classical example of the Adlerian concept of 'masculine protest.' Interesting is also that the patient compensated for his organ inferiority (bad eyesight) by scoptophilia and fetishism.

The favorable outcome after such a short period of treatment can be attributed to the positive aspects of the client's personality. According to Benjamin's categories, this case can be classified as a 'simple male heterosexual psychogenic transvestite.' Though he was self-centered, he was not so completely discouraged as to deviate into manifest homosexuality. His fantasies were always of heterosexual character; though in feminine clothing, he assumed the role of the male.

Moreover, the cooperation of his wife cannot be overlooked. She refrained from everything that might feed his neurosis, his feeling of inferiority and incompetence; she avoided overindulgence, or a critical or domineering attitude . She rather helped him to apply his newly gained insight to obtain a positive relationship based on equality.”

• Robert Veit Sherwin. “The Legal Problem In Transvestism”.

This is the first consideration of the legality or otherwise of transvesting and or having genital surgery in the US.

“… in the strict sense of the word, there are no laws concerning either transvestism or the various medical aspects concerned with sex transformation. But this fact in no way prevents or nullifies the popular conception that everything connected with this subject is illegal in this country. … Legislators are seldom willing to tackle problems involving sex head-on. The result is that law enforcers are therefore forced to utilize whatever laws they have at their disposal, and whether these laws actually fit the problem often seems of little consequence.”

He then discussed the mis-application of the Disorderly Conduct and the Mayhem laws.

[Editorial comment: Sherwin did not discuss the many cities in the US starting with Columbus, Ohio in 1848 that passed municipal laws against cross-dressing.]

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See also the 1967 symposium at the New York Academy of Sciences.

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• Emil Gutheil. “XVI. Analyse eines Falles von Transvestitismus,” in Wilhelm Stekel. Der Fetischismus, vol. 7, Störungen des Trieb- und Affektlebens. Urban & Schwarzenberg, 1923: 534-570. Translated by S Parker: “Analysis of a Case of Transvestism” in Sexual Aberrations: The Phenomena of Fetishism in Relation to Sex. John Lane The Bodley Head Ltd, 1930: 281-318.

• Harry Benjamin. The Transsexual Phenomenon. Warner Books reprint Edition 1977: 29-30.

• Werner H Engel, Frederic Wertham, Paul H Hoch, William Wolf, Lewis R Wolberg & Hilda Stekel. “In Memoriam: Emil A Gutheil, M.D., 1899-1959”. The American Journal of Psychiatry, 13,4, 1959. Online.

• Linda Heidenreich. “A Historical Perspective of Christine Jorgensen and the Development of an Identity” in Bonnie Bullough, Vern Bullough & James Elias (eds). Gender Blending. Prometheus Books, 1997: 274-5,

• Joanne Meyerowitz. How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States. Harvard University Press, 2002:105-7.

• Rainer Herrn. Schnittmuster des Geschlechts. Transvestismus und Transsexualität in der frühen Sexualwissenschaft. Giessen, 2005: 76n6

Charlotte d'Eon - Addendum B - Untruths, Comments, What modern label would fit?

Part I: Le Secret du Roi - Russia and then England. 

Part II: Return to France, Return to England

Part III: Addendum A - Legacy, Bibliography

Part III: Addendum B - Untruths, Comments, What modern label would fit?

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Untruths.

The following were added to various d’Eon biographies, but later research fails to confirm them. They are almost certainly false.

- that d’Eon was born female and raised as a male.

- that d’Eon participated in the masquarade balls in Moscow dressed as female.

- that d’Eon as Lia de Beaumont was a lectrice to the Russian Empress Yelizaveta Petrovna Romanova.

- that d’Eon was frail and delicate as a boy and that he was dressed by his mother in girl’s clothing.

- that at age 26 d’Eon in female guise caught the eye of Louis XV.

- that d’Eon was seduced by Madame de Pompadour, mistress of Louis XV.

- that d’Eon became a Chevalier and was induced into the Order of St Louis in recognition of his role as a Dragoon in the Seven Years War.

- that d’Eon had an affair with Sophia Charlotte of of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Queen Consort to George III, and that D’Eon was the father of George IV.

- that d’Eon was a member of the English Hell-Fire Club.

- that d’Eon was courted by Benjamin Franklin.

The major sources for these untruths were d’Eon’s own cross-dreaming which was incorporated into both the La Fortelle (auto) biography 1779 and the unpublished autobiography found at Brotherton Library, and Gaillardet’s first 1836 biography. Farrer comments: “This is very nearly cross dressing fiction, a century in advance. To conclude, I think that all the Leeds autobiographical writings of Mademoiselle d'Eon are fiction of the deepest kind even more so than Gaillardet's first book.”

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Comments

Whilst Gary Kates’ biography is the most detailed and the most reliable, it is annoying that he continues to use male pronouns for d’Eon even after 1777. In the recent BBC short documentary Kates uses “they’ instead, but never ‘she’.

As does, for example, Patrick Califia, who actually wrote of d’Eon, p12, “he kept a journal in which he referred to himself by feminine pronouns”. This despite p49n16 writing: “female pronouns will be used for transsexual women”.

The Wikipedia article on the Ordre Royal et Militaire de Saint-Louis (which does not mention d’Eon as a recipient) says: “ Catholic faith was mandatory, as well as at least ten years' service as a commissioned officer in the Army or the Navy”. D’Eon returned from Russia in 1761, and became a captain of Dragoons. He fought at the Battle of Villinghausen in July 1761, and was wounded at the action at Ultrop. In 1762 he was sent to London as an assistant to the French Ambassador. That makes one (1) year, not ten in the military. As Kates says (p93): “the medal was not really for his military services. Rather it was .. [for] diplomatic service”. The UK still maintains the practice of giving high level titles to some of its diplomats - see David Frost who was recently made a lord for his negotiations with EU.

D’Eon ran up debts of 100,000 livres in only four months, when he was acting ambassador! How much was that? www.historicalstatistics.org/Currencyconverter.html says that “100,000 French livres tournois [1663-1795] in year 1763 could buy 32,682.682472401524 gram gold. The price of 32,682.682472401524 gram gold in year 2015 was 7,208,587.425194473 French franc. In 2015 France adopted the Euro at €1 = FRF 6.55957, and so 7,208,587 livres = €1,098,942. Add another few years inflation, and round to just over €1 million.

D’Eon was given a £500 advance in 1805 for the autobiography that was never published (until very recently). At a time when the the average wage was £20 a year, that was 25 years income for ordinary people.

Did people actually believe that d’Eon was a woman prior to 1777? James Lander comments: “The very earliest reports of the rumour are conveyed in letters whose writers clearly do not believe the gossip. When gamblers in London soon began placing large wagers on the issue, the majority were betting that d’Eon was a man (i.e. that the rumour was false). A year or so later, most of the people who asserted that the rumour was actually true had vested interests for doing so. D’Eon’s intelligence chief, Broglie; Broglie’s secretary, Drouet; and the later foreign minister, Vergennes, had all been members, like d’Eon, of the ‘king’s secret’. The testimony of Drouet, the only one of the three who, as reported by Broglie, actually investigated the matter physically, was not only erroneous but probably deliberately false. Support for d’Eon’s supposed female-status was also given by one of Vergennes’s agents in the negotiations, Pommereux, who was an old family friend of d’Eon. The libellist, Morande, and Vergennes’s final and successful envoy, Beaumarchais, also supported d’Eon’s hoax, but they too had wide-ranging reasons for doing so, as did the former chief of police and later minister of marine, Sartines, a friend of Beaumarchais and close colleague of Vergennes. Louis XV never showed any real belief in the hoax, and certainly not enough to make him relent regarding d’Eon’s negotiating proposals. However, Louis XVI, who came to the throne in 1774 as a very naive nineteen-year-old, may well have believed the tale told him by so many eminent advisers, though even that is not certain.”

Most of the persons mentioned in Lander’s comment were members of Le Secret du Roi - so in effect it was a Psych-op, a disinformation project by secret agents. Joel Paul in his 2009 Unlikely Allies: How a Merchant, A Playwright, and a Spy Saved the American Revolution, implies that one outcome of the project was to get Louis XVI to side with the American Secession.

Of course the French still humiliated over their losses in the Seven Years War did not need much nudging to support the Americans.

With reference to the American Secession, we should note that Chief Justice Mansfield, who presided on the farcical trial of gambling debts re d’Eon’s sex, and then later ruled that such gambling debts were not enforceable under English law, had made a more dramatic ruling in June 1772 when he ruled in the case of Somerset v Stewart that slavery had no legal basis in England. This became one of the major causes of the American Secession in that the slave states were concerned that the ruling would be expanded to cover them also.

Lander comments on the purchases of items of female attire via Mrs Lautem in 1775: “D’Eon’s papers show that he made numerous purchases of female clothes in the months before and after this date, but most can be understood as gifts for female acquaintances, particularly his ‘landlady’, Madame Lautem, who, along with her wine-merchant husband, was also a good friend of the Chevalier. Earlier we noted d’Eon’s purchase of earrings and a bracelet for this lady, and it is clear that she was reimbursed by d’Eon for the purchase of a considerable number of ‘stays’ (or corsets) around this time. While it may seem odder to us than it did to them that the Chevalier was paying for corsets for the wife of a good friend, one possible if somewhat far-fetched interpretation is that d’Eon was using the corsets himself, perhaps to combat his own corpulency so he might still fit into his beloved dragoon officer’s uniform. Whatever these other purchases may signify, the order, placed on 28 October, for a complete outfit (in the black silk that d’Eon would later in life favour), seems to indicate that on this special day, d’Eon had decided to prepare for a trip to France in the near future – a trip which, under the terms of the Transaction, required that he appear in female dress. If d’Eon secretly longed to don women’s clothing, then he might soon satisfy that desire with a degree of (apparently) official approval.”

Surely couturière Rose Bertin at that first dressing 21 October 1777 must have noticed that Mademoiselle d’Eon’s anatomy was a bit off: facial hair, flat chest, male gait, male voice - not to mention what she between the legs. To rise has she had done from working-class origins to such eminence must have required guile and political savvy. Perhaps she did indeed notice, and just went along with what was expected. She managed to survive the Revolution unscathed, although she had to live abroad for three years. Her business in Paris did continue tough, and in old age she retired to her estate in Épinay-sur-Seine.

If we are looking for an 18^th century trans person who approximates to our modern concept of transsexual (although of course they had to live it without benefit of external hormones or modern surgery) the best candidate is John de Verdion. I have yet to find a book about D’Eon that even mentions the existence of Verdion although they were in Londonat the same time 1770-1800.

I always found it odd that those who write about d’Eon stuck with ‘Chevalier’ the male form of the word, and insist on using the transient title over 200 years later. The female form is 'chevalière'. D'Eon is hardly the only trans chevaler/chevalière. So are Marie-Pierre Pruvot (Bambi) and Amanda Lear. Why is it that those who always say Chevalier d'Eon do not say Chevalière Pruvot and Chevalière Lear? Here is the Wikipedia list of Chevaliers (which does not include Charlotte d'Eon). And of course the EN.Wikipedia biography entry is for "Chevalier d'Eon" not "Charlotte d'Eon de Beamont". The FR.Wikipedia entry is for "Charles d'Éon de Beaumont" - yet another Wikipedia entry for a trans person under the pre-transition name.

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What modern label would fit?

Autogynephilic?

Kay Brown commented: “the term Eonist which was named after a famous historically significant cross-dresser, who by his history, is easily recognizably autogynephilic”. Now this is not a surprising claim from Brown who after all declared Christine Jorgensen to be autogynephilic.

Some of the problems in applying a 21st-century concept like 'autogynephilia' to the 18th century:

1. A lack of early-transitioners to compare to. It seems that there were many early-transitioners in 18^th-century India and South-East Asia. In Christian Europe where sex and gender expression had been so repressed, it is almost impossible to name any at all.
2. Nor is there any evidence of D’Eon being gynephilic.
3. Brown seems to regard autogynephilia as sort of an essentialism, that is a resultant from DNA modified by epigenetics. If so why are there not loads of such persons in the 18th century? Is modern pollution the required epigenetic? The best known transvestites in 18th century London are George Selwyn, who loved to attend public executions in drag, and Horace Walpole who dressed as an old woman for masquerade balls. Neither ever married and historians discuss whether Walpole was gay.
4. HSTS/AGP is a 21st century social construction that fails to fit anyone in the 18^th

Femmiphilic?

As the Beaumont Society was so named at a time when its membership was limited to heterosexual transvestites of the Virginia Prince type, it was implicitly declaring d’Eon to be femmiphilic. Likewise Susan Valenti naming her retreat the Chevalier D’Eon Resort, and Virginia Prince publishing books as Chevalier Publications.

However as there is no evidence that d’Eon was at all gynephilic, this is inappropriate. It is hard to conceive that that d’Eon would have been a member of any such club.

Vern Bullough makes the claim – that surprisingly has been ignored in the debate about social construction - that “there is no evidence in Western culture of what might be called a heterosexual transvestite consciousness before the twentieth century”, and probably not before Magnus Hirschfield modified the term 'transvestite' in 1910.

Transvestite/cross-dresser?

Loads of modern writers simply describe d’Eon as a transvestite, even when referring to pre-1777. The points made against regarding d’Eon as Femmiphilic apply here also.

The verb ‘to transvest’ has been recorded in English as early as 1652, and even earlier in Italian. 'Travestissement' was being used in France by 1692. The concept was around in the late 18^th century, but rarely applied to d’Eon.

D’Eon actually transvested less than the general public, many of whom did so for the masquerade balls that were so popular at the time. D’Eon is not recorded as doing so.

Homovestite

Prior to 1777, d’Eon was a diplomat for 20 years, and a Dragoon for only one. Despite this he persisted in dressing (up) as a Dragoon, and after 1777 when she complied with the Royal Command to dress as female, she several times requested permission to again dress as a Dragoon. Surely this is makes d’Eon a homovestite, and this is a more acurate descriptor than ‘tranvestite’

Mollie

Apart from the masquerade balls, the major incidence of transvesting was found in the Molly houses. Of course this was rather low in the class system, and even if interested d’Eon would not be found at such a place.

Eonist?

Havelock Ellis used d’Eon’s name for the trans persons whom he met and/or read about in the 1920s. However as we have discussed he did not meet Ellis’ definition of an Eonist, and thus was not an Eonist.

Strictly speaking, for one to be an Eonist, one, being born male, should intimate that one was born female and has been brought up male, and be living male.

GIDAANT=Gender Identity Disorder of Adolescence or Adulthood, Nontranssexual Type?

This term for a trans person who is neither fetishistic nor desirous of bodily changes, sort of fits, but the term introduced in the DSM IIIR is a residual term for those who did not fit into the other more accepted terms. As the other terms lack exemplars in the 18^th century, a residual term is otiose.

Intersex?

From a misreading of the report on d’Eon’s death in 1810 at the age of 81, it has been suggested that d'Eon had Hypogonadotropin eunuchoidism or Kallman's syndrome, a congenital sexual disorder characterized by underdeveloped genitalia and sterile gonads. D’Eon reported childhood urinary tract disorder but this is insufficient data for such a diagnosis.

Incidentally transsexuality is extremely rare in patients with Kallman’s syndrome. Only one such case has ever been reported.

Incel?

D’Eon by all reliable accounts was non-sexual, a situation that modern persons regard negatively. Some modern Incels transition so as not to be Incel anymore.

However that is a 21^st-century mindtrip. D’Eon was an 18^th-century Catholic, and in his milieu Chastity was positively valued, leading many to become monks or nuns.

Cross Dreamer:

The modern concept of Cross-Dreamer is probably more useful. A Cross-Dreamer is one who would be of another gender, have fantasies of being or becoming another gender who may, but are not necessarily, be sexually aroused by such ideas.

The idea of being born female but raised and living as male, as put forth as rumour and then in the 1779 biography under the name La Fortelle, and the unpublished autobiography of her final years, is certainly Cross-Dreaming - although not the more common type of such dreams.

A Miscellany of Typologies

 Of the making of typologies there is no end.

To some extent they are needed in that trans persons are and can be very different. Those who attempt to abolish our variation by banning the obvious words like Traassexual and Tranvestite deform us by making everybody a vanilla Transgender.

Howver none of the Typologies work comprehensively. Whichever one you prefer, there are many trans persons who do not fit in any of the boxes.

Unfortunately, for the last couple of decades one particular typology that of HSTS/Autogynephilia as propouned by Kurt Freund/Ray Blanchard/Michael Bailey/Anne Lawrence/Kay Brown/Rod Fleming has dominated the discussion. There was a basic insight there in that early transitioners are indeed different from those who are first husband and fathers before transition - but their confaltion of other variables with the basic dichotomy increases the number of those of us who do not fit into the schema.

The typologies give us words to describe ourselves, and even to organise. However they should not be taken dogmatically.

You will immediately notice that almost all of these typologies apply to trans women, and extremely few to trans men.

Magnus Hirschfeld

1 Heterosexual

2 Bisexual

3 Homosexual

4 Narcissistic

5 Asexual

Albert Moll

1 Impulsive States. The individual compelled by strong inner force.

2 Homosexual. Part of the perversion.

3 Heterosexual. Constitutes a part of a contrary sexual state.

4 Pronounced heterosexual desire to imitate and enter into the feelings of the opposite sex.

5 Pseudo-transvestism for reasons of employment.

Virginia Prince 1957

 three types of ‘males’ who may share ‘the desire to wear feminine attire’:

1. homosexuals,
2. transvestites
3. transsexuals

• “Homosexuality, Transvestism and Transsexuality: Reflections on Their Etiology and Differentiations”. The American Journal of Psychotherapy, 11, 1957: 80-5.

Georgina Turtle, 1962

A: The Immature type

Mr A, 25 and in catering, subject all his life to over-doting parents, no associates of his own age and sheltered from the outside world. No sexual experience and no opportunities to cross dress.

B: The Aesthetic type

A sensitivity of feeling, a desire of everything that is fine and clean, a love of music and the arts. A disassociation of all fine things from masculinity. A feeling that one cannot express finer emotions and remain masculine. A man's life is shallow and superficial while femininity represents purity, cleanliness, finesse, charm and gracefulness, gentleness and beauty. These transsexualists are intelligent and well-educated, and are successful in passing as male. They can be talked out of transition if the illogicality of associating aesthetic characteristics with womanhood is forcefully brought home. Mr B, 34, engineer, an only child raised by his father to avoid aesthetic and beautiful things. He spent good money so that his female clothes were just right. After a period on female hormones, he reverted to male after realizing that his female state would be less than perfect.

C: The Oedipus type

Identify with their mother, and are antagonistic to their father. Mr C, 44, chemical processing executive. His desire to cross-dress is repressed by his fear of ridicule, and when he does, he quickly burns the items afterwards.

D: The Homosexual type

Unlike the above, this type has friends, and does not feel guilty about cross-dressing, and often will reach a stage of being a man only for work. Many work as female impersonators, and transition earlier. Mr D, 42, engineer, served in the forces, taken for a girl as a child and overcompensated by being good at rugby and cricket. Attracted to men but rejects homosexuality. Has been to many doctors, and has started living as female, though unable to obtain surgery.

E: The Anti-Social type

Turtle sees this as a variation on the Homosexual type. They are selfish and cowardly, and desire to be female in that things must be easier for females. They want to be pampered and looked after without having to work hard. They enjoy the pleasure of fooling people by their appearance, and are exhibitionists. Often they will abandon wife and children to live full-time as female, and have fantasies about becoming prostitutes. Mr E, 56, married with several children, has lived on and off as a woman for much of his life, and has obtained a female National Insurance card. Has made no effort to seek treatment. Has been arrested for theft.

no letter The Glandular type

Glandular, that is endocrinal imbalances, result in a man in his twenties who does not shave, or a woman with a muscular physique and hirsutism. Of those so affected, only few become transsexualists. However for those few, the adoption of a cross-sex role comes easily. Those born boys often take up work as a female impersonator, but move on to a sex change, and afterwards desire marriage. Those who manage to obtain female hormones early avoid the male secondary sexual characteristics, and have less past to leave behind them. Turtle, however, cautions: "Nevertheless, it must be remembered that however much justification these individuals might appear to have they are no less biologically of the sex they were born, and can still only be called transsexualists. We are not therefore speaking here of someone who is intersexual."

F: The Basic Female transsexualist

Turtle admits that there should be a corresponding typology for female-born transsexualists, "Nevertheless, all cases known to the writer had intimate female partners, suggesting that most were probably homosexually oriented." There was no significant loneliness or need for secrecy. Miss F, 25, an only child, wanted to be a boy from childhood. Since the age of 18 has sought help from doctors, but with no success. Has had a female companion for many years.

G: The Intersexual group

In true intersexuality "sexual ambiguity is caused by a conflict of the biological factors affecting development, and, in contrast to transsexualists who often prove the normality of their sexual function, intersexes are often both physically and sexually immature and may indeed be sterile". However "intersexes may continue through life quite happy in their sex of rearing, regardless of their 'true' sex". Miss G, 37, realised from early years that her interests and feelings were those of a girl. "In spite of her inner feelings there was never any question of wanting to dress up or resort to transvestism, and it was only when she was eventually obliged to see a sexologist that her physical intersexual state was revealed."

British Medical Journal, 1966

3 kinds of transvestism:

• as a masturbatory ritual associated with erotic excitement
• a symptom associated with other anomalies such as homosexuality
• a means of gratification without genital excitation or interest in homosexual behaviour.

It followed Kinsey in that a transvestite may or may not be homosexual, and rejected the common attitude in psychoanalysis that (1) was the main form.

Early Harry Benjamin

Divided all transvestites into three groups:

• those who merely want to ‘dress’ and be accepted as women.
• those who waver, who want breast development but shy away from surgery.
• ‘fully developed’ transsexuals.

Benjamin had arrived at this typology after observing over 200 patients, of whom more than half he diagnosed as transsexuals.

Harry Benjamin 1966

• Pseudo Transvestite
• Fetishistic Transvestite
• True Transvestite
• Non-op Transsexual
• True or Core Transsexual (moderate intensity)
• True or Core Transsexual (high intensity)

Virginia Prince 1966

In reaction to Benjamin.

• Fetishist
• Low intensity TV
• True femmiphile TV
• Asexual type
• Gender type TS
• Intensive sexual type TS
• Operated TS

Robert Stoller

• Primary (androphilic)
• Secondary (other)

Ethel Person

Types of transsexuals:

1 Primary - functionally asexual and who progresses resolutely toward a surgical resolution without significant deviation toward either homosexuality or heterosexuality, no evidence of effeminacy in childhood.

2a Secondary, homosexual - effeminate from earliest childhood, preferred girls as playmates, avoided boyish pursuits and were "mother's helpers." Crossdressing began in childhood, initially for narcissistic satisfaction, but later at puberty to attract male sexual partners. Cross-gender fantasies were frequently tied to identification with movie actresses and drag queens. The authors note that the homosexual cross-dresser wants to be noticed and to this end often wears flamboyant and colorful clothing and engages in theatrical endeavors.

2b Secondary, transvestic - appropriately masculine, and occasionally exceedingly hyper-aggressive and hyper-competitive. They neither played with girls nor engaged in female pursuits. They fantasized about being girls when cross-dressed, but valued their assertiveness and maleness.

This typology was in contradistinction to Stoller’s writings where the androphilic early transitioner was regarded as primary.

Charlotte Bach 1978

Central to Bach’s theory is an eight-box typology that is based on the old trapped soul concept. You may be a male soul in a male body, a female soul in male body, a female soul in female body or a male soul in a female body. Which gives four options. However the soul strives to become the other sex, and this striving can be denied or asseverated. Now we have eight options:

The stable options:

• Male positive denialist. The heterosexual male, physically and psychologically male, denying the pull to become female.

• Female positive denialist. The heterosexual female, physically and psychologically female, denying the pull to become male.

• Male negative denialist. A female soul in male body who denies the pull to the other psychological sex, i.e. male. This is a transvestite or drag queen.

• Female negative denialist. A male soul in female body who denies the pull to the other psychological sex, i.e. female. This is a butch lesbian.

The changeable/creative options:

• Male positive asseverationist. The male, physically and psychologically male, accepting the pull to become female. (This is not properly explained. Would this be a metrosexual or a psychologically androgynous male who is accepting of his female side?)

• Female positive asseverationist. The heterosexual female, physically and psychologically female, accepting the pull to become male. (This is not properly explained. Would this be a psychologically androgynous female who is accepting of her male side? Would one type of this be a career woman?)

• Male negative asseverationist. A female soul in male body who accepts the pull to the other psychological sex, i.e. male. He will be masculine, and dress definitely so, and might be quite aggressive. (This is what others have called a homovestite. Would homophobia fit here?)

• Female negative asseverationist. A male soul in female body who accepts the pull to the other psychological sex, i.e. female. This is a femme lesbian who dresses extra femme. (Although surely a heterosexual femme or homovestite would fit here also.)

• Colin Wilson. Mysteries: An Investigation into the Occult, the Paranormal and the Supernatural. Putnam, 1978 : Grafton Books 1979: 514-523.

Ray Blanchard 1989

Adapted from Kurt Freud, and endorsed by Michael Bailey, Anne Lawrence, Kay Brown and Rod Fleming.

Two types of transsexualism:

• Homosexual Transsexual (that is Androphilic) but also early transition and living on the margins of society without a regular job. Many are assumed to be prostitutes, performers or to work in gay bars
• Autogynephile, usually a husband and father, also a late transition and usually well-employed.

Four types of Autogynephilia:

• Transvestic – being aroused by the act or the fantasy of wearing women’s clothes
• Behavioural - being aroused by the act or the fantasy of doing stereotypical female things, e.g. knitting, or having one’s hair’s done
• Physiological - being aroused by the fantasy of menstruating or being pregnant
• Anatomical - being aroused by the act or the fantasy of actually having breasts and a vagina.

• “The concept of autogynephilia and the typology of male gender dysphoria”. The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 177, 616-623. 1989

Alice Novic

A rewrite of Blanchard’s typology to be more polite

• Love to be Femme (Cross-dressers and late transitioners. a) enjoy being women b) not spontaneously effeminate c) basically gynephilic d) business or technical careers)
• Act-Femme (Drag queens and early transitioners. a) act like women naturally b) don’t automatically love being women, but if it works they go with it c) androphilic d) people-oriented or creative careers),

https://aliceingenderland.com/twotypesoftranswomen

After Anne Vitale

The gender neutral version

G1. A high degree of cross-sexed gender identity. The cross-gender expression of identity of these individuals appears very difficult or impossible for them to conceal. They transition naturally, without anxiety and with relatively little difficulty

G2. A lifelong history of rejecting the dress conventions of their assigned gender along with conventional toys and activities. … these individuals typically take full advantage of the social permissiveness since the late 1960s and the gay and lesbian movements to wear gender-neutral clothing. They transition without anxiety.

G3. Individuals who look and act unambiguously as society expects them to but privately identity as the opposite gender. For these female-identified males and male-identified female the result is a more complicated and insidious sex/gender discontinuity. From earliest childhood these individuals typically suffer increasingly painful and chronic gender dysphoria. They tend to live secretive lives, often making incrementally stronger attempts to convince themselves and others that they are the gender they were assigned at birth.

Kris Kirk 1984

"If there is any one lesson to be learned from studying this field it is that the individual is individual. People define themselves and the self-definition must always takes priority over the received wisdom. I have met self-defined draq queens whom others would describe as TV either because they enjoy 'passing'; or because they 'dress' so often that it could be seen as a compulsion; or because they wear lingerie, either to turn men on or to make themselves feel sensuous. I have met drag performers who have grown to dislike drag, and men who insist on being called 'cross-dressers' because they dislike what the word 'drag' stands for, and men who wear part-drag in order to create confusion and doubt amongst others, but who would never wear full drag because that would defeat their object. I know self-defined TVs who are gay or bisexual or oscillating, some of them having learned to cross this sexuality barrier through their cross-dressing. I have met TVs who dress like drag queens and drag queens who dress like TVs, and TVs whose cross-dressing has encouraged them to question their 'male role', which in turn has made them examine their idea of 'femininity'. And perhaps most important of all, I have learned how marshy a terrain is the middle ground between our earlier clear-cut distinction between transvestites and transexuals."

Richard F Docter, 1988

a 5-part typology for heterosexual transvestites:

1. fetishism,
2. fetishistic transvestism,
3. marginal transvestism,
4. transgenderism
5. secondary transsexualism.

a 4-part typology for homosexual transvestites:

1. primary transsexualism,
2. secondary transsexualism,
3. "so-called drag queens"
4. female impersonators.

• Transvestites and Transsexuals: Toward a Theory of Cross-Gender Behavior.Plenum Press, 1968

Anne Bolin 1996

1. hermaphroditic genders
2. two-spirit traditions
3. cross-gendered roles in the manly heart tradition
4. woman-marriage
5. cross-gendered rituals

• “Traversing Gender”, in Sabrina Ramet. Gender Reversals and Gender Culture,1996

Richard Ekins 1996

3 modes:

• body (as in transsexual changes)
• gender (emphasis on doing and passing)
• erotic (self explanatory).

5 phases:

• Beginning (often in childhood, the first time)
• Fantasying (sic) (he spends a lot of time on telephone sex-lines, but also pornography and the individual imagination)
• Doing (solitary, solo, dyadic or group)
• Constituting (the search for an explanation and maybe the adoption of a label)
• Consolidating (a way of fitting femaling into one's life, e.g. by completing the transsexual change, by deciding not to change sex, but fitting into the transvestite subculture, or by finding an androgynous mix).

• Male Femaling: A Grounded Approach to Cross-Dressing and Sex-Changin Routledge, 1996.

Richard Ekins & Dave King 1999

four major modes or styles of body transgendering:

1. Migrating - crossing the gender divide permanently
2. Oscillating - crossing back and forth
3. Erasing - seeking to eliminate the divide (renamed Negating in 2006)
4. Transcending - seeking to ‘go beyond it’.

• "Towards a sociology of transgendered bodies". The Sociological Review, 47:580–602, 1999.
• The Transgender Phenomenon. Thousand Oaks; 2006.

Myra J Hird 2002

(1) authenticity – transsexualism and ‘real’ sex and gender;

(2) performativity – transsexualism and fictive sex and gender;

(3) transgression – transsexualism and the disruption of sex and gender.

• “For a Sociology of Transsexualism”. Sociology, 36, 3, 2002.

Charlotte Goiar 2005

• HBS
• Autogynephile

• shb-info.org.

Ariadne Kane 2005

 The Transgender Phenomenon Flowchardt

Group A:

• Bigenderist
• Transgenderist
• Androgyne
• Gender Bender

Group B:

• Masculine or Femme Impressionist
• Cross-Dresser
• Transvestite
• Drag King or Queen

Group C:

• Transsexual
• Intersexual

• Crossing Sexual Boundaries: Transgender Journeys, Uncharted Paths. Edited by J. Ari Kane-Demaios and Vern L. Bullough. Prometheus Books, 2005.

Mercedes Allen 2008

1.Zucker-Blanchard Model

2.HBS Model

3.Transgender Model

http://bilerico.lgbtqnation.com/2008/05/3_models_of_transsexuality.php

Koloa 2020

 I: Trans Individuals with higher risk tolerance, yet low adaptability manifest dysphoria at a younger age, fail to adapt to their assigned gender, yet feel more free to transition before mid-life if not in their teens and early 20’s because they are socially risk tolerant.

II: Trans individuals with high social risk tolerance and high adaptability are the most visible and carefree in their gender variance. Examples are Drag performers or gender rebels like Eddie Izzard and Conchita Wurst.

III: Trans individuals with high adaptability yet low social risk tolerance find they can live long successful lives as their assigned gender and often never transition at all. They avoid expressing variance due to a low social risk intolerance. And if they do transition it is usually mid-life or later after a process that enhances their social risk tolerance. Many MtF in quadrant III are gynophillic which might contribute to adaptability to their assigned gender.

IV: Trans individuals with both low social risk tolerance and low adaptability experience the worst situation because they cannot find any comfort in their assigned gender. The inability to adapt and the fear of the social and material consequences gives them a life bereft of expression putting their mental health and very lives at risk. Individuals in this quadrant simply endure until they experience a mental collapse that leads to treatment, or loss of life. This crisis can come at any age.

https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/crossdreamlife/a-transgender-typology-and-unification-theory-t3063.html

And

https://www.crossdreamers.com/2020/08/koloas-approach-to-transgender.html