Murry Pickford (? - 1976) drag performer.

Murry Pickford of  Boston was deaf-and-dumb. She worked a drag act with pigeons that she insisted were doves.

In 1947, when female impersonation was banned in Boston at the instigation of the Catholic Archbishop, she went to the officials and pleaded that because of her disability, she had no other way to make a living. She was issued a special license, and was the only drag queen then working in Boston.

• Minette, edited by Steven Watson. Recollections of a part-time Lady. New York: Flower-Beneath-the-Foot Press 1979: 22-3.

William Smith (190? - ?) farm worker.

William Smith worked in Queensland as a farm labourer, drover, railway navvy and cane cutter in the 1920s. He obtained 851 acres of land, but lost it and his cattle after a severe drought. He returned to labouring and moved with the seasonal farm work.

In 1928 he rode into New South Wales.  He took employment at the Waterside Estates. He agreed to a pay cut in the middle of a drought on agreement of higher wages afterwards. The drought broke in March 1929 but from then on he was not paid at all. He quit in May, and in June took legal action claiming £39 12s 3d.

Thomas Waters, the employer, first avoided the claim by transferring the property to his wife, and declaring bankruptcy, and then by claiming that William Smith was a woman. Smith gave interviews to a few newspapers in which he admitted that he might not be male. He was admired as a “plucky Sydney girl” trying to survive.

The first court case was on 28 August 1929 and Matilda Waters, now the owner of the farm, made a counter claim of £45 12s 3d for the keep of Smith and his horse. The defence solicitor pursued the argument that Smith was a woman based on the newspapers articles. Smith conceded that he he might be a ‘half-and-half’ or a hermaphrodite. The agreed wages had been at a male rate.

There were several adjournments and the second hearing was heard on 13 November. A doctor testified that Smith was a woman but with the muscular development of a man and capable of doing physical work as well as a man.

Evidence was also admitted through cross-examination that Thomas Waters had a previous conviction of obtaining £350 through false pretences, was a declared bankrupt and had been committed for trial on two charges of false pretences. The magistrate criticized Smith as “not an entirely truthful witness”, but but awarded him the full amount claimed plus £1 5s 3d cost. The counter claim was denied.

*Not the jockey, Bill Smith.

• Ruth Ford. “'Prove first you're a male': A Farmhand's Claim for Wages in 1929 Australia”. Labour History 90 2006: 52. www.historycooperative.org/journals/lab/90/ford.html.

Enza Anderson (1964 - ) civil engineer, political candidate, journalist.

Enzo Anderson was born and raised in Toronto by Italian-immigrant parents.  He graduated as a civil engineer in 1988, and worked as a supervisor at a concrete manufacturer.

At weekends he hung out with drag queens in Toronto’s gay village. When he was laid off, she became Enza and worked at a gay bar. She started calling herself ‘Supermodel’ although she has never walked a runway.


In 1998 she was on the cover of the Toronto Sun giving the then Toronto mayor, Mel Lastman, a sloppy kiss at the end of Pride. Two years later she ran against him for the office of mayor and came in third. In 2002 she ran for the leadership of the homophobic Canadian Alliance Party (previously the Reform Party and now the Conservative Party). Stephen Harper (now Prime Minister) won, and Anderson had to drop out because she was not raising enough money. In 2003 she ran against the city incumbent in the Toronto downtown ward, and came second.

In the same year, she had breast enhancement, charging it to her credit card.


She got herself a job writing for the free daily, Metro, by cold-calling the Toronto editor and reminding her of her political runs. She profiles Toronto’s party scene, attending 200 parties a year, and also profiles transit users. She also contributes to Fab and to Xtra.

She has done volunteer work with AIDS and gay youth charities, and was on the Police Liaison Committee.

In 2008 she was Grand Marshall for Toronto Pride.

She has a small part in the 2010 horror movie, Horrorween.

• Antoine Tedesco. “My date with Enza: Enza "Supermodel" Anderson: drag queen, politician, and a great set of legs too” Scene and Heard. 2002. www.sceneandheard.ca/archive/V2_03/focus_enza.htm.
• Chris Dupuis. “Pride grand marshall: Model citizen”. Xtra June 19, 2008. www.xtra.ca/public/viewstory.aspx?AFF_TYPE=3&STORY_ID=4952&PUB_TEMPLATE_ID=2.
• Rita Zekas. “Enza gets her Marilyn moment”. The Toronto Star. Jun 21, 2008. www.thestar.com/living/article/444921.
• “Enza Anderson”. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enza_Anderson.

Beth Elliott (1950 - ) singer, activist, writer.

++ revised August 2011.

Beth transitioned to female in her late teens. She became a hippy singer/ songwriter, sometimes using the name Mustang Sally, and antiwar activist. One of her songs, “Teen Love” was a doo-wop lesbian love ballad.

She was the first woman under 21 to be an officer in the pioneering lesbian organization, The Daughters of Bilitis, where her transition was known, and where after a heated controversy, she had been accepted. In 1972, she was vice-president of the San Francisco branch.

Bev Jo,  who had been a friend of Beth’s at college just before she transitioned, and, who was now active in the lesbian separatist Gutter Dykes Collective, accused the adolescent Beth of sexual harassment. Beth was was expelled from the Daughters for not being woman-born.

In 1973, Beth was one of the organizers West Coast Lesbian Conference held at the University of California, Los Angeles, and had played benefits to help finance it.  However the Conference split over whether Elliot should be allowed to perform. The Gutter Dykes protested the presence of a ‘man’.  Two-thirds of the women present voted to allow Beth to remain, and she performed as had been arranged, but she left after the performance.  The keynote speaker, the heterosexually married Robin Morgan, incorporated the protests into her speech the next day, and referred to Beth as a ‘male transvestite’ and as a ‘rapist’.

Beth was also a founding member of Alice B. Toklas Memorial Democratic Club, an activist in the California Democratic Party, a Director of the California Committee for Sexual Law Reform, the lobbying organization that won repeal of California’s sodomy laws in 1975.

She put out an album, Kid, Have You Rehabilitated Yourself?  but the women’s music distribution channels were closed to her. In the 1980s she played bass for the all-women new wave band Satin Food Stamps; in the 1990s she was in the dykeabilly The Bucktooth Varmints with Anderson Toone; she did backing tracks for the drag king musical Hillbillies on the Moon, which again featured Anderson Toone. Her recent CD, Buried Treasure contains the tracks from Kid, Have You Rehabilitated Yourself?, some Satin Food Stamps tracks and some others (listen to previews of it at www.cdbaby.com/cd/bethelliott).

Beth was blacklisted by lesbian publishers, and was still traumatized by the 1973 events, until 1985 when she was profiled in Telewoman with a pseudonym and no photographs.  This eventually became the book, Mirrors, but that took another decade.  Bev Jo denounced Beth in 1985 and again in 1992, and this contributed to the decision to issue the book as 'told to Geri Nerrick'.  The 2011 re-issue of Mirrors clarifies that Geri and Beth are the same person.

Beth has been a writer for a variety of publications including a weekly column for three and a half years for the Bay Area Reporter. She has also written for off our backs and FrontPage Magazine.  She has recently written lesbian science fiction.

Beth is a keen softball player and hiker, and has traveled the world chasing and photographing solar eclipses. She is also the historian and genealogist for her long-time California family, which finally accepted her back. 

*Not the artist, nor the other singer with the same name, nor the romance novelist.

• • Beth Elliott. “Bisexuality: The best thing that ever happened to lesbian-feminism?” In Loraine Hutchins & Lani Kaahumanu (eds). Bi Any Other Name: Bisexual People Speak Out. Alyson Books 408 pp 1991.
  • Beth Elliott. “Holly Near And Yet So Far”. In Elizabeth Reba Weise (ed). Closer to Home: Bisexuality and Feminism. Seal Press 320 pp 1992.
  • Geri Nettick and Beth Elliot. Mirrors: Portrait of a Lesbian Transsexual. N.Y.: Masquerade Books 1996.  Revised edition: CreateSpace  2011.  
  • Joanne Meyerowitz. How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States. Cambridge, Ma, London: Harvard University Press.  2002: 259-260.
  • Beth Elliot. Don’t Call It Virtual. ENC Press 2003. A satirical lesbian time-travel novel. With an associated biography at www.encpress.com/Beth_Elliott.html.
  • Susan Stryker. Transgender History. Seal Press. 190 pp 2008: 102-5,108-9.
  • Marcia M. Gallo. Different Daughters: A History of the Daughters of Bilitis and the Rise of the Lesbian Rights Movement. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2006: 190-2.  
  • Josh Sides. Erotic City: Sexual Revolutions and the Making of Modern San Francisco. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009: 120-2. 
  • http://gerinettick.com.

Destiny Lauren (1979 – 2009) sex work, IRA bombings, miscarriages of justice and US royalty.

++ updated August 2013.

On 5th November 2009, Destiny Lauren aged 29, was found strangled in her flat in Kentish Town in northern London.   She was rushed to hospital but died shortly afterwards.

She was pre-op and worked as a prostitute.  Whether we classify her as a transsexual or as a prostitute, deaths like this are far too common.

Destiny had an interesting although rather sad family nexus, that most newspapers, with the exception of the Hampstead and Highgate Express, her local newspaper, did not pay any attention to.


Elizabeth and Paul Hill, brother and sister, were raised in Belfast, but moved to London.

On 5 October 1974 The Provisional Irish Republican Army detonated two bombs at two pubs, The Horse and Groom and The Seven Stars, both in Guildford, Surrey, and both popular with British Army soldiers.  Four soldiers and one civilian were killed; a further sixty-five were wounded.  Under pressure to come up with results, the police arrested Paul Hill and three others (Gerry Conlon, Patrick Armstrong, Carole Richardson).  They were convicted and imprisoned.   Elizabeth Hill was also questioned and held at the police station for a week.

Elizabeth married a Mr Samuels, and they had four sons, including Justin who felt that he should have been a girl, and grew up to be Destiny.  Elizabeth endured the strain of campaigning for 15 years for her brother’s release.

In 1990, The Guildford Four were released.   Their convictions were overturned on appeal in that they were based on confessions extracted by torture, and evidence of innocence had been held back by the police.  In addition, at the trial of the Balcombe Street Four, the IRA men instructed their lawyers to draw attention to the fact that innocent people were serving time for the Guildford bombings.

The movie, In the Name of the Father, 1993, based on the autobiography by Gerry Conlon, is the story of the Guildford Four.

After release, in 1993,  Paul Hill married Mary Courtney Kennedy, the fifth child of Robert and Ethel Kennedy of Massachusetts.  They legally separated in 2006.

Elizabeth committed suicide in November 2005, at the flat that she shared with her daughter, Destiny.  Destiny, was well-known in London’s transsexual scene, and was an acquaintance of Boy George.  She continued to live in her mother’s flat, until she was found strangled.

Leon Fyle, 23, was convicted for the murder and jailed for 21 years in September 2010, but the Court of Appeal quashed the conviction the next April,  and he was again found guilty at the retrial.  He had stolen £350 found on her and spent £250 of it on two sex workers at a brothel in Kings Cross the same night.  Det Insp Liz Baker pointed out that Fyle never showed any remorse.

• “Tragic story of murdered transsexual, whose uncle was one of the Guildford Four”. Hampstead and Highgate Express. 26 November 2009. www.hamhigh.co.uk/content/camden/hamhigh/news/story.aspx?brand=NorthLondon24&category=Newshamhigh&tBrand=northlondon24&tCategory=newshamhigh&itemid=WeED26%20Nov%202009%2016%3A32%3A18%3A477. 
• "Man Jailed for "Brutal and Pre-Meditated" Murder".  LBC, 3/6/11.  www.lbc.co.uk/man-jailed-for-brutal-and-pre-meditated-murder-30611.
• "Man guilty of Destiny Lauren murder in Kentish Town".  BBC News, 21 Sepember 2011.  www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-15010132.

Hibiscus (1949 – 1982 ) performer.

George Harris Jr was born in Bronxville, Westchester, New York. His family moved to Florida and lost their money in real estate.

On return to New York, child George worked as a model in commercials, and at Caffe Cino and other off-off-Broadway theaters. At 13 he left home to live with an older man, with the understanding of his parents. One of his contacts was Jack Smith, the avant-garde filmmaker who was already cross-dressing his actors.

At 17, George had an offer to drive to California, and arrived in San Francisco in time for the Hippy thing. He grew his hair, became vegetarian and wore robes and headdresses. At midnight on December 31, 1969, The Palace, let him, as Hibiscus, and several others put on a show and the Cockettes were born. They put on periodic reviews using castoff junk for their props, and dressing in drag and as whatever they liked. They attracted the attention of celebrities, and were featured in articles in Rolling Stone and Paris Match.

One night after a performance he came home to find that his apartment building had burned down. He took a break, but on return found that he had been voted out of the group, and that shows were no longer free. He founded a new group, Angels of Light, which did their first performance in Grace Cathedral before the police evicted them. Allen Ginsburg did his first drag with the group and was was Hibiscus’s lover for a while.

Hibiscus left the group and returned to his family in New York, and started an East Coast version of the Angels. They were discovered by Swiss choreographer, Maurice Bejart who financed a European tour.

He died of AIDS at age 33.

• Mark Thompson. “Children of Paradise: A Brief History of Queens”. In Mark Thompson (ed). Gay Spirit: Myth and Meaning. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987: 61-8.
• “Hibiscus (entertainer)”. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hibiscus_%28entertainer%29.

Ray Blanchard (1945 - ) psychologist.

Ray Blanchard’s father, an aviation metal smith died in the Japanese attack on the USS Franklin, just before his namesake son was born. The son was raised a Catholic in Hammonton, New Jersey.

He did an A.B. in psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, 1967, and PhD in psychology at Urbana University, Illinois, 1973, the year that the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its list of diseases. He had a draft classification of 4-A, the sole surviving son of a service member killed in action, and so was exempt unless war was officially declared, which the US never did against Vietnam.

He emigrated to Canada anyway. He did post-doctoral research at Dalhousie University investigating learning processes in animals (mainly rats) until 1976 when he became a clinical psychologist at the Ontario Correctional Institute in Brampton (now the Brampton Adult Training Centre). There he met Kurt Freund while working with sex offenders. They made plans to collaborate, and in 1980, Blanchard started working at the Clarke Institute in Toronto (now the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health).

He did work on male birth order and sexuality and claims that the number of older brothers increases the chance of homosexuality in right-handed men, but not in left-handed men or in women at all. He claims that pedophiles have lower than expected IQs and higher rates of non-right-handedness. He hypothesizes that “these and other correlates of pedophilia reflect some perturbation of prenatal neurodevelopment in subsequently pedophilic males”.

A lot of his work utilizes phallometric diagnosis. He is best known for his re-presentation of Kurt Freund’s ideas on fetishistic transsexualism which he re-labelled as ‘autogynephylia’. He insisted for many years that there are no gay trans men, and consistently ignored Lou Sullivan’s letters in the 1980s explaining that Lou and many others are indeed gay trans men. Further to this he does not acknowledge autoandrophilia, which is the term that his theoretical system should apply to such trans men. However he now claims to have published two of the earliest reports of gay trans men (but without using that terminology).  He also insists and persists in referring to heterosexual trans women as homosexual, and refuses to use the word ‘androphilic’.

Blanchard is a Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto (despite being a psychologist not a psychiatrist), and in 1995, after Kurt Freund’s retirement, he became Head of Clinical Sexology Services in the Law and Mental Health Programme of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH). He served on the gender dysphoria sub-working group for the DSM-IV, 1994, and is serving as Chair of the paraphilia sub-working group for the new DSM-V. He is an Associate Editor of Sexual Abuse: A Journal of Research and Treatment and a member of the Editorial Board of the Archives of Sexual Behavior.

He supported Michelle Josef’s lawsuit in 1999 to get gender surgery relisted under the Ontario Health Insurance Plan. He supplied material to Lisanne Anderson for her Autogynephilia Site.

He gave a paper at the Third International Body Integrity Disorder Meeting in 2003 comparing BIID (apotemnophilia=desire to have a limb removed) to Gender identity disorder, as did Anne Lawrence. This has fed the usage on the religious right of referring to sex changes as sexual-amputation fetishism.

Michael Bailey’s The Man Who Would Be Queen, 2003, recycles many of Blanchard’s ideas. Blanchard's favourable review of the book is the only review that he ever wrote for Amazon, and he resigned from HBIGDA (Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association, now WPATH) when it criticized the book, an act which he called 'appalling'.

In 2002 the CAMH GIC was awarded a Presidential Citation from Div 44 of the American Psychological Association.  Ray Blanchard accepted the award on behalf of CAMH.

The population of Ontario being over 13 million, there should be around 200 trans persons completing transition each year.   Before the suspension of Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP) funding for gender surgery in 1998 Blanchard's management had kept the number approved to around 10 per year, and it looks as if the numbers approved since the re-instatement in 2008 will be approximately the same.

As Blanchard manages a clinic that rejects most of its applicants, and proclaims a universal theory based on the minority that it accepts, it is a reasonable assumption that the majority are rejected precisely because they do not fit the theory.  For this crime of contradicting the theory, they are denied OHIP funding.

In 2004 he wrote: “This is not waving a magic wand and a man becomes a woman and vice versa.  It's something that has to be taken very seriously. A man without a penis has certain disadvantages in this world, and this is in reality what you're creating" (Jane Armstrong. “The Body within, the body without”. The Globe and Mail June 12, 2004 here).

• Ray Blanchard. “Research Methods for the Typological Study of Gender Disorders in Males”. In Betty W. Steiner (ed) . Gender Dysphoria: Development, Research, Management. New York & London: Plenum Press. 1985..
• Ray Blanchard. “Gender Dysphoria and Gender Reorientation”. In Betty W. Steiner (ed) . Gender Dysphoria: Development, Research, Management. New York & London: Plenum Press. 1985..
• Ray Blanchard. “The concept of autogynephilia and the typology of male gender dysphoria”. The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 177, 616-623. 1989. Online at: www.genderpsychology.org/autogynephilia/male_gender_dysphoria/index.html.
• Ray Blanchard & Betty W. Steiner (eds.). (1990). Clinical management of gender identity disorders in children and adults. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press.
• Ray Blanchard. “Origins of the Concept of Autogynephilia”. Feb 2004. www.autogynephilia.org/origins.htm.
• Ray Blanchard. “Autogynephilia and the Taxonomy of Gender Identity Disorders in Biological Males”. International Academy of Sex Research. Paris 2000. www.autogynephilia.org/ColoredParisTalk_files/v3_document.htm.
• Ray Blanchard. “Theoretical and Clinical Parallels Between Body Integrity Identity Disorder and Gender Identity Disorder”. Third Annual BIID Meeting. June 2003, Columbia University. www.autogynephilia.org/NYPt1GIC&BIID_files/v3_document.htm and www.autogynephilia.org/NYPt2AcceptanceofSRS_files/v3_document.htm.
• Ray Blanchard. “Man Who Would Be Queen”. Amazon review. www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A166CMIUYHGOTH/ref=cm_pdp_rev_more?ie=UTF8&sort_by=MostRecentReview#R1WW22WD205WEJ.
• Ray Blanchard. “Deconstructing the feminine essence narrative”. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 37, 2008: 434–438.
•  Andrea James." 'Male gender dysphorics, paedophiles, and fetishists:' How Ray Blanchard sees us". Transsexual Road Map.  www.tsroadmap.com/info/ray-blanchard-clarke.html. 
• Andrea James. "Bailey on Blanchard".   Transsexual Road Map. 13 November 2003. www.tsroadmap.com/info/bailey-ray-blanchard.html,
• Lynn Conway.  "Blanchard resigns in a huff from HBIGDA!".  http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/BaileyAssociates/BlanchardResigns.html.
  
• Andrea James. “What motivates Ray Blanchard’s oppression of sex and gender minorities?”. Transsexual Road Map. 2 November 2009. www.tsroadmap.com/info/ray-blanchard-motivations.html.
• “Ray Blanchard”. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Blanchard.
• “Ray Blanchard”. University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine. http://individual.utoronto.ca/ray_blanchard. 
•  "Dr. Ray Blanchard".  CAMH.  www.camh.net/Research/Scientific_staff_profiles/bio_detail.php?cuserID=50.
  

______________________________________________________________________

I am not discussing the concept of autogynephilia in any detail here as I have already done so here.

As his insistence on calling heterosexual trans women ‘homosexual’ shows, Blanchard regards trans women as men, and trans men as women.  This was shown again in the 2004 article in The Globe and Mail.  Blanchard has tried to claim that he is not transphobic, but until he changes in his regard of which gender we are, it is inevitable that many, probably most, of us do regard him as transphobic.  This attitude will probably not change until the next generation take over the gender clinics.   It does appear that Blanchard and Zucker are attempting to solidify their position in the DSM-V, so that it will last for another generation.

Of course Blanchard supported Michelle Josef’s lawsuit in 1999 to get gender surgery relisted.  The CAMH GIC is a stronger institution when it can offer the carrot of paid-for gender surgery on the Ontario Health Insurance Plan.

Blanchard claims that pedophiles suffered “perturbation of prenatal neurodevelopment”.  The HBS people claim that the same thing happened to them, but don’t phrase it so well.

Unlike Kurt Freund who was married to a woman and had had children, and unlike James Cantor who is openly gay, Blanchard has been very coy about his private life.  Andrea James’ article of November 2009 is by far the best on this particular topic, but I would maintain that his closetry denies him the right to claim to be gay.

Being a right-handed eldest child with a heterosexual younger brother, I am not sold on the birth-order effect.

Blanchard, Zucker and Cantor are all by upbringing American.  That is a bit too many to be all in one Canadian clinic, especially the dominant Canadian clinic on transsexuality.