Sports, Gender and Trans–Part 2: the Cold War

Part 1: to 1945
Part 2: the Cold War
Part 3: recent developments


Accusations of gender impersonations became a weapon to be used, mainly by the US, in the Cold War in the 1960s and 1970s.  While the initial suspicions in the 1930s had been about Mark Weston and Zdenek Koubkov, they were long forgotten by the 1950s. The focus was on east European female athletes who were too butch.  The suspicions were taken to be confirmed when Iolanda Balas, Irana Press, Tamara Press, Tatyana Shchelkanova and Maria Itkina all retired after sex testing was brought in.  However if they were intersex women they would have known that they would fail the tests despite being women.

It was a co-incidence that Stella Walasiewicz/Walsh was murdered and thereby outed just before the Moscow Olympics in 1980.  Walsh was described as a man in many newspaper articles, but again was an intersex woman.  By that time 14 years of sex testing had shown that the tests were not actually catching any men in drag.  65 nations refused to compete at Moscow because of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan (as we know such boycotts do not happen to all occupiers of Afghanistan).  As sex testing as been brought in as a way to attack the Soviet Union, why was sex testing done at the rump Olympics in Moscow?

Quite a few modern articles refer to  'gender verification' at the Olympics.  Gender is verified by asking for identity papers, which would be passports for all competitors except the home team.  Gender identity is verified by talking to the person.  What is verified by genital examination and DNA analysis is sex.  While only persons of female gender are subject to the testings, the testings are sex tests or sex verifications.

1946	Cis athlete Mildred Didrikson wins US Women’s Amateur Golf. IAAF introduces a rule requiring female competitors to bring a medical certificate.
1946 Oslo European Championship	Clair Bresolles and Léa Caurla. Silver in relay race. Both later became men.  Caurla also 3rd in 200 m.  Bressolles also 3rd in 100 m.
1947	Mildred Didrikson wins British Ladies Amateur Golf.
1948 London Olympics	IOC also requires female competitors to bring a medical certificate. Held while wartime rationing still in effect. Athletes are given increased rations, the same as those received by dockers and miners, which meant 5,467 calories a day, instead of the normal 2,600.  No new venues are built. 3714 male competitors, 390 female. Neither Germany is represented, nor is Japan.
1949	Foekje Dillema is named “athlete of the match” at a tournament in London. Laura Dillon  completes surgeries with Harold Gillies to become Michael.   Wins Sporting Blue for rowing at Trinity College, Dublin.
1950	Foekje Dillema runs 200 m in 24.1 seconds breaking the Dutch national record.  She and other women athletes are sent for a gynecological exam, and Foekje is declared not a woman, and expelled for life from competition. Mildred Didrikson voted "Greatest Female Athlete of the First Half of the Century".
1951	Roberta Cowell  has surgery with Harold Gillies. East Germany resents the West German Olympic Committee’s claim to represent both Germanys. ++Richard Raskind Eastern Indoor Male Tennis Champion
1952 Helsinki Olympics	Avery Brundage becomes IOC president. West Germany, but not East Germany competes. Japan returns. Soviet Union and Israel participate for the first time. Both Taiwan and China claim to be the Chinese team.  Taiwan withdraws.
1954	Roberta Cowell  publishes her autobiography. Maria Itkina Gold 200 m at Bern European Championships.
1950s	Tsutsumi Taeko,  Japanese athletics star, becomes Kiyotaka, a man.
1955	Maria Itkina 400m world record. ++Richard Raskind captain of Yale University Men's Tennis team.
1956	Mildred Didrikson dies of cancer at age 45. Maria Itkina world record for 220 m. ++Stella Walasiewicz/Walsh married boxer Neil Olson; they separated after eight weeks, but never divorced, and she continued to use his surname.
1956 Melbourne /Stockholm Olympics	The equestrian events are held in Stockholm  because of Australian quarantine regulations. 2938 male competitors, 376 female. Netherlands, Spain, and Switzerland refuse to attend because of the repression of the Hungarian uprising; Cambodia, Egypt, Iraq and Lebanon refuse because of the Suez war; The IOC recognises both China and Taiwan.  China withdraws because Taiwan enters. IOC requires that the two Germanys compete as one team. Maria Itkina 4th in 4 events.
1957	Heinrich Ratjen, a barman in Hamburg, says that he was Dora Ratjen, who had won medals in 1936 and 1938. Roberta Cowell wins hill climb.
1958	Maria Itkina Gold 400 m at Stockholm European Championship.
1959	Maria Itkina world record for 440 m.
1960 Rome Olympics	4727 male competitors, 611 female. Soviet gymnasts win 15 of 16 possible medals in women’s gymnastics. Irina Press Gold in hurdling for USSR Tamara Press Gold and Silver in shot-put for USSR Iolanda Balas Gold in long jump for Romania. Maria Itkina 4th in 3 events. Two British female athletes are accused in the press of being men. The two Germanys still required to compete as one team. Taiwan but not China participates. Avery Brundage accepted the word of South African officials that non-white athletes were allowed to compete, but they simply were not good enough.
1962	Sin Kim Dan for North Korea breaks women’s records for 400 m and 800 m. Maria Itkina Gold 200 m at Belgrade European Championships.
1963	In Moscow, other female sprinters refuse to run against Sin Kim Dan because she looks like a man. IOC suspends South Africa because of its racial policies.
1964	Mike Duff wins Belgian Motorcycle Grand Prix. ++Richard Raskind consults Harry Benjamin.
1964 Tokyo Olympics	4473 male competitors, 678 female. Irina Press Gold in Pentathlon for USSR Tamara Press Gold and Silver in shot-put for USSR. Ewa Kłobukowska Gold and Bronze in sprinting for Poland. Sin Kim Dan does not compete as North Korea is not in IAAF. Tatyana Shchelkanova Bronze in long jump for USSR Iolanda Balas Gold in long jump for Romania.
1965	Peter Drouyn wins the Australian Junior Surfing Championship, despite being assaulted the night before. Ewa Kłobukowska sets a world record for 100 metres with a time of 11.1 seconds.
1966 Budapest European Athletics Championships	Visual inspection sex testing of all 243 female athletes by 3 female doctors. Ewa Kłobukowska passes sex test and wins two gold medals. Iolanda Balas  attends only as a spectator, and then retires. A separate East German team recognized for the first time.
1966	Press sisters announce retirement. Tatyana Shchelkanova retires Maria Itkina retires Erika Schinegger world champion women’s downhill ski champion. British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Jamaica – female athletes were manually examined. Frank True.  Herald Tribune, 13 September: 17: “If the Commies hadn’t been guilty of substituting men for women in the first place, the new rule by the IAAF wouldn’t have been necessary”. Fanny Blankers-Koen (who had helped ruin Foekje Dillema’s career in 1950): The Milwaukee Journal, 31 August: 2: “I for one am glad that the girls have to submit to an examination … It was always unfair when a real girl was beaten by one who posed as a female.”
1967	Pan American Games in Winnipeg. Visual inspection sex testing of all female athletes. Avery Brundage’s IOC bans performance enhancing drugs, and introduces Barr Body sex test. Joana Nery Brazilian female diving champion. Peter Drouyn came second in the Australian Surfing Championship. Mike Duff second in Canadian Motorcycle Grand Prix.
1967 Kiev European Athletics Championship	Ewa Kłobukowska 2x Gold in sprinting for Poland. Fails Barr Body sex test.
1968	The Eligibility Code of the IOC Charter is modified to read: “No discrimination is allowed against any country or person on grounds of race, religion or political affiliation.”  No mention of sex or gender. ++Bruce Jenner wins football scholarship to Graceland College. Switches to decathlon because of a knee injury.
1968 Grenoble Winter Olympics.	947 male competitors, 211 female 1st Olympic sex verification: 50 out 240 female athletes tested. Erika Schinegger, skier, found to be XY and disqualified.  He accepts this and later transitions to male.
1968 Mexico City Olympics	The Tlatelolco massacre  of students and protesters just 10 days before the Olympics opens. Avery Brundage decides to continue with the Games. 4750 male competitors, 780 female. Barr Body sex test applied using a lottery system. US blacks and Czechoslovak athletes make political gestures about the repressions in their home countries. Ewa Kłobukowska fails sex test. Medals rescinded. Banned from competing.   Later marries and becomes a mother. East Germany finally as a separate team.  Rhodesian team not allowed into Mexico as per UN Security Council request.
1969	Peter Drouyn equal points with winner of the Australian Surfing Championship. Peter Wherrett drives in the 1969 Bathurst 1000 race for Mazda. Mike Duff wins Eastern Canadian Motorcycle Championship.
1970	Peter Drouyn wins Australian Open Surfing title. Peter Wherrett  drives in the 1969 Bathurst 1000 race for Ford. ++Bruce Jenner came 5th in Drake Relays decathlon. British Association of Sport and Medicine makes Barr Body testing available to sporting associations.  This also happens in most countries and no further athletes are failed by the test until 1985.
1972 Sapporo Winter Olympics	801 male competitors, 205 female. All female competitors subjected to a sex test.
1972 Munich Olympics	6075 male competitors, 1095 female. 960 female competitors subjected to a sex test. Exceptions only if had certificate that were tested at a previous Olympics. Rhodesia excluded by IOC. ++Bruce Jenner 10th in decathlon. 11 Israeli athletes, 1 police officer and 5 Black Septemberists killed during shootout. Avery Brundage, at his last Games as IOC President, decided that the Games were to continue after the shootout.
1973	Cis tennis champion Bobby Riggs claims that the female game is inferior and even at 55 he could beat top female player, but is defeated by lesbian Billie Jean King. ++Bruce Jenner graduates from Graceland College with a degree in physical education.
1974	Peter Wherrett drives in the 1969 Bathurst 1000 race for Alfa Romeo. Bill Smith, jockey and trainer, is outed as female-bodied on entering hospital.  He dies the next year. ++Bruce Jenner US men's decathlon champion, and on Track and Field News cover August issue.
1975	Peter Wherrett drives in the 1969 Bathurst 1000 race for Alfa Romeo. Stella Walasiewicz/Walsh inducted into the US Track and Field Hall of Fame. Renée Richards, amateur tennis player, completes transition. ++Bruce Jenner wins Franch national decathlon championship.  Also set new world record at event in Eugene, Oregon. ++Robin Mathy wins a wrestling scholarship to a junior college.
1976	Peter Wherrett drives in the 1969 Bathurst 1000 race for Alfa Romeo. 1st Gay Rodeo championships.  Includes a Miss Dusty Spurs for drag queens. Renée Richards banned from US Women’s Open as she will not submit to a chromosome test.  She sues.
1976 Innsbrook Winter Olympics	241 female competitors subjected to a sex test.
1976 Montreal Olympics	4781 male competitors, 1247 female. All female competitors have their sex verified with the exception of Anne Windsor of the UK equestrian team.   This exception is because her mommy is the Queen of Canada. ++Bruce Jenner dominates games with victories in several events.  He is awarded several US awards.  He then abandons amateur status, and monetizes his fame. (see 2015 in Part III).   South Africa and Rhodesia banned because of their racist policies. Taiwan also withdraws because not allowed to call itself Republic of China. 28 African nations boycot the Games because the IOC refuses to bar New Zealand after its rugby tour of South Africa. It will take 30 years for Montreal to pay off the debt incurred by the Games.
1977	Joana becomes João W. Nery, surgery by Roberto Farina. Renée Richards wins the right to play without submitting to testing.  She ranks 22nd. She reachs doubles finals in US Open, and wins 35-and-over women’s singles.
1978	16-year-old Chris Dale climbs the Old Man of Stoer without a rope. 1st true female body building contest in Ohio, that is based on musculature rather beauty. ++Frank Maloney working as professional boxing trainer.
1979	Renée Richards wins 25-and-over singles title at US Open.
1980	Stella Walasiewicz/Walsh is shot as a bystander during a robbery in Cleveland.  She is found to be intersex.  The U.S. Olympic Committee announces that there would be no attempt to posthumously retract Walsh's Olympic medals. ++Robin Mathy is a candidate to the 1980 USA Olympic Team in Freestyle Wrestling. ++Bruce Jenner inducted into National Track and Field Hall of Fame.
1980 Moscow Olympics	Coincided with Ramadan.  4064 male competitors, 1115 female. 995 female competitors subjected to a sex test.  Another 200 had certificates from a previous Olympics. Of 9292 drug tests, none were positive. 65 nations refuse to compete because of Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.  29 of these countries hold an alternate Liberty Bell Classic Games in Philadelphia.  Rhodesia returns to the Olympic Games as Zimbabwe. Ludwig Prokep of the IOCMC claims that some ‘third world’ athletes have failed the sex tests.  This is quickly denied by the IOCMC chair. Jarmila Kratochvílová Silver in 400m for Czechoslovakia.
1981	Chris Dale makes a bold first ascent in Australia’s Blue Mountains. First woman accepted into IOC.
1980s	++James Hayes wins over 500 regional and national champion-ships in go-kart, midget, and sprint racing, and  then competes in NASCAR Winston Cup. Judy Cousins active golfer at Stoke Poges and in the higher ranks of UK women's amateur golf.
1982 1st Gay Games – San Francisco 1983	1350 competitors. As it had done with the Women’s Games in 1926, the IOC vetoes the use of the word “Olympics”. ++Renée Richards 1st autobiography, Second Serve.
1983 Helsinki inaugural  Athletic World Championships	Jarmila Kratochvílová 2 Golds 400 m 800 m..  Accused of either taking male steroids or being male, although passes Barr Body test.
1984	Kia Sladeski declared Rookie Cowgirl of the Year, but is outed as male-born by folks in her home town. The American Rodeo Association announces that if Kia has completed a sex-change operation, there will be no problem. Either way she will be allowed to keep her rodeo earnings.
1984 Sarajevo Winter Olympics	262 female competitors subjected to a sex test. China finally participates.
1984 Los Angeles Olympics	15 east European nations refuse to attend in retaliation for the 1980 boycott, and hold alternate Friendship Games. 5263 male competitors, 1566 female. 1610 female competitors subjected to a sex test, 4 fail. 11 fail drug tests.  China finally participates.  Taiwan also as Chinese Taipei.
1985 Kobe World University Games	Maria Jose Martinez Patino, Spanish hurdler, found to be XY AIS.  Struggles for 3 years to persuade IOS to re-instate her.  Given certificate of femininity to exempt her from further testing.
1985	Peter Drouyn introduces surfing in China. Cis athlete Bev Francis denied a win in female body building contest in Las Vegas because of low score on ‘femininity’. ++Malcolm McGregor, rugby player, cricket commentator, diagnosed as transgender, but drinks and marries instead.
1986 Madrid European Games	Heidi Kreiger, unknowingly on male steroids, Gold in shot-put for DDR.
1986 Gay Games II – San Francisco 1986	3,482 competitors.  Many are HIV+ and will not compete again. ++TV movie Second Serve based on biography by Renée Richards, with Vanessa Redgrave as Renée Richards. ++Bruce Jenner inducted into Olympic Hall of Fame.
1987	Mike Duff completes transition as Michelle. Charlotte Wood, finishes third in US Senior Women’s Golf Amateur contest, and reaches semifinals of US Women's Mid-Amateur. She did not reveal that she is trans until questioned.  In reaction the US and many other Golf Associations add ‘female at birth’ requirement for women’s tournaments.
1988	Erik Schinegger,  women’s downhill champion 1968, appears on Austrian television and gives his gold medal to the woman who came second. IAAF drops Barr Body testing in favour of a manual/visual check by a doctor.
1988 Calgary Winter Olympics	1122 male competitors, 301 female.  296 female competitors subjected to a sex test.
1988 Seoul Olympics 1989	A Spanish professor presents the medical evidence to the Olympic Medical Commission that AIS women such as Maria Jose Martinez Patino,  cannot use the testosterone in their bodies, and have no unfair advantage. 8391 male competitors, 2194 female. 2200 female competitors subjected to a sex test. Cis Canadian Sprinter Ben Johnson and 2 cis Bulgarian weightlifters win gold but disqualified after drug tests.  North Korea, after failed negotiations to be a joint host, boycots, and is supported by Albania, Cuba, Madagascar & Seychelles. Defending cis diving champion, HIV+ Greg Lougania, hits the board and bleeds into the pool, but does not admit he is HIV+. For the first time, all dressage events are won by women. ++Frank Maloney becomes manager of boxer Lennox Lewis.

Sports, Gender and Trans - Part 1: to 1945

Part 1: to 1945
Part 2: the Cold War
Part 3: recent developments

The first version of this three-part chronology was published in August 2012.   Since then I have become aware of many persons who were originally missed.   This is an expanded version.  As per my usual practice, additions are marked ++.

FSFI=Fédération Sportive Féminine Internationale.
IOC= International Olympic Committee
IAAF= International Association of Athletics Federation

Given that most sports that we do today were originally created and codified by men and that traits such as strength and speed, which enable competitors to win, are often regarded as masculine, it is no surprise that a) some masculine women including intersex women take up sports b) successful female athletes are now and them accused of being males in disguise.  Furthermore, a handful of female prize winners in the 1930s, most noticeable Mark Weston and Zdenk Koubkov publicly became men.  This led to Avery Brundage, who would later be president of the IOC, demanding proof that women were women.  Because the 1940 and 1944 Olympics were cancelled, this did not start until 1948.

Note that Dora Ratjen and Stella Walasiewicz, who both competed in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, were not outed until 1957 and 1980 respectively, and thus were not considered in the early discussions.

Three strands interweave in the events recounted below: 
1) Misogyny.  First women were simply excluded, and then were accused of masculinity if they won, particularly if they did not try hard enough at the constructedness of femininity such as makeup and hair styling.
2) Intersex women were the collateral damage of sex testing.  Some did not know they were intersex until they failed a sex test.  In addition the understanding of intersexuality by sports executives was usually quite deficient.
3) Some early transsexuals such as Michael Dillon and Roberta Cowell were sportive.  As transsexuals became more common, some of them wished to continued their sporting activities, and they found themselves in a system that did not know how to deal with them.

The sex testing imposed an undignified experience on female athletes for 30 years, and has never revealed a single male trying to pass as female.  The intersex women who were caught by the testing were women, and by modern rules none of them should have been excluded.  Even 17-year-old Dora Ratjen, arguably the closest to being a fraud, was in fact intersex.  The fact that she later, like Mark Weston and Zdenk Koubkov who also had been raised as girls, felt that he should really be male, does not make his younger self a fraud.    A stronger case can be made re Francis Anderson, who was considered a fraud by the standards of her time.  From our perspective it appears that she was a trans woman.  Today we would require that she took estrogens for a minimum of one year before competing against women.  This of course was impossible in the 1890s.

Fraud in the sense of a male athlete pretending to be female to score a top medal always was highly improbable.  As James Rupert  writes: “at any given time, there are only a handful of men in the world who could beat the best women, and most of them would be so well known in the sport that their disappearance would be noted, as would the sudden appearance in the top ranks of a previously unknown female competitor.  As well, a substantial conspiracy would be required, as the poser would need special hygiene and medical accommodations.  Above all, most men do not make very convincing women, (especially when wearing the minimal garb often worn in track events) and the chances of finding one who does and who is also an elite athlete seem minute.“

No male athlete has ever been obliged to prove his sex, even in sports like long distance swimming where women have a biological advantage.
         
Competitor’s names given are the names they used at that time.  Most competitors mentioned are trans or intersex or both.  However some who were not are mentioned because they were pioneering women or gay men etc.  For clarity the latter are described as cis on first appearance - it is possible that some of the these were cross dreamers, and if so, apologies of course.

Stella Walasiewicz and Mildred Didrikson in Jersey City, New Jersey on June 25, 1931.

1000 BCE	Games for Greek women dedicated to Hera.
766	First Olympics dedicated to Zeus.  Held every 4 years.  For men only and performed in nude.  Married women barred, but prostitutes and virgins were allowed to spectate.  However could not take place unless a priestess of Demeter present.
440	Kallipateria, a female boxing coach, sneaks in in male guise to watch her son compete.  Resulted in a new rule that coaches also must be nude.
392	Kyniska, a Spartan woman, owned winning horse and chariot. Proclaimed victor but not allowed to attend.
14 CE	Emperor Tiberius  turns the 4-yearly Augustine Games into an annual sporting event.
1st century	Martial told of Philaenis, who can out-wrestle men and lift heavier weights .
131 180s	Emperor Hadrian founds the Antinoeia Games in the city of Antinopolis and elsewhere dedicated to his lover Antinous, who had met an early death.  Emperor Commodus  does chariot and horse racing and archery as well as performing as a gladiator.  He likes to dress as Hercules in drag.
218	Hierocles, a charioteer, becomes lover of trans Emperor Elagabalus.
393	Emperor Theodosius I  abolishes as pagan: Olympic Games, Hyakinthian Games, Panathenean Games.
13th century	Ulrich of Lichtenstein  jousts in female clothing.
1612	Cotswold Olimpyc Games, first modern revival, held near Chipping Campden.
1720s	Elizabeth Stokes, professional boxer. Mary Welsh, professional sword fighter for prize money
1790s	Ozaw-Wen-Dib, a Saulteaux Chippewa A-Go-Kwa shaman and two-spirit., is the best runner in the tribe.
1855	Lucy/Joseph Lobdell, who ever met only one man who was a better shot, transitions to male.
1859	1st revival games in Athens
1860s	Jimmy De Forest, future fight trainer, is Mlle Petite De Forest, circus arielist.
1870s 1876 1880   1881	Sándor Vay  noted for riding, hunting and fencing. ++Steve Hart,  jockey is declared the winner of The Benella Handicap after a protest was upheld.  He is said to be the only person to jump a horse over the Wangaratta railway gates. He is known for his preference for female attire. ++Steve Hart, dies, with several of the Kelly Gang, at the famous siege of Glenrowan. ++Joseph Lobdell, shooter, admitted to Willard Asylum where his masculinity is taken as evidence of insanity. Frederick Taylor, efficiency engineer and female impersonator, is a winner in the first doubles tournament in the US National Tennis Championships.  He was also a cricketer.
1893	Calamity Jane/Martha Jane Burke, masculine woman,  shooter and horse rider at Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show.
1890s	Charles Winslow Hall  wins several shooting contests. Frances Anderson, first female billiards champion.
1894	International Olympic Committee (IOC) is founded by Pierre de Coubertin.
1896 Athens Olympics 1898	Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the gay father of the modern Games says: “Olympics with women would be incorrect, unpractical, uninteresting and unaesthetic”.  Zero women compete officially. Cis woman Stamati Revithi runs the men’s race by herself the next day.  The officials ignore her name and referr to her as Melpomene, the muse of tragedy. ++Toupie Lowther, masculine woman, at a widely publicised fencing competition and display held at The Military Gymnasium of the Army Camp in Aldershot, vanquished not only her lady opponents but also the army’s Sergeant instructor.
1900 Paris Olympics 1900 1901 1902 1903	976 men compete. 21 women compete in ballooning, croquet, golf, yachting, horse riding, tennis.  Held at the same time as the Exposition Universelle, and some confusion as to which was which. ++Toupie Lowther wins British Covered Court Tennis Championship. ++Toupie Lowther wins German Tennis Championship ++Charles Winslow Hall dies mid-Atlantic returning to US with his wife and is found to be female bodied.  ++Toupie Lowther wins British Covered Court Tennis Championship, and, at a fencing display in Paris, billed as “The Lady Champions of England and France,” she opposed (and worsted) the famous Mme Gabriele before a crowded salon. ++Toupie Lowther wins Monte Carlo Tennis Championship and British Covered Court Tennis Championship, and, engaged and held her own as a fencer against the Maître, or Prof. Yvon at the Civil Engineers Hall in Paris.
1900s	Sybil Mousey-Heysham, masculine woman, is declared to be one of the three finest duck shots in Britain.
1904 St Louis Olympics 1904	Chicago had won the bid, but the Louisiana Purchase Exposition  threatens to eclipse with a bigger sporting event unless the Olympics are moved to St Louis.  As in Paris the Exposition and the Olympics were confused. Co-incides with the Russo-Japanese War. Only 12 nations and 52 athletes from outside the US. 6 women contest. Women’s boxing is featured as an exhibition sport.  Women’s archery. Fewer than half of the events include athletes from outside the US. Cis man George Eyser wins 6 medals even though he had a wooden leg. ++Toupie Lowther wins Homburg Tennis Cup.
1906 Interim Games - Athens 1906	Danish women do a gymnastics demonstration.  Tennis is the only women's sport, and only Greek and French women take part. Considered an official Olympics Games at the time, but later downgraded. Unlike 1900, 1904, 1908 not overshadowed by an international exhibition. ++Toupie Lowther wins Cannes Tennis Championship and South of France Championship.
1908	Female bullfighters banned in Spain.  La Reverte claims that she is a man, and continues to fight.
1908 London Olympics	Rome had won the bid, but after eruption of Vesuvius in 1906, funds are diverted to disaster relief.  Olympics are transferred to London to be alongside the Franco-British Exhibition. 1971 male competitors, 37 female.
1912 Stockholm Olympics 1913 1915	2406 male competitors, 47 female. A 15-year British girl entered the pentathlon, but is rejected. Two swimming events and high board diving for women are included. ++Violette Morris, masculine woman, comes 5th in the 8 km French swimming contest – she was the only female competitor. ++Germany announces that 1916 Berlin Olympics will continue but only for its allies, and neutral countries such as USA.
1916 Berlin Olympics 1917 1918	As the Graet War was still raging, it was finally cancelled. ++Violette Morris sets the first French record in shot put. ++Toupie Lowther co-founds ambulance unit active on German-French front line. ++Violette Morris plays in the first official women's football match in France. In goal, she played with her head bare (as men did) rather than wearing the prescribed beret.
1919	14-year-old cis Lily Parr is recruited for a women’s football team at Preston, Lancashire.  Remained a star player until 1950, scoring over 900 goals. ++Violette Morris is admitted to the Fédération française de sports féminins (FFSF) ++Toupie Lowther and other members of her ambulance unit were awarded Croix de Guerre.
1920 Antwerp Olympics	Budapest had been scheduled to host, but Hungary, Austria, Germany, Bulgaria & Turkey are barred from competing as part of sanctions after the Great War. Soviet Union declines to participate. 2561 male competitors, 65 female.
1921.	Fédération Sportive Féminine Internationale  (FSFI) is formed on 31st October as IOC continued to refuse women’s athletics in the main Olympics. ++Violette Morris participates in the first Women's World Games in Monte Carlo in 1921 establishing new records for shot-put and javelin. ++England's Football Association bans the popular female teams with the excuse “quite unsuitable for females and ought not to be encouraged”.  The ban remained for 50 years.  The female players went abroad to play matches.
1922 Paris Women's Olympic Games 1922	Organised by the FSFI and attended by 5 nations.  Mary Weston  and Zdenka Koubková  compete, as does Stella Walasiewicz, who is known as Stella Walsh when she competes in US.    ++Violette Morris sets records in athletics, and comes second in 1,000 m swimming, and won a cycling race. ++Violette Morris takes up motor racing, and, the only woman entered, comes 4th in the Bol d'Or.
1922 Deutsche Kampfspiele -Berlin 1923	Being barred from the Olympics, Germany and it’s Great War allies put on an alternate games.  Repeated in 1926 and 1930. ++Violette Morris opens a car/motorbike accessories shop, Spécialités Violette Morris, at 6, rue Roger-Bacon,
1924 Paris Olympics	2954 male athletes, 135 female. The IAAF refuses to add more women's events to the programme, except for fencing.
1925	++Mary Weston  UK national champion in shot-put.
1926 Gothenburg Women's Olympic Games	9 nations attended: 100 participants After protests by the IAAF and IOC next Games  retitled the Women's World Games.  ++Mary Weston  6th in 2-handed shot-put.
1926.	++Joe Carstairs enters Duke of York’s trophy for speed boating.  After most competitors had fallen out, the Newg's propeller was caught by a submerged rope, but Joe managed to cut the rope, and completed the course to win the trophy.  won the Royal Motor Yacht Club International Race, the Daily Telegraph Cup, the Bestise Cup and the Lucina Cup. On Lake Windermere Joe set a world record of 54.97 mph for a 1½ litre class boat. ++Violette Morris indefinitely suspended from playing football. ++Toupie Lowther elected a member of the French Academie d'Armes.
1927	Stella Walasiewicz wins a place on the US Olympic team, but is disqualified in that she is not a citizen, and could not become one until age 21. Violette Morris, wins the Bol d’Or 24 hour car race. ++Violette Morris  suspended by the FFSF. ++Violette Morris practises boxing, sparring with Raoul Paoli (1887-1960), the Olympics athlete, boxer, rugby player.
1928	Frances Anderson, billiard champion, commits suicide, and is found to be male-bodied. ++Mary Weston  UK national champion in shot-put. ++Joe Carstairs competes in Harmsworth Cup for boating, but is thrown into the water and has a cracked rib.   He sets up his own boatyard in East Cowes. ++Toupie Lowther is main real-life influence behind FTM novel Well of Loneliness.  In his book Atalanta or The Future of Sport, G.S. Sandilands, writes that women’s Olympics are "extremely immodest. Girls appeared in running shorts and revealed great lengths of unclad legs. Even naked thighs were displayed - and displayed as if they didn't matter. . . . There was one disconcerting aspect about these public revelations: prurient people (i.e., all of us) discovered yet again that a woman's legs are far less indecent than her underclothing.”
1928 Amsterdam Olympics 1929	Germany is welcomed back.  German Athletics team leader is cis gay man , Otto Peltzer . The IOC and the IAAF agree to include women’s athletic. However, they agree only to the inclusion of a limited number of events, and only as an experiment.  The FSFI does not find this satisfactory.  2606 male athletes, 277 female. Violette Morris, expected to be on French team but is rejected because of the way that she dressed. ++Violette Morris has top surgery, using the excuse of fitting into a racing car, and also sues the FFSF for reinstatement and 100,000 francs in damages.  However her case is dismissed. ++Joe Carstairs competes in Harmsworth Cup, but hits a log. ++Mary Weston UK national champion in javelin, discus and shot-put.
1930 Prague Women's World Games 1930	17 countries.  Stella Walasiewicz Gold in 60 metres,100 metres and 200 metres for Poland.  Is voted the most popular Polish athlete. ++Joe Carstairs competes in Harmsworth Cup for boating, sets an American speed record, but breaks down in the actual race.
1930s	Bill Smith trains and rides winners in north Queensland horse racings. Laura Dillon wins Sporting Blue for rowing at Oxford.
1931	++Left-handed cis woman baseball picher, Jackie Mitchell, is recruited by Chattanooga Lookouts.  She strikes out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.  A few days later baseball commissioner bans women from playing as game "too strenuous".
1932	Lesbian tennis star Helen Jacobs first to play in shorts rather than a skirt. Cis gay man, Gottfried von Cramm wins German tennis championships.
1932 Los Angeles Olympics	1206 male athletes, 126 female. China participates for the first time. Because of the depression many could not afford to attend. Stella Walasiewicz for Poland, Gold 100m. Mildred Didrikson, cis athlete, 2 golds  (hurdling and javelin) and 1 silver (high jump) for US.  Her appearance is masculine, and she is rumoured to be a  man.
1933	Gottfried von Cramm co-winner of mixed doubles at Wimbledon.
1934	Maurice Wilson, in gender-mixed clothing, dies becoming first European to climb Everest. Gottfried von Cramm wins French Tennis Open. ++Elvire de Bruijn  Belgian, European and world cycling champion.
1934 London Women's World Games	19 nations: 200 competitors. Stella Walasiewicz Gold in 800 metres for Poland. Zdenka Koubková Gold in 800 metres, Bronze in Long Jump for Czechoslovakia. Her genitals are examined. She is stripped of her medals and banned.
1935	Robert Cowell drives in the London-Land’s-End trial run. Otto Peltzer sentenced for homosexuality. ++Elvire de Bruijn  Belgian, European and world cycling champion.
1936	Mary Weston becomes Mark with surgery at Charing Cross Hospital by Lennox Broster. Zdenek Koubkov has has an operation in Kiev with Milosh Kilcka, is declared a man and becomes a performer in New York. Gottfried von Cramm wins second French Open. ++Elvire de Bruijn  Belgian, European and world cycling champion. Avery Brundage, chairman of US Olympic Commission calls for female athletes to have their sex confirmed.  He is also against any boycott of the Berlin games, claiming that Jewish athletes were being fairly treated, and that there was a Jewish-Communist conspiracy to keep the US out of the Berlin Games.  He reassures his German hosts that he understands their position, as he is in a sporting club in Chicago that also bars Jews.
1936 Berlin Olympics	Boycotted by Ireland because Northern Irish not permitted on their team.  Boycotted by the Soviet Union. Spain boycotted because of the policies of the Nazi German government.  Spain also organizes an alternate Peoples’ Olympiad  in Barcelona (which had come second in bidding for this Olympics).  6,000 athletes (more than go to Berlin) from 22 countries (not the Soviet Union, but including German and Italian exiles) arrive, but the day before the opening ceremony Franco’s fascists launch a military coup and the Civil War starts.  The Peoples’ Olympiad is cancelled, and many athletes join in the battles against the fascists. The FSFI hands over full control of international women's athletics to the IAAF in return for the IAAF recognising all FSFI records, a complete programme of women's Olympic events, and the IAAF holding the fifth Women's World Games in Vienna in 1938. In the event, while the 1936 IAAF Congress agrees to recognise FSFI records, it otherwise only agreed to proposing a somewhat expanded programme of Olympic events to the IOC (the IOC refused) and holding a programme of women's events in the 1938 European Athletics Championships in place of the Women's World Games. The FSFI ceases operations without ever accepting or rejecting the IAAF's decisions. 3632 male athletes,  331 female. 1st torch relay from Athens to the host nation. 1st Olympics to be televised. Filmed by Leni Riefenstahl. Hitler wanted to exclude Jews and blacks, but other nations threatened a boycott.  The ‘No Jews’ signs in Berlin are removed for the duration.  All Romanies are arrested and sent to a Concentration Camp. Hauptmann Wolfgang Fürstner, commandant of the Olympic Village, is abruptly replaced at the end of June, awarded an Olympic Medal First Class, reclassified as Jewish and commits suicide. Gretel Bergmann, cis woman and Germany’s best high-jumper is excluded because she is Jewish.   She is replaced by Dora Ratjen who comes fourth. Stella Walasiewicz narrowly beaten by cis woman Helen Stephens, who is then obliged to submit to a genital inspection which she passes. Otto Peltzer banned from competing. Jesse Owens, a cis black US athlete wins 4 Golds and broke 2 Olympic records, to the irritation of the Nazis. The only two Jews on the US team are pulled on the day of the competition.  Rumour says that Avery Brundage did not want Hitler to be embarrassed by a Jew winning in addition to Jesse Owens. ++Jesse Owens is obliged to use the freight elevator at the Waldorf-Astoria, NY, to attend his own reception.   Unlike the other US Olympians, Owens is never invited to the White House.  He therefore campains for Negro votes for the Republican Party in the 1936 Presidential election. "Hitler didn't snub me – it was our president who snubbed me. The president didn't even send me a telegram."  ++Violette Morris said to be a special guest, but did not compete.  This is not confirmed.
1937	++Elvira de Bruijn,  again  Belgian, European and world cycling champion. Having heard about Zdenk Koubkov, de Brujin investigates and then becomes a man. Otto Peltzer again sentenced for homosexuality. Gottfried von Cramm has a phone call from Hitler just before 1937 Davis Cup, but doesn’t win. Pierre de Coubertin dies.
1938	Mildred Didrikson competes in men’s Los Angeles Golf Open with a good score but misses the cut.  There she meets her husband. Gottfried von Cramm sentenced for homosexuality.
1938 Vienna/ Paris European Championships	Men’s events held in Paris, women’s in Vienna (by then part of Germany). Stella Walasiewicz 2 Golds 2 Silvers. (see 1980 in Part II) Dora Ratjen wins in the female high-jump, setting a world record.  However is later genitally examined by a police doctor, after being arrested at a railway station. Medal and permit to compete are rescinded, but on grounds of violating amateur status. (see 1957 in Part II)
1939	Robert Cowell drives in Antwerp Grand Prix. Gottfried von Cramm is refused at Wimbeldon because he is a ‘convicted criminal’.  Also refused a visa for US Open.
1940 Tokyo Olympics	Tokyo is stripped of the Games in 1938 because of the Second Sino-Japanese War.  The Games then go to Helsinki.  This in turn is suspended in September 1939 when European War breakes out.  The Stadium is used for the annual Finland-Sweden games, with Germany invited to participate.
1941	Otto Peltzer returns to Germany, and sent to Mauthausen concentration camp. ++María Torremadé breaks Spanish records in 100m, 200m and 800m, and in high jump.  Is discovered to have internal male organs.
1942	Gottfried von Cramm, after military service and winning an Iron Cross, is dismissed from the military because of his conviction. ++19-year-old María Torremadé, having won Spanish and European awards in basketball and athletics and high jump, has surgery and announces that he, Jordi, is a man.  He marries in 1952, and moves to Paris in 1959.
1940s	Bill Smith trains and rides winners in north Queensland horse racings.
1944	Violette Morris is assassinated by French Resistance. Robert Cowell crashes his airplane in Germany and sent to Stalag Luft 1. ++Richard Raskind, age 10, wins  Sunrise Club tennis championship for boys. He was also considered as a pitcher by a baseball scout.
1944 London Olympics	Cancelled because of the war. The IOC organized many events to celebrate its 50th anniversary at its headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland.
1945	Robert Cowell released from Stalag Luft 1. Otto Peltzer released from Mauthausen concentration camp. Mildred Didrikson playes 3 PGA (men’s golf) tournaments.  She is still the only woman to ever make the cut in a regular PGA.

Zanzibar 1860

General Christopher Rigby, the best linguist in the British Army, was the British Consul in Zanzibar in 1860.   In paragraph 33 of his Report on the Zanzibar Dominion of that year he wrote (probably with less than full full understanding):

"Since the death of the late Imam [Syud Said] numbers of sodomites have come from Muscat, and these degraded wretches openly walk about dressed in female attire, with veils on their faces". 

• Christopher Palmer Rigby & Mrs Charles E. B. Russell. General Rigby, Zanzibar, and the Slave Trade, With Journals, Dispatches, Etc. New York: Negro Universities Press, 1970: 342.

Toupie Lowther (1874 – 1944) Part II: The Well of Loneliness.

Part I: sporting champion and war service
Part II: The Well of Loneliness.

Also in 1926, Radclyffe Hall wrote a short story, "Miss Ogilvy Finds Herself", although it was not published until 1934. It drew on Toupie's accounts of her life during the war, her masculinity and her lack of fit in society. Ogilvy, "My God! If only I were a man", who, even as a child had insisted that "her real name was William and not Wilhelmina", finds a role in the war leading an ambulance unit, but afterwards finds that again her masculinity has become absurd. She commits suicide.

A few years later Radclyffe Hall incorporated much more of Toupie into the life of her FTM invert anti-hero Stephen Gordon, who is an accomplished fencer, tennis player and motorist, in the ambulance unit in the battles at Compiègne, and is awarded a Croix de Guerre. The book was published in 1928 as The Well of Loneliness.

It was prosecuted for obscenity that same year. This had a side effect of outing the Hackett-Lowther Unit as being largely a lesbian organization. In his summing up, the barrister Charles Biron said:

“ ….according to the writer of this book, a number of women of position and admirable character, who were engaged in driving ambulances in the course of the war, were addicted to this vice".

For a while after the trial, Toupie took to dressing as an heterosexual woman: skirts, silks etc, and disassociated herself from Hall and Troubridge.

Toupie's brother, Claude, unmarried, but the father of one son, after a career as a right-wing Conservative, died the next year after a period of illness – the outing of his sister cannot have helped.

Toupie spoke of being the inspiration for Stephen Gordon and some books say that John and Una dropped her for saying so. Una wrote in her life of Radclyffe Hall:

“She passed out of our lives when John wrote The Well of Loneliness, and we afterwards heard that she had resented the book as challenging her claim to be the only invert in existence. Later still, when she was growing very old, I was told that she had moreover acquired the illusion that she had served as a model for Stephen Gordon.”

In 1935, Toupie's elder sister Aimée, an unmarried amateur thespian, died of tuberculosis.

Toupie retired to the village of Pulborough, Sussex. During the war years, a little girl needed a field in which to keep her shetland pony, and a vacant field was known to be available:

"The little girl made her way up the hill to Lowther Lodge, and knocked on the door. Which was opened by an elderly gentleman with short grey hair wearing a suit. Rather surprised Joanne asked if Miss Lowther was in. 'I am Miss Lowther' said the elderly gentleman 'come in'.

Toupie died in 1944, like her sister, of tuberculosis.
___________________________________________________________

Michael Baker's 1985 biography of Radclyffe Hall credits Toupie with a husband and a child. As DR Boodle clearly demonstrates, he had confused May Lowther (1874-1944) with her second cousin Barbara Lowther (1890-1979). This confusion was repeated in several later books. Eg. Sally Cline in her Radclyffe Hall – a Woman called John, 2010 writes:

“Barbara “Toupie” Lowther, another friend of Ladye’s – eldest daughter of the 6th Earl of Lonsdale, provoked a similar response in John on the matter of war work. Toupie, who had married Lieutenant-Colonel James Innes in 1914 and become the mother of two small babies, did not allow marriage or motherhood to restrict her activities. Even before she divorced James in 1921 she and  Norah Desmond-Hackett had formed a spectacular, women only ambulance unit, which despite opposition from the authorities, eventually drove alongside the French army on the Compiegne battlefront.”

Emily Hamer writes:

"In 1917 Barbara 'Toupie' Lowther began to set up an all-women ambulance unit".

Two authors, Kerry Greenwood and John Longenbaugh, have written murder mysteries with a fictional Toupie Lowther as a central character.

No-one else seems to have mentioned that Claude Lowther died within a few months of the Well of Loneliness trial.   Being such a right-wing Conservative, he cannot have taken it easily when his sister was outed.

In Halberstam's Female Masculinity, it is immediately after the discussion of Toupie Lowther that Halberstam writes:

"Toupie and Miss Ogilvy, the women in Havelock Ellis's surveys, and even Stephen Gordon seem much more closely related to what we now call a transsexual identity than they do to lesbianism.   Indeed the history of homosexuality and transsexuality was a shared history at the beginning of the century and only diverged in the 1940s, when surgery and hormonal treatments became available to, and demanded by, some cross-identifying subjects."

The game of more-trans-than-thou is a sterile road.  We could point out that Toupie Lowther was less down the road to manhood than Violette Morris and Joe Carstairs but all three had to make decisions without the options of hormones or surgery or role models.   To confuse such a comparison, remember that Morris did have top surgery but never took a male name.  We can wonder how each of them would have decided if hormones and surgery had been available twenty years earlier.

• The Evening Telegraph, 6th May 1898.
  
• Arthue Wallis Myers. Lawn Tennis at Home and Abroad. Scribner's Sons, 1903: 181-2.
  
• Regis and Louis Senac. Spalding's Athletic library, The Art of Fencing. American Sports Publishing Company, 1904: 29.
  
• Toupie Lowther. "Chapter VII: Ladies' Play". In Reginald F. & H. Lawrence. Doherty. On Lawn Tennis. Baker and Taylor Co.,1903.
  
• A. Wallis Myers. "Miss Toupie (Toupee) Lowther". The Bystander, 19 December 1906.
  
• Mary Dexter & Emily Loud Sanford. In the Soldier's Service: War Experiences of Mary Dexter: England, Belgium, France, 1914-1918. Houghton Mifflin Company, 1918.
  
• "Englishwomen with the French Army: Miss Toupie Lowther’s Unit". The Times, 15 August 1919.
  
• Una Toubridge. The Life of Radclyffe Hall. Arno Press, 1975: 113.
  
• Lovat Dickson. Radclyffe Hall at The Well of Loneliness A Sapphic Chronicle. Collins, 1975: 117-8, 174.
  
• Michael Baker. Our Three Selves: The Life of Radclyffe Hall. Hamilton, 1985.
  
• Emily Hamer. Britannia's Glory: A History of Twentieth-Century Lesbians. Cassell, 1996: 50-3, 99, 114-5, 207.
  
• Sally Cline. Radclyffe Hall A Woman Called John.   Faber and Faber, 1997:63, 74-5, 153-4, 163, 173, 177, 178, 181, 187, 193, 196, 201, 209, 221, 230, 251,263, 334.
  
• Diana Souhami. The Trials of Radclyffe Hall. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1998: 33, 40, 52, 66, 75, 111, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 127, 130, 132, 137, 144, 147, 159-160, 162, 198, 211, 242, 367.
  
• Judith Halberstam. Female Masculinity. Durham: Duke University Press, 2004: 83-5.
  
• Kerry Greenwood. Murder in Montparnasse - A Phryne Fisher Mystery. Crows Nest,2012.
  
• D. R. Boodle. Toupie Lowther 1874–1944: Her life - A new assessment. 12/6/2014. toupielowther.com.
  
• John Longenbaugh. The Pale Blue Ribbon. Kindle, 2015.
  

EN.WIKIPEDIA

Toupie Lowther (1874 – 1944) Part I: sporting champion and war service

Part I: sporting champion and war service
Part II: The Well of Loneliness

May Lowther, her elder sister Aimée (1869-1935) and elder brother Claude (1870-1929) were scions of the Lowther dynasty, which features the Earls of Lonsdale (see also, more) and many Conservative Members of Parliament.

May's father, William Francis Lowther (1841-1908), was a naval office who rose to the rank of Commander. When his father, William Lowther, the 2^nd Earl of Lonsdale, died in 1872, he retired and lived on an inherited trust fund. He did not inherit the title as his parents, his mother being the opera singer Emilia Cresotti, had never married. The 2^nd Earl also had two illegitimate daughters with different mothers. May's mother was Louise Beatrice de Fonblangue from Toronto (? -1922).

May was educated at Le Pensionnat Les Ruches, a private boarding school at Avon, near Fontainbleau in France. Natalie Barney and her sister also attended the same school. Lowther became fluent in French and gained a baccalaureate in sciences.

Using the name Toupie, she took up fencing at age 15. She preferred the Italian rather than the French style, and declined to fence in a skirt on grounds of practicality. She fenced with both men and
women.

In 1898 at a widely publicised fencing competition and display held at The Military Gymnasium of the Army Camp in Aldershot, Toupie vanquished not only her lady opponents but also the army’s Sergeant instructor. At a display in Paris 1902, billed as “The Lady Champions of England and France,” she opposed (and worsted) the famous Mme Gabriele before a crowded salon. In 1903 she engaged and held her own against the Maître, or Prof. Yvon at the Civil Engineers Hall in Paris.

She was an accomplished singer and composer. She set poems by Oscar Wilde and Alfred Tennyson to music, and her music was performed at the Wigmore Hall in London. The Waifs and Strays Society held a fancy Grand Benefit on 3 June 1899 with royalty in attendance. The program included "Incidental music by Miss Toupie Lowther".

At this time, brother Claude was with the British Army in the Boer War. He became a Conservative MP in 1900.

Toupie was also a keen tennis player and participated in championship games, especially those held at Homburg 1896-1901, and at Wimbledon where she reached the singles semi-final in 1903. She did win the British Covered Championships in 1900  and then again in 1902 and 1903. She also won the German Championships, 1901, the Monte Carlo Championships, 1903, the Homburg Cup, 1904, the Cannes Championships, 1906 and the Championships of the South of France, 1906. She was large, renowned for her lobs and said to have a man's stroke and a man's strength.

She was one of the first women to own a motorbike and lift weights.

Toupie was a friend of Mabel Batten (Ladye) (1856-1916) and John Radclyffe Hall (1880-1943) and is frequently mentioned in Mabel's diaries, 1910-5.

In 1917, at age 43, with Norah Desmond Hackett, Toupie sent a petition to General Petain at the Grand Quartier General to organise

“an ambulance section on exactly the same lines, subject to the same conditions as the allied men’s section … we should be allowed to do front line work under the same conditions as the men’s Units”.

This being approved the Hackett-Lowther Unit with 20 donated vehicles was incorporated into the French Army with permission to do front-line work. The drivers and the canteen women were ranked as private soldiers and paid 5 sous a day; Toupie Lowther and Norah Hackett as sous Lieutenants at 10 sous a day with one stripe on the sleeve. The drivers were all women, and some had already done similar work in Serbia, Romania, Greece and Russia.

They were heavily involved in the battles at Compiègne, in June 1918. They were then incorporated into the 1^st Army for the final advance into Germany. The Unit was twice mentioned in dispatches.

Several members of the unit, including Lowther, were awarded the Croix de Guerre. The Unit was disbanded 19 March 1919.

After Mabel's death, John Radclyffe Hall and Mabel's cousin Una Toubridge (1887-1963) became a couple. Again Toupie and her brother Claude were friends of John and Una, who were taken with Toupie's war record. In 1920, Una said that she thought that Toupie was a hermaphrodite. In 1922 in Brighton with Una Toubridge and Radclyffe Hall she bought an “Overland Tourer” and taught them to drive.  They referred to her as 'Brother'.

In the 1920s Toupie ran a lesbian salon, and writers such as Radclyffe Hall, Ida Wylie, May Sinclair and Vere Hutchinson (popular at the time) attended. Toupie loved to tell how, while motoring, she was stopped at the Franco-Italian border for masquerading as a man. On the return journey she wore a skirt and was arrested for masquerading as a woman.

In 1926, Toupie Lowther was elected a member of the French Academie d’Armes, the only woman to that date to be so.

________________________________________________________________________________

There is no mention that Toupie ever met either Joe Carstairs or Violette Morris.  With their shared interests in sports and motor vehicles and experience with ambulance uits in the war, they would have had a lot in common.

There are Wikipedia pages for both Toupie and Claude.   Claude's does not mention Toupie at all.   Toupie's - mainly about her as a tennis star, with a brief afterword about the ambulance unit, and no mention of The Well of Loneliness - returns the favour.

Penny Whetton (1958 - 2019) climate scientist

Peter Whetton was born in Melbourne, and did a BA in physics and a PhD, 1986, in climate variability at Melbourne University, where he met Janet Rice and they married. They had two sons.

After a few years in the Geography Department at Monash University, Whetton became a climate scientist at Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), and was the main contributor to, and editor of, CSIRO's Australian climate change projections released in 1992, 1996, 2001 and 2007.

In 1998, Whetton came out to Janet first as a cross-dresser and then as transgender, and four years after that in 2003 changed her name to Penny and had transgender surgery.

This was the same time as Rice, a Greens politician was elected to Maribyrnong council; she was elected Mayor in 2006.

Whetton was a lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Third Assessment Report, and of the Fourth Assessment Report which was awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize (jointly with Al Gore). She is contributing to the Fifth.

Rice was elected to the Federal Senate as a Greens member in 2013.

In an interview in 2014, Janet said:

“Look, I think we’re pretty normal. We’ve been married 28 years. Penny transitioned from Peter to Penny – we stayed married, we still love each other.”

In her maiden speech in the Senate, Rice said:

“The time for marriage equality in Australia has come. I'm here for all lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people and their families. We deserve recognition and respect in all aspects of our lives.”

++Penny died peaceably age 61

• "Gender changes, but a wife's love stays". The Age, September 9, 2007. www.theage.com.au/news/national/gender-changes-but-a-wifes-love-stays/2007/09/08/1188783562207.html.
  
• "Penny Whetton: Climate change science in focus". ECOS, 18 September 2013, www.ecosmagazine.com/?paper=EC13210.
  
• Matt Akersten. "New Senator's proud to be in a same-sex marriage". Samesame, 9^th Jul, 2014. www.samesame.com.au/news/11120/New-Senators-proud-to-be-in-a-same-sex-relationship.
  
• Tina Perinotto. "Penny Whetton and CSIRO on how 8 areas of Australia will fare under climate change". The Fifth Estate, 29 January 2015. www.thefifthestate.com.au/habitat/climate-change-news/penny-whetton-and-csiro-on-how-8-areas-of-australia-will-fare-under-climate-change/70998.
  
• "I still love her, we can stay married: The Senator and her transgender wife". SBS, 7 Feb 2015. www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2015/02/06/i-still-love-her-we-can-stay-married-senator-and-her-transgender-wife.
  
• Benjamin Law. "Transformers: the unique challenge of changing gender within a relationship". The Sydney Morning Herald, March 7, 2015. www.smh.com.au/good-weekend/transformers-the-unique-challenge-of-changing-gender-within-a-relationship-20150219-13jm4n.html.
  
• "Penny Whetton, wife of Senator Janet Rice, climate scientist and transgender woman, dies".  ABC, 2019-09-17.  www.abc.net.au/news/2019-09-17/penny-whetton-climate-scientist-and-wife-of-janet-rice-dies/11519308. 

EN.Wikipedia(Penny)    EN.Wikipedia(Janet)    GoogleScholar     TheConversation