John Edgar Hoover (1895 - 1972) police management.

John Edgar was born and raised in Washington D.C. He studied law at George Washington University. He worked for the Justice Department during the Great War, and was promoted to head of the Enemy Aliens Registration section. He was then head of the new General Intelligence Division and then in 1921 he joined the Bureau of Investigation as deputy head.

Hoover was Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation from 1924 until his death. A vocal patriot, he had avoided service in the First World War; a public Christian, he never went to church; a man with black ancestors, regarded by the black community as passing as white, he proved his whiteness by refusing to employ black agents, by ferociously opposing all movements for racial equality, by slandering and persecuting Marcus Garvey, Paul Robeson and Martin Luther King.

Publicly homophobic, he started an affair with rookie agent Clyde Tolson in 1927, promoting him to Assistant Director within three years. The affair continued until Hoover's death 45 years later, although they never lived together.

On the take from, and being blackmailed by, organized crime, Hoover always insisted that there was no such a thing as the Mafia, and always understaffed or removed any team that was supposed to be fighting organized crime. He always made sure that he had information about the current U.S. president so that he would not be removed.

Anthony Summers' 1993 biography tells how photos of Hoover in drag were being circulated in a political gay crowd associated with the Maystat Tavern at 1628 L St NW in Washington in 1948. Susan Rosentiel, wife of Lewis, the owner of Schenley distillers, has told how she met such right-wing gays as Roy Cohn and Cardinal Spellman, and how twice in 1958 and 1959 she attended an orgy party at New York's Plaza Hotel, next to Central Park, where she met 'Mary' Hoover in short skirt, wig and stockings.

Hoover was made a Knight of the British Empire (KBE) 1950, and was warded the National Security Medal 1955, and the Distinguished Service Award 1966.

He introduced the 1945 film The House on 92nd Street which is about a female German agent in New York who passes as male.

In Woody Allen’s film Bananas, 1971. Dorothi Fox plays a middle-aged black woman who is J. Edgar Hoover in disguise. Had Woody Allen heard some rumors?

• Anthony Summers. Official and Confidential: the Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, London: Victor Gollancz, 528 pp 1993. New York: Pocket Star Books 1994: 254.
• William Cran (dir & scr). The Secret File on J.Edgar Hoover. Based on the book by Anthony Summers. US 55 mins 1993.
• “J. Edgar Hoover”. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Edgar_Hoover.
•  "The Classic Detective".  Aangirfan. May 20, 2009.  http://aangirfan.blogspot.com/2009/05/classic-detective.html
• Anthony Summers.  "The Secret Life of J Edgar Hoover".   The Observer, 1 Jan 2012.   www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/jan/01/j-edgar-hoover-secret-fbi

Demet Demir (1961-) Turkish activist.

Demet was born in Yalova. She has been a trans activist since 1980 when she was jailed after the 1980 military coup. She was jailed again in 1982, and again with torture in 1991. She was also arrested many times while working as a prostitute.

She established the first sexual minorities’ commission within the (Turkish) Human Rights Organization. She took part in the successful campaigns against article 159, which prevented married women working without their husbands’ consent, and article 438, which decreases the punishment by one third in cases where the female victim is a prostitute.

She was the first trans woman and the first person considered a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International because of “sexual orientation”. She completed transition in 1996.

International Lesbian and Gay Human Rights Commission awarded her the 1997 Felipa de Souza Award.

On returning to Turkey after receiving the award, she was re-arrested within hours when she tried to help a young girl who was being beaten by police officers for selling handerchiefs to help a transgender workshop.

She was a local government candidate in 1999 election.

• Ayliz Baskin. “Interview with Demet Demir, A Turkish Transgender Activist”. Kaos GL http://news.kaosgl.com/item/56.
• Demet Demir. “Demet Demir’ Speech”. Lamda Istanbul www.qrd.org/qrd/www/world/europe/turkey/demet.htm

The first transvestite to climb Mount Everest

Maurice Wilson (1898 – 1934) was descended from wool-mill owners in Bradford, Yorkshire. In the Great War, he rose through the ranks and became a Captain. He fought at Passchendaele, and won the Military Cross in an engagement near the village of Meteren. Later his left arm was permanently injured by machine gun fire.

After the War he worked on a sheep farm and then ran a ladies’ clothing shop in New Zealand for a while. On the boat home he met a group of yogis, and at home when he contracted tuberculosis he cured himself by fasting and prayer.

He decided to climb the then unconquered Mt Everest/Chomolungma. He had never climbed any mountain before. He bought an aeroplane to fly to India. He had never flown an aeroplane before. He took some lessons, crashed the plane only once and then flew to India with a simple map using the coastlines. The British Government of India impounded his aeroplane when he arrived.

He escaped and made his way though Tibet dressed as a monk. After a few failed attempts, his Sherpas refused to go on, and he continued alone, without extra oxygen. His body was found a year later and given a mountain funeral: he was tossed into a glacier. When his body was found, he was wearing female underwear, and the Chinese expedition of 1960 found a woman’s dress shoe. Mountaineering forums debate whether he died on the way up or on the way down - if the latter, he was the first European to climb the mountain, 19 years before Edmund Hillary.

• Dennis Roberts. I'll climb Mount Everest alone; the story of Maurice Wilson. London: R. Hale 1957.
• Peter Meier-Hüsing. Wo die Schneelöwen tanzen: Maurice Wilsons vergessene Everest-Besteigung(Where the Snowdoves Dances: Maurice Wilson’s Forgotten Climb of Everest). München: Malik 288 pp 2003. München: Piper 2004.
• Thomas Noy. “Who Climbed Everest First?” Everest News. Jun 26, 2003. www.mounteverest.net/story/stories/WhoclimbedEverestfirstJun262003.shtml. www.mounteverest.net/story/stories/WhoclimbedEverestfirstPartIIofIIIJun272003.shtml. and www.mounteverest.net/story/stories/WhoclimbedEverestfirstPartIIIofIIIJun292003.shtml.
• “A German author gives his perspective on Maurice Wilson”. Everest News . Jul 3, 2003. www.mounteverest.net/story/stories/AGermanauthorgiveshisperspectiveonMauriceWilsonJul32003.shtml. About Peter Meier-Hüsing and his book on Wilson.
• Mike Harding. Yorkshire Transvestite Found Dead on Everest. Hayloft Publishing 200 pp 2005. And other essays. Associated web-page: www.mikeharding.co.uk/books/other/ytran/ytran.html.
• Geoff Powter. Strange and Dangerous Dreams: The Fine Line Between Adventure and Madness. Seattle: Mountaineers Books 256 pp 2006. One of the eleven mountaineers is Maurice Wilson.
• "Maurice Wilson". Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Wilson

Desiré Dubounet (1951 - ) inventer, fraudster, genius, Maitreya, singer, film-maker, LGBT activist.

William Nelson was born in Ohio. In the late 1980s, he was an out-of-work math instructor in Colorado when he built an electronic machine, which he called the EPFX (Electro-Physio-Feedback-Xrroid System), which he said would diagnose and eliminate all diseases from Aids to cancer. The US Food and Drug Administration indicted him on felony fraud charges in 1996, and he relocated to Budapest and continues to sell his machine world-wide including in the US for up to $55,000 each.

By Desiré’s own account, 18-year-old Bill Nelson was on the Apollo 13 engineering team and on his own rescued the return to Earth; was an alternate member of the 1986 US Olympics gymnastics team; and later was nominated for a Nobel Prize in medicine. She claims that William has eight doctorates. Desiré’s web site describes herself as “easily by far the most colorful, interesting, intelligent and courageous person in the world today”. She also says “Bill recognizes that he is the Maitreya predicted in Buddhist legend”.

William had two wives and two children. Both wives left him when he revealed that he was a transvestite. However he claims that his medical for his immigration to Hungary revealed that he also has ovaries. 

His current Hungarian wife of 10 years is accepting of his female side, and in 2002 William became Desiré Dubounet. She regularly performs with her band, Hunz, at conventions for fans of her machines and in her own club. He also makes films at a Budapest studio, and is a activist for LGBT rights in Hungary. 

*Not the country singer, Willie Nelson.

• Michael J. Berens and Christine Willmsen. “How one man's invention is part of a growing worldwide scam that snares the desperately ill”. The Seattle Times. Nov 19, 2007. seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2004020583_miracle18m2.html.
• Stephen Barrett. “Some Notes on the Quantum Xrroid (QXCI) and William C. Nelson”. Quackwatch. www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/Tests/xrroid.html.
• “Transvestite Trouble (II): Leave Desiré Dubounet Alone!”. Pestiside.hu www.pestiside.hu/archives/transvestite_trouble_ii_leave_desire_dubounet_alone003608.php.
• Katrina Fox. “2007: A Trans Odyssey”. The Angels. Feb 03, 2007. www.theangels.co.uk/blog/2007/02/2007-trans-odyssey.html.
• Bruce Marshall (dir). Who’s Afraid of Desire Dubounet? Hungary 70 mins 2007.
• www.theqxci.com/qxci_nelson.html.
• www.desifm.net. www.desire-dubounet.info.

Twitter

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This is an interesting test case re the issue of how one should balance journalism against the person's own website.

Note the sympathetic article by Katrina Fox. This is the same Katrina Fox who is spouse to Tracie O'Keefe and co-editor of Finding the Real Me: True Tales of Sex & Gender Diversity, 2003.

Neat name for the English-language Hungarian magazine published in the city of Pest.

Lynda Cash (1950 - ) sailor, operating theatre technician.

Brian Waling from Bolton, Lancashire worked as an operating theatre technician and joined the Royal Navy in 1971. He married and had one child.

During the Falklands War, 1982, he served on HMS Invincible treating seriously injured servicemen.

In 1986 he started to transition and was discharged from the Navy. As Lynda, she had surgery in 1988. She then worked for North Manchester Healthcare NHS Trust. She met her boyfriend on a trip to Chester, but waited five years before telling him about her past. He stayed with her.

She has war flashbacks and post traumatic stress disorder. In 1999, she appealed to a tribunal claiming unfair dismissal and medical negligence. This claim was dismissed. She then appealed on grounds of sex discrimination, but was dismissed on the grounds that the time limit had expired in 1995. She then applied for a sickness pension in that it was post-traumatic stress rather than her gender change that had made her unsuitable to stay in the Navy. A letter from the Naval Personnel Secretariat said: “Because her post-traumatic stress disorder remained undiagnosed or acknowledged, her gender dysphoria and its apparent effects became the primary reason for dealing with her case administratively”. She was awarded £68,000 in back pension payments.

• “Sex-swap Navy veteran's five-year secret life”. Bolton Evening News 18 Aug 1999. http://archive.lancashireeveningtelegraph.co.uk/1999/8/18/761094.html.
• “Lynda Cash-es in with £70,000”. Bolton Evening News 22 Oct 1999. http://archive.prestoncitizen.co.uk/1999/10/22/753524.html.
• Michael Paterson. “Sex change medic wins Navy pension”. The Daily Telegraph 25 August 1999. Online at: www.pfc.org.uk/node/845.

Thierry Paulin (1963 – 1989) soldier, drag performer, murderer.

Thierry was born in Martinique. His father returned to France, abandoning his son and the boy's mother. When he was 10, his behaviour was erratic, and his father agreed to take him to avoid paying alimony.


At school in Toulouse and later in the French Army parachute troop, he was rejected because of his skin colour. His army career ended when he was convicted of robbing a female grocer.

He became a drag performer at the Paris nightclub, Paradis Latin, where he impersonated Eartha Kitt. He met his lover Jean-Thierry Mathurin, from French Guyana, at the nightclub.

Sometimes with his lover, from 1984-1987 Paulin murdered at least 20 elderly women for small amounts of money. Though he was captured, Paulin died of AIDS-related complications before going to trial.


His partner, Jean-Thierry (right), served a life sentence, and was released in 2009.
Paulin is referred to as the ‘Beast of Montmartre’, and his story was filmed as J'ai pas sommeil.

• Clair Denis (scr & dir). J'ai pas sommeil. Scr: Jean-Pol Fargeau, with Richard Courcet as Camille Moisson (Thierry Paulin). France/Switzerland 112 mins 1994.
• “Thierry Paulin”. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thierry_Paulin.
• “Thierry Paulin and Jean-Thierry Mathurin: The ‘Old Ladies Killer’ and the ‘Monster of Montmartre’". www.francesfarmersrevenge.com/stuff/serialkillers/paulin.htm

Gladys Bentley (1907 – 1960) Blues singer.

Bentley was born in Trinidad and raised in Philadelphia by a US father and a Trinidadian mother.

She became a Blues singer, mainly famous in the 1930s when she performed by playing piano and singing naughty parodies of blues standards in a deep voice at gay speakeasies in New York. She normally dressed in men’s attire, usually a tuxedo and top hat, and flirted with women in the audience. She appeared at The Clam House on 133^rd St and at Harlem’s Ubangi Club, where she was backed by a chorus of men in drag.

After prohibition, she moved to southern California, and was frequently harassed for wearing men’s clothing. She claimed that she had married a white woman in Atlantic City. During the repressive 1950s, she felt obliged to wear dresses, pretended that she had married a man, and, in a fabricated article for Ebony magazine, claimed that female hormones had ‘cured’ her.

She was about to be ordained as a minister when she died of pneumonia at age 54.

• “Gladys Bentley”. Queer Culture Center. www.queerculturalcenter.org/Pages/Bentley/Index.html.
• “Gladys Bentley”. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladys_Bentley

Here is a clip of her with Groucho Marx on You Bet Your Life in the late 1950. http://video.google.ca/videosearch?rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&um=1&q=gladys%20bentley&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wv