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15 March 2013

Virginia Prince: Part II – Second Marriage

Part 1 – Youth and First marriage
Bibliography
Part II – Second Marriage
Part III – Femmiphilic activist
Part IV – Full-time Living
Part V – Transgenderist dowager
Jargon terms and general comments

Charles Leroy Lowman published his seminal work, Abdominal Fascial Transplants, in 1954. He remained Chief of Staff at the Orthopedic Hospital until 1955 when he was 75. His son Arnold had several ideas re cosmetics which he published as his second book, Chemistry in Your Beauty Shop, also 1955. With a partner he set up a business, Cardinal Industries, located on real estate owned by his mother.1

With the encouragement of his mother, Arnold married a second time in 1956 to Doreen Skinner, of English origins, who had been his parents' housekeeper and after initial misgivings, was accepting of his cross-dressing. Arnold initially found Doreen to be unattractive because of her "dowdy attire, old-fashioned hair style and lack of makeup". He instructed her and she became more attractive. She told him that she had discovered photographs of his father cross-dressed. Arnold and Doreen went out socially as two women, and spent weekends in San Francisco like that. Doreen bought him a white satin nightgown as a wedding present. She also helped Arnold run his business selling grooming products for dogs and humans. They designed and built a house in Nichols Canyon. It included a special room with wardrobes, a sewing machine and several mirrors. (Docter: 35-7)

In a club in West Hollywood that same year, Rae Bourbon was billed as ‘not a female impersonator’, and was charged by the LAPD and convicted of impersonating a female. In January 1957 Confidential Magazine outed actor/dancer Dan Dailey as a transvestite: "The Night Dan Dailey was Dolly Dawn", which pretty well ended his film career, although he continued in television.

Arnold began using the male name of Charles (his father's name) Prince. In 1957 C.V.Prince wrote a paper for The American Journal of Psychotherapy where he was introduced by Dr Benjamin: "‘Dr Prince is known to me personally. I have met him in his male as well as his female role. I have had lengthy and stimulating discussions with him. He is highly educated with a fine cultural background". Prince presented three types of ‘males’ who may share ‘the desire to wear feminine attire’ (p82), that is homosexuals, transvestites and transsexuals. He was keen to dissipate the confusion of the three, but in its place propagated an alternate myth that ‘true transvestites ... are exclusively heterosexual ... Frequently they are married and often fathers”.

He was developing the concept of “femmiphilia” and was talking of his feminine self as “a real personality in her own right”. He also proposed “femmepersonator”. As he explained to Harry Benjamin (TSPhenomenon:53) the two words are to counteract the popular confusion with homosexuality, and to to take the sex out of if. He later wrote up these ideas in a pamphlet: An Introduction to the Subject of Transvestism or Femmiphilia (Cross-Dressing). He no longer thought of himself as the same kind as Christine Jorgensen, and started denouncing sex change operations. One of the first to receive this message was the teenage Diane Kearny who naively wrote to him and was told that she was ‘delusional’ in wanting such.

It was in 1958 that a 19-year-old, who had been taking her mother's estrogen pills, was referred to Dr Robert Stoller at the University of California at Los Angeles Medical Center. Stoller took Agnes to be an example of testicular feminization syndrome, and arranged for her to have corrective surgery.

In 1959, Virginia Prince established Chevalier Publications (named for D’Eon), and the next year revived Transvestia, which was now sold by subscription and later in adult book stores. The cover of the first issue contained the statement: "A privately Printed Magazine with three objectives – (1) To Provide expression for those interested in the subjects of exotic and unusual dress and fashion; (2) To provide information to those who, through ignorance, condemn that which they do not understand; (3) To provide education for those who see evil where none exists."

Louise Lawrence and Edith Ferguson with their more tolerant definitions of transvestite were no longer involved. Joan Thornton complained that Prince had stolen the name Transvestia. As in the 1990s with the term 'transgender', Prince took the word 'transvestite' and attempted to restrict its meaning to a narrow group. The first editorial offices of Transvestia were in the premises of Cardinal Industries on Pico Boulevard. (Docter: 74-7) Arnold published a revised and enlarged Chemistry in Your Beauty Shop, and also his new book, A Survey of Chemistry for Cosmetologists.2

While most of the content of Transvestia was submitted by readers, Prince used the forum to construct transvestism as he had presented it in his 1957 paper. Much of Lawrence’s material, such as bondage and petticoat punishment was never allowed in Transvestia, nor was anything that might be deemed fetishistic, such as wearing only female underwear. However the first issue January 1960 contained a letter from William Bessie Beck, a noted advocate of petticoat-punishment, and issue #2 had a letter from his wife, and two photographs of Bessie were in issue #4. (Farrer:14-5) #1 also included an In Memoriam to sexologist David Cauldwell who had died the previous year. From #5 Transvestia featured a cover girl. Potential cover girls were asked to supply several photographs and a personal history, and were requested to pay for their page of photographs. The first such was Annette of Idaho. #6 contained a description of the research questionnaire that Prince was doing with Peter Bentler that was finally published in 1972.

Prince did not want to be associated with queens of Bunker Hill who had organized transvestites in Los Angeles only a generation earlier, nor with the transvestite drinking clubs that Edward D Wood was involved in. In particular, transvestites as imagined were never to be homosexual or to desire a sex change. Prince early picked up the new usage of ‘gender’. “It is not the sex we are imitating, it is the gender—the quality of expression, the kind of living, the kind of personality that we associate with a lady.” In Transvestia, Prince repeatedly claimed that gender is between the ears, not the legs. (Hill:58), and argued that whereas homosexuals were ‘sexual deviates’, transvestites were ‘gender deviates’. Prince discouraged the use of established words such as ‘TV’, ‘drag’, ‘camp’ etc as they were associated with homosexuality: ‘femmiphilia’ (Transvestia, 7, Jan 1961) and ‘femmepersonation’ (Transvestia, 12, Dec 1961) should be used instead, and FP be the abbreviation of both words instead of TV. Also in December 1961, Prince claimed, that having coined ‘TV’, Prince could end its use. The terms ‘femmename’, ‘femmeself’, ‘femmelife’ and ‘femmetalk’ were also proposed.

Around the same time Vern and Bonnie Bullough moved to Los Angeles to teach at California State University, Northridge, and shortly afterwards they met Prince, and also became involved with the homophile organization, ONE, Inc. Vern also became head of the San Fernando Valley chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)

1959 was also the year that Jack Doroshow/Flawless Sabrina started his Nationals Pageants, which were drag contests. As local laws almost always prohibited cross-dressing, he would meet with officials and propose a charitable donation, and in return the town would pass a variance to permit the pageant. Usually the town officials did not understand that local people would be performing. In May of that year, at the all-night Cooper's Doughnuts on Main St, Los Angeles, the LAPD started arresting the queens among the customers, and a riot broke out.

Hose and Heels Club, Lavender Los Angeles: 65
Prince founded the Hose and Heels Club in 1960 for an initial 12 members who all arrived en homme at a house attached to a church property and put on their hose and heels simultaneously so that no-one had anything on anyone else. The second meeting, at the home of a member who was a dress designer, was attended by Vern and Bonnie Bullough. Bonnie commented: "There were 12 or 14 cross dressers in attendance who reminded me of a bunch of young girls at a wedding shower, giggling and acting like teenagers". Prince enforced a no alcohol policy. (Docter: 51)

One of the first other columnists in Transvestia was Susanna Valenti of New York, who had a more carefree style. She coined the metaphor the ‘girl within’ which became popular with Prince and the readers of Transvestia.

Hill (60) writes: “Prince recognized that both groups [transvestite and homosexual] shared a common problem with social intolerance and understood that the social gains won by the larger and better organized homophile movement would only benefit her group. In this regard, she called for mutual respect and cooperation while still maintaining that separateness must also prevail in order to build a distinct group identity for heterosexual cross-dressers. My sense is that there was rampant homophobia within the readership and that Prince was quite progressive on the issue of homosexuality, especially given the historical context.“ Prince did in fact work with homophile activists, Harry Hay and others.

Kate Cummings in Australia discovered Transvestia in 1960. "When it arrived I was overwhelmed by the potential wealth of transvestite material available to me by subscribing. There were scientific articles reprinted from learned journals; there was advice on what to wear, how to use makeup, how to act in public; there were letters from transvestites and their wives; there was wish-fulfillment fiction and there were even advertisements for booklets published by Chevalier Publications." Kate was the Cover Girl on Issue #8 as 'Joan from Australia'.3

Although the US supreme Court had ruled in 1958, re an edition of One Magazine, also from Los Angeles, that homosexual content is not obscene simply because it is homosexual, and in 1959 the US publisher of D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover won his case and its appeal against the US Post Office’s censorship, these were not taken to apply to transvestite content. In 1960 Nan Gilbert in New England, a publisher of petticoat-punishment fantasies had had his mail stopped and was fined $500. In 1961 Tito Valenti (Susanna's male persona) was summoned by postal officials. Two of her correspondents had been charged with mailing obscene materials, and Susanna’s name had come up. Tito pleaded respectability and denounced the obscenities. Prince was actually arrested re personal correspondence to another transvestite, who he thought was a woman sympathetic to male cross-dressing, who was already under investigation. Prince pleaded guilty in a plea bargain to sending obscene material through the mail. With a five-year probationary sentence, he was liable to be imprisoned if caught cross-dressed in public. However his lawyer persuaded the court to include educating the public about cross-dressing as part of the probation order. In the next few years Virginia lectured to service clubs in the Los Angeles area and participated in a few medical conferences. Transvestia #6 contained the announcement that "Flash … Important … Read Carefully .. Transvestia has been examined by Postal Inspectors and has not been found to be unmailable".(Docter: 78-80).

José Sarria ran to be a San Francisco Supervisor in 1961: the first openly transvestite person to run for political office.

Charles Lowman co-published Postural Fitness; Significance and Variances in 1960, and Underwater Therapy in 1961. Arnold's previous psychiatrist, Karl Bowman, along with Margaret Mead and Hal Call of the Mattachine Society, appeared in a ground-breaking documentary on San Francisco's KQED television channel, The Rejected, about homosexuality. Bowman argued that homosexuality is not a mental illness and should be legalized.

Mr and Mrs Lowman visited Doreen’s relatives in England, and Virginia used the trip to contact some English transvestites.

1962.  Plate 6 in JJ Allen.  The Man in the Red Dress
In 1962 Virginia attempted to organize Transvestia's readership into a nationwide group. FP (from FemmePersonator) also stood for Full Personality. What was needed was Full Personality Expression (FPE). That was Hellenized into Phi Pi Epsilon in the fashion of university sororities. The Hose and Heel Club became the Alpha Chapter. In Transvestia #15 Prince exhorted: "Haven’t you all read newspaper reports of police in various cities raiding some home or club and finding a bunch of ‘guys as dolls’? What prevents our groups being looked upon the same way? Nothing at all…except Phi Pi Epsilon… when we get organized to the point where we have something to point to with some pride." In subsequent issues its purpose was developed and proposals made on how it would be organized. FPE was for cross-dressers who have gone beyond the novelty of dressing up secretly. Social interaction would be fun, and would foster self-acceptance. "The sorority is here, for those whose development has taken them to the point of FemmePersonation, which differs from simple transvestism in much the same way as being a champion Olympic swimmer differs from the person who simply puts on a bathing suit and gets in the pool." Homosexuals, transsexuals and fetishists were not admitted. Soon afterward there were three other FPE chapters: Beta in Chicago, Delta in Cleveland, and Theta in Madison, Wisconsin.

Prince published the first edition of The Transvestite and his Wife in 1962, and a first version of the results of his survey questionaire, "166 men in dresses" was published in Sexology magazine. In March Darrell Raynor, in Los Angeles on business, having previously corresponded, met first Charles, and then was invited to dinner to meet Virginia and Doreen. He was chauffeured to the Prince home by Robert Stevens/Barbara Ellen who was also a business associate of Prince (Raynor: chp 1-4).

The program of the Alpha Chapter was two meetings a months. One was formal, without any members being dressed, at which Virginia or an invited psychologist would give a lecture, and serious discussion would ensue. The other meeting was a party, a dress-up affair (Raynor:135).

In 1962, Elmer Belt finally discontinued doing sex-change operations at UCLA Medical School. That same year, Prince gave a lecture at the UCLA Medical School, which led to being contacted by a psychiatrist at the School, Robert Stoller. He was interested in Virginia as a research resource. It was Arnold who appeared for the first session, as per the terms of his parole. Stoller was requested to send a letter inviting Virginia Bruce. However by the time of the second interview Arnolds's parole was ended. From then, for the next for 29 years, Virginia and some other Alpha Chapter members met with Stoller. In Virginia's case the meetings were twice a month and continued until Stoller's death in 1991. These sessions were taped, and some have been transcribed. She was emphatic about the distinction between sex and gender, and both Vern Bullough and Richard Green affirm that it was Prince's influence that led to Stoller's first two books being called Sex and Gender, Vol 1: On the Development of Masculinity and Femininity, 1968 and Sex and Gender, Vol 2: The Transsexual Experiment, 1974. (Docter: 62-5) Unlike Harry Benjamin and Vern Bullough, Stoller never named Prince in his books, although sometimes there is mention of an anonymous person who would seem to be her.4

While in her articles in Transvestia, Virginia played down the erotic aspects of cross-dressing, in the conversations with Stoller, she affirmed it. While she denied finding men attractive, she did enjoy being attractive to and flirting with men.5 She had a cross-dresser friend who was willing to play the male role and took her for lunch and drinks. Afterward they did mutual masturbation.6 She found kissing, hugging and affection from a man to be sexually rewarding. (Docter: 66-7)

Virginia was the major guest at the 1962 Halloween meeting at Susanna Valenti's Casa Susanna in upstate New York. The New York Transvestia subscribers had already been socializing with each other meeting in the apartments of Susanna and Gail Wilde. The Halloween meeting was also attended by psychologists Hugo Beigal and Wardell Pomeroy as well as Darrell Raynor, Felicity Chandelle and Katherine Cummings. Katherine Cummings later wrote that Virginia "was argumentative in the extreme. She had very fixed views on transvestism and proclaimed them with great force and no tolerance whatever of opposing views." While previously Susanna had not been in agreement with Virginia's insistence on respectability, they were in agreement in being appalled about one guest who didn't shave and wore a simple nightgown, and even smoked a cigar. Susanna later wrote that such members lacked the cultivation of an 'inner femininity' that distinguished a true transvestite from drag queens and clothing fetishists. (Transvestia #19, 1963).

Prince gave a speech that she did not regard herself or any other femmepersonator as emotionally or psychologically ill. Psychologists were not consistent with their research on gender when it came to labeling deviancy: "Further indication of the falsity of this arbitrary division [between genders] is evident in all the tests and devices which psychologists come up with to measure masculinity and femininity ‘indexes’ in each sex. They therefore give lip service to the presence of masculinity in the female and femininity in the male, but when it comes to practical and actual expression of this (at least on the part of the male) they raise their eyebrows…and start to work ‘helping’ the individual to ‘get back to normal’—to ‘adjust himself to society’ and, if possible, to stop being what he is…. FemmePersonation as we know it and show it is not a perversion, sex deviation, anomaly, obsession, or similar terms denoting that ‘something is wrong’.… It should be made clear that ‘statistically uncommon’ is not synonymous with ‘psychopathological,’ and ‘culturally impermissible’ is not necessarily ‘morally reprehensible.’ All a true TV or FP is doing is to seek to express some of the values and traits which, when they were drawn from the common human supply depot, so to speak, were arbitrarily assigned to the female.” (Also printed in Transvestia #19, February 1963; Hill: 310-1)

In the last Transvestia of the year, Prince urged co-operation with the homophile movement:
"Whatever the more highly organized homophile community does to improve their lot tends to improve ours and vice versa…. The homophile group is much better organized, larger, and has been at it far longer than we have. Thus where we can assist any general programs they have for breaking down prejudice and legal restrictions, we should do so. Where we can take advantage of any organizations or procedures which they have set up which can be of help to us individually or collectively, we should do so. We should establish and maintain contact with the organizational centers that are maintained by the homophile community, getting from them and giving to them such information and assistance as may be mutually helpful." (Transvestia #18, December 1962; Hill: 321)
In early 1963, Virginia fell out with both Barbara Ellen and Evelyn, a best friend for ten years. They started a competing group, and for a while it looked as if the Alpha Chapter would not continue (Raynor: Chp.17-18)

The most famous transvestite in Los Angeles that year was Miss Destiny who was featured in John Rechy's City of Night, and then in One Magazine the next year. FPE was only a small and specialized part of the transvestite scene. There were various kinds of trans women at the gay bars on Main Street, from the obvious to the passing. There was even a group for Pacific Islanders. Rex/Gloria, was an FPE member, but was also paying for younger trans women to fly to Dr Burou's clinic in Casablanca. (Gay LA:114-5) Edward D. Wood extended the lead character of his film Glen or Glenda in an unlikely direction in his first novel, Black Lace Drag (renamed Killer in Drag, 1965): Glen is doing contract killings to pay for a sex-change. The same year saw the publication of the transvestite novel Double Switch, which is attributed to Virginia Prince.

In New York, Siobhan Fredericks, who had quit FPE, started a competing magazine, Turnabout and made fun of the many femme* words that Prince had coined, and attracted cross-dressers who were critical of Prince and her ideas. Fredericks started a support group in her home, to which Harry Benjamin sent some of his patients, including Renée Richards.

Also new that year was the glossy magazine Female Mimics. Performer Kim August was on the cover of the first issue, and Coccinelle on the second. No statistics are available on how many subscribers to Transvestia also read Female Mimics. In San Francisco, The Black Cat bar, where José Sarria had performed, was shut down for permitting cross dressing.

That year Prince delivered her first paper to a professional conference, the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality in New York. She differentiated transvestites, transsexuals and homosexuals, introduced the term feminiphilia, explained that most professionals conflate sex and gender, and presented statistics from a 272-member survey that she had analyzed. She presented her group as the vanguard of men's liberation, and denounced aversion therapy: doctors should advise transvestites to accept themselves as they are. "There is no question but that persons with these types of histories [i.e. troubled] do exist and that they turn up in the offices of psychiatrists. Unfortunately, the psychiatrist only sees a specialized sampling of transvestites and therefore the conclusions drawn are based on a biased population of cases. Generally speaking, the only cases that go to a doctor are those that have been sent there by legal authorities, are forced to come by wives or parents, or are quite disturbed by their desires and seek help. The well adjusted, happily married and out-of-trouble transvestite does not go to the doctor, and he is therefore not studied nor counted in the population of cases from which most conclusions are drawn." (Transvestia #24, December 1963; Hill:309-310)

In 1964 José Sarria, in San Francisco, was part of the founding of the Imperial Court System, an alternate transvestite sub culture, albeit mainly for gays. Unlike FPE, the imperial Court was able to open branches in Canada and Mexico. With only a few exceptions, FPE and its later successor Tri-Ess and the Imperial Courts did not acknowledge each other. José Sarria's later successor as leader of the Imperial Courts was at that time a Los Angeles sex worker under the name Lolita. She was not of course invited to join the Alpha Chapter. In New York the short-lived Lavender & Lace magazine for transvestites came out – it had a much greater racial diversity than Transvestia. The Los Angeles Free Press started, which would provide an alternate voice for hippy, gay, trans and other minority voices. Vern Bullough, working with ONE, Inc was successful in getting the San Fernando Valley chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to adopt a policy of protection of homosexuals, transvestites and transsexuals.

Felicity Chandelle/John Miller was arrested for cross-dressing under an obscure New York law and lost her job: her male persona had been a pilot for Eastern Airlines for 25 years. Prince and Fredericks championed her case, persuaded the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to file a brief and raised over $1,200 to finance an appeal, which however was denied by the New York appeal court and by the US Supreme Court.

Prince started using Carl Jung's7 concepts of ‘anima’ and ‘animus’, but with the twist that each of us has both an anima and animus, and that they should be integrated. This need not necessarily be done by cross-dressing.
“There are, however, quite a number of us who have succeeded in recognizing our Anima sides, giving expression to ‘her’, originally through dressing, and subsequently simply through an integration of our inner selves in our daily lives. Dressing may still remain a very pleasant activity and a source of renewed emotional awareness and may continue with greater or lesser frequency all our lives. The important thing is not necessarily to conquer the dressing but to recognize what it is actually doing FOR us, and recognizing this, to actively attempt a greater degree of integration in our ordinary lives without any guilt feelings. I believe that this is the true goal and virtue of FemmePersonation. (Transvestia, 27, June 1964)”.
1964 was when Transvestia published its first photograph of a black transvestite (Diana, 28, Aug). The next would not be be until 1969.

In Transvestia #31, February 1965, Prince reacted to Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, not by empathizing with the problems of being a woman, but: “So who is going to write a book on the Masculine Mystique and the frustrations and psychosomatic disturbances that George and Harry have, because they too are trying to live up to an artificial and unsatisfying role forced on them by society? It seems to me that all of you who read Transvestia and myself are collectively, so-to-speak, writing such a book.”

Also that year, Chemistry in Your Beauty Shop was revised again and republished.

Until this point, Prince alone ran the organization out of her home and her work office, collected dues and handled membership applications. There were complaints about autocratic style, and profiting from the dues. Thus Prince appointed Fran Conners, president of the Theta Chapter in Madison, Wisconsin as executive secretary, and Sheila Niles of New Jersey to be field co-ordinator. Niles had a job that involved frequent travel around the US and was able to visit the various chapters. They divided the US, in fact the entire world, into regions, and appointed a regional counselor and deputy for each. The counselors were to encourage the renewal of dues, and also to meet with each new applicant to ensure that they were suitable – however vast distances made face-to-face meetings almost impossible, and some became members without being screened. Like the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis, FPE was a white, middle-class organization with concerns about being respectable. An applicant must purchase fives issues of Transvestia before applying. This was not just to sell more copies, but also to ensure that he was serious, and that, having read the issues, he was acquainted with the philosophy of femmepersonation. The application asked about sexual orientation, marital status, employment status and cross-dressing history. The applicant had to sign his legal name and write his home address, however these would not be passed on the the regional counselor. He also had to pledge to keep secret all information about other members.

Bonnie and Vern Bullough, visiting the Lowmans at home, noted that Virginia would act as the hostess, reducing Doreen to sort of a maid. (Docter: 37-8)

In 1964 Reed Erickson founded his Erickson Educational Foundation (EEF), through which over the next twenty years he donated hundreds of thousands of dollars into gay, lesbian, trans and New Age activities such as acupuncture, homeopathy, dolphin communication and altered states of consciousness. He donated to two friends of Prince, Harry Benjamin and Vern Bullough, and especially to the Los Angeles gay center, One, Inc, but never considered FPE as a suitable recipient.

In May 1965 members of Theta (Wisconsin) joined with members of Beta (Chicago) and Delta (Cleveland) in South Bend, Indiana for a Midwest Conference. However the turn-out was disappointing. Only fourteen FPE members and three wives made it to the event. The Alpha chapter in Los Angeles, although one of the most populous chapters, still had only 18 members.

ONE, Inc split into two competing factions, and Vern Bullough was one of only two people who was able to maintain working relationships with both sides.

In Transvestia #36, December 1965, Virginia reaffirmed the lifestyle of part-time cross-dressing:
"I have had the experience, now that Virginia lives as much as she does and gets about everywhere, of having people who know me as Virginia and see me as a relaxed and comfortable woman often say ‘why don’t you live that way all the time’. They are not thinking of surgery but just of living. Sometimes I am afraid the fascination of this new life gets out of hand and we lose the perspective necessary to enjoy it. When we go too far in the femme-direction we are riding up the other side of the pendulum swing…. So let’s not forget that we are all built in a male way and have been brought up in a masculine framework which has its costs but also its compensations and let us say a word for and give a little credit to the ‘boy without’ as both the source and the support of the ‘girl within’. (quoted Hill:172).
By this time Arnold's son, Brent, had come to live with his father and Doreen. He was having personal problems, probably drugs, and his presence added to the stress among the Lowmans. Virginia had been taking dancing lessons and attending public dances. An out-of-town male friend visited and they went dancing all night. (Docter:69) Doreen was also anxious in that Arnold had developed a friendship with a post-operative transsexual, Sherry, and she was concerned that he would go the same route. Virgina and Sherry went to public dances as two women. Doreen moved out, and in with Arnold's parents. Stoller, who counseled both of them, felt that Doreen was "emotionally exhausted" in her struggle over the possibility that Virginia would go full-time. Stoller reported that Prince said he was hurt that Doreen would "just up and walk out on me" – which perhaps implies a lack of empathy. (Docter: 38-40)

In December that year, Stoller dictated a description of how he saw Virginia, who was then 53:
"It's worth describing Virginia's appearance today which is typical of the way she usually looks: A light brown wig which is not startling but well kept, dangling silver earrings, pancake makeup, sharply red but not extravagant lipstick. On her neck, a necklace made of three strands of large silver balls, pretty garish when taken with all the rest of her appearance, with a V-cut dress out of which peaked the pushed-up bits of breast tissue looking like an old woman's breasts being shown when they shouldn't be with her brassiere showing and the straps showing, the inner side of the two shoulder straps of her dress; the dress, the upper part of it where her bosom is huge and the largeness is increased by a whole bunch of white flowery patterns on on a navy blue background, the lower part is just the navy blue. When she sits with her legs crossed you see up the outside of her thigh quite a long distance, it's not particularly attractive, her knees are bony and her legs although not masculinely muscled are not at all like a woman's; her arms have the muscular contour of a man's, they are very smooth and soft skinned though on her forearms they are darker brown while the upper part is light. I didn't really notice her shoes except that they were high heeled. The overall impression is that if this were in fact a woman, no woman of her age and appearance should show so much of herself and I would think there was something severely wrong in the degree of exhibitionism being revealed." (Stoller#4: 23-4; Docter: 70-1)


  1. Cardinal Industries seems to have disappeared from history. It should not be confused with Cardinal Industries of New York which is a still active and successful company that makes toys. I could not find the name of Arnold's partner in any of the source documents.
  2. I do find it strange, given the number of books that discuss Virginia Prince, that no-one previously – except the editors at WorldCat – had bothered to check if there were any book under the name of Arnold Lowman. Milady Pub. Corp is a real publisher, specializing in books about beauty. It is not a self-publishing like Chevalier Publications.
  3. Kate Cummings also volunteered to be and was the cover of Transvestia #108, 1983, twenty three years later.
  4. For example: Presentations of Gender, 1985:137. "For instance, for about twenty years I have had a friendly, more than therapy-oriented relationship with a transvestite man, In that time we have often talked of his childhood, his parents, his parents' personalities, and the relationships among the family members."
  5. "While she denies finding men attractive, she does enjoy being attractive to and flirting with men." A subtle difference. I wonder how many cisgendered women could be likewise described. Has anybody done research into heterosexuality using this distinction?
  6. Prince: "mutual masturbation … but never once was there any kind of anal or oral sex .. never". Was Prince unaware that a significant minority of gay men have exactly the same preference?
  7. Prince probably related to the fact that Jung, in 1950, had dismissed transsexual surgery as having nothing to do with either medicine or psychology. Carl Gustav Jung, “Zur Frage der arztlichen Intervention” In. Das symbolische Leben: verschiedene Schriften. Olten: Walter-Verlag, 1995: 375-6. Quoted in Sander L.Gilman.Making the Body Beautiful: A Cultural History of Aesthetic Surgery. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999:271.

Virginia Prince: Bibliography.

Part 1 – Youth and First marriage
Bibliography
Part II – Second Marriage
Part III – Femmiphilic activist
Part IV – Full-time Living
Part V – Transgenderist dowager
Jargon terms and general comments


As I have supplied line source notes, it is seemly that I should provide the bibliography now, rather than at the end.

As usual on this site, the bibliography is in chronological order. It is not by author surname.

Where a source item is simply Docter, the reference is to From Man to Woman, 2004. If to either of his other books, a year is given.

It is interesting that so many books and articles have been written about Virginia Prince, but none of them mention that she published three books under the name Arnold Lowman. She also wrote transvestite fiction anonymously. Such are marked below as: Anonymous (Virginia Prince).

  • Charles Leroy Lowman. A Collection of Papers Dealing with Some Physical, Educational, Physiotherapeutic & Orthopaedic Problems. Los Angeles,1924.
  • Charles Leroy Lowman, Claire Colestock & Hazel Cooper. Corrective physical education for groups: a text book of organization, theory, and practice /cby Charles Leroy Lowman, Claire Colestock, Hazel Cooper . New York: A.S. Barnes.1928.
  • Charles Leroy Lowman. Balance skills in physical education, . Ann Arbor, Mich., Edwards brothers, inc. 1935.
  • Charles Gurchot & Arnold Lowman. "A Stable and Potent Lactic Dehydrogenase Preparation". Proceedings of the Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine. Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine (New York, NY). Vol. 35. No. 2. Royal Society of Medicine, 1936.
  • Charles Leroy Lowman. The Therapeutic Theatre. New York: Samuel French, 1937.
  • Charles Leroy Lowman, Susan G. Roen, Ruth Aust, and Helen G. Paull. Technique of Underwater Gymnastics . Los Angeles, Calif: American Publications, inc, 1937.
  • Arnold Lowman. The Preparation, Standardization, and Properties of Lactic Dehydrogenase. University of California, Berkeley: MS Thesis 1937.
  • Arnold Lowman. Carbohydrate Metabolism and Its Relation to the Cancer Problem. University of California, Berkeley: PhD Thesis,1939.
  • Charles Gurchot & Arnold Lowman. The preparation and properties of a potent lactic dehydrogenase powder . Berkley, Calif: University of California press, 1939.
  • Charles Leroy Lowman & Susan G. Roen. Therapeutic use of pools and tanks . Philadelphia: Saunders, 1952.
  • “Father Admits Liking to Wear Feminine Garb”. “Man Who Dons Women’s Attire Wins Son Case”. Los Angeles Mirror, March 4-5, 1953. Online at: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/thedailymirror/2011/05/lugosi-to-appear-as-weird-scientist.html.
  • Charles Leroy Lowman. Abdominal Fascial Transplants . Ann Arbor, Mich: Edwards, 1954.
  • Arnold Lowman. Chemistry in Your Beauty Shop . New York: Milady Pub. Corp, 1955. Rev & enl 1959. Rev 1965. Rev & enl 1976.
  • C.V. Prince, with a preamble by Harry Benjamin. “Homosexuality, Transvestism and Transsexuality: Reflections on Their Etiology and Differentiations”. The American Journal of Psychotherapy, 11, 1957: 80-5. Reprinted in Richard Ekins & Dave King (eds) Virginia Prince: Pioneer of Transgendering. The Haworth Medical Press, 2005: 17-20 and the International Journal of Transgenderism, 8,4, 2005: 17-20.
  • Arnold Lowman. Survey of Chemistry for Cosmetologists . New York: Milady Pub. Corp, 1959. Rev ed 1970.
  • Anonymous (Virginia Prince?) An Introduction to the Subject of Transvestism or Femmiphilia (Cross-Dressing). Foundation for Full Personality Expression. No date.
  • Virginia Prince (ed). Transvestia. Chevalier Publications. 1959 – 80.
  • Charles Leroy Lowman & Carl Haven Young. Postural fitness; significance and variances. . Philadelphia: Lea & Febiger, 1960.
  • Charles Leroy Lowman & Susan G. Roen. Underwater therapy . Los Angeles: Rubel Memorial Library at Orthopaedic Hospital, 1961.
  • Virginia "Charles" Prince. The Transvestite and His Wife. Chevalier Publications, 1962. Argyle Books. 143 pp 1967. Reprinted by Sandy Thomas Publication as The Cross-dresser And His Wife, 1992.
  • V.C. Prince. "166 men in dresses". Sexology, 1962.
  • Anonymous (Virginia Prince). Double Switch . Chevalier Publications, 1964.
  • Harry Benjamin. The Transsexual Phenomenon. New York: Julian Press, 1966: 43, 49, 53-4,108.
  • Virginia Bruce. “The Expression of Femininity in the Male”. The Journal of Sex Research, 3,2,1967: 129-139. Reprinted in Richard Ekins & Dave King (eds) Virginia Prince: Pioneer of Transgendering. The Haworth Medical Press, 2005: 21-7 and the International Journal of Transgenderism, 8,4, 2005: 21-7.
  • Darrell Raynor. A Year Among the Girls . New York: Lyle Stuart, 1966. New York: Lancer Books, 1968.
  • Virgil Warner Fornas. Charles L. Lowman: His Role in Physical Education. University of Southern California: PhD Thesis, 1968.
  • Hugo Beigel. “A Weekend in Alice’s Wonderland”. Journal of Sex Research, 5, 1969: 108-122.
  • Virginia Prince. "Men Who Choose to be Women". Sexology Magazine, Feb 1969.
  • Anonymous (Virginia Prince). From Martin to Marion: A Transvestite Story in Three Parts (Three Complete Volumes) . Chevalier Publications, 1970.
  • Virginia Prince. How To Be A Woman Though Male. Chevalier Publications 193 pp 1971.
  • Virginia Prince and P.M. Bentler, “A Survey of 504 Cases of Transvestism,” Psychological Reports 31 (1972): 903—17.
  • Anonymous (Virginia Prince). The Turnabout (Turn About) Party . Chevalier Publications, 1972.
  • Anonymous (Virginia Prince). The Birth of Barbara . Chevalier Publications, 1973.
  • Virginia Prince. “Sex vs. Gender”. In D.R Laub & P. Gandy (eds). Proceedings of the Second Interdisciplinary Symposium on Gender Dysphoria Syndrome . Stanford Universiity Medical Center, 1973: 20-4. Reprinted in Richard Ekins & Dave King (eds) Virginia Prince: Pioneer of Transgendering. The Haworth Medical Press, 2005: 29-32 and the International Journal of Transgenderism, 8,4, 2005: 29-32.
  • Lois Armstrong. "Dr. Charles Lowman at Age 95 Is Still Straightening Out Kids", People, April 28, 1975. www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20065185,00.html.
  • Jack Nichols. Men's Liberation: A New Definition of Masculinity . New York: Penguin Books, 1975.
  • Deborah Heller Feinbloom. Transvestites & transsexuals: Mixed views . New York: Delta, 1976: 57-86, 98, 109.
  • Virginia Prince. Understanding Cross-Dressing. Chevalier Publications. 145 pp 1976.
  • Vern L Bullough, W. Dorr Legg, Barrett W. Elcano & James Kepner. An annotated bibliography of homosexuality . New York:: Garland Publ, 1976.
  • Virginia Prince. "Transsexuals and Pseudotranssexuals", Archives of Sexual Behavior, 7, 4, 1978: 263-272. Reprinted in Richard Ekins & Dave King (eds) Virginia Prince: Pioneer of Transgendering. The Haworth Medical Press, 2005: 33-7 and the International Journal of Transgenderism, 8,4, 2005: 33-7.
  • Virginia Prince. “The ‘Transcendents’ or ‘Trans’ People”. Transvestia, XVL, 95, 1978: 81-92. Reprinted in Richard Ekins & Dave King (eds) Virginia Prince: Pioneer of Transgendering. The Haworth Medical Press, 2005: 39-48 and the International Journal of Transgenderism, 8,4, 2005: 39-46.
  • Vern L. Bullough. Homosexuality: A History . New York: New American Library 1979: 136-7.
  • Virginia Prince. “Charles to Virginia: Sex Research as a Personal Experiencein Vern Bullough (ed), Frontiers of Sex Research . New York: Prometheus Books, 1979.
  • Lowman v. County of Los Angeles (1982) 127 Cal.App.3d 613 [179 Cal.Rptr. 709]. www.lawlink.com/research/CaseLevel3/58411.
  • Virginia Prince. Bound in Drag. Charles Slavik, 1984.
  • Lee Grant (dir). What Sex Am I? [VHS] with Christine Jorgensen, Virginia Prince. US 58 mins color 1985.
  • Robert J.Stoller. Presentations of Gender . New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985: 137.
  • Virgina Charles Prince. Handbook for speakers on cross dressing . 1987.
  • Richard F. Docter. Transvestites and Transsexuals: Toward a Theory of Cross-Gender Behavior (Perspectives in Sexuality) . New York: Plenum Press, 1988: 21-5, 46, 47, 130, 136, 145, 167, 214.
  • Annie Woodhouse. Fantastic Women . New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1989: 122-6.
  • Rudolph Grey. Nightmare of Ecstasy: Life and Art of Edward D. Wood, Jr. . Los Angeles: Feral House, 1992.
  • Vern L. Bullough & Bonnie Bullough. Cross dressing, Sex and Gender. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. xi, 382 pp 1993: 280-6, 292-3, 296, 302, 324, 326, 339, 345, 347, 348, 350.
  • Leslie Feinberg. Transgender Warriors : Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman . Beacon Press, 1996: x.
  • Harry Hay and Will Roscoe. Radically Gay : Gay Liberation in the Words of Its Founder . Boston: Beacon Press, 1996: 37,52.
  • J. J. Allen.The Man in the Red Velvet Dress: Inside the World of Cross-Dressing . New York: Carol Pub. Group, 1996; 176-186.
  • Virginia Prince. "Gender Fundamentalists". Cross-Talk, October 1996.
  • Virginia Prince. "Seventy Years in the Trenches of the Gender Wars". In Bonnie Bullough, Vern L. Bullough, and James Elias. Gender Blending: Transvestism (Cross-Dressing), Gender Heresy, Androgyny, Religion & the Cross-Dresser, Transgender Healthcare, Free Expression, Sex Change Surgery . Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1997:469-479.
  • Richard F. Docter & Virginia Prince. "Transvestism: A survey of 1032 cross-dressers". Archives of Sexual Behavior, 26, 589-605, 1997.
  • Patrick Califia. Sex Changes: The Politics of Transgenderism . San Francisco, Calif: Cleis Press, 1997: 197-207.
  • Vern LBullough. “Virginia Prince”. In Vern LBullough (ed) Before Stonewall: Activists for Gay and Lesbian Rights in Historical Context . New York: Harrington Park Press, 2002. Online at: www.williamapercy.com/wiki/images/Virginia_prince.pdf.
  • Meyerowitz, Joanne J. How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States . Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2002: 92, 181-2.
  • Stephen Whittle. “Adam and Eve? Virginia Prince, the first transgender person”. Sixth International Congress on Sex and Gender Diversity. The School of Law, Manchester Metropolitan University, 10th to 12th September 2004.
  • Richard F Docter. From Man to Woman: The Transgender Journey of Virginia Prince. Docter Press xiv, 149 pp 2004.
  • Susan Stryker "Prince, Virginia (b. February 1913), transgender activist, author". In Marc Stein (ed). Encyclopedia of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender History in America (3 Volume Set) . New York, NY: Charles Scribner's Sons/Thomson/Gale, 2004.
  • Laura Granger & Joan Half. "A brief history of the Tiffany Club of New England." Tiffany Club of New England, 2004. http://tcne.org/?page_id=65.
  • Richard Ekins & Dave King (eds). Virginia Prince: Pioneer of Transgendering. Haworth Press Inc., Paperback: 65 pages 2005.
  • Susan Stryker. "Foreward". In Richard Ekins & Dave King (eds). Virginia Prince: Pioneer of Transgendering: xv-xvi..
  • Richard F. Docter. "Virginia at 92". In Richard Ekins & Dave King (eds). Virginia Prince: Pioneer of Transgendering: 57-60.
  • Michel Hurst & Robert Swope. Casa Susanna. New York: PowerHouse Books, 2005.
  • J. Ari Kane-Demaios and Vern L. Bullough (eds). Crossing Sexual Boundaries: Transgender Journeys, Uncharted Paths . Prometheus Books 2005: 22-4.
  • Jane Ellen Fairfax. “A Brief History of Tri-Ess”. Tri-Ess, 01/26/06. www.tri-ess.org/history.html.
  • Richard Ekins & Dave King. Pioneer of Transgendering: The Life and Work of Virginia Prince. GENDYS 2k, The Sixth International Gender Dysphoria Conference, Manchester Eng. www.gender.org.uk/conf/2000/king20.htm. 2006.
  • Richard Ekins & Dave King. The Transgender Phenomenon . London: SAGE, 2006.
  • Robert S. Hill. ‘As a man I exist; as a woman I live’: Heterosexual Transvestism and the Contours of Gender and Sexuality in Postwar America. PhD Dissertation. University of Michigan. 2007. http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/57615/2/rshill_3.pdf.
  • Kate Cummings. Katherine's Diary William Heinemann Australia 1992. Revised and updated 2007: 105, 142, 144, 146, 185, 197, 282-5.
  • Richard F. Docter. Becoming a Woman: A Biography of Christine Jorgensen (Sexual Minorities in Historical Context) . New York: Routledge, 2008: xii, xxii, xxiii, xxvi, 7.
  • Susan Stryker. Transgender History . Berkeley: Seal Press. 2008: 46-7, 49, 50-7.
  • Rosemary Langton. “Vale Virginia Prince”. Seahorse, November 23rd, 2009. www.seahorsesoc.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=6.
  • Suzan Cooke. "Virginia Prince is Finally Dead". Women Born Transsexual, 05/03/2009. http://womenborntranssexual.com/2009/05/03/virginia-prince-is-finally-dead.
  • Vanessa E. Foster. "Virginia Prince: The Passing Of A Trans Icon ". Trans Political, May 4, 2009. http://transpolitical.blogspot.ca/2009/05/virginia-prince-passing-of-trans-icon.html.
  • Alice L100. ‘A History of the Beaumont Society’. The Beaumont Society, 2010. www.beaumontsociety.org.uk/about_us/History.htm.
  • Peter Farrer. Cross Dressing Since the War: Selections from Justice Weekly 1955-1972 . Liverpool: Karn Publications Garston, 2011: 14-5.
  • Jack Molay. "From "transgenderist" to "transgender" - on Virginia Prince and crossdresser separatism ". Crossdreamers, March 11, 2011. www.crossdreamers.com/2011/03/from-transgenderist-to-transgender-on.html.
  • Christine Parker. "The Definitive History of the Seahorse Society – 1967-2013". Seahorse, 30/12/2012. www.seahorsesoc.org/history/index.html.
Background. Details of other persons and events in Los Angeles were taken from:
  • Lillian Faderman & Stuart Timmons. Gay L. A.: A History of Sexual Outlaws, Power Politics, And Lipstick Lesbians . New York: Basic Books, 2006.
  • Daniel Hurewitz. Bohemian Los Angeles: and the Making of Modern Politics . Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007.
  • C. Todd White. Pre-Gay L.A.: A Social History of the Movement for Homosexual Rights . Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009.
  • Tom De Simone, Teresa Wang, Melissa Lopez, Diem Tran, Andy Sacher, Kersu Dalal, Justin Emerick. Lavender Los Angeles (Images of America) (Images of America (Arcadia Publishing)) . Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia Pub, 2011.
    WORLDCAT   AMAZON.COM(Lowman)   AMAZON.COM(Prince)   EN.WIKIPEDIA   GLBTQ TRANSGENDERARCHIVES

    14 March 2013

    Virginia Prince (1912 - 2009): Part 1 - Youth and First marriage

    See also:  Did Virginia Prince have Harry Benjamin Syndrome?
    and The Myth That Transgender is a Princian Concept.

    Previously in April 2008, I wrote an account of Virginia Prince, who started life as Arnold Lowman. With all due modesty I think that it still stands as the best short account of her.  I wrote it based mainly on the books by Richard Docter, Richard Ekins and Vern Bullough.  Particularly after I wrote my TG, Words and Concepts series, I realized that my account of Prince could be much improved.  This realization was further developed by reading Robert Hill’s dissertation which is largely based on a close reading of Transvestia magazine.   One problem with most accounts of Virginia Prince is that they are not integrated into GLBT and general history.  Hence I have included background events below, mainly of what else was going on in Los Angeles, but also elsewhere when it seemed appropriate, to give a contextualization.

    Part 1 – Youth and First marriage
    Bibliography
    Part II – Second Marriage
    Part III – Femmiphilic activist
    Part IV – Full-time Living
    Part V – Transgenderist dowager
    Jargon terms and general comments

    Charles Leroy Lowman (1879-1977) was born in Park Ridge, Illinois. Both his paternal grandparents were physicians. He trained as doctor at the University of Southern California, interned at California Lutheran Hospital and studied orthopedic surgery at the Massachusetts General Hospital and the Children’s Hospital in Boston. In 1909 he started a small out-patient clinic for handicapped children, and was the only orthopedist between San Francisco and New Orleans, traveling through five states to practice. He married Elizabeth Hudson Arnold (1882-1968), the daughter of a prosperous Indiana farmer and Ella Gifford Ferris, who was a cousin of George Ferris, the inventor the Big Wheel that first appeared at the 1893 Chicago Exposition1. Charles and Elizabeth Lowman had two children: Arnold born in 1912 and Elizabeth born four years later.2

    The owner of the building where Charles Lowman had his clinic made an offer that if Lowman could establish a functioning hospital within 15 years, he would donate clear title to the building and its gardens. This was done and further expansion of the Los Angeles Orthopedic Hospital was being discussed when the 15 years had passed in 1922. Lowman pioneered aquatherapy for poliomyelitis patients, and devised motor-driven lifts to get the patients in and out of the water. He pioneered fascia lata strap transplants which enabled wheelchair-bound patients to walk with crutches.

    Elizabeth Sr contributed to the home by shrewd investments in property and stocks. For grades 3-7 Arnold was transferred from his local public school to the residential Glendora Foothill Christian School, fifty miles to the east. On Thanksgiving Day in his seventh grade, the school burnt down, and he was transferred back to a local school.

    Arnold developed a fixation with high-heeled shoes. They were of course not welcome in the home of an orthopedist. He moved on to his mother's clothes, and then started collecting his own. By the age of 12 Arnold was an accomplished cross-dresser and could pass in public as a girl. He used the name Muriel.(Docter:41-2)    As Prince wrote in 1979:
    "Starting at the age of about twelve I found myself fascinated with wearing my mother's clothes on all occasions when the family would be out. It was sexually exciting and thrilling but it was also frightening and it gave rise to a tremendous load of guilt and shame. With that kind of pressure I should have quit – and I did – many times, I felt terrible about it, guilt ridden and wondering what was wrong with me – an otherwise normal, functional boy. For a while I supposed that I must be a homosexual – though I had no interest in boys sexually. When I got that straightened out in my head I decided that I must be psychopathic. But on the other hand, I was an intelligent, above-average student, an athlete, member of clubs, etc. But even if I was not either of those two two things surely I must be the only otherwise normal boy who was so weird as to want to wear girl's clothes. I went through adolescence with those worries, and I kept on dressing on every occasion when I thought I could do so safely. While it started out as an erotic experience each time, there came a time when, after eroticism had run its course, I discovered that there was still a very special pleasure in 'being' a 'girl'. Instead of just being an erotically aroused male in a dress, I found that I was somehow different. I did not know for years what was going on – or more properly what was coming out. It was that part of myself that had been hidden and suppressed in all my growing years – just as it is in all men. It was my other half, that half that when openly expressed is termed feminine."
    In 1922, the Los Angeles City Council had revised its anti-masquerading law of 1898. It now stated that if one dressed in the clothes of the opposite sex on the streets, a penalty of up to six-months in jail or a fine of up to $500 could be imposed. By 1924 the Los Angeles drag culture was dominated by Clarabelle, who was regarded as the queen mother of Bunker Hill. Arnold never spoke of this. That was also the year that male-impersonator Jean Southern accosted a police officer who failed to read her, and the encounter made headlines in the Los Angeles Times. Julian Eltinge was the US's top female impersonator and was playing to sell-out audiences at the Los Angeles Orpheum Theater.

    Charles Lowman was a prolific author and innovator in the field of orthopedic medicine. He published A Collection of Papers Dealing with Some Physical, Educational, Physiotherapeutic & Orthopaedic Problems in 1924, persuaded the California legislature to provide teachers for handicapped children in hospital in 1927 and co-published Corrective Physical Education for Groups: A Text Book of Organization, Theory, and Practice in 1928.

    At age 18, in drag, Arnold won a prize for best costume at his church Halloween party. He did his BA at Pomona College, Los Angeles where by chance he shared a dorm with Edward Richards, the future Barbara Wilcox, although they did not know each other.

    Whether young Arnold knew or not, 1932 was a peak year for pansy revues (which featured female impersonation) with appearances in Los Angeles by Karyl Norman and Jean Malin, and the next year Hollywood made a record number of films with pansy content. However, from 1932 onwards, and especially after the end of Alcohol Prohibition in 1933, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) started busting the pansy clubs. BBB's Cellar and Jimmie's Back Yard were raided repeatedly. The raid on The Big House in fall 1932 met resistance: the patrons fought back and a female impersonator attempted to escape through a window. The bar, renamed Buddy's Rendezvous, reopened, and the police returned eight months later and arrested five transvestites on vagrancy charges. In November 1933 another raid on Jimmie's Back Yard resulted in 90-day sentences for the owner, the mistress of ceremonies and the piano player. Three other female impersonators were each sentenced to six months – the maximum penalty. Harold Brown, arrested on suspicion of posing as a narcotics officer, was discovered to be female bodied and got a suspended 30-day sentence for masquerading. Three pansy bars were shut down in 1936, and another three the next year. Frank Shaw, the Los Angeles Mayor, ran a notably corrupt administration from 1933 until he was recalled in 1938. He was opposed by Clifford Clinton, a restaurateur, who with others filed a grand jury report that led to the recall. Part of Shaw's fight back was to step up the attack on 'sex pervert' bars. This was reinforced in 1937 by a national sex panic after children were killed in New York, and J Edgar Hoover declared 'War on the Sex Criminal'. In 1940 even Julian Eltinge was prevented from appearing on stage in Los Angeles in female clothes, and was obliged to do his act in a tuxedo with his dresses on mannequins.

    However private parties in Hollywood and even public appearances by its stars were another matter. Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo and Katherine Hepburn were known for their male attire, both on screen and when out socializing. Film director, Dorothy Arzner, the only female director in Hollywood, was known for dressing in men's clothes. In 1937, Howard Greer, the Hollywood fashion designer who did the costumes for Bringing Up Baby and My Favorite Wife, threw a drag party at which he hired female impersonators to sing a Cole Porter song in front of the real Cole Porter (Gay LA: 46) In 1938 Los Angeles resident Michael Higgins was arrested on charges of grand theft and fraud, and discovered to be female-bodied.

    Meanwhile Arnold graduated from Pomona College in 1935 and did postgraduate studies in pharmacology at the University of California at Berkeley.

    Charles Lowman published Balance skills in physical education in 1935, and the next year Arnold co-published with a fellow student a paper on lactic dehydrogenase. In 1937 Charles Lowman published The Therapeutic Theatre, and contributed to Technique of Underwater Gymnastics; A Study in Practical Application. Arnold's MS thesis was on lactic dehydrogenase, and the fellow student and he published a book on the topic in 1939. Arnold's PhD thesis, Carbohydrate Metabolism and Its Relation to the Cancer Problem, was completed in the same year.

    Elizabeth followed her brother to Pomona College and then Berkeley. She later met and married a mining engineer, and they moved to Nevada. They had three children.

    Fletcher Bowron, who was mayor of Los Angeles 1938-53, had a particular antipathy to women in trousers. In 1942 he declared to the city council that he loathed "to see masculine women much more than feminine traits in men" and got them to pass a regulation barring female employees at City Hall from wearing pants.

    In 1941 Arnold outed himself as a transvestite to his father after a trip to San Francisco, by being his femme self when his father arrived to pick him up. This was just before his first marriage, to Dorothy Shepherd (1909 – 1985) a secretary from Anoka, Minnesota, whom he had met at church. The wedding was held in the Lowman home, the day after Arnold burned all his female clothing. Mr and Mrs Lowman then moved to San Francisco where Arnold had a job with Del Monte Foods, and later on a medical research project for one of his professors who was now at the University of California Medical School at San Francisco.

    Arnold researched transvestism in the medical library. He noted two case studies of interest being presented in the psychiatry department, and attended both. The first was by Barbara Wilcox who had been his classmate at Pomona College, and was by then living as a woman and had petitioned the Superior Court of California to change her name and to become legally a woman. The second presentation was by Louise Lawrence, the pioneering transvestite organizer who put transvestites in touch with each other, and with sympathetic doctors. Either Arnold badgered the lecture organizer to reveal Louise's home address, and Louise took in the nervous young man on her doorstep (Stryker, 2005: xv); or he sneaked a look in the case file to obtain her address, and telephoned and asked to meet (Docter: 45). In either case Lawrence introduced Virginia Prince as Arnold named himself (he lived on Prince Street) to other transvestites in San Francisco, and provided contacts in Los Angeles. Through her he became a patient of Karl Bowman of the Langley Porter Psychiatric Clinic, the seventh psychiatrist that he consulted, who told him to “relax and learn to accept yourself” (TV&Wife: 5-6). She also introduced him, in the late 1940s, to a doctor who spent each summer in San Francisco, and was starting to build a practice with transvestite clients: Harry Benjamin.

    In 1945 the millionaire Howard Hughes went to San Francisco's famous Finocchio's female impersonation revue and night club where he met performer Pussy Katt. Shortly afterwards he flew her to Mexico City for an operation that made her America's first surgical transsexual. Meanwhile in Los Angeles, Clarabelle, the queen of Bunker Hill was no more. Her successors were Wilhemena, and then Carioca (who later died on an operating table in Calexico). The inter-racial Club Alabam on Los Angeles' Central Avenue continued to sponsor an annual drag ball contest.

    When the research project was over Arnold and Dorothy returned to Los Angeles where Arnold found work as a chemist. Their only son, Brent, was born in 1946. For the first five or six years of their marriage, Arnold kept his cross-dressing from Dorothy, but then got it into his head that he was going as a half man/half woman to the church Halloween party. Dorothy was not thrilled. Afterward they had a long talk and agreed that Arnold was not to dress in her presence, but that she would do his clothing shopping, to avoid one risk. Then Arnold got to be Virginia about once every two weeks. He started spending time with Edith Ferguson and other transvestites. They attended meetings at the Long Beach home of Joan Thornton, who shared the same interest.
    Virginia Prince, 1948.  Plate 1 in JJ Allen, The Man in the Red Velvet Dress

    William Parker (played by Nick Nolte in the film Gangster Squad) was Los Angeles Police Chief from 1950 until his death in 1966. He repeatedly sent his men to raid gay and lesbian bars and to treat gays and lesbians as if they were criminals. So many arrests occurred that an entire section of the Lincoln Heights jail was reserved for gay and trans inmates, nicknamed the "fruit tank". One case that made the newspapers in 1950 was of three Negro domestic servants who were arrested for dressing as female.

    That year two lesbians, in separate cases, challenged the Los Angeles anti-masquerading law, and in both cases the courts declared that cross-dressing alone did not constitute guilt under the ordinance unless there was further intent to conceal one's identity. However the LAPD and the local politicians simply ignored these two rulings.

    By 1951 Dorothy Lowman felt unable to cope with her husband’s cross-dressing, and saw a psychiatrist who explained that Arnold was homosexual. She sued for divorce mainly citing her husband’s “admitted propensity for feminine apparel”. Arnold was ordered to pay $50 a month for his son’s support and $50 for his wife’s. His transvestism was publicized during the proceedings, which led to contacts with more transvestites. (Docter: 29-35, 47-8)

    One who did not establish contact was Gigi Hemingway who was arrested en femme in the women’s restroom of a Los Angeles movie theater. Many gays and trans were incarcerated in Atasceradero State Hospital, a maximum-security facility, which came to be known as the 'Dachau for queers'. Atasceradero was frequently visited by Dr Walter Freeman who specialized in ice-pick lobotomies. This was done through the eye socket. Of the 4,000 patients he treated this way, over 30% were diagnosed as homosexual (which included transvestites).  Another of his victims may have been the film star, Francis Farmer.

    Charles Lowman co-published Therapeutic Use of Pools and Tanks in 1952. The same year the group meeting at Joan Thornton’s created a mimeographed newsletter: Transvestia: Journal of the American Society for Equality in Dress – a name suggested by Joan, who was the major editor. The initial subscription list was built around Louise Lawrence’s address book, and the subscription list for Edith Ferguson’s instruction course. Arnold contributed under the name Muriel. While only two issues were made, they were mailed to all the cross-dressers that they could identify in the United States and to sympathetic doctors and sexologists including Alfred Kinsey. Without paid subscriptions, the project proved to be too expensive to continue. This was at the same time as the fledgling homophile organization, ONE, Inc started selling its magazine. The first attempt to ban it by the US Post Office occurred a year later. At the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) School of Medicine Elmer Belt had started doing controversial sex change operations.

    For the group at Joan Thornton's, there was a question of who was a transvestite. Louise Lawrence had written that the group includes "heterosexuals, there are definite fetishists, sadists, masochists, voyeurs, homosexuals, etc.", and Edith Ferguson had previously been a female impersonator. However there were cross-dressers who were not invited such as fellow Angeleno and heterosexual Edward D. Wood, Angeleno Sascha Brastoff, José Sarria who was starting to organize fellow drag queens in San Francisco, and the majority of female impersonators, such as those who performed at Finocchio's in San Francisco. Nor was the invitation extended to female cross-dressers. While Lowman maintained that women were free to wear what they liked, many women in Los Angeles, mainly lesbians, were being arrested for 'masquerading' and dumped in the Daddy Tank at Lincoln Heights jail. One of these was Nancy Valverde who was arrested many times in this period.

    In 1953 when Arnold was attempting to modify his visiting rights and reduce his alimony, he was again named in the press as a transvestite and his father threatened to disown him. This was at the same time that Christine Jorgensen was in the news after returning from Denmark, and it was announced that Bela Lugosi’s next film would be called Transvestite. The director, Edward D Wood, announced that the film, which was eventually called Glen or Glenda, would have no relation to the transvestite divorce story then in the Los Angeles newspapers. The judge ruled in favor of Arnold who was allowed custody one day a week and alternate holidays, increased the son’s support to $60 and discontinued the alimony payments. However Dorothy moved back to Minnesota with Brent. Arnold called on her some years later. They had a cordial evening, but then never saw each other again.

    Harry Benjamin had helped Lowman with “parental and marital problems” (TV&Wife: 6, Ekins & King, 2006: 81), and put him on female hormones, which he continued for a few years. As Virginia, Arnold wrote to Christine Jorgensen that he had "a missionary complex" and hoped to "alleviate the lot of our kind in the social scheme" (quoted in Meyerowitz:182). Benjamin arranged for Virginia to have a personal interview with Christine and her mother while they were in Los Angeles ( Ekins & King, 2006: 235n4; Docter 2008:xii). As Prince later admitted, at this time he was considering sexual surgery: "If I had had the money at the time, I would have taken the boat to Europe". ("The Life and Times of Virginia", Transvestia, 100, 1979; TS&PseudoTS :271).

    In 1954 the LAPD raided LaVie Cafe in Altadena and arrested five 'men' for wearing women's clothes. Tamara Rees, another ex-GI turned female was in town to do a burlesque show. Elmer Belt discontinued doing sex-change operations after a committee of doctors decided against it, but restarted a few years later.









     1. Docter:18 says that George Washington Ferris was Arnold's great-great grandfather. As George Ferris lived 1859-96 this seemed improbable. With the aid of genealogy sites I was able to construct the following:

                                            Silvanus Ferris (1773-1861)
                                                            |
                                              _______________________
                                              |                                   |
                Henry Ferris (1809 -1891)                       George Ferris (1818 - 1895)
                                              |                                    |
                Ella Ferris Arnold (1842 – 1929)               George Ferris (1859 – 1896)
                                              |
                Elizabeth Arnold (1899 - 1968)
                                              |
                           Arnold Lowman

    Hence George Ferris was Arnold's grandmother's cousin. While he built the first Ferris Wheel, he died alone and impoverished, of typhoid at age 37.

    2. Docter:19 says that the Lowmans lived at 123 South Hobart Avenue until Arnold was eight. According to Google Maps, there is no such address. It must be South Hobart Boulevard. However ferristree.com says that the first address was 7121 Senalda Road which is in the Hollywood Hills.

    They then moved to 867 Victoria Avenue "two blocks off Wilshire Boulevard … in the Hancock Park neighborhood". There is such an address, in the Venice district. However South Victoria Avenue is close to Wilshire Boulevard.

    _________________

    Arnold went to a Christian School, met his wife in church, did his early drag appearances at church Halloween socials, and as we will see in Part II the first meeting of the Hose and Heel club was in a church building. After that we hear no more about any involvement with a church.

    Arnold completed his PhD in 1939 at the age of 27. The US joined WWII two years later. There is no mention in any of the sources that he was called to be inducted into the military. Did the military not want qualified pharmacists? It is difficult to believe that the Arnold who had not yet met Louise Lawrence avoided service by confessing his transvestism, and being refused.

    For some reason the Find-a-Grave page on Elizabeth Arnold does not link to either husband or children (although it does say "cremains buried with the Prince family - Ferris family relations ").