Chi Chi LaRue (1959 - ) porn director, drag performer.

Larry Paciotti was born in Hibbing, Minnesota, Bob Dylan's home town. He was first influenced by glam-rock, and became half of a drag-duo in Minneapolis.


When he moved to California his extensive knowledge of pornography got him a job as an administrative assistant. In first years of AIDS, when directors in the industry were dying off, he was able to talk himself into directing gay porn. However he wasn’t considered butch enough, until his other career as a drag performer started to take off.

Chi Chi LaRue also works as a disc jockey. Later he also directed straight porn. He has won many awards from the porn industry. Has also directed as David Lawrence and Taylor Hudson. He was a friend of the late Karen Dior and introduced her to the porn business.

*No relation to Danny La Rue.

• Chi Chi Larue with John Erich. Making It Big: Sex Stars, Porn Films, and Me. Alyson Books 250 pp 1997.
• Mike Aho (dir). Sex Becomes Her: The True Life Story of Chi Chi LaRue with Chi Chi Larue. US 70 mins 2001.
• Angie Carlson. “Sex Becomes Him: How one portly, effeminate lad from Minnesota rose to the top of the gay porn industry”. The Independent Weekly. Aug 8, 2001. www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/PrintFriendly?oid=16264. 

EN.WIKIPEDIA    IMDB   IMPERIAL COURT TRANS HERO

Vernon Coleman (1946 - ) doctor, columnist, self publisher.

Vernon was born and grew up in Walsall, West Midlands, the son of an electrical engineer. He qualified as a doctor and was a general practitioner in Leamington Spa for a decade, but rebelled against the form-filling.


His first book, The Medicine Men, 1975, accused the National Health Service of being controlled by the drug companies. It was serialized in The Guardian. He has written for The Daily Star and The Sun, and had a regular column in The People. He met his second wife when she wrote to his column in The People.

He took up self-publishing when no-one would publish his novel written from the viewpoint of his cat – he has now sold over 50,000 copies of it. One of his best-sellers is How to Stop Your Doctor from Killing You. He has sold over two million copies of his 90 books.

He gave up his People column in 2003 when the editor would not publish his comments on the war in Iraq. He now lives in Devon, still using WordPerfect 5.1. He writes against medical malpractice, animal testing, the drug companies and vaccination. He is a vegan.


He came out as a transvestite in 1995. He is a member of The Beaumont Society, but is critical of it for having transsexuals as members. He surveyed 1,016 male transvestites and published the results as Men in Dresses. He does not identify with gays, transsexuals or drag queens. He argues that transvestites are not homosexual, that they do not do it for sexual thrills, and that they do not develop into transsexuals. He estimates transvestites as around 10% of the male population - which is very similar to the positions of The Beaumont Society.

• Vernon Coleman. Men in dresses : a study of transvestism/crossdressing. Barnstable: European Medical Journal 1996.
• Esther Walker. “The doctor will see you now: Who does Vernon Coleman think he is?”. The Independent. 14 May 2008. www.independent.co.uk/news/people/the-doctor-will-see-you-now-who-does-vernon-coleman-think-he-is-827603.html.
• www.vernoncoleman.com. His articles on crossdressing are at www.vernoncoleman.com/dan1.htm, www.vernoncoleman.com/dan2.htm, www.vernoncoleman.com/thethreemyths.htm, www.vernoncoleman.com/andwhydosome.htm and the summary of Men in Dresses is at www.vernoncoleman.com/downloads/mid.htm.
• “Vernon Coleman”. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernon_coleman.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

As this site is inclusive, we really do not relate to Coleman's separatism.

One is instantly suspicious of anyone who has published 90 books. How could he have found the time to do the relevant research for each one? This suspicion seems quite germain in his writings on crossdressing. He does not cite any other writers. One would expect him to at least mention Virginia Prince who was saying almost the same things over 40 years ago - but he does not.

He seems quite unaware of the biases that are introduced by the methods of selecting a sample.

His survey included the following question with the indicated percentage response:

Question asked: Why do you do it?

Note: Respondents were invited to tick as many options as they liked.
a) Because I like the feeling of women’s clothes: 321 (77%)
b) Because it gives me a sexual kick: 244 (59%)
c) Because it helps me relax and deal with stress: 202 (48%)
d) Because I want to be like a woman: 262 (63%) .

The issue of sexual arousal in crossdressing is contentious. It was certainly exaggerated by psychoanalysts who tried to define the sexual arousal as a a central trait. Many of us have rejected this on the simple grounds that one cannot pass if one is aroused. However how can Coleman report that 59% of his respondents say that they crossdress "Because it gives me a sexual kick", and then conclude

"The second well-established myth about transvestites is that men who wear the sort of clothes normally worn by women do so because they get a sexual thrill out of it. This absurd piece of nonsense was created by doctors who couldn't understand why else men would want to put on dresses. Despite the fact that there is not and never has been any evidence to support this theory many psychiatrists, doctors, psychologists and social workers still believe it."

 His own survey is one of the strongest pieces of evidence for what he calls a myth.

There is a transsexual site by Leyla that reproduces two of Coleman's pages, but does not explain why she thinks that he is the person to best explain transsexuality.

Lily Savage (1955 - 2023) performer.

Is it Paul O' Grady, or is it Lily Savage, who got an MBE in the the Queen's birthday honours in 2008.

Paul O’Grady was born in Birkenhead, Merseyside. As a young adult Paul fathered a daughter with a female lover, and married a Portuguese lesbian in a marriage of convenience. Later he was openly gay.

In 1977 he worked as a waiter in a brothel in Manila, and came back with the concept of Lily Savage. In the early 1980s Lily played gay clubs and pubs and did an eight-year residency at The Royal Vauxhall Tavern in London. She also appeared in double and treble acts and appeared across Europe. She was nominated for a Perrier Award at The Edinburgh Festival.

From there she appeared on ITV daytime programmes, and then her own comedy shows, on both BBC and ITV. She has also done pantomime, and played a recurring prostitute snout called Roxanne in several episodes of the police serial, The Bill, listed as her male persona, Paul Savage.

Paul lived for 20 years with his lover, Brendan Murphy, until the latter’s death in 2005. From 2000 on, Paul O’Grady has increasingly appeared, first in travelogues, in a BBC sitcom, and then with The Paul O’Grady Show. He announced that Lily had retired to a convent in Brittany - but she keeps escaping.

His daughter is married, and has made him a grandfather.

In 2017 he married Andre Portasio.

Paul died age 67. 

• Amber M. Beattie & Martine Boon. Lily Savage – The Blonde Bomb Site. Online.

 
EN.Wikipedia    IMDB.

Issan Dorsey (1933 - 90) sailor, female impersonator, zen priest.

Tommy Dorsey grew up in Santa Barbara, California, the eldest son of Catholic parents. He came out as gay while in the US navy, and on being discovered he and his lover were given an Undesirable Discharge under Honorable Conditions.

In San Francisco in the early 1950s he got into doing drugs including heroin, and some transvestitic hustling. He became a stage female impersonator using the name Tommy Dee, and at this date one of the very few to have grown his own hair long. He was billed as ‘the boy who looks like the girl next door’, and his major performance was of ‘Hard-Hearted Hanna’.

He toured over most of the United States and Canada in this role. In 1962 he was the only survivor of a car-full of drag queens that crashed on route from New York to Rochester, although he suffered medical problems from it in later years.

In the late 1960s he began exploring Buddhism at the San Francisco Zen Center. He was ordained as a priest with the name Issan Dainei ('One Mountain, Great Peace). He was known as a priest particularly open to persons living on the margin. He worked with a soup kitchen, and was one of the key founders of the Hartford Street Zen Center in the gay Castro District in 1981.

His work with AIDS patients in the 1980s grew into an AIDS hospice. He died of AIDS-related complications.

*Not Tommy Dorsey the big band musician.

• Tensh David Schneider. Street Zen: The Life and Work of Issan Dorsey. Shambhala 1993.
• Kobai Scott Whitney. "The Lone Mountain Path: AIDS in the Life and Death of Issan Dorsey Roshi". Shambhala Sun. March 1998. www.shambhalasun.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1980. Also at: www.lo.redjupiter.com/gems/hartfordstreet/IssanAIDS.html.
• Jonathan Walters (dir). The Posture Queen. Scr: Jack Gibson, Choreography: Mark Hayes, Tobias Lawrence & Heather Pearl. A play with song and dance, based on the life of Tommy Dorsey. US 2001.
• “Issan Dorsey”. LGBT Religious Archives Network. March 2004. www.lgbtran.org/Profile.asp?A=E&ID=63.

Maria Gioacchina Stajano Starace (1932 - 2011) writer, actor, journalist, painter.

Gioacchino Stajano was born in the province of Lecce in southern Italy. His uncle was the notable fascist, Achille Starace.  At age 12, with the fall of fascism, his parents separated and he was sent to a Jesuit school.

Giò completed his education at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, and the architectural university in Rome.

In 1956 Giò exhibited his paintings with some success, but is better known for scandal and literature. Asked by a woman if he were a man dressed as a woman or a woman dressed as a man, he answered that he was ‘frocio’ dressed as a frocio.

In 1959, he wrote and published the autobiographical Roma capovolta about the café society soon to be made famous by Federico Fellini in La dolce vita. As it was explicitly gay, it was banned as contrary to public morals. The media attention made Giò the most famous homosexual in Italy.

Next Giò wrote Meglio l’uovo oggi ( = a better egg today), a roman a clef about gay life in Rome, including that of the former king Umberto II.  Giò wrote Roma Erotica. These were also banned, but not until after he had sold many copies. Stejano was famous. He opened a bar. He worked with the drag star Dominot. He inspired Fellini by bathing fully dressed in a fountain, which was copied in La dolce vita, 1960, with Anita Ekberg doing the bathing. He was in La dolca vita, but he quarrelled with the producer and lost his credit.

1958-61 Giò worked for Lo Specchio, a scandal rag. In 1961, during the Ballette Verdi gay scandal, he was interrogated by magistrates, and as a protest, he appeared in court in female mourning drag.

In the late 1960s Giò wrote for Men, a fashion and gossip magazine, as a comical agony aunt, Il salotto di Oscar Wilde. This was the only gay column in Italy at the time. In 1971 he became the director of the magazine. He never identified with the gay movement, but they were interested in him.

In 1983 Giò transitioned to female, and became Maria Gioacchina Stajano Starace, Contessa Briganti di Panico, although she still used 'Giò' in her public life. Her first interview was with Il Borghese for which he had written as ‘Pantera Rosa’, mainly about Roman aristocracy.

In 1992 she published her autobiography La mia vita scandalosa, thus being the first Italian to publish on being gay and the first on being transgender.

In her later years Giò returned to the village of her birth, and returned to the Church. She declared to the press that she wanted to enter a nunnery but church does not recognize her gender.

She died in a retirement home aged 79.   

Giò was in 9 films in addition to La dolce vita:

Avventura a Capri, 1958.
Gli scontenti, 1959.
La ragazza di mille mesi, 1961.
Totò, Peppino e...la dolce vita, 1961.
Caccia all'uomo, 1961.
In nome del popolo italiano, 1971.
Gli amici di Nick Hezard, 1976.
Il comune senso del pudore, 1976.
Nerone, 1977.

• Giò Stajano. Roma capovolta. Roma: Quattrucci 1959.
• Giò Stajano. La mia vita scandalosa. Milano: Sperling & Kupfer Editori 1992.
• Giò Stajano and Willy Vaira. Pubblici scandali e private virtù: Dalla Dolce Vita al convento. Manni Editori 136 pp 2007.

 IT.WIKIPEDIA

Sándor Vay (1859 - 1918) novelist.

Sarolta Vay was born into an old Hungarian family of eccentrics. Her father brought her up as a boy, Sándor, encouraging muscular activities, riding, driving and hunting. This father also permitted his second son to be a girl and dress as female, but only until he went to a higher school at the age of fifteen.

Sándor had a temporary interruption in his preferred gender when staying with a grandmother in Dresden. He was placed in an institution and forced to wear dresses. However he had a love-relationship with an English girl and they ran away together.

After this Sándor was allowed to be a boy. He travelled much with his father and was quite independent, spending much time in cafés and brothels, frequently using the title 'Count'. He was a skilful fencer and enthusiastic drinker. He frequently fell in love with older women, always pretty ones, and he had no sexual interest in men. He also became a published writer. His affairs were short lived, perhaps not surprisingly for one so young, and with a secret.

In 1884, when he was eighteen, he fell in love with Emma, who was ten years older. They made a marriage contract and lived together for three years, until Sándor met Marie. Only for a large sum of money was Sándor able to break his contract with Emma, who announced herself to the world as the divorced Countess Vay.

Sándor's new affair was opposed by Marie's mother and cousin. But the following spring, 1888, Marie gave up her position as a teacher and they were married 'by a pseudo-priest'. There is no indication that the new in-laws thought of Sándor as anything but male. However the servants in the hotel where they lived seem to have had him figured out. The chambermaids found traces of menstrual blood on the bed linen, and once they looked through a keyhole while he took a bath.

However Sándor had a falling out with his father-in-law over a bond that was required if he were to become secretary of a stock company. The issue was reported to the authorities and the facts of his life came out. This resulted in a physical examination. The court granted pardon, and allowed him to go on living as a man, but he was very distressed in that he had lost his Marie.

He later became known in Hungary for his 12 novels, none of which have been translated into English:

• C. Birnbacher, “Ein Fall von konträren Sexualempfindung vor dem Strafgericht(A case of cross-sexuality in criminal court)” Friedreichsblätter für gerichtliche Medizin 42, no.1 (1891): 2–42. The original account, based on the court records.
• R. V., Krafft-Ebing. Psychopathia Sexualis: With Special Reference To The Antiseptic Sexual Instinct: A Medico-Forensic Study. Paperback Library - 1965 Case 166 p428-438. Based on Birnbacher, rewritten as psychology.
• Hanna Hacker. Frauen und Freundinnen: Studien zur “Weiblichen Homosexualität” am Beispiel Österreich, 1870–1938. Weinheim/ Basel,Austria: Beltz Verlag, 1987: 40–70, 70–75.
• Geertje Mak. "Sandor/Sarolta Vay: From Passing Woman to Sexual Invert" Journal of Women's History. Volume 16, Number 1, 2004, pp. 54-77.
• Onagy Zoltán. Vay Sarolta/Sándor a Kiegyezés korából. http://onagy.zoltan.terasz.hu/index.php?id=2656. 

HU.Wikipedia

William Alexander Hammond (1828 – 1900) doctor; Lida (?1857 - 81) cigar retailer.

William Hammond was raised in Pennsylvania, and took an MD from the University of the City of New York in 1848. The next year he became a surgeon in the US Army until 1860 when he accepted the chair of anatomy and physiology at the University of Maryland. In 1857 he won a medical prize for an essay on Albumen used as a food.

He rejoined the Union Army in the US Civil War and rose to be Surgeon General. After the army, he moved to New York, and became professor of nervous and mental diseases at Bellevue Medical College in 1867. In 1874 he founded the American Neurological Association.

In his book, Sexual Impotence in the Male, 1883, Dr Hammond tells us of one his patients who used the name Lida when in the female role. He had at the age of seven discovered the pleasure of anal stimulation, and at boarding school he was pleased to act the 'rôle of the passive' with various boys, frequently half a dozen times a night. When he left school at the age of 15, his 'health [was] shattered, his nervous system irritable, with almost constant headaches' and various anal problems. The patient took work as a cigar dealer, and took as a lover a young man in the liquor trade. Lida would array herself in pretty attire as she waited for her lover to return home. After three years this affair was abruptly ended when the liquor dealer had to flee from police inquiring into a gambling operation with which he was engaged. Lida looked for a new lover, but found it difficult to state her preferences given the legal persecution of the time. She did however find an older man of about fifty who was very 'salacious' and would have relations with her three or four times a day. Lida developed an anal fissure and began to suffer epileptic fits during intercourse. She went to see Dr Hammond, who prescribed bromides (sedatives). The doctor was 'not prepared for the horrible instance of depravity' which he elicited from the patient. Hammond was amazed that the patient had had intercourse over ten thousand times, and had repeatedly been tempted to have her genitals amputated. Hammond reports that the young 'man' died in trouble in Cuba where 'he had gone for his health'.

In 1882 Hammond delivered a paper to the American Neurological Association on the ‘disease’ that makes men think that they are women, giving examples from Native American tribes.

Hammond suggested that homosexual patients be "cauterized (at) the nape of the neck and the lower dorsal and lumbar regions" every 10 days.

• William A. Hammond. Sexual Impotence in the Male. New York: Bermingham 1883. Expanded edition: Sexual Impotence in the Male and Female. Detroit: George S. Davis 1887; reprinted New York: Arno Press. 1974: 55-70.
• “William Alexander Hammond”. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Alexander_Hammond.
• Jonathan Ned Katz. Gay/Lesbian Almanac: A New Documentary, Harper & Row Publishers, Inc. 1983, Carrol & Graf Publishers, Inc. 1994: 185-6.