Jane Fae (1957 - ) journalist.

Revised February 2019

Jane Fae was previously John Ozimek, who was raised in Birmingham, the child of a Polish-born doctor. Ozimek studied at Oxford, and was was Britain’s youngest parliamentary candidate at age 21 in 1979 standing as the unsuccessful Liberal candidate in Newham South in London. Ozimek worked in student journalism and for Liberal News, and was a comedy writer for Noel Edmunds.

Ozimek married at 33, and they had a daughter. The marriage lasted two-and-a-half years.

Ozimek became a free-lance journalist, and has specialized in law and computer technology, privacy and censorship, and was a regular contributor to The Register and The Guardian.

A second relationship resulted in a son. At Christmas 2009 John told of his gender troubles. In January 2010 Jane changed her name legally, and was diagnosed as gender dysphoric by an NHS psychiatrist and and a specialist.

Jane has since become the best known trans journalist in the UK.

In 2019 she published Transition Denied, about prejudice against trans people in general, and focusing on the tragic death of Synestra de Courcy.

• Clare Fisher. “Freelancer of the fortnight: John Ozimek, Lincolnshire”. Journalism.co.uk. 01/04/09. Online.
• Helen Weathers. “The devoted fiancée who's sticking by her man, the father of her son, despite the fact he wants to become a woman”. The Daily Mail. 20^th Feb 2010. Online.

Books

• John Ozimek. ALTU Discrimination Handbook. Association of Liberal Trades Unionists, 1983.
• John Ozimek. Targeting for Succes: a Guide to New Techniques for Measurement and Analysis in Database and Direct Response Marketing.  McGraw-Hill, 1993.
• Jane Fae. Taming the Beast: An Analysis of Legislative and Regulatory Responses to Concerns Over Online Pornography and Sexualisation. 2015.
• Jennie Kermode & Jane Fae. Transgender Employees in the Workplace: A Guide for Employers. Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2017.
• Jane Fae. Transition Denied: Confronting the Crisis in Trans Healthcare.  Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2018.

The Independent      Pink News     The Register        Letchworth Garden City     New Statesman     Eye for Eye (film criticism)      Open Democracy      Index on Censorship     LinkedIn    

Anderson Bigode Herzer (1962 – 1982) poet.

Sandra Mara Herzer was born in Rolândia, state of Paraná, Brazil. Her father was killed in a bar when she was four. Her mother, a prostitute, handed the child over to the state orphanage, and died shortly after. In the school records, Sandra was a difficult student often in fights, using drugs and alcohol.

However she published a book of poems, A queda para o alto (descending upwards). Sandra went through a period of identifying as a lesbian, but at age 14 adopted the name Anderson Bigode Herzer. (Anderson is common male first name in Brazil; Bigode= mustache).

At age 17 he was mentored by Eduardo Suplicy, a Parliamentary deputado, who was touched by Herzer’s poems, and hired him to work in his office.

However, Herzer was traumatized by his upbringing and jumped from the Viaduto 23 de Maio in downtown São Paulo. He died from his injuries.

His life, based on his writing, was turned into the film Vera, 1987.

• Sandra Mara Herzer. A queda para o alto. Petropolis: Vozes 1986.
• Sergio Toledo (dir & scr). Vera. From the writings of Anderson Bigode Herzer, with Ana Beatriz Nogueira as Vera Bauer. Brazil 85 mins 1987.
• José Carlos A. Brito. “O suicídio em poetas jovens, como Sandra (Anderson) Herzer, vulgo Bigode”. Revista de Cultura #47. www.revista.agulha.nom.br/ag47bigode.htm.

 EN.Wikipedia.

Hélène Hazera (1952 - ) activist, actor, broadcaster, film-maker.

Hélène was active in the Front homosexuel d'action révolutionnaire (FHAR) and the Gazolines in the 1970s.

She acted in the film Les Intrigues de Sylvia Couski, 1975 with Marie-France Garcia, and in theatre in Paris, and has been photographed by Emil Cadoo and Martine Barrat.

She wrote a column on television for the journal, Libération, and then on French song. She broadcasts Saturday midnight to 1 am as Chanson Boum on France Culture. She is also passionate about Arab and Andalusian music. She directed a documentary on the films of Jean Painlevé.

She is an active member of Act-Up Paris on behalf of transgender persons, and has written for the gay magazine Têtu on Algerian trans prostitutes in France, and gay Iraqi refugees in England.

She is writing a book on the chanteuse Marianne Oswald.

• “Hélène Hazera répond à Marie-Hélène Bourcier”. Têtu. 31 July 2009. www.tetu.com/actualites/france/helene-hazera-repond-a-marie-helene-bourcier-15181. 

FR.WIKIPEDIA

Baby Dee (1953 - ) musician.

Born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, Baby Dee started as a street musician in New York while studying Gregorian chant and Renaissance music. On teachers advice Dee learned to play organ and got a job in a church.

However Dee felt a need to stop pretending to be a man, and transitioned to female. However she found this emotionally devastating as she was a constant object of staring and commentary. She left the church work and returned to street performance, and emphasized her appearance to give people something to look at. She worked in side shows on Coney Island as a bilateral hermaphrodite, and in circuses. She also played a harp while riding a tricycle through downtown Manhattan in a catsuit.

She was a founder member of Anthony Hegarty’s Anthony and the Johnsons which featured transgender themes. She is a member of Current 93, and also a solo artist playing vaudeville style songs. She has also worked with the Sex Pistols, Mark Almond, Andre WK and the Dresden Dolls.

• Christian Bordal. “Unclassifiable Musician Baby Dee Is Now 'Safe'”. NPR Music Beta www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17940655.
• Jake Austen. “Baby Love”. TimeOut Chicago. 153, Jan31-Feb 6, 2008. http://chicago.timeout.com/articles/music/26081/baby-love

www.babydee.org     EN.Wikipedia.

Click here for a list of her albums and a selections from some of her songs.

 

Dorian Wayne (1936 - 2015) female impersonator.

Revised April 2020.

Rick Colantino was a drag performer as Dorian Wayne, mainly in the late 1950s/ early 1960s, initially in southern Florida. He also worked with the jewel Box Review and at 82 Club and elsewhere.

He starred in She Man, 1967, as a drag-dominatrix who blackmailed others into feminization; The Blue Sextet, 1971, and The Doors of Jessica Prine. 1976.

He then became a dresser and worked on Broadway until retirement.

As Dominita in She Man

He spent his last days in rural New York State.  He died age 78.

• Laurie Ann.  "TVideo reviews: She Man".  Ladylike, 25, 1995: 29-30.  Online.  
• Joe E. Jeffreys (dir). Dorian: A Picture, narrated by Rick Colantino, with clips of Rick Colantino/Dorian Wayne. US 6 mins 2008.

IMDB    TGForum    Queer Music Heritage   FastPeopleSearch   

Tamara Rees (Stevenson) (1924 - 2000) stripper, housewife.

++brief update March 2016 based on Elnora's comments.

From Los Angeles, the father of two children, Rees was wounded and decorated as a paratrooper in WWII.

Frontispiece to Reborn, 1955

As Tamara Tees she transitioned in 1954, with surgery in the Netherlands, a year after the media sensation around Christine Jorgensen. She was mobbed by the press when her ship returned to New York. She played to the press and claimed that her ex-wife’s children had been fathered by someone else. At the end of the year she published a short autobiography.

Back in Los Angeles, she worked as a stripper in burlesque clubs. In 1955 she married James Courtland, a makeup artist, and hairdresser. This was regarded as the first transsexual wedding, but lasted only a short time. She married again, became Tamara Stevenson, and adopted children.

Like Jorgensen, she became a patient of Harry Benjamin who used her as as a counseling resource for other transsexuals, and in the early 1960s she was interviewed by psychiatrist Ralph Greenson, who interpreted her as in flight from homosexuality.

Mr and Mrs Stevenson remained married until the husband's death.  Tamara died of cancer at age 76.

• Tamara Reese. "Reborn": a factual life story of a transition from male to female. Los Angeles: Irene Lipman. 1955. PDF  
• Ralph R. Greenson. “On Homosexuality and Gender identity”. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis. 45, 1964.
• Joanne Meyerowitz. How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States. Cambridge, Ma, London: Harvard University Press. 363 pp 2002: 84-5, 90, 133,173, 305n98-102.

  Transascity

Erik Schinegger (1948 - ) skier.

Erika Schinegger was raised in Agsdorf, Austria. She was the world champion women's downhill skier at the Alpine World Ski Championships in 1966. While preparing for the 1968 Olympic Games the International Olympic Committee (IOC) determined that he was chromosomally male.

19-year-old Erika was surprised at this news, but accepted it, and started living as male, with hormones and surgical reconstruction. Erik trained to the point that he defeated male champions, but was simply refused a place on the Austrian National Men's team.

He twice married a woman and also fathered a daughter. He currently owns a children’s ski school and two inns in Agsdorf.

• Erik Schinegger & Marco Schenz. Mein Sieg über mich. Der Mann, der Weltmeisterin wurde (My victory over myself: the man who became a female world champion). München: Herbig. 1988. L'homme qui fut championne du monde. Ma victoire sur moi-même, Paris, Editions Michel Lafon, 1989. Autobiography.
• Kurt Mayer (dir) Erik(a). With Erik Schinegger. Music by Olga Neuwirth. Austria 86 mins 2005. His story.
• Patricia Nell Warren. “Intersex Skiing Star”. Outsports History. 2006. http://outsports.com/history/schinegger.htm. NO LONGER AVAILABLE.
• Patricia Nell Warren “Erik Schinegger. An Intersex Epic in Alpine Skiing” in The Lavender Locker Room: 3000 Years of Great Athletes Whose Sexual Orientation Was Different. Wildcat Press, 2006.

 DE.Wikipedia     http://sechzig.schinegger-erik.com.