Essays on trans, intersex, cis and other persons and topics from a trans perspective.......All human life is here.
This site is the most comprehensive on the web devoted to trans history and biography. Well over 1800 persons worthy of note, both famous and obscure, are discussed in detail, and many more are mentioned in passing.
There is a detailedIndexarranged by vocation, doctor, activist group etc. There is also a Place Index arranged by City etc. This is still evolving.
In addition to this most articles have one or more labels at the bottom. Click one to go to similar persons. There is a full list of labels at the bottom of the right-hand sidebar. There is also a search box at the top left. Enjoy exploring!
Her second volume of poetry, Les secrets de l'origami, was published in 2018. Her autobiographical novel, La fille d’elle-même came out in 2021 and was awarded a Prix des libraires du Québec, The next year she published a young adult novel, La voix de la nature.
Hayton grew up in County Durham and was at Newcastle University when the Thatcher government passed Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988 which resulted in a de facto ban on any mention of gay or trans topics in schools. Hayton did a BSc, 1989 and PhD, 1992 in atomic physics, and became a physics teacher at secondary schools, mainly (2002 - now) in Coventry in the West Midlands.
As a man Hayton married and had three children, and was also an active trade unionist.
By 2011 Hayton was feeling a very strong desire to transition and had sessions with a psychotherapist who compelled an exploration of every alternative to transition. Following this, Hayton started transition as Debbie 20 December 2012, the very same day that another trans teacher Lucy Meadows was denounced in the Daily Mail, and eventually driven to suicide by the unrelenting press scrum outside her home and school. Debbie’s transition, by contrast, went well with support from fellow teachers and the union.
Debbie had completion surgery in 2016 at the age of 47. Mrs Hayton has stayed as her wife.
Debbie set herself up almost immediately as an arbiter of all things trans. Since 2016 she has been an opponent of self-identification. She has written on trans topics for most of the Conservative-supporting press: The Daily Mail, The Times, The Economist,The Telegraph, and has a regular column in The Spectator, UnHerd and Russia Today (RT),
In May 2019, TES (previously Times Educational Supplement) published an article on its front-page by Hayton on trans issues in schools where she endorsed the Transgender Trend guide which regards trans in children as ‘simple social contagion’ via rapid-onset gender dysphoria (ROGD), is against medical assistance to trans kids and advises teachers to tell classmates that one cannot change sex.
In December 2019 Hayton wore a T-shirt at an event organised by Fair Play For Women (one of the largest and best-funded campaign groups working to oppose reforms to the Gender Recognition Act) which (mimicking a slogan by Stonewall) stated that "Trans women are men. Get over it."
Hayton has spoken up for the LGB Alliance, a splinter group from Stonewall UK founded in 2019 in opposition to Stonewall’s postions re trans persons. The Alliance in return describes Hayton as “one of our bravest trans allies”.
Hayton has expressed opposition to the Yogyakarta Principles; the Resolution 2048 of the Council of Europe; Self-identification; the concept of Gender Identity; the provision of Puberty Blockers to children; trans women using women’s toilets; Eddie Redmayne apologising for taking a trans role.
Nick Duffy. “Education magazine TES loses star columnist over transphobia row” Pink News,May 11, 2019.
Emma Powys Maurice. “Transgender woman accused of hate speech after wearing t-shirt proclaiming ‘trans women are men’ “. Pink News, December 23, 2019. Online.
“Debbie Hayton, Not in Our Name.”. Steph’s Place, 26thMarch 2021. Online.
Debbie Hayton. “ 'It's a betrayal of children to ban experts from asking tough questions before they can change gender': Transwoman DEBBIE HAYTON gives her view on a new Government bill which she fears will have damaging, unintended consequences”, Daily Mail, 3 December 2021. Online.
We have considered several on these pages who regard who regard that what worked for them should be imposed on others (Virginia Prince), and what did not work for them should be banned (Alan Finch, Walt Heyer). Of course no approach works for all. We are very different and have different needs.
There is a divide among trans persons between those who regard therapy as essential and those for whom such a requirement is at best an irritant.
There is an important typology re transsexuals who require therapy and those who do not. That of Anne Vitale. Like all typologies, there are some trans persons who do not fit in it at all, but it explains more than other approaches. Vitale's third type G3 is those who arrive in middle-age still acting heteronormatively as per their initial gender. These persons suffer chronic gender dysphoria and do need a therapist to either help them stay in their initial gender or to start transition. Vitale proposes the term Gender Deprivation Anxiety Disorder (GEDAD). G3 person have often married and had children. Within this typology, Hayter would certainly seem to be a G3.
Hayter presumes to know what is best for transkids. Her perspective is that of a school teacher. However she was never a transkid herself and cannot really understand them.
Hayter seems to be a contrarian re almost everything advocated by and achieved by the trans movement, even though the trans movement is riven on many issues. To be so contrarian she has allied with those who would "morally mandate us out of existence" (to use Raymond's words). Hayton is not the first trans woman to seek validation from anti-trans organisations.
David Thomas Senior, UK diplomat, was posted in Moscow when his son was born. The boy partly grew up in Havana and Washington, DC on later postings, and then had an elite education at Eton (paid for by the Foreign Office) and Cambridge (where he first spoke to psychiatrists about gender incongruity). He married and they had three children. In his twenties he wrote young-adult books under the name David Churchill, while establishing himself as a journalist as David Thomas. He was Young Journalist of the Year at age 24, a magazine editor at 25 and in 1989 the youngest ever editor of the 150-year-old Punch magazine where he stayed for three years. While there he edited a best-of anthology from the magazine.
In 1993 he published Not Guilty - The Case in Defense of Men, which he regarded it as an examination of masculinity, and how men are oppressed thereby - however some took it as an attack on feminism. After discussing machismo and the rise in plastic surgery for men, he writes
“This should come as no surprise. Homosexuals are pioneers for the male sex. They experiment with attitudes and lifestyles that may take decades to reach the straight community. Gays are to straights as California is to Arkansas.”
It moves on to a section called “Frocks Away” (p104-8) in which he discusses drag parties at Mick Jagger’s house, Bohemian Grove drag events for the super elite, Paris is Burning, drag star Lypsinka being featured in Vanity Fair in November 1992 and in Esquire magazine, Wigstock, and a survey that showed that only 2% of women accept cross-dressing from their male partner, while female cross-dressing is repeatedly common in fashion.
“A woman has to retain only one or two visible elements of femininity in order to keep her gender identity intact. … For men, the opposite is true. It takes only one or two non-masculine elements to intrude upon a man's appearance for his whole identity to fall apart. He may be six feet six, bearded, and wearing combat boots on his feet, but if he's got a skirt around his waist, he's no longer a man in the eyes of the world. Once again one should note the extreme fragility of masculinity in the face of any threat to its conventions.”
and
“Transvestism is an unlikely mast upon which to fly the banner of men's liberation. The right to put on a dress is not one for which most of us would man the barricades. But it illustrates two typical processes in society's treatment of men. The first is that we drastically limit male freedom of action by drawing rigidly defined boundaries around the perimeters of acceptably masculine behaviour. The second is that we then classify any action outside these boundaries as either criminal or, in this case, perverse. Neither of those processes applies to women, whose femininity is in no way compromised by the clothes they choose to wear, any more than it is by the job in which they choose to be employed.”
“Why are inappropriate clothes such a threat to male self-image? Perhaps our response is a sort of metaphor for the limitations that are placed upon male behavior as a whole. In the reasons why transvestism should be feared by the many, and desired by the few, lie many of masculinity's most delicate hidden secrets—secrets that relate to all men, even if they've never, in their wildest nightmares, dreamed of wearing a dress.”
He follows this with a report on a visit to the Manchester branch of Stephanie Lloyd’s Transformations where married man “Samantha” says “I’d like to bonk” while being dressed in a tartish fashion.
Two years later he published Girl, a forced femininity novel about a man in hospital for a minor operation who awakes to find that there has been some confusion and he has had a vaginoplasty.
From 2007, as if he had never written Not Guilty, Thomas wrote a series of masculine thriller novels under the name Tom Cain featuring Samuel Carver, an assassin who makes his killings look like accidents. In 2015 he revived the David Churchill name and wrote a trilogy about William the Conqueror, as well as two other thrillers as David Thomas. From 2016 he has written three Wilbur Smith novels using Smith’s characters and situations. One of these as Tom Cain and two as David Churchill.
In 2019 Thomas announced that she was now Diana, and has written a column in the Daily Telegraph about her experiences in transition. She was due to have completion surgery in 2020 but of course this was delayed because of the Covid pandemic. Her 87-year-old father succumbed to Covid. In 2021 she went to a private hospital for an enucleation of the prostate. She estimates that transition (including facial surgery) has cost £40,000 funded by a house sale and cashing in a pension.
Books by Tom Cain
The Accident Man. Bantam/Corgi, 2007.
The Survivor (US title: No Survivors). Bantam/Corgi, 2008.
Assassin. Bantam/Corgi, 2009.
Dictator. Bantam/Corgi, 2010.
Carver. Bantam, 2011.
Revenger. Corgi, 2012.
Wilbur Smith with Tom Caine. Predator. Harper Collins, 2016.
Books by David Churchill
Its Us and the Others. HarperCollins Juvenile Books, 1979.
The Silbury Triangle.Heinemann, 1979.
A Focus for Writing. Heinemann, 1980.
Fishing Forever. Merlin Unwin, 1999.
Devil (Leopards of Normandy 1).Headline, 2015.
Duke (Leopards of Normandy 2). Headline, 2017.
Conquerer (Leopards of Normandy 3). Headline, 2018.
Wilbur Smith with David Churchill. War Cry. Harper Collins, 2017.
Wilbur Smith with David Churchill. Courtney’s War. Zaffre, 2019.
Books by David Thomas
David Thomas with Ian Irvine. Bilko: The Fort Baxter Story. Vermilion/Hutchinson, 1985.
Pick of Punch. HarperCollins, 1991.
Not Guilty - The Case in Defense of Men. William morrow & Co, 1993.
Girl. Penguin, 1995.
Beggars, Cheats and Forgers: A history of frauds through the ages. Pen & Sword History, 2014.
Blood Relative. Quercus, 2011.
Ostland. Quercus, 2013.
Other
“Punch Editor David Thomas”. In Pictures,01-06-1989. Online.
"Tim Dowling talks to David Thomas".BBC. 24 November 2014.Online.
Manuela Svoboda & Petra Zagar-Sostaric. “How much Artistic Freedom is permitted when it comes to Language? - Analysis of a Crime Novel”. European Journal of Social Science Education and Research, 5,2, 2018, Online.
David Thomas.Media: “The dirty world of Mr Punch: Punch is fighting back by hitting below the belt. It may be hurting, but is it working?”. The Independent, 23 October 2011. Online.
Julie Bindel. “What women really want? You’ve got no idea”. UnHerd, August 6, 2021. Online.
Jane Gordon. “ ‘Call me Diana’: Our columnist David Thomas reveals her new life and look”. The Telegraph, 14 March 2020. Online.
"David Thomas obituary". The Times, May 04, 2020. Online. (father)
Charlotte Metcalf. “Conversations At Scarfes Bar: Diana Thomas” Country & Town House, Online.
Diana Thomas. “Ex-Cambridge University rower and married dad DIANA THOMAS spent six decades as a man... So why does she say trans militants are only stoking intolerance?”. Daily Mail, 19 February 2021. Online.
'David Thomas' is a rather common name, and there are several who have written books. There is no definitive list of Thomas's writings and so the list above is tentative.
Francis Bennett did a BA in Philosophy at the Pontifical College Josephinum in Columbus, Ohio, and then a two-year chaplaincy residency in the Ohio Health Hospital system. He then entered the Trappist Abbey of Gethsemane, Kentucky in 1981 and in the 90’s subsequently lived at a “daughter house” of Gethsemane in Moncks Corner, South Carolina. And then after that a small urban monastery in Montréal. Bennett has been a “spiritual seeker” throughout, practicing in the Christian mystical/contemplative Tradition and inspired by the Christian mystic, Thomas Merton, and working deeply with teachers in both the Theravadan Vipassana and the Zen traditions of Buddhism as well as the Advaita-Vedanta teachings of Ramana Maharshi;. In 2010 he experienced a profound perceptual “shift” in which he realized the ever-present presence of pure Awareness.
Bennet then left monastic orders, and came to see that this awareness is actually the unchanging essence of who one really is and has always been; the Supreme Self, talked about by many sages and saints from many spiritual traditions down through the ages.
In 2013 Bennett published a book: I Am That I Am, described by reviews as simple and straightforward, yet profound.
Bennett then travelled and taught, lead residential retreats and weekend events in the US, Ireland, the UK and elsewhere in Europe, and also wrote and recorded a series of online courses.
She transitioned to female 2016-7. This was announced on Facebook 16 November 2016.
“God created humankind in the divine image … both male and female (Genesis 1:27). So God as Creator is both father and mother. God is both male and female. God is fully androgynous……God is therefore trans-gender if you will…
I believe that we LGBTQI persons can be considered to be special gifts of God not in spite of, but precisely BECAUSE we are different and don’t fit within normally accepted societal gender or sexual attraction categories. We have been rejected by the leaders of most organized religions. Simply to survive emotionally and spiritually, we have been often forced to look more deeply into the meaning of life than the average person who fits in more easily. Our rejection by mainstream religions causes many of us to question the basic tenets of these religions in order to determine what fits for us and what does not. Though not always, this in turn can sometimes result in a higher level of spiritual consciousness. . . . Because our very survival depends on it, we who are different must question all these things. As survivors of this painful process, we are perhaps better able to tap into the true nature of God/Source/Consciousness, and the intended relationship of humanity with this absolute Reality.” (Bennett in Science & Non-Duality, and quoted in Horsley)
Fran has since then been involved in spiritual outreach to LGBTQI communities, as well as others interested in an inclusive study of the mystical forms of Christianity, Buddhism and Hinduism. She regards being trans as just one part of her own journey, which she describes as a quest of the spirit.
“In that journey and process we do not necessarily need to reject spirituality or religion altogether. But we do need to reject the patriarchal, misogyny and sexism that has defined virtually all religious hierarchies and structures, both in the East and the West from time immemorial.”
*There is another trans woman with the same name: Fran Bennett the celebrity DJ in Phoenix and Los Angeles.
Rick Archer. “133. Francis Bennett”. BatGap, August 7, 2012. Online.
Francis Bennett. I Am That I Am: Discovering the Love, Peace, Joy and Stability of the True Self. Non-Duality, 2013.
Jim Morekis. “Renowned mystic leads two-day event at UU Church”. Connect Savannah, November 29, 2017. Online.
Jasun Horsley. “The Rise of the Dream-State, part 3 of 3: Trans-Culture, Paraphilias, Non-Duality, & Corporate Cures for Alienation”. Auticulture, 12 June 2017. Online.
Francis Bennett. “What Does Being Transgender, Intersexed, Lesbian or Gay Have To Do With Spirituality Anyway?”. Science & Non-Duality, no date. Online.
Finding Grace at the Center (archive) Francis Bennett Europe (archive)
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Francis has stayed with the male spelling: not Frances.
“I am that I am” is the standard English translation of the name given by Yahweh or perhaps the Elohiym in Exodus 3:14. This is not the same as “I am what I am” as per Greta Garbo, Popeye, the Village People, a song in the musical version of La Cage aux Folles and a defiant cry from many who are queer.
Some people are featured once in the press, and never heard of again.
Lorraine Campbell-Craig
Lorraine, originally from New South Wales, met and was inspired by Coccinelle (presumably in Paris) in the 1950s, and then found work “travelling with theatrical shows through Egypt and Italy” and arrived in London in 1957. She worked as the manager of a bistro, and saved up the £700 needed for sex-change surgery. However her voice gave her away, and by 1966 and she descended into drugs and sex work while living in Manchester.
This much was featured in the Sunday People in November 1967, at a time when she was down.
Lorrains on Cross's blog
There is also a blog post from Peter Cross remembering a club on Sydney’s Oxford Street called Capriccios or simply Caps, where the featured performer was a Lorraine Campbell-Craig, “one of the great personalities of Oxford Street”.
He describes her:
"Lorraine was also a very, very large woman… to say the least, how she made it up the stairs I was never sure but this was her throne. Her history is shrouded in myth and mists of time. Some say she was on the run from the police in Britain, although I doubt she could have run anywhere very fast or far, others say she was just a local girl who liked a frock. One or two people know the truth; sometimes the stories are better than the facts.”
Cross does not give a date, but I assume that it was the 1970s.
Alwyn Thomas. “The Tragic Case of the Woman Who was Once Called Donald”. The People, 5/11/1967: 7. Online.
Goad, from Birmingham, Alabama, worked as a nurse pre-transition, and was married for a while, but was divorced in 1953. He had surgeries in April and June 1960, and then in September, in Miami, legally changed his name. He was living with a common-law wife, mainly working as a cab driver, and doing some free-lance writing. The journalist described him as “an admitted genius and unpublished novelist”.
However it seems that he never was published, at least not under the name Stephen Goad. He died age 60, in Florida.
Gene Miller. "Once a Bride. and Now a Man". The Miami Herald, 1 Sep 1960:30.
“Sex Change Is revealed by ‘Genius’ “. Sarasota Journal, 2 September 1960.
Hoskins was born in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, and mainly educated at Uppingham School, a boarding school in Rutland County, where he was sexually abused by a teacher who later was sent to prison. When he was fifteen, he sent off for mail-order oestrogen from Amsterdam. However his father intercepted the package and incinerated all of it at the bottom of the garden. Richard was pulled out of Uppingham, completed his sixth form elsewhere, and was then sent to the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst to learn how to be a ‘real man’. This led to a Short Service Commission in the 3rd Battalion of the Royal Anglian Regiment.
At the age of twenty-one Hoskins, again a civilian, travelled to Africa intending a gap year, but stayed six years until 1992. He and his wife spent most of the time working at the Baptist Mission medical centre in Bolobo, upriver from Kinshasha in what was then Zaire. In 1988 they became pregnant with twins. However the twins were two months premature, and a breech birth was required. The first daughter was a still-birth; the second survived, but only for 18 months.
The Hoskinses returning to Britain in 1992 and Richard read theology at Oxford University. The Hoskinses had two further children. Richard did a PhD at King's College London with a thesis on the doctrine of the trinity among Anglo Catholics at Oxford University in the late 19th century. Richard became a senior lecturer at Bath Spa University teaching African religions, and a senior research fellow at King's College London. The Hoskinses divorced. Richard remarried, and with his second wife wrote several entries on African religions for The Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature.
On 21 September 2001 the mutilated body of a very young black male was found floating in the Thames. The police dubbed him ‘Adam’, not knowing his name. Suspecting a ritual murder, they approached Hoskins for his knowledge of African religions. He was then called as an expert witness in many other criminal cases, including numerous high-profile murders, such as those of Victoria Climbié, Jodi Jones and the Eric Bikubi and Magalie Bamu case (in the last of which the killers claimed ‘kindoki’ – that the murdered child had evil powers). Hoskins was the only registered multicultural expert on the UK national police database at that time.
His first book on this subject was Sacrifice:
journey to the heart of darkness, 2005.
In 2006 Hoskins was the lead presenter in Witch Child, a BBC 2 documentary re African children accused of being witches and then severely abused.
In 2009 his son with his first wife, David, then 19 and with mental health problems, climbed an electricity pylon and touched the 33,000 volt cable. He was then in hospital for 42 days before life support was switched off – a decision that his mother, the first Mrs Hoskins had to take.
Soon afterwards Richard’s second marriage ended. Which left him free to explore his feminine side, mainly taking instruction from YouTube videos.
In 2012 Richard published his account of the 2001 murder of ‘Adam’. TheBoy in the River was both a commercial and critical success.
In autumn 2014 Hoskins surfed the Dark Web and purchased oestrogen from a site registered in Vanuatu. “They all seemed bona fide and a few even carried expiry dates”. They worked, but they also made him ill. A trip to the doctor, and, as Rachel, Hoskins was referred to the National Health Service gender identity system. By February 2015 she was not only accepted but fast-tracked into the programme. She was now on prescribed oestrogen, and over 18 months had her facial hair removed by NHS electrolysis.
Rachel 2016
In September 2015 Hoskins was asked by detectives of Wiltshire Police to examine claims made by "Lucy X" of a VIP satanic sex-abuse ring which was said to include the deceased former Prime Minister Edward Heath, as part of two separate investigations by the force into sexual abuse. She was addressed as Dr Rachel Hoskins, and so referred to in press reports. She compiled a 40,000-word report, and also went public alleging that some of the evidence presented was ‘preposterous’, ‘fantastical’ and gained through the ‘controversial’ practice of recovered-memory therapy. After the Mail on Sunday article in November 2016 on the Edward Heath investigation in which Dr Rachel Hoskins was mentioned for the first time, questions were inevitably asked.
In her Goodreads blog, she wrote
“I was worried about reaction to my public and police profile. I needn’t have been. Most of my friends and family have been fantastically supportive and it helped that other public figures have acted as pioneers. When I eventually dragged myself to my GP she was brilliant and the NHS took me through counselling and then onto properly prescribed treatment. … I’d like to think we’re reaching a point in society when gender transition or gender-flex no longer matter. We certainly fixate too much on isolated body parts as human identifiers. … What’s important is to be true to yourself and value yourself. And for others to accept you for who you are. Be happy. That’s all that counts.”
In October 2016 Hoskins, apparently as Richard, went to Paris for the release of the French translation of The Boy in the River, published as L’Enfant dans la Tamise. From there Hoskins flew to Bangkok and took a train to Malaysia “on the trail of both traffickers and some practices in the world of spiritual healers …..On a personal level I feel like the real Richard is back”.
In December Hoskins was back in Bangkok for an orchiectomy and facial feminisation surgery with Dr Sutin Khobunsongserm. This cost £15,000 and included only one night’s stay. Recovery had to be done in a hotel. Hoskins began to doubt the path she was on. In March 2017 Rachel received a referral letter for vaginoplasty at Brighton’s Nuffield Hospital, but instead went as a private patient to Nightingale Clinic, London. They diagnosed her as suffering from complex PTSD: multiple severe traumas, from the deaths of two daughter in Zaire, from the death of David, and from the gruesome nature of her police consulting work. Hoskins underwent intensive trauma counselling, and returned to being Richard, taking male corrective hormones.
In January 2020 he wrote an account of his gender journey for the Mail on Sunday.
“For a decade, I ran and ran. I tried to escape my life, my very identity. I changed my
gender to leave Richard and his life behind. Inspired by youthful images of smiling women, I grabbed the chance for a different life. I know I’m unusual and that few others have experienced the multiple traumas to have befallen me. I accept, too, there are some people who feel they have no choice but to change gender and I have sympathy, although I suspect the true numbers are small. For the few who genuinely feel they have no choice, perhaps a third gender would be a way forward: neither male nor female. For as I know all too well, it is nigh impossible for surgeons to replicate female body parts in full, nor can they alter the XY chromosomes with which most men are born. There is, after all, an added issue here about respect for women born as women. Looking back, I sometimes think that I was insensitive, that in my rush to change identity I trampled through places which rightly afford women their own dignity and space. What really gave me the right to use ladies’ loos, for example? Most of all, we need to recognise that gender transition can, in truth, be a misguided attempt to escape the person you were born to be – and demand a halt to this dangerous headlong charge.”
*Not the NZ trans activist Rachel Hoskin.
*Not the Christian Nordic writer Richard Kelly Hoskins; nor the Cornish writer Richard Hoskin.
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There are passing mentions of novels by Hoskins. The first one was apparently called The Ritual Killer and published in 2015. However the book is in neither Amazon nor World.Cat. In addition, the article “Kimbanguism” in the Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature, written by Hoskins and his wife cites a 2003 book by Hoskins on the topic. This too is not found in either World.Cat or Amazon.
Virginia Prince had a PhD in pharmacology, and listed her doctorate in the context of sexology and counselling. This was at best misleading. Hoskins has a PhD in theology and is referred to as the criminologist Dr Hoskins. I really doubt that the trinitarianism of John Illingworth contributes much to the study of ritual murder. Not that I regard Hoskins' skill as a criminologist as being any the less for being learnt on the job, but the use the Dr title in the context is misleading.
Hoskins is not the only trans person to get better service for already being on hormones, blackmarket or otherwise. However it was very marked in his case. Perhaps because he graduated from private school and Oxford. Most applicants for NHS gender change get such slow service that they have plenty of time to reconsider. In addition it seems that even in 2016, Hoskins was not really presenting as female. While news articles in various newspapers referred to Dr Rachel Hoskins, the person interviewed on television was a slightly androgynous Richard Hoskins - see video below.
Richard Hoskins. The Trinitarian Theology of John Richardson Illingworth and William Temple: and the implications for contemporary Trinitarian theology. PhD Thesis, University of London, 1998. Published as The Doctrine Of The Trinity In The Works Of John Richardson Illingworth And William Temple, And The Implications For Contemporary Trinitarian Theology. The Edwin Mellen Press, 2000.
Richard Hoskins. "Social and Transcendent: The Trinitarian Theology of John Richardson Illingworth Re-examined”. International Journal of Systematic Theology, 1,2, July 1999: 185-202.
Richard Hoskins. Sacrifice: journey to the heart of darkness. Little, Brown, 2005.
Richard Hoskins & Faith Warner. “African Religions and Nature Conservation”, “Biodiversity and Religion in Equatorial Africa”, “Kimbanguism” in Bron R Taylor (ed) The Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature. Thoemmes Continuum, 2005.
Richard Hoskins. “Muti and African Healing”, “Muti Killings” in Bron R Taylor (ed) The Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature. Thoemmes Continuum, 2005.
Ian Cobain & Vikram Dodd. “How media whipped up a racist witch-hunt”. The Guardian, 25 Jun 2005. Online.
“King's Sociologist of Religion presents documentary”. King’s College London, 4 April 2006. Archive.
Witch Child, with Richard Hoskins, BBC 2. 4 April 2006. Online.
Richard Hoskins. Boy in the River: a shocking true story of murder and sacrifice in the heart of London. Macmillan, 2012. Translated into French by Marie Causse. L’Enfant dans la Tamise: Mautres rituels et sorcellerie au Coeur de Londres aujourd’hui. Belfond, 2015.
Richard Hoskins. “How a criminologist probing the ritual 'boy in the Thames' murder had to confront the personal tragedy of his own daughter's mysterious death in Africa”. Mail on Sunday, 19 May 2012. Online.
Richard Hoskins. “How London became the child abuse capital of the world: Trafficked here by gangs, prey to pimps, paedophiles and murderers... the booming trade in 'lost' children that shames us all”. Mail on Sunday, 2 August 2014. Online.
Rachel Hoskins. “Gender: are you sure you know?”. Goodreads, January 1, 2016. Online.
Rachel Hoskins. “A Trans response to Greer & Humphries”. Goodreads, January 5, 2016. Online.
Richard Hoskins. “The Witch Children: Tortured by evil exorcists, but 'multicultural' Britain is too liberal to admit they exist”. Mail on Sunday, 30 April 2016. Online.
Martin Beckford with Rachel Hoskins. “Sir Edward Heath accuser is a 'satanic sex fantasist': Police warned by OWN expert that ritual abuse claims are false - including how the former PM 'went to candlelit forest for paedophile parties' ”. Mail on Sunday, 26 November 2016. Online.
Robert Booth. “Ted Heath's accuser 'gave child abuse inquiry fantastical evidence'”. The Guardian, 27 Nov 2016. Online.
Richard Bartholomew. “Police Probing Recovered “Memories” of Satanic Ritual Abuse Involving Former Prime Minister Edward Heath”. Bartholomew’s Notes, November 27, 2016. Online.
Rachel Hoskins. “Going public as Rachel Hoskins”. Goodreads, November 29, 2016. Online.
Jean La Fontaine. Witches and Demons: A Comparative Perspective on Witchcraft and Satanism. Berghahn Books, 2016: 59, 61-2, 64, 71, 72n13, 81.
“Should we have the right to decide our own gender?”. The Big Questions, BBC1, 5th February 2017. Archive.
Richard Bartholomew. “Expert: Satanic Ritual Abuse Claims are the “Core Strand” of Wiltshire Police Investigation into Edward Heath”. Bartholomew’s Notes, April 16, 2017. Online.
Richard Hoskins in David James & Jane Lunnon (eds) The State of Independence: Key Challenges Facing Private Schools Today. Routledge, 2019: 115-6.
Richard Hoskins. “Academic had gruelling sex swap surgery and then changed his mind at the last minute - and is now accusing the 'transition' industry of pushing vulnerable people like him into irreversible operations they'll regret”. Mail on Sunday, 11 January 2020. Online.
Lara Keay. “'I was very convincing': Academic who detransitioned four years after living as Rachel says he was 'hurtled through the system' and would never have changed gender if he was assessed properly by therapists”. Daily Mail, 21 January 2020. Online.
Salmonson started life as Amos, being born in Seattle to parents on the carny circuit, father a fire eater and mother a sword swallower. Amos was seven when, with an elder sister, they were abandoned and put in the foster system.
Salmonson started submitting stories to pulp magazines from the age of 10, although without initial success. At 12 Salmonson ran away and was able to survive in the burgeoning hippy scene of the mid 1960s. Salmonson’s father was rediscovered, and his new wife, a Thai Buddhist nun, became a teacher of Buddhism to the teenager.
By the age of 22, Salmonson was able to get published. A few years later, while one of the editors of The Literary Magazine of Fantasy and Terror which served as a forum for issues of feminism, Salmonson transitioned and was able to discuss her changes in its pages.
Jessica Amanda Salmonson has specialized as a writer and anthologist in stories with female protagonists, and in feminist science fiction. She has also used the names Patrick Lean and Josiah Kerr and Paghat the Ratgirl.
She is a prolific author. For the most comprehensive list of her works see her page in the Internet Speculative Fiction Database.
Jessica Amanda Salmonson. The Encyclopedia of Amazons: Women Warriors from Antiquity to the Present Era. Paragon House, 1991;Anchor Doubleday, 1992.
Jessica Amanda Salmonson & Jules Remedios Faye. Wisewomen & boggy-boos : a dictionary of lesbian fairy lore. Banned Books. ii, 105 pp1992.
John Clute. “Salmonson, Jessica Amanda”. In John Clute and John Grant (ed) The Encyclopedia of Fantasy. Orbit. St Martin’s Press, 1997.
Perkins did a dissertation on transvestism and transsexuality at Macquarie
University in Sydney in 1981 – one the very first by an openly trans woman.
She was also one of the members of the newly founded Australian Transsexual
Association. She approached Rev. Bill Crews of the Wayside Chapel Crisis Centre
to ask for a regular meeting place. Weekly support meetings were arranged.
Roberta’s book The Drag Queen Scene: Transsexuals in Kings Cross, a
study of 146 lives based on her dissertation came out in 1983. This was read by
Frank
Walker, New South Wales Labor Assembly person and at that time Minister for
Youth and Community Services.
In July, he invited her to come in and talk, which led to a grant of $80,000
which was used to open a centre, Tiresias House, at 75 Morgan Street, Petersham,
Sydney – its 12 bed spaces were filled immediately, and had to be converted to
16 by using the lounge as a bedroom. In December that year, Walker officially
opened the centre.
Within a few years, the centre has expanded to four houses, one of which was
registered as a halfway house for ex-convicts on parole. A residential nurse and
a community worker were employed. Six years later it was renamed the Gender Centre.
Perkins left Tiresias House in 1985, and went on to write and subsequently
publish books and articles in peer-reviewed journals on trans women and sex
workers. She was involved in the struggle for decriminalization of sex work in
New South Wales and Australia.
Roberta died aged 78.
Publications by Roberta Perkins:
The Third Sex and Sanctified Persons: A Cross-Cultural Survey, Comparison
and Analysis of Transvestism and Transsexuality. Macquarie University BA
Hons Thesis 1981.
The Drag Queen Scene: Transsexuals in Kings Cross. George Allen &
Unwin, 1983.
With Nikki Searant & Linda Tyne. Transsexualism: An Overview :
Understanding the Transsexual.: Collective of Australian Transsexuals,
Australian Transsexual Association, 1983.
With Garry Bennett. Being a Prostitute: Prostitute Women and Prostitute
Men. Allen & Unwin, 1985.
A History, Manifesto, and a Report on the Proposed Welfare Services of
the Australian Prostitutes' Collective. The Collective, 1985.
Female Prostitutes in Visible Prostitution in Inner-City Sydney. The
author, 1985.
Female Prostitution in Sydney an Overview: An Information Document on
Female Prostitution and Prostitute Women of Sydney. Australian Prostitutes
Collective (N.S.W.), 1985.
"Working Girls": Normality and Diversity Among Female Prostitutes in
Sydney. Macquarie University MA Hons Thesis, 1988.
Interviewed by Phil Jarratt. "The working girl's friend. -Interview with
Roberta Perkins, founder of the Australian Prostitutes Collective". Bulletin
(Sydney). 140-141,143-144, 13 September 1988.
"Wicked Women Or Working Girls: The Prostitute on the Silver Screen".
Media Information Australia, 51, 1989: 28-34.
"Working Girls in ‘Wowserville’: Prostitute Women in Sydney Since 1945". In
Richard Kennedy. Australian Welfare: Historical Sociology. Macmillan, 1989:
362-389.
Working Girls: Prostitutes, Their Life and Social Control. Australian
Inst. of Criminology, 1991.
With A. Griffin, & J. Jakobsen. Transgender Lifestyles and HIV/AIDS
Risk. University of New South Wales, 1994.
With G. Prestage, R. Sharp & Frances Lovejoy. Sex Work, Sex Workers
in Australia. University of New South Wales Press, 1994.
With Frances Lovejoy. "Healthy and Unhealthy Life Styles of Female Brothel
Workers and Call Girls (Private Sex Workers) in Sydney". Australian and New
Zealand Journal of Public Health. 20, 5, 1996: 512-6.
“The Drag Queen Scene: Transsexuals in Kings Cross". In Richard Ekins &
Dave King (eds). Blending Genders: Social Aspects of Cross-Dressing and
Sex-Changing. Routledge 1996: 53-62.
With Frances Lovejoy. Call Girls: Private Sex Workers in Australia.
University of Western Australia Press, 2007.
About Roberta Perkins
Katherine Cummings. “Vale Roberta Perkins (1940-2018)” Gender Centre,
2018. Online.
“'Trailblazer' to be remembered in Sydney”. Australian Associated
Press, 28 June 2018. Online.
It is a shame that Roberta's books are so hard to find.
She was a pioneer in what we now accept as normal, that trans people write about trans people, but until the 1980s this was regarded as heretical, and writings by trans persons were dismissed simply because the person was trans.
Kiernan started life as Kenneth R Wright in Dublin, and a few years later
moved to Leeds
outside Birmingham, Alabama, with his mother, Susan Ramsey Cleveland.
Susan, an avid reader, introduced Wright to Edgar Allen Poe and Bram Stoker.
Wright also became strongly interested in paleontology, and as a teenager, volunteered at the Red Mountain
Museum where fossils of Cretaceous mosasaurs, extinct seagoing reptiles,
could be seen in the rock. Wright also spent several summers on archaeological and
paleontological digs.
After studying geology and vertebrate paleontology at the University
of Alabama at Birmingham and the University
of Colorado at Boulder, Wright then held both museum and teaching positions
at the Red Mountain Museum, and published in paleontology journals, mainly on
mosasaurs.
By 1992 Wright had transitioned, and was using the name Caitlin R Kiernan.
She wrote her first novel, The Five of Cups, but it was not published
until a decade later. Caitlin continued to be published in paleontology journals
using her new name.
Her 1995 short story “Persephone” was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award by
the Horror Writers of America, and led to Neil Gaiman and the editors
of DC/Vertigo Comics asking her to write The Dreaming, an anthology comic
book spun off from Gaiman's popular Sandman, featuring both existing
supporting characters from Gaiman's title and new ones of Kiernan's own
creation.
Her first published novel, Silk, came out in 1998. It was nominated
for the Bram Stoker Award and British Fantasy Award and won the International
Horror Guild Award for Best First Novel. More novels, short stories and comics
followed. Her most acclaimed novel to date is The Drowning Girl: A
Memoir, published in 2012 and set in Providence,
Rhode Island.
Like HP Lovecraft, a major influence, Caitlin lives in Providence with her
wife. She describes herself as an atheist pagan.
Caitlin has used the Red Mountain cut, as a setting for four of her novels –
Silk (1998), Threshold (2001), Low Red Moon (2003), and, to
a lesser extent, Murder of Angels (2004).
She has also written as Kathleen Tierney.
James Dawson, from Bingley, Yorkshire, went to the University of
Bangor (previously the University College of North Wales), moved to
Brighton, Sussex, and became a school teacher of personal, social, health and
economic (PSHE) education. He lived as a gay man.
He wrote young adult novels with gay characters. He also wrote the
well-received Being a Boy, 2013, a guide for boys going through puberty.
In 2014 Dawson wrote in the Guardian:
“I was unaware gay people even existed and, when puberty hit, found myself
more than a little lost. I so dearly wish there had been just one book with a
character who was a bit like me – just a normal teenage guy who happened to be
gay. I would have especially loved one whose sexuality did not define him.”
The same year, he became the first male winner the Queen of Teen award
where the shortlist are all nominated by teenage readers, who then vote for the
winner.
Dawson published This Book is Gay for lesbian, bisexual, gay, queer,
transgender or just curious persons, but mainly for teens and young adults. By
this time Dawson had begun a gender transition. In 2015 she announced that she
was transgender and that her name was Juno. Most of her books were re-issued
with her new name (but not Being a Boy).
She was signed to write a column in Glamour magazine to document the
experience of transition.
In an interview with Attitude magazine, May 2017, Juno says
"I think there are a lot of gay men out there who are gay men as a
consolation prize because they couldn’t be women. That was certainly true of
me."
She describes her identity as a gay man as a 'personal misdiagnosis', and
believes that it is a more common phenomenon than one may think.
For her Glamour column, Juno interviewed the plastic surgeon Christopher
Inglefield who does work for trans persons. She was considering facial
feminization surgery. She was then invited to be part of the ITV 3-part series
documentary, Transformation Street. She is featured in episode 2. It fell
to her to help educate the television crew on limits, such as the
inappropriateness of childhood photographs. Initially the program was to be
called Sex Change Clinic, and Juno had to make a fuss to explain that such
terminology is outmoded.
Juno’s most recent book is The Gender Games: The Problem With Men and
Women, From Someone Who Has Been Both, which restates for another generation
that gender is a system of oppression for cis and trans both, mixed with
autobiography.
*Not the US Actress, nor the other writers called James Dawson.
James Dawson. Hollow Pike: Where Witchcraft Never Sleeps. Indigo,
2012.
James Dawson. Cruel Summer. Indigo, 2013.
James Dawson. Being a Boy. Hot Key Books, 2013.
James Dawson. Say Her Name. Hot Key Books, 2014.
James Dawson. “James Dawson: The importance of LGBT visibility in children's
books”. The Guardian, 13 May 2014.
Sally Benton (dir). Transformation Street, Ep 2. With Christopher
Inglefield and Jono Dawson. Narrated by Lesley Sharp, research by Amanda Riley.
UK ITV 50 mins 2018. https://vimeo.com/254635912.
Golden was born near Philadelphia, the child of an electronics engineer and a
high-school guidance secretary. The family was gay-friendly, and one grandmother
was openly lesbian. Family funding paid the costs of transition including
surgery.
Golden graduated from Philadelphia College of Art, 1975 (before it became
part of the University
of the Arts). She read Neils Hoyer’s book on Lili
Elbe and Jan
Morris’ Conundrum; started hormones at 18, started living as a woman
at 20, and had surgery as soon as she was 21. Eve had done two years at Towson State
University as a man, took a semester off and returned as herself. That was
okay with the students, but less so with the faculty. The head of the theatre
department said that he would never allow her on stage. She would be a
distraction -- and what if an actor had to play a love scene with her. However
Eve did graduate in 1979.
She acted for about five years: Off-Broadway, in commercials and summer
stock. In 1984 Eve got a job as a secretary with a New York advertising agency,
and talked her way into a copywriting position.
Being a classic-movie buff, she was annoyed that there was no good book on Jean Harlow, and eventually
had a go at writing one herself. She managed to get an agent, a publisher and an
advance, and the book came out in 1991. It got good reviews and sold well.
By that time she was working as a senior editor. She followed up with books
on silent actress Theda
Bara, 1997, Essays on Silent Film Stars, 1998, Anna Held and Ziegfeld’s
Broadway, 2000, the 1950s actress Kay Kendall, 2002.
From 2005 Golden was working as a freelance writer and photographic
archivist. In 2007 she published a book on the Ragtime dancers, Vernon and Irene
Castle.
Eve next intended to do a book on Peg Entwistle, the
British actress, who is mainly remembered in that she jumped to her death from
the Hollywood Sign in 1932 at the age of 24. However after starting research,
she discovered that a first-time writer, James Zeruk, was already working on
such a biography. Impressed by the quality of his work, she helped him.
Her most recent books have been Essays on film stars 1930s-60s, 2009, and on
the silent actor, John Gilbert,
2013.
Eve Golden. Platinum Girl: The Life and Legends of Jean Harlow.
Abbeville Press, 1991.
Eve Golden. Vamp: The Rise and Fall of Theda Bara. Vestal Press,
1997.
Eve Golden. Golden Images: 41 Essays on Silent Film Stars. McFarland,
1998.
Eve Golden. Anna Held and the Birth of Ziegfeld's Broadway.
University Press of Kentucky, 2000.
Eve Golden. The Brief, Madcap Life of Kay Kendall. University Press
of Kentucky, 2002.
Eve Golden. Vernon and Irene Castle's Ragtime Revolution. University
Press of Kentucky, 2007.
Eve Golden. Bride of Golden Images: Essays on Stars of the 1930s-60s.
BearManor Media, 2009.
Eve Golden. John Gilbert : the last of the silent film stars.
University Press of Kentucky, 2013.
James Zeruk, with an introduction by Eve Golden. Peg Entwistle and the
Hollywood Sign Suicide: A Biography. McFarland Publishing, 2013.
Michelle was born in Salinas in the
Canelones Department of Uruguay. She transitioned at age 15 with the support of
her mother.
Accepted at the Universidad
de la República in Montevideo, she was the first out-trans person to attend
university in Uruguay. She suffered transphobic harassment and a professor who
specialized in human rights refused to grade her work. She also set a precedent
in changing her legal gender status. She graduated and became the first out
trans lawyer in the country in 2010.
That year her mother died. Michelle joined Ovejas Negras (Black Sheep), an
LGBT rights organization. There she made a major contribution to the draft bill
for equal marriage legislation. The bill was presented to congress in 2011,
initially passed in 2012, and finally approved in 2013.
In 2012 Michelle published a book on the difficulties that some minorities,
including trans and gay, have in achieving human rights.
She joined the Communist Party (PCU) which is part of the ruling coalition
Frenta Amplio (Broad Front) and was elected an alternate senator (with limited
voting rights).
In October 2017, Senator Márcos Carámbula resigned and Suárez became a full
Senator. She said that she would introduce a bill that would allow trans people
to legally change their identity without a court order. The measure would also
require Uruguay to set aside 1 percent of government jobs for trans people and
create a pension to compensate those who suffered persecution during the
country’s military dictatorship, 1973-1985, because of their
gender identity.
However in December, two months later, she was found guilty in a case of an
estranged father’s parental rights having been cancelled in a document with the
wrong signatures. Suárez resigned her seat.
Michelle Suarez Bértora. Hacia una Igualdad Sustantiva (Towards a
Substantive Equality). Mujer y Salud en Uruguay, 2012.
Thomas Bevan’s father was a wildlife manager, and his mother a school
teacher. Thomas was an only child, and was soon trying on his mother’s clothing.
He tried to tell his parents that he was not really a boy, but quickly learned
that his gender identity was something that should be kept a deep secret, and
concentrated on science and on sports. Partly because they did not live in town,
Bevan did not make male friends, and his female friends withdrew as puberty
developed. Loneliness led to depression.
The football coach got Bevan an award in the senior year. He picked Dartmouth
College, New Hampshire, for its football team and its Reserve Officer
Training Corps (ROTC). Bevan graduated AB in psychology in 1969, and spent
the next four years at Princeton University.
Thomas, like so many others, married a woman thinking that it would ‘cure’
the urge to cross-dress. However the graduate student housing provided the
privacy to do so when his wife was at work.
Bevan gained a PhD in physiological psychology at Princton 1973 with a thesis
on Experimental Dissociation of Hypothalamic Finickiness and Motivatonal
Deficits from Hyperphagia and from Hyperemotionality.
After graduation Bevan served as a Captain in the Army Medical Service Corps,
and was involved in developing antidotes to chemical weapons and agents. After
leaving the army, Bevan became a civilian contractor. One of the projects that
he worked on was aircraft sensors.
The Bevans had two daughters.
Bevan's job involved near continuous travel, and the associated hotel stays
provided opportunities for cross-dressing. Sometimes there would be a local
transvestite group that provided dressing facilities at its meetings. Bevan
accumulated enough female clothing – between purges -- that a second bag was
being checked on air flights.
Bevan found Jan
Morris’ Conundrum, and later some books by Vern
Bullough in libraries, but being in the closet hid the book in the stacks
rather than check it out. By the 1990s Bevan had rented a post-office box, and
bought books and Tapestry magazine from IFGE.
“I particularly studied Virginia
PrinceHow to Be a Woman though Male, information I use to this day”.
With the end of Cold War I, Bevan felt that he could come out a little.
However most transvestite groups met on weekends only, and he was not prepared
to tell Mrs Bevan. So he went instead to a BSDM group that met on a weeknight.
Using the listings in Tapestry Bevan did find cross-dressing groups in different
cities to attend.
The Bevans separated.
Bevan also started taking testosterone by patches, hoping that it would
‘cure’ the cross-dressing.
Thomas found another wife using the new invention tele-conferencing. This
wife knew from the beginning that Thomas was a cross-dresser. Bevan found a job
in Atlanta where she lived, and moved in with her:
“she panicked when she saw all the ‘junk’ that I had, which consisted mostly
of professional technical files, electronic junk and all my carpentry and metal
working tools”.
From 2000-2005, Bevan was an Associate Lab Director at Georgia Tech Research
Institute, and did work for Department of Defense customers.
Using the name 'Dana', Bevan found a therapist who was experienced in Transgender issues, although
Bevan continued to pretend that it was marriage counseling.
From 2005-2011, Bevan was a Research VP at KFORCE Government Services in
Atlanta, working on artificial intelligence algorithms for Homeland Security.
In 2007 Dana gave a paper at the IFGE conference held in Philadelphia. Dana
started transition in 2011. She gave presentations at the Southern Comfort
Conference in 2011 and 2012, and to WPATH in 2012.
In 2013, as Dana Bevan, she published The Transsexual Scientist: The
Causation and Experience of Transgenderism and Transsexualism, a mixture of
autobiography and the science of TSTG as she named her condition. The next year,
reverting to her male name, Thomas Bevan, she published a 280 page exposition,
The Psychobiology of Transsexualism and Transgenderism: A New View Based on
Scientific Evidence.
In the title of The Transsexual Scientist, Bevan refers to herself as
‘transsexual’, tells of taking hormones, electrolysis but says nothing of
surgery. In the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine, 2017, Dana says:
“I still present as male at family gatherings, primarily because of in-laws
and friends of my children. The trend seems to be that younger people are more
accepting, so we’ll see what happens with my grandchildren’s
generation.”
Dana ends her autobiography, The Transsexual Scientist with
“Knowing what I know today, I should have chosen transsexuality earlier in my
life and fought for being my authentic self, no matter what the cost. The delay
has cost me time, friends and productivity. I had several good opportunities to
choose correctly but I passed them up, choosing to fight another
day.” (p. 155)
Dana’s theoretical position will be discussed in Part II.
Thomas E. Bevan, Experimental Dissociation of Hypothalamic Finickiness
and Motivatonal Deficits from Hyperphagia and from Hyperemotionality. PHD,
Princeton,1973.
Thomas E Bevan. “Physiological correlates of information processing
load-ongoing research and potential applications of physiological psychology”.
The Role of Behavioral Science in Physical Security Proceedings of the Second
Annual Symposium, March 23-24, 1977. US DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE: National
Bureau of Standards.
Thomas E Bevan. “Biosensor for Assessment of Defender Performance
Capability”. The Role of Behavioral Science in Physical Security Proceedings
of the Third Annual Symposium, May 2-4, 1978. US DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE:
National Bureau of Standards.
Dana J Bevan. The Transsexual Scientist: The Causation and Experience of
Transgenderism and Transsexualism. Bevan Industries Inc, 2013.
Allison Tate. “5 Transgender Myths...Busted: In the wake of Trump repealing
transgender protections, scientist Dana Bevan is here to bust your
misconceptions”. Advocate, February 24 2017. See below.
TGForum says that “Thomas E Bevan” is a pen name; Dartmouth Alumni Magazine
says that it is her professional name. It is the name on her PhD.
In Bevan’s 2013 and 2014 books she uses the term TSTG as a collective noun,
for individual trans persons, for the phenomenon and as an adjective. E,g: “Many
TSTG suffer from depression”; “TSTG behave as they do”; “Although TSTG is no
longer regarded as a disorder”. Fortunately the usage has not caught on. She
does not use the acronym in Being Transgender, 2016, but does still use
it on her LinkedIn page and elsewhere.
“For the purposes of research I treat transgenderism and transsexuality
(TSTG) as one phenomenon. Many transgendered people become transsexuals. Most
important, there is no scientific evidence to distinguish between the two, other
than the frequency of TG presentation.” (2013 interview with Dartmouth GLBT Alumni) This statement will of course alienate many transsexuals. While the DNA and epigenetic triggers may be indistinguishable between transvestites and transsexuals, they do not constitute the totality of causality, and a scientific approach that does not examine the wider picture is not the best of science. See more in part II.
The text of The Transsexual Scientist disguises the names of the
universities that Thomas attended, but then openly names them on and only on the
back cover. Likewise the text hides the name of the mentor at Princeton, but
gives his name in a dedication at the front of the book.
On p30 of The Transsexual Scientist Bevan says “I gradually put aside
my love of music and art lest these be seen as ‘feminine’”. This was in the mid 1960s when the Beatles and the Stones were changing music. The feminist
criticism of ‘60s music is that it was far too masculine.
Bevan is yet another writer who repeats the misinformation that
‘transvestism’ was coined by Magnus Hirschfeld (p38). However she does not
like the term: “Today, transvestite is regarded as a pejorative word and is used
primarily in degradation of transsexuals and transgender people” (Psychobiology:
42). This may be so in the Tri-Ess culture, but despite Prince's efforts, Tri-Ess never did own the word.
Is Bevan a Princian? In addition to her statement: “I particularly studied Virginia PrinceHow to Be a Woman though Male, information I use to this day”, let us look at the appendices to The Psychobiology of Transsexualism and Transgenderism. The only autobiographies listed are her own, Jan Morris, Jennifer Boylan's She's Not There, and for some strange reason, the novel Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. The only self-help books are two by Prince, Crossdressing with dignity by Peggy Rudd and Identity Management by Dallas Denny. The only support groups are Beaumont Society, Seahorse Society, Renaissance, Tiffany Club, Transgender Educational Association, Tri-Ess and Susan's Place. So she certainly looks like a Princian.
