This site is the most comprehensive on the web devoted to trans history and biography. Well over 1800 persons worthy of note, both famous and obscure, are discussed in detail, and many more are mentioned in passing.

There is a detailed Index arranged by vocation, doctor, activist group etc. There is also a Place Index arranged by City etc. This is still evolving.

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16 April 2012

Rachel Tortolini (194?–) physicist, doctor, writer.

Totolini’s great great uncle was Barnaba Tortolini, the Italian mathematician.

Tortolini did a BS degree in physics and electrical engineering, and then worked for the CIA for three years researching Soviet comsats, and then did degrees in mathematics and philosophy, and worked for Lockheed and Hewlett-Packard.

After transition in 1980, Rachel did a degree in medicine at the University of Cincinnati from 1984-9, specializing in psychiatry and pathology, followed by a psychiatry residency at the Seventh-day Adventist Loma Linda University Medical Center. She did a study of intersex (broadly defined) patients, which led to the first version of her book under the pseudonym of Sarah Seton, and speaking engagements. This was not compatible with the ethos of the Christian medical center and she was asked to go elsewhere.

She became a general practitioner, and then a hospital and prison doctor in Hawai’i. From 2007 she has run a gender clinic, and revised her book on transsexuality. She contributed to the Intersex Guidelines mainly written by Milton Diamond and H. Keith Sigmundson that is featured on the UKIA site. She has also written and published a science fiction novel under the name of Abyssinian J. Kelly. She is also active in SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, and has worked for human rights for indigenous peoples of the Pacific.

The title of the latest version of her book is Transsexuality in the late 20th Century, which is so in that she wrote most of it around 1990. Her position is biologistic and that transsexuality is a type of
intersex: that “DNA mapping and advances in neuroanatomy have shown us that transsexuals are indeed inverted in sexual dimorphic areas of their brains (p xv)”, however like most biologistic accounts she does not explain or cite evidence to show how transsexuals differ in this biology from gays or transvestites, or why with each decade there are more trans people. She pays special attention to aromatase syndromes (p 40, 66-72).

Her designations of transsexuality vary from “simply a natural variation in human personality (p xii)” to “Gender Identity disorder (GID) is a rigorously defined syndrome not a blend (p xv)”. On p12 she writes:
“Unfortunately, this so-called ‘real life experience” (RLE) is not specific (although sensitive) to primary transsexuals; many effeminate homosexuals, transgenderists, and self-stigmatized transvestites have deceived themselves into believing they are ‘women’ for secondary gains and can negotiate the trial period successfully due to being gifted with a body habitus close enough to the sex-stereotypes”.
Remember that she wrote this in 1990 before the Blanchard-Bailey fracas, and before the HBS-notTG movement. In February 2010 she commented on Women Born Transsexual:
“Speaking as a clinician, I had no idea that the intersex diagnosis was being hijacked to self serving ends by some members of our community (?). I would also like to apologize here if I have in anyway contributed to encouraging this type of behaviour. “
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    14 April 2012

    Cynthia Conroy (1916 - 2009) scientist, doctor.

    Robert Conroy emigrated from England to the US with his parents in 1920. His father beat his wife and children, and served three years for extortion.

    Robert did a degree in physics and chemistry. While at college he was arrested while out cross-dressed. He married Margaret, who was of Concow (a California tribe), French and Irish descent.

    After World War II he had a job with an electronics film in San Diego that was working with the US Navy in developing sonar. In 1957 the firm found out about his arrest while at college and he was instantly fired.

    They moved to Berkeley and Robert became a eye doctor. He had few opportunities for cross dressing, but did so now and then. He was encountered so separately by his daughters, but they separately agreed to keep it secret. Margaret found it hard to deal with and went through a period of drinking.

    After her death Robert started transition and as Cynthia was in her seventies when in 1992 she had surgery with Stanley Biber in Trinidad, Colorado.

    She died aged 93 after a few year’s of Alzheimer’s disease.
    • Janice Gould. “My Father, Cynthia Conroy”. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 2010, 16:19-103.
    ________________________________________________________________________________

    As mentioned in the article on New York in the 1960s, the authorities intended that  anyone arrested for 'sexual perversion' not be permitted to acquire professional qualifications.  Fortunately, in the pre-computer age, the system was not always thorough.
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    12 April 2012

    Cynthia Watson (1928 - 2000) carpenter.

    Peter Acke was raised in Stowe, Buckinghamshire. He married in 1948, but his wife died a few years later.

    He worked as a gaucho in Argentina, and was a carpenter in the merchant marine.

    Acke lived for a while on Osier Island, a one-property island in the river Avon.

    Around 1980, as Cynthia Watson, she moved to the small village of Midgham in Berkshire, where she was accepted but kept to herself. It was thought to be unusual that she had carpentry skills. She made toys for the raffle at the Christmas fair, and on commission made meticulously accurate models of ships. When the village plaque saying that the village was mentioned in the Doomsday Book was vandalized, she offered to repair it at her own expense. Being an old-fashioned lady, she always wore dresses, even when doing carpentry. She also did beautiful cross-stitching.

    She apparently made money on the stock exchange. She left an estate of £3.3m, including a bequest to the Royal National Lifeboat Institution of £1m for a new lifeboat to be call The Witch of Osier.
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    09 April 2012

    Celeste Tate (1944 - 1995) charity organizer.

    In 1982 Celeste Tate and her husband David Cory McKinley (1963 – ) of Las Vegas  noticed how much dated food is thrown away by supermarkets. She persuaded a store manager to donate his expired items and she and her husband set up a charity supermarket, which she called The Gleaners. Food was given away, sold for a nominal amount or exchanged for work. Shortly afterwards they were credited with running 194 stores in the US and other countries including China.  Apparently this resulted from confusing the Las Vegas Gleaners with other food banks with 'Gleaners' in their name.

    The US Department of Health and Human Services called The Gleaners the most outstanding food program in the United States. The Gleaners was touted at the 1984 Republican National Convention as a model of feeding the homeless while taking no government money. A letter from Ronald Regan praising them was read. Esquire and Newsweek magazines ran articles honoring the McKinleys.

    The Las Vegas Review-Journal investigated and ran a series of articles 12-14 August 1990. They found that The Gleaners had failed to submit charity tax forms, reliable records were not kept, and the McKinley’s mortgage expenses were intertwined with other charity expenses. They also ‘tithed’ from the organization’s income to a store-front church whose pastor was on their Board of Directors. In addition, the articles outed Celeste as a woman with transsexual history.

    David appeared on Sally Jessy Raphael’s television talk show complaining that he had been duped into a 13-year marriage in that Celeste had never told him that she had had a transsexual change. Shortly afterwards, Celeste agreed to an annulment but without admitting any change of sex.

    In July 1991 David was arrested at a traffic stop when a records check showed that he was also Daryl Ashford was was wanted in Wichita, Kansas for aggravated arson in that he set fire to his mother’s house while she was inside. He was also wanted for jumping bail.

    Ignoring The Las Vegas Review-Journal articles, the 1992 book, Megatrends for Women, lauded the work of the McKinleys.

    In 1993 The Gleaners contracted with the for-profit fundraiser, The Charity Center, which passed onto The Gleaners 10% of the monies raised.

    In 1994 lawsuits were filed against The Gleaners and against The Charity Center.

    Celeste died at age 51 after a series of strokes and liver problems.
    • A D Hopkins. “Gleaners president accused of arson”. Las Vegas Review-Journal, 11 July 1991: 1b.
    • Carl Scarbrough, . “IRS: Gleaners hasn't filed tax returns”. Las Vegas Review-Journal, 28 Sep 1991: 1b.
    • Patricia Aburdene & John Naisbitt. Megatrends for Women. New York: Villard Books, 1992: 276.
    • “Charitable solicitation fraud : hearing before the Subcommittee on Consumer of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, United States Senate, One Hundred Third Congress, second session, March 24, 1994". Online at: http://archive.org/stream/charitablesolici1994unit/charitablesolici1994unit_djvu.txt.
    • Randolph Smith.  “Here Comes Charity Scams Bogus Appeals Aim At Holiday Spirit”.  Daily News, Nov 30, 1994.  http://articles.philly.com/1994-11-30/news/25867492_1_fund-raising-charity-scams-pacific-west-cancer-fund
    • Marian Green. “Food bank operator, target of praise and notoriety, dies”. Las Vegas Review- Journal, 12 Oct 1995: 2.B.
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    06 April 2012

    Tom Reucher (196?–) psychologist, activist.

    "Until the lions have their historians, tales of hunting will continue to glorify the hunter ' African proverb cited by Tom Reucher

    Reucher first worked as a computer programmer-analyst. In the late 1980s he joined Joseph Doucé’s Centre de Christ Libérateur which helped him overcome his shame and become an activist.

    In 1994 he was a co-founder of the Association du Syndrome de Benjamin, which grew to over 300 members. (This is apparently the first use of the term Syndrome de Benjamin). They asked for the syndrome to be removed from the bailiwick of psychiatry, that the term ‘transsexuality’ not be used as it is stigmatizing. They drafted a bill to harmonize changes of civil status. From 1997 they marched in Paris, the first Saturday in October under the label Existrans. They also marched with Gay Pride.

    Tom Reucher did a diploma and then a masters in psychology at the University of Paris 8, applying ethnopsychiatry and queer theory to allow transsexuals to speak for themselves.

    In September 2001 the magazine Res Publica published an article on transsexuality by Colette Chiland, and the magazine accepted a reply by Reucher, but the management then changed its mind and the reply did not appear, apparently to oblige Chiland.  Reucher’s article was presented at the HBIGDA symposium in September 2003.
    “Speaking out by transsexual or transgender individuals in order to counter the professionals who speak in their place is a novelty in France. This goes hand in hand with reclaiming their identity by the act of self-naming, as well as with the founding of organizations to protect their rights. (When ‘Shrinks' are Frightened by Transsexuals ..) “
    In 2002 he was a co-founder of VigiTrans, and of the Groupe Activiste Trans, and the next year set up the website Transidentité. From 2003-2006 he worked with the first trans radio program, Bistouri oui-oui , on Radio Libertaire FM 89.4 Mhz.  In 2004 he left the Association du Syndrome de Benjamin following internal dissent, and has been working with Sans contrefaçon. By 2005 the Existrans march was attracting over a thousand marchers.

    Since 2005 he has preferred the term transidentity rather than transsexuality or Benjamin Syndrome. In 2007 he completed training in Reichian analysis. In 2008 he moved to Brest where he works as a psychologist and analyst. He is an active member of OII-France.
    “My academic career and my background therapy led me to question the medical practices and to understand what was effective and ineffective for transsexes. I also met with transgender men and women and exchanged with them.There are many commonalities.”(Mon parcours thérapeutique et ma formation universitaire m'ont amené à remettre en cause les pratiques médicales et à comprendre ce qui était efficace et inefficace pour les transsexes (transsexuelLEs). J'ai aussi rencontrer des transgenres et échangé avec elles et eux. Il y a beaucoup de points communs. -- Qui Suis-Je? at Transidentité: le site de Tom Reucher)
    “The writings of these experts arise from their fright, poor knowledge of the various processes of  transidentity, and heterocentric theories now set up as "standards" in defiance of human rights. In evoking the idea of psychopathology, these words of experts generate social and political consequences for transgender people, such as rejection by family, friends and neighbours, and society in general. These writings also show an inability to learn from patients." ("Les écrits de ces experts découlent de leur frayeur, d’une méconnaissance des différents processus de transidentité et de théories hétérocentrées qui se sont érigées en « normes » au mépris des droits humains. En évoquant l’idée d’une psychopathologie, ces paroles d’experts génèrent des conséquences sociales et politiques pour les personnes transsexuelles, telles que leur rejet par la famille, l’entourage et par la société en général. Ces écrits montrent également une incapacité à apprendre des patients." - Quand les trans deviennent experts)
    ____________________________________________________________

    The Association du Syndrome de Benjamin  was formed in 1994.  The Harry Benjamin Syndrome founded by Charlotte Goiar happened a decade later and was initially called Síndrome de Benjamin.   I have not been able to find any mention of Goiar acknowledging the prior existence of Association du Syndrome de Benjamin.    While the ASB was radical, queer and inclusive, HSB was mainly conservative, homophobic and separatist.  It is very difficult to imagine the HBS crowd in a thousand-strong march with gays, socialists and greens.

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      04 April 2012

      Paul Walker (1946 – 198?) social psychologist.

      Paul Walker did research with John Money at Johns Hopkins Psychohormonal Research Institute, and graduated from the University of Rochester with a PhD in Social Psychology.

      He taught at the University of Texas at Galveston Medical Branch where he started a sex offender treatment program and ran the Rosenberg Gender Clinic.

      He was openly gay.

      In 1977 he was the defense psychologist at Fort Rucker. Alabama, where a young female soldier was accused of homosexuality for marrying a trans man, Kristian von Hoffburg.

      After Reed Erickson closed the Erickson Educational Foundation in 1977, Walker and Zelda Suplee formed Janus Information Facility which carried on the work of EEF. Walker also became the founding president of the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association (HBIGDA now renamed WPATH) and wrote the first Standards of Care for transgender clients with input from other members of his committee.


      Dr Walker was recommended by the syndicated newspaper agony aunt, Anne Landers, and that is how Sarah Weston, came to him for counseling early in her transition.

      Paul Walker later moved to San Francisco.   He died in the late ‘80s of AIDS complications.

      The work of the Janus Information Facility was picked up by J2CP Information Services run by Jude Patton and Mary Elizabeth Clark.

      *Not the actor.
       EN.WIKIPEDIA
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      01 April 2012

      Kimberly Nixon (1957 - ) activist.

      Kimberly felt like a girl from an early age.
      “I’ve been who I am since I was born. I am a woman. I was just born wrong.”
      She worked briefly as an bush pilot, but started living full-time as female in her mid-twenties, and applied to the Gender Clinic at Vancouver General Hospital in 1986. She completed transition in 1990. Afterwards she continued to apply for jobs as a pilot, but would be rejected when references were taken.

      She suffered physical and emotional abuse from a boyfriend and was given support and advice in 1994 by the Battered Women’s Support Services (BWSS). In August 1995, she thought to give back to the community by volunteering at Vancouver Rape Relief (VRR). She did a telephone interview, and then a face-to-face interview, and was invited to join the training session. However at the break she was taken aside by facilitator Danielle Cormier, and her gender was questioned. She was then told “men aren’t allowed here”. Kimberly replied that she was not a man, but admitted that she had been through a transsexual change. She was asked to leave.

      Kimberly filed a human rights complaint the next day. Rape Relief offered $500 for hurt feelings, and a personal apology. During the five-year wait while the British Columbia Human Rights Commission worked through its backlog, Kimberly secured the services of barbara findlay, a lawyer with a strong record as a feminist and as an advocate for GLBTT equality. Kimberly commenced volunteer training at BWSS, but later left after disagreeing about the role of trans women in the organization. She became a volunteer at Vancouver’s Woman Against Violence Against Women (WAVAW).

      VRR went to the BC Supreme Court asking to throw out the human rights case on the grounds that the province’s 1984 and 1996 human-rights legislation did not extend protection to gender identity, and also because of the five-year wait. In June 2000, the Judge dismissed the argument based on undue delay in that VRR continued to discriminate against women not born as women, and ruled that while the legislation wording only prohibits discrimination based on sex, it cannot be interpreted to exclude someone "merely because that person or group is not readily identifiable as being either male or female”. Ms Nixon is a woman under the BC Vital Statistics Act and is entitled to a human rights complaint.

      Also in 2000 barbara findlay was counsel for inmate Synthia Kavanagh, that she was entitled to surgery and transfer to a women’s prison.

      Prominent Canadian feminist Judy Rebick, who otherwise has a long record of fighting for progressive causes, agreed to testify for Rape Relief. In 1997 Sheila Jeffreys wrote a paper that transsexualism should be seen as a violation of human rights. In 1999 Margaret O’Hartigan in opposition to the Portland Lesbian Community Project extending its services to those trans women whom Margaret referred to as ‘men’, had written “Post-modernism marches on: Women's space under continued attack”, citing Janice Raymond as part of her argument. Both these articles were added to the Vancouver Rape Relief & Women’s Shelter web site.

      In 2002, The British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal in the person of Adjudicator Heather MacNaughton found that Nixon had been discriminated against, in that volunteering is equivalent to employment. Rape Relief was ordered to pay Ms Nixon $7,500, the highest award yet made by the tribunal, and not to discriminate against any transsexual woman, but declined to order Rape Relief to hold a “unlearning transphobia” workshop.

      Vancouver VRR appealed to the Supreme Court of BC, arguing that Kimberly Nixon is immediately recognizable as a former man and as such would make some clients uncomfortable.  Also that she is not a real woman in that she does not have a history of living as a girl and then as a woman. VRR is entitled under BC law as a non-profit assisting a marginalized group to be a woman-only organization (a policy which Kimberly agrees with). The Supreme Court ruled in favour of VRR. Chief Justice Edwards noted in his judgement:
      “By reason of Rape Relief's self-definition, perhaps reflected in its small number of members, exclusion from its programs is quite evidently exclusion from a backwater, not from the mainstream of the economic, social and cultural life of the province. It may be an important backwater to its members and to Ms. Nixon, but that is a subjective assessment.”.
      Kimberly appealed to the BC Court of Appeal which issued a ruling in December 2005 which upheld Edwards’ ruling. Nevertheless it affirmed that Nixon is a woman, and that Rape Relief had discriminated against her.

      In February 2007 the Supreme Court of Canada declined to hear the case without giving any reasons, as it does in 89% of cases. It also awarded costs, estimated to be $100,000, to Rape Relief.

      *Not Kimberley Nixon, the British actress.
      • Margaret Deirdre O’Hartigan. “Post-modernism marches on: Women's space under continued attack”. Off Our Backs. Aug-Sept 1999. Online at: www.rapereliefshelter.bc.ca/learn/resources/post-modernism-marches-womens-space-under-continued-attack.
      • Sheila Jeffreys. “Transgender Activism: A Lesbian Feminist Perspective”. Journal of Lesbian Studies, 1, 3/4, 1997. Featured at: Vancouver Rape Relief & Women’s Shelter. www.rapereliefshelter.bc.ca/learn/resources/transgender-activism-lesbian-feminist-perspective.
      • Wendy McLellan. "Sex change does not limit person's rights, court finds: Code covers the transgendered, B.C. judge rules". National Post, Jun 9, 2000.
      • Stephanie Nolen. “Fighting to do a woman’s work”. The Globe and Mail, Dec 9, 2000.
      • Viviane K. Namaste & Georgia Sitara. “Inclusive Pedagogy in the Women’s Studies Classroom: Teaching the Kimberly Nixon Case”. In Viviane Namaste. Sex Change, Social Change: Reflections on Identity, Institutions, and Imperialism. Toronto: Women's Press, 2005: chp 5.
      • Andy. "Kimberly Nixon". Rabble.ca, Jan 15, 2006. http://rabble.ca/babble/feminism/kimberly-nixon.
      • Rory Leishman. Against Judicial Activism: The Decline of Freedom and Democracy in Canada. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2006: 19-21,33-4, 40-7.
      • Keith Frazer. "Top court won't hear gender appeal case: End of legal road for woman born a man". The Province, Feb 2, 2007.
      • Robin Perelle. “Rape Relief wins: Supreme Court refuses to hear trans woman's appeal”. Xtra, Feb 14, 2007. www.xtra.ca/public/Vancouver/Rape_Relief_wins-2656.aspx.
      • Christopher A. Shelley. Transpeople: Repudiation, Trauma, Healing. University of Toronto Press, 2008: 73, 85-6, 145-9.
      • Patricia Elliot. Debates in Transgender, Queer, and Feminist Theory: Contested Sites. Farnham: Ashgate Pub, 2010: 12, 19-31.
      • “Chronology of events in Kimberly Nixon vs Vancouver Rape Relief Society”. Vancouver Rape Relief & Women’s Shelter. www.rapereliefshelter.bc.ca/learn/resources/chronology-events-kimberly-nixon-vs-vancouver-rape-relief-society.
      ____________________________________________________________

      The 2002 order from Adjudicator MacNaughton that the VRR not discriminate against any transsexual woman would oblige them to accept non-op and pre-op trans woman, so to that extent one can see why they appealed.  However VVR still declines to accept all women with known transsexual history.

      The O’Hartigan and Jeffreys papers are still found on the VRR web site.

      The VRR Chronology neglects to mention that the VRR went to court to argue that trans persons are not covered under the province’s human rights laws.  Nor does it mention that it added the confrontational O’Hartigan and Jeffreys papers.

      The Wikipedia article on Judy Rebik fails to mention that she testified for VRR.

      The Xtra article, 2007, argues that most Canadian women’s centres became trans inclusive because of Nixon v. Vancouver Rape Relief.  However the Globe article by Nolen, 2000, says that that was already the case at that time.

      It is ironic that Nixon won a ruling from a female Adjudicator, and the feminist VRR won its rulings from male judges.

      Nixon was read; she wasn’t tattled on.  VRR did raise the issue of her being read at one point, but the legal arguments did not pivot around it.  This is an issue that most of us don’t like to examine.  Kimberly went to VRR initially in stealth, and was read.   She later went to WAVAW known as a trans woman and was accepted.  What would be the protocol if a VRR rape victim being counselled did realize that the counsellor was trans and reacted badly to that?

      barbara findlay is a noble activist who continued the fight long after Nixon’s legal aid had run out.
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