Trans cops

There has been discussion recently of the reactionary autobiography by Rene Jax (spelt without the usual accents). He (for he has reverted) has the impertinence to claim to be the ‘first’ transgender cop. It is always inadvisable to claim to be the ‘first’ anything, as almost always other earlier ones come to light.

As we know only 1-2% of those who transition, later de-transition. As such, medical sex-change is one of the most successful branches of medicine. In particular the regret rates in plastic surgery range up to 47%; having children and getting a tattoo have regret rates of 7 % and 16.2 %, respectively.

However some sections of the press like to dramatise transsexual surgery regret, and Walt Heyer (1940 -) has made a career from his detransition. Jax appears to be doing something similar.

Jax, born 1954, social transition 1977, surgery 1990, detransition 2022, maintains an ignorance of the transgender cops who preceded him. He even ignores Carol Katz (see below) also in California, and who transitioned in 1974, only three years earlier. This is a bit much.

There are actually quite a lot of transgender cops, both trans men and trans woman. Here are the best known of transgender cops who very much pre-date Jax.

Fernando Mackenzie (1836- ?) transitioned while still a child. He did national service in the French army. At the age of 35 he migrated to Spain and joined the Madrid police force. After a move to Seville, still serving as a policeman he was employed at the governor’s palace. In this role he served under seven successive governors. Two years after his wife died, he was badly injured in a street accident, and was taken to hospital where it was revealed that he had a female body. Consequently he was dismissed and denied his pension.

Emilie Kellner (1873- ?) a Berlin police officer (Kriminalschutzmann) who was allowed to dress female while on duty from 1912. Kellner became one of Hirschfeld's patients, but after moving to the suburb of Charlottenburg, became unemployed.

Tony Barreto-Neto (1945- ) first a lesbian and then a trans activist. In his 40s Barreto-Neto became a cop in Hillsborough, Florida and became a decorated police officer with numerous awards. He transitioned to Tony on the job. After hostility from fellow cops, he joined the Hardwick, Vermont, Police Department. After being ostracized, he sued, won and established for the first time that trans persons are protected under Vermont law.

Carol Katz

Carol Katz (1947 - ) Katz was a US Federal law enforcement agent in Los Angeles until 1973 when she resigned and started to transition. She started a transsexual support group in 1980 and was a charter member of the ACLU Transsexual Rights Committee. From 1979-81 she was on the Christopher Street West Gay pride Parade and Festival Committee. She recruited trans persons to work as parade monitors and in festival security. She used her contacts to effect greater co-operation with the various police forces.

Alexandra Selyaninova (? - ) served in the Red Army, then as a police officer. After a transfer to the Perm Region as a Police Captain, far away from relatives and old friends, Selyaninova began to wear female clothing, and applied for a medical examination. Doctors from Moscow diagnosed Selyaninova as transsexual. There were two operations in 1991, and Alexandra was issued a new passport and birth certificate. She stayed in Perm and ran her own business.

In the 1990s, there were enough trans cops to found TOPS (Transgender Officers Protect and Serve), which later became TCOPS (Transgender Community of Police & Sheriffs) with a world wide membership in the 100s.

Two more trans cops of interest:

Laura de Costa Teixeira (1980-) previously in charge of the anti-drugs squad in the north-east city of Goiana, Pernambuco, Brazil, transitioned in 2013 with surgery in Thailand, and then transferred to a police unit that specializes in countering crimes against women.

Lorimer Shenher, previously of the Vancouver Police Department, was involved in the Missing Women Investigation that eventually led to the arrest and conviction of serial killer Robert Pickton in 2007. Shenher transitioned in 2015, and has published two books: That Lonely Section of Hell: The Botched Investigation of a Serial Killer Who Almost Got Away, 2025 and This One Looks Like a Boy, 2019, his autobiography.

Francois-Timoléon de Choisy - cross-dreamer or out transvestist?

Part 1: Life, and the 1695 short-story

Part 2: discussion and bibliography

Was de Choisy more trans than a cross-dreamer?

Joan DeJean in her introduction to the 2004 edition of The story of the Marquise-Marquis de Banneville:

“Modern biographers and critics generally assume that Choisy's memoirs may be taken at face value. His tendency to hyperbole and self-aggrandizement makes me more than a bit skeptical with regard to the reliability of the memoirs.”

Paul Scott is the major advocate that de Choisy’s memoirs are mainly fiction. 

“I argue that these memoirs, from the time of their discovery, have been taken at face value and wrongly treated as autobiographical. It is my contention that, when they are examined with a degree of critical scrutiny, the inescapable conclusion is that they represent nothing other than an elaborate and sustained fantasy on their creator’s part. The primary problem in attempting to verify the accuracy of Choisy’s account is the absence of supporting evidence. This has been noted by some, if by no means the majority, of the scholars working on Choisy. It should be emphasized that this lack of substantiation is absolute and comprehensive, for there is not a single reference, allusion, or description, no matter how cursory, to Choisy’s cross-dressing escapades by any of his contemporaries.” [p15] 

… “The memoirs are filled with accounts of events that surpass any reasonable degree of plausibility. The level of social and, in particular, clerical acquiescence that the cross-dressed Choisy receives beggars belief. It is not only the parish priest, the curate, and M. Garnier, his confessor, who tolerate his unusual flamboyance, but also the cardinal archbishop of Paris. He becomes the principal collection-taker during Sunday offices at Saint-Médard and does not tone down his extravagant dress: ‘je m’y préparai comme à la fête qui devait me montrer en spectacle’ (‘I prepared myself for it as for the party that was to show me off’ p. 439). There is no question that parishioners do not realize that this lady is not all she seems, for Choisy boasts that ‘il est certain qu’il vint beaucoup de gens d’autres paroisses, sachant que j’y devais quêter’ ( ‘it is certain that many people from other parishes will come, knowing that I had to collect there’ p. 440). The pinnacle occurs with a mock marriage between Choisy, dressed as a bride, and her fourteen-year-old bridegroom, Charlotte, dressed in male garb, which is witnessed by a crowd comprising clergy, parishioners, and the girl’s family members (p. 448). The simulated nuptials are an extremely dubious occurrence in a period when marriages, and indeed all the other sacraments, were prohibited from being enacted on stage for fear of profanation,” [18-19]

… “In the fourth part, for example, Choisy goes to great lengths to explain his acquisition of a recently built chateau close to the city of Bourges, noting that the exact purchase price is 28,000 livres. The estate, called Crespon, belongs to a trésorier, M. Gaillot, and Choisy’s agent is named M. Acarel, to whom Choisy grants a procuration générale authorizing him to conclude the affair (pp. 479–80). Despite this detailed account, not one of these references can be verified or documented. There is not, and has never been, an estate called Crespon in the locality of Bourges, and no official named Gaillot working in local government. One critic has attempted to argue that Crespon might be identified with the chateau and estate of Vouzay, but this assumption can easily be refuted by the fact that it never changed hands during the seventeenth century. Choisy commissions a joint portrait of himself, dressed as Mme de Sancy, and his lover, Charlotte, vested as a boy, by a M. de Troyes, with sittings lasting for a month (p. 446). This is likely to be the society artist François de Troy (1645–1730), yet this painter did not begin to specialize in portraits until 1675, a full decade after he is supposed to have captured the cross-dressed pair. [p19-20]

By the late 17^th century literacy rates in France, using the very simple measure of being able to sign one’s own name, was 29% for man and 14% for women. This was lower in rural areas, and higher in Paris -- 74 percent of men and 64 percent of women in Montmartre could sign their names, and on some streets literacy rates reached 93 percent. Literacy was of course higher among the rich and titled – the top 1% - many of whom went to prestigious schools and universities. Many who attended the Royal court in Paris and Versailles, and their servants, kept diaries and wrote letters to each other – often containing gossip. Historians specialising in this group read theses diaries and letters – many have actually survived. What is not found in these documents are accounts of de Choisy en femme. This alone is sufficient to reject de Choisy’s posthumous memoirs as such and to categorise them as fiction, or cross-dreaming.

Scott’s examples of anachronisms and of details that simply do not check out further the argument.

Works by de Choisy:

• Quatre dialogues. I. Sur l'immortalité de l'âme. II. Sur l'existence de Dieu. III. Sur la providence. IV. Sur la religion (with Louis de Courcillon de Dangeau, also an Abbé), Paris, Sébastien Mabre-Cramoisy, 1684.
• Interprétation des Psaumes avec la Vie de David, Paris, Sébastien Mabre-Cramoisy, 1687 (reprinted 1690 and 1692)
• Journal du voyage de Siam fait en 1685 et 1686, Paris, Sébastien Mabre-Cramoisy, 1687 ; 1688 ; 1740; Éditions Duchartre et Van Buggenhoudt, 1930 ; critical edition by Dirk Van der Cruysse, 1995; reedited Orchid Press, 1999.
• Recueil de plusieurs pièces d'éloquence et de poësie présentées à l'Académie française pour les prix de 1687, donnez le jour de S. Louis de la mesme année, avec les discours prononcez le mesme jour (par MM. l'abbé de Choisy et de Bergeret) à la réception de M. l'abbé de Choisy en la place de M. le duc de Saint-Aignan, Paris, Pierre Le Petit, 1687
• La Vie de Salomon, Paris, Claude Barbin, 1687.
• Les Pensées chrétiennes sur divers sujets de piété, Paris, Claude Barbin, 1688.
• Histoire de France sous les règnes de Saint Louis… de Charles V et Charles VI, 1688-1695.
• Histoire de Philippe de Valois et du roi Jean, Paris, Claude Barbin, 1688.
• La Vie de Saint Louis, Paris, Claude Barbin, 1689.
• Histoire de Charles cinquième, roi de France, Paris, Antoine Dezallier, 1689.
• Histoire de Charles VI, roi de France, Paris, Jean-Baptiste Coignard, 1695.
• De l'imitation de Jésus-Christ, Paris, Antoine Dezallier, 1692.
• La Vie de Madame de Miramion, Paris, Antoine Dezallier, 1706
• Histoires de piété et de morale, par M. L. D. C., Paris, Jacques Étienne, 1710.
• Les plus beaux événements de l'histoire sacrée et de l'histoire prophanes rapportés à la morale par M. l'abbé de Choisy, Paris, Jacques Étienne, 1711.
• La Nouvelle Astrée, Paris, Nicolas Pépie, 1712. An adaptation of the novel byHonoré d'Urfé. 
• Histoire de l’Église, Paris, Jean-Baptiste Coignard, Antoine Dezallier & Christophe David, 1703-1723, 11 vol.
• Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire de Louis XIV, par feu M. l'abbé de Choisy, edited with a preface by François-Denis Camusat, Utrecht, Van de Water; Amsterdam, Jean-Frédéric Bernard et N. Étienne Lucas, 1727 ; new edition with notes by Georges Mongrédien, Mercure de France, 1966, 1983, 412 p.
• Mémoires de Madame la comtesse des Barres, à madame la marquise de Lambert, Bruxelles, François Poppens, 1736 ; reedited under the title : Aventures de l’abbé de Choisy habillé en femme en 1862 ; reedited under the title : Aventures de l’abbé de Choisy déguisé en femme en 1923 ; again reedited and retitled : Mémoires de l’abbé de Choisy habillé en femme, comme suite des Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire de Louis XIV, Mercure de France, coll. « Le Temps retrouvé » n^o 7, 1966).

La marquise-marquis de Banneville,

• Anon. Histoire de la marquise-marquis de Banneville, nouvelle parue dans le Mercure galant, Feb 1695.
• Anon. Histoire de la marquise-marquis de Banneville, nouvelle parue dans le Mercure galant, Aug 1696. – extended version.
• Paul Bonnefon, “Les dernieres annees de Charles Perrault,” Revue d’histoire litteraire de la France, Oct.-Dec. 1906 : 606-75.
• Jeanne Roche-Mazon, ‘“Une Collaboration inattendue au XVIL siecle: L’Abbé de Choisy et Charles Perrault’. Mercure de France, Feb 1928: 513-42.
• Paul Delarue. “Les Contes merveilleux de Perrault: Faits et rapprochements nouveaux." Arts et traditions populaires 1.1, 1954: 1-22; 1.3, 1954: 251-74.
• Marc Soriano. « Une Enquête difficile » Les Contes de Perrault. Paris: Gallimard, 1968 : 55-71.
• François-Timoléon de Choisy, Charles Perrault, Mémoires de l'abbé de Choisy habillé en femme. Suivi de Histoire de la marquise-marquis de Banneville, Éditions Ombres, 1995.
• Deborah J Hahn. “The (Wo)Man in the Iron Mask: Cross-dressing, Writing and Sexuality in L'Histoire de la Marquise-Marquis de Banneville”. Paroles Gelees, 15, 1, 1997.
• Daniel Maher. « Monsieur ma femme? Le travestissement au XVIIè siècle » in Elzbieta Grodek (ed), Écriture de la ruse, Faux Titrenumber 2000.
• Francois Timoléon de Choisy, Marie-Jeanne L’Heritier & Charles Parrault, translated by Steven Rendall, introduction by Joan DeJean. The story of the Marquise-Marquis de Banneville. Modern Language Association of America, 2004.
• Caroline Jumel. Review of the 2004 The story of the Marquise-Marquis de Banneville. Marvels & Tales: Journal of Fairy-Tale Studies, 21,2, 2007.

Works by others who accept the Memoirs at face value:

• Abbe d'Olivet. La Vie de M. de Choisy de l’Academic Française. Lausanne: Bousquet, 1742.
• Oscar Paul Gilbert (translated from the French by Robert B. Douglas). Men in Women's Guise: Some Historical Instances of Female Impersonation. John Lane,1926: chp I-IV. The standard account.
• C J Bulliet. Venus Castina : Famous Female Impersonators Celestial and Human. Bonanza Books, 1928: 186-195.
• Pierre Vachet. “Histoire de l’Abbé de Choisy”. La Psychologie de Vice : Les Travestis. Editions Bernard Grasset, 1934 : 95-132.
• J.S. Thompson. The Mysteries of Sex: Women Who Posed as Men and Men Who Impersonated Women. Hutchinson, 1938. Causeway Books, 1974. Dorset Press, 1993: chp XX. Another standard account.
• Hector Uribe Troncoso. “De Choisy … Prince of Tranvestites”. Sexology: Sex Science Magazine, August 1953: 19-24.
• Edward Podolsky & Carlson Wade. Tranvestism Today: The Phenomena of Men Who Dress as Women. Epic Publishing, 1960: 36-44.
• Jacque Lacan, ‘L’Objet de la psychanalyse’. Online: 259-260.
• 
  The Abbé de Choisy, translated by R H F Scott. The Transvestite Memoirs. Peter Owen, 1973.
• Dirk van der Cruysse. L’Abbé de Choisy: androgyne at mandarin. Fayard, 1995.
  
• Nancy Arenberg. “Mirrors, Cross-dressing and Narcissism in Choisy’s Histoire de Madame la Comtesse des Barres”. Arenberg Cahiers, 17,2,2005.
• Pierrick Brient, ‘La Perversion normale de l’abbe´ de Choisy’, La Clinique lacanienne, 11 (2006), 195–202.
• Hervé Castanet. Tricheur de sexe: L'abbé de Choisy : une passion du travesti au Grand Siècle. Max Milo, 2010.

Works critical of the memoirs:

• Paul Scott. “Authenticity And Textual Transvestism in The Memoirs of The Abbe De Choisy”. French Studies, 69,1, 2014. 
• “Professor Casts Doubt on One of History’s Greatest Cross-Dressing Memoirs”. The University of Kansas, 02/20/2015.

Other:

• Catherine Ornstein. Little Red Riding Hood uncloaked : sex, morality, and the evolution of a fairy tale. Perseus, 2002: 198-200.

EN.Wikipedia          FR.Wikipedia.

Francois-Timoléon de Choisy (1644 - 1724), Part 1: Abbé, diplomat, author, cross-dreamer

Part 1: Life, and the 1695 short-story

Part 2: discussion and bibliography

François-Timoléon was born in August 1644, a week after the Battle of Freiburg which eventually led to the end of the Thirty Years’ War between Europe’s Catholics and Protestants.

François-Timoléon was a grandson of Jean de Choisy Jr. (1562 - 1652), receiver general of finances of Caen. He was the fourth and last son of Jean III from Choisy, lord of Balleroy (1598 -1660), a State Councillor, intendant of Languedoc, chancellor of Gaston d'Orléans, and Jeanne-Olympe Hurault de L'Hospital (1604-1669), a granddaughter of Michel de L'Hospital and an intimate of the Queen of Poland Marie de Gonzague. From the ages of 18 to 22, he studied philosophy and theology at the Sorbonne, and in 1663 became an abbé de cour (a low rank tonsured cleric, not usually connected to an abbey or a religious order, but with a sinecure). His mother’s death in 1669 left him an inheritance which he frittered away in Venice.

He returned impoverished, and lived off his sinecure. In 1676 he visited Rome as a part of the retinue of Emmanuel-Théodose de La Tour d'Auvergne, Cardinal de Bouillon (1643-1715), and was part of the Conclave that elected Pope Innocent XI. After serious illness in August 1683, de Choisy retired for a year to the seminary of Paris Foreign Missions Society, and co-wrote Quatre dialogues. I. Sur l'immortalité de l'âme, II. Sur l'existence de Dieu. III. Sur la providence. IV. Sur la religion. After that, in 1685, he accompanied the Chevalier de Chaumont on a year-long diplomatic mission to the Kingdom of Siam. It was there that he was finally ordained by Louis Laneau, bishop of Métellopolis, envoy of the Paris Foreign Missions Society and Vicar Apostolic of Siam. 

On return to France in June 1686, de Choisy wrote Interprétation des Psaumes avec la Vie de David, and in 1687 was admitted to the Académie Française on 24 July 1687. In 1689 he received the benefit of the priory of Saint-Benoît-du-Sault. From then until his death in 1724, de Choisy wrote a series of hagiographies on French monarchs, histories of France and tracts on Catholic devotions. 

In February 1695 an anonymous short story, a cross-dressing fantasy, Histoire de la marquise-marquis de Banneville, was published in Le Mercure galant, and then an extended version of the same story was published in in the same magazine in August of the next year.

De Choisy was given the deanery of the chapter Bayeux Cathedral, in April 1697.

He died aged 80 in October 1724.

His nephew and executor, the marquis d’Argenson, following his death, found among his papers an apparent autobiography. The manuscript was carefully written (unlike the majority of his other texts, which had been subject to additions and corrections). The document related that, when young, de Croisy had lived as a woman for at least two years in Paris, Bordeaux, and Bourges using three different personas, which he used to seduce young women and even dress them as boys. One result was the fathering a daughter - he paid for the upbringing and education of this child, later arranging a happy match for her. This account was first published as Mémoires de Madame la comtesse des Barres, 1736,

Who wrote La marquise-marquis de Banneville?

Summary of the story :

A young man raised as a woman and a young woman raised as a man. They meet and fall in love, unaware of each other's sex. They marry. On their wedding night, each lover reveals their secret, to their mutual surprise and relief. They decide to keep living in their chosen genders, move to the countryside, and conceive a child, ultimately achieving an unconventional happy ending.

There is obviously a similarity to the Mémoires de Madame la comtesse des Barres, first published 1736.

Three candidates have been proposed as the author of La marquise-marquis de Banneville, either alone or working together:

• Charles Perrault, a major advisor and bureaucrat at the court of Louis XIV who supervised the building of the Louvre and Versailles and wrote fawning biographies of prominent French men. Posterity remembers him for the fairy tales he wrote later in life, Les Contes de ma Mère l'Oye (Tales of Mother Goose) which includes "Little Red Riding Hood", "Cinderella", "Sleeping Beauty", and "Bluebeard".
• Perrault’s niece Marie-Jeanne L'Héritier, who also wrote fairy tales under her own name, and collaborated with her uncle. In her story, Marmoisan, a young woman takes her dead twin brother’s clothing, passes as a man, and becomes a courtier, a soldier, and a lover.
• Francois-Timoléon de Choisy whom Perrault knew in that both were members of theAcadémie Française … and as France’s most famous transvestite??

Scholars disagree about who wrote it:

• Paul Bonnefon, 1906, proposed L'Héritier alone.
• Jeanne Roche-Mazon, 1928, proposed Perrault and de Choisy together,
• Paul Delarue, 1954, proposed Perrault and L'Héritier together.
• Joan DeJean, 2004, proposed all three authors.

As Joan DeJean tells us (p x-xi):

“In February 1695, Jean Donneau de Vise, the editor of Le Mercure galant, an early French newspaper and the richest source of information on the doings of the French court and the lifestyles of its rich and famous, called his female readers' attention to the short story of the month, an early version of Marquise-Marquis. It was, he said, written by “someone of [their] sex" and displayed “charm" and “intelligence," as well as all the “delicate wit" that, he argued, “only women possess" (12-13). This was not at all an unusual thing for Donneau de Vise to say: he stands out among early journalists for his consistent desire to advertise women's accomplishments — Le Mercure galant published many women writers and promoted women's writing—and to cover news of particular interest to female readers. The paper gave so much space to every aspect of la mode, for example, that it can be thought of as the beginning of the fashion press. The story that followed Donneau de Vise's introduction opens with a prologue in which its author identifies her-self as a woman and addresses her self to readers of“[her] sex, assuring them that they can always be sure when a work is written by a woman and listing all the ways in which her style is typical of women's writing in general.

Fast forward to August 1696. In that issue of Le Mercure galant, Donneau de Vise included a far more extensive version of Marquise-Marquis. He claimed that its author, identified once again as a woman, “had forgotten" to include certain parts the first time around (171). In the meantime, in February 1696, Donneau de Vise had published another story, “Sleeping Beauty" (“La Belle au bois dormant"), which he introduced in this way: 

“We owe this work to the same person who wrote the story of the little marquise"

—in other words. The Story of the Marquise-Marquis de Banneville (74). Here is where the mystery of the story's authorship begins. No one has ever believed that “Sleeping Beauty" was written by a woman; it has been included in every edition of Perrault’s tales. Indeed as soon as the first collection of those tales was published, Donneau de Vise sang its praises in the January 1697 issue of Le Mercure galant and told his readers that all those who had enjoyed “Sleeping Beauty" were sure to want to read the rest of Perrault's stories.”

Based on the similarities between the Banneville story and de Croisy’s posthumous memoirs, it is generally assumed that he contributed to the story by example or by text. However De Vise’s editorials suggest L'Héritier as the likely author, and as he also attributes “Sleeping Beauty” to her, we wonder how much of Les Contes de ma Mère l'Oye was her work rather than her uncle’s. Further: it is possible that the similarities with de Croisy’s memoirs are because he drew up on the Banneville story, and, as several commentators have suggested, the Red Riding Hood story as well.

La Forest Potter (1855-1951), an early 1930s witness to queer New York

• 
  La Forest Potter. Strange Loves: A Study in Sexual Abnormalities. Robert Dodsley Company/ National Library Press, 1933.
  

Trigger warning: Some of the quotations from Dr Potter include words and opinions relating to sex and/or race that are today considered objectionable.

1933 was not a good year for being queer. The ending of alcohol prohibition in the US (good in itself) unfortunately led to the end of the Panzy Craze, and increased police raids on queer bars and nightclubs. In Germany, Hitler’s Nazi Party took control of the government. In the Soviet Union, Stalin’s OGPU started a reversal of the decriminalization of homosexuality that had resulted from the Revolution by arresting 198 gay men, and claiming that there was a link between homosexuality and fascism.  In England and France trans men and masculine women had been shaken after Victor Barker, John Radclyffe-Hall and Violette Morris had each lost in their very different law trials.

The New York that La Forest Potter describes falls in between that found in the earlier publications, Mowry Saben/Jennie June’s three books and the psychological study of five transvestites by Bernard Talmey, and the later study Sex Variants: A Study of Homosexual Patterns (1941) attributed to George Henry but based on the research of Jan Gay. 

George Chauncey’s Gay New York: Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940, published 1994 mentions Potter in its notes as a source for details, but he is not in the book’s index, and there is no mention of him or his book in the text. 

The term ‘fairy’ was commonly used in this period for effeminate gays, trans feminine persons and drag performers. Chauncey’s book goes into a lot of detail on this.

Two anecdotes referring to the book’s influence

David K Johnson’s “The Kids of Fairytown: Gay Male Culture on Chicago's Near North Side in the 1930s” in Brett Beemyn’s Creating a Place for Ourselves: Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Community Histories, p111 tells us:

“Although most Chicagoans had never read a medical text on homosexuality, Harold's list of the books that introduced him to gay life did include one work by a medical expert. La Forest Potter's Strange Loves: A Study in Sexual Abnormalities was an attempt to bring medical expertise on the nature, causes, and curability of homosexuality to a general audience to help eradicate ‘the problem.’ But by outlining the prevalence of homosexuality — how America had ‘Gone Pansy;' as he titled one of his chapters — he inadvertently suggested that it was normal. Potter asserted that ‘homosexuality ... is diffused not only through all the anthropological forms of mankind — savage and civilized life — but also throughout every strata of society, and among every class of population.’ ” ... “To Harold and undoubtedly many others, Potter's line of argumentation intrigued more than it dissuaded.”

Robert Darby. “The Censor as Literary Critic”. Westerly, 31,4, December 1986: 37 tells us:

“Genuine scientific texts on sexual abnormality might be allowed in serious libraries for research use by approved scholars, but popular works were a different matter. Garran read Strange Loves, by La Forest Potter MD, as professing to be "a serious study of homosexuality", but he found its general style suggesting that it was, rather, "a book to excite curiosity". American authors, he remarked, "show no squeamishness in an open discussion of this subject; but I think its discussion in this way offends against present standards of decency in Australia." Allen agreed: ‘This book is not desirable for public bookshelves, and I should not regard it as in any way a serious contribution to medical science. It is a popularisation of information regarding sexual abnormality ... It is not well written: and in places is incorrect. For instance, it repeats mere garbled gossip about Socrates; and I do not believe that the author has read a word of the Symposium.’ ” 

Who was La Forest Potter?

La Forest Potter graduated from Boston University School of Medicine in 1884 and contributed articles to Physical Culture, the food faddist magazine run by Bernard MacFadden. He was apparently interested in 'cancer cures'; at one time he was associated with a proponent of the so-called 'grape juice cure' for cancer. Strange Loves was banned in Australia in 1936. He also wrote The psychology of health and happiness, 1897; A new treatment of cancer and chronic diseases, 1929 and various other popular medical texts. He lists membership in the New York County Medical Society, Massachusetts Medical Society, Boston Gynecological Society, Associate Professor of Rhinology, Laryngology, and Otology, New York School of Clinical Medicine, and Surgeon, Malden Hospital.

Potter's other books as listed on page opposite title page

The Advertisement

This is the advertisement that ran several times in the magazine Broadway and Hollywood Movies.

The chapters of interest:

Chapter IV THE “INTERMEDIATE SEX"

“For while admittedly there are mental hermaphrodites and mental deviates in uncounted numbers, the true “third sex, if we are to be really accurate in our description, consists only of individuals who are anatomically bisexual. … These individuals are unquestionably atavistic or retrogressive in their biological status. Nevertheless, true hermaphrodism is an extremely rare phenomenon. I stress the anatomical basis of this condition at this time in order to differentiate true hermaphrodism from pseudo -hermaphrodism -- or what I might term " mental " hermaphrodism.” 

So far, not too bad. 

However, Potter then has a sub-heading, REAL WORLD PROGRESS MADE BY HETEROSEXUALS where he proclaims that the “[homosexual] abnormality should be considered anti-social, anti-racial, and anti-biologic”.

Then still in the same chapter WHEN MEN DON WOMEN'S CLOTHES, where he writes: “To the average person it would seem that all this bother is ‘much ado about nothing’. For it would be rather difficult to see what particular harm can come to the police force, or to society in general. … However, it may be because these transvestites, as they are called, suggest abnormality (whether they are abnormal or not) that they are arrested, hailed into court and fined.” 

In his next sub-heading, IS INVERSION COMMON AMONG TRANSVESTITES? Potter contrasts William Stekel who regarded trans persons as homosexuals with Magnus Hirschfeld who from a much larger sample knew otherwise. Potter attempts to reconcile this difference with the opinion of the psychoanalyst Andre Tridon who claimed that transvestites are in the majority of cases unconscious homosexuals. 

His final sub-heading in the chapter is THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE GERMAN URNING. He writes:

 “While it may not react greatly to the prestige and glory of Berlin in the minds of many people, it is nevertheless true that this highly cultured city boasts perhaps a greater number of homosexuals than any other city in the world -- not excluding Paris, which, for several centuries, has been notorious for its sexual profligacy. Of course, it may be that this seeming preponderance of abnormals arises merely from the fact that, in Berlin, and in Germany and Austria, the urning comes out into the open, so to speak. He does not find it necessary to skulk and slink in the hinterlands of society, as he does in European and American centers generally. However, we may attribute this apparent epidemic of homosexuality to the fact that there is less hypocrisy in Germany and more real science than is to be found anywhere else on the face of the earth.” 

This of course had been previously true, but it is ironic, sad and frightening that by the time Potter’s book was published, the Nazis had become the German government, and the purge of queer culture and persons was ongoing.

Chapter VII FEMALE MEN AND MALE WOMEN

This is a rather nasty chapter where the question is should his readers 

“place these individuals either in the same category with burglars, swindlers, and automobile thieves, or else it would permit them to be recognized as men and women who are mentally and morally sick — neurotics who are no more to blame for their condition than they would be for having dyspepsia, or sciatica, or a deviated septum”. 

Potter quotes Dr. W. Beran Wolfe, Director of the New York Community Church Mental Hygiene Clinic who blames the second opinion almost exclusively on Otto Weininger’s Geschlecht und Charakter (Sex and Character), 1903. However he goes on to discuss opposite sex characteristics such as male gynecomastia and women with beards. He misleadingly connects this to homosexuals, whom he regards as having a female psyche. He has a brief discussion of the work of Eugene Steinach and his transplanting of gonads to animals of the other sex.

Chapter XI “The Drag”

I have previously written of the Hamilton Lodge Balls, the premier drag event in New York in the 1920s and 1930s, which attracted thousands each year. Potter does not mention them by name. He writes of the Philadelphia Mummers parade, Mardi Gras in New Orleans, The Rose Pageant in Pasadena, California. He quotes from Blair Niles’ 1931 novel, Strange Brother, but he wrote too early to include The Young and Evil, 1933 by Charles Ford and Parker Tyler. Both novels include scenes at the Hamilton Lodge Balls. 

He then comes to “THE DRAG BALL”. 

“These are the famous ‘Drag Balls’, held in many of our principal cities, on the average of once a year. The men, dressed in the clothes of women, are called ‘drags’. In New York City there are at least two outstanding Drag Balls yearly - one held at Webster Hall, in Greenwich Village, the other in the Manhattan Casino, up in Harlem. Of late years this place has had ‘the run’."

 And in a purple passage using terms, that no modern writer would, he refers to 

“the motley throng that surges and sways to the blood-boiling rhythm of a Negro band. Hundreds and hundreds of Negroes also- of every shade of black and brown— from the octoroon, hardly to be distinguished from a strikingly lovely brunette Caucasian girl, to the burly blackamoor, of pure Ethiopian type are crowded, cheek by jowl, into sense -maddening proximity. For the Harlem Drag Ball is a ‘mixed’ affair, attended by whites and blacks alike.” 

THE PARADE OF THE FAIRIES. 

“Finally the dancing floor is cleared by the police for the chief event of the evening. It is the big ‘kick’ for which most of the spectators have come -the ‘parade of the fairies’, with a prize of two hundred dollars to be awarded to the ‘fairy’ who displays the loveliest and most artistic costume.” 

$200 in 1932 = $4,700 today.

Reviews and comments

In December 1934, the pioneer gay activist Henry Gerber reviewed Potter’s book in his Chanticleer newsletter (as summarized by Jonathan Katz):

... I think the history of psychology is . . . damning evidence of man’s credulity and outright stupidity. The volume under review by Dr. La Forest Potter, who boasts of being a “late member of the New York County Medical Society, Massachusetts Medical Society,” etc., etc. . . . proves to me two significant facts: 1) that the medical authorities in America, of which Dr. Potter is a shining example, are about 100 years behind the times, and 2) that most psychologists in this country are mere yes-men who blindly and obediently follow the current authorized moral code without any regard to common sense or the results of modern scientific research ….

While the title of the book would indicate that the author had in view all phenomena of sex which seem strange to him and to the ignorant public alike, Dr. Potter deals mainly with homosexuality. . . . such a title is a profitable device for the sale of books, for the morons are always looking for something new and “strange” in sex matters. In other words, the book of Dr. Potter is just another instance of the morbid sex racket, a lurid description of sex abnormalities under the moral guise of condemnation of the queer sinners dealing in such “strange” loves in order to get the filthy details by the post office censors of “obscene” literature. Krafft-Ebing was perhaps the first author to start this racket and the volume in review is evidence of the sad fact that the end of it is not yet.

In the accepted fashion of Krafft-Ebing’s pot-boiler, Dr. Potter goes through the various artificial classifications of homosexuals. He has Chapters on the Riddle of Homosexuality . . . a chapter on the history of . . . the various unsuccessful attempts of “scientists” to solve the “riddle,” .. . special chapters on Lesbians (female homosexuals), in which the author makes the sensational statement that “there isn’t a man on earth who has a Chinaman’s chance against a Lesbian, once she has thoroughly seduced a woman to her wiles” (any doctor having knowledge of gynecology ought to know the reason to be due to the fact that males are very deficient in the fine art of satisfying a woman’s sexual needs.) [etc.] ….

.. . Dr. Potter views the psychoanalytical method of dealing with homosexuals and cites cases in which homosexuals have been “cured” by psychoanalysts. . .

But the author does evidently not think so much of this “cure” of homosexuals, for he cautiously warns that homosexuals can be cured only if they want to be cured. The only way to cure a [male] homosexual of his foible is to make him love women, a very simple process indeed, but Dr. Potter does not seem to realize that heterosexual men can be cured exactly in the same fashion from their love for women, by getting them to like men. By the same method, Pop-eye, the sailor cures children who do not like spinach by making them believe that spinach is really good for them and that every normal citizen must eat it.

Byrne Fone. A Road to Stonewall, 1969:

“Dr. Potter’s cliches resonate against the common currency of homophobic texts of the period and centuries before. He deploys the familiar accusations and links homosexuality not only with the destruction of what he suggests are virtually nationally encoded gender roles but clearly implies that homosexuality and homosexuals are effectively un-American. Because of the ‘infestation’ of homosexuality, however, the pioneer and heterosexual American virtues have been weakened and now the danger is clear and increasingly present: ‘Today there are homosexual ‘joints,’ ‘queer’ clubs, pervert ‘drags’ or homosexual plays in practically every considerable American city.’ Not only general society but American youth has been tainted by homosexuals, for ‘today there is scarcely a schoolboy who doesn’t know what a ‘pansy’ is’ ”. (p233-4)

Andrea Ens, Pain, Pleasure, Punishment, 2024:

“The book’s ad promised sophisticated adult readers clinical findings that would ‘tear away the veil of mystery that hides the facts behind homosexuality’ by demonstrating ‘the abnormal ties and the unnatural desires and erotic reactions of these twilight men and women’. But while Strange Loves’ marketers emphasized its titillating narratives of perverse sexual trysts hidden in darkness, the text itself repeatedly insisted ‘abnormals’ were often not malicious, intentional criminals, but ‘neurotics who are no more to blame for their condition than they would be for having dyspepsia, or sciatica, or a deviated septum’. This blamelessness – revealed by contemporary medical and scientific advances into the origins and impacts of ‘sexual abnormality’ – meant that American medical, social, and legal treatment of non-heteronormative Americans might allow their re-entry into ‘normal’ heterosexual society’. (p26)

• Henry Gerber, “More Nonsense about Homosexuals,” Chanticleer, Vol. 1, No. 12 (Dec. 1934), 2-3. Partially reprinted in Jonathan Katz (ed) Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay men in the USA: 595-6, and in Tracy Baim’s Out and Proud in Chicago: 38-9.
• Byrne Fone. A Road to Stonewall: Male Homosexuality and Homophobia in English and American Literature, 1750-1969. Twayne Publishers, 1995: 233-4.
• Byrne Fone (ed). The Columbia Anthology of Gay Literature. Columbia University Press, 1998: 669.
• Byrne Fone. Homophobia: A History. Henry Holt and Company, 2000: 386-8.
• "More Hilarious Zeitgeistiness". Autist's Corner, February 28 2009. Online. 
• Anna Lvovsky. Queer Expertise: Urban Policing and the Construction of Public Knowledge about Homosexuality, 1920–1970. PhD thesis, Harvard. May 2015: 34, 38, 39, 41, 48, 49, 53, 54, 60, 63, 64, 66, 67, 68, 69, 71, 72 81, 84, 86, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92.
• Alysha Maree Crossan. Liberals, Ground Breakers, and Graduate Students: Reinvestigating US Sex Surveys and Research Before Kinsey, 1900-1953. PhD thesis, University of Auckland, 2022: 46, 154, 155, 156, 157.
• Andrea Ens. Pain, Pleasure, Punishment: The Affective Experience of Conversion Therapy In Twentieth-Century North America. PhD Thesis, Purdue University, May 2024: 26-7, 47-8, 50-2, 55-6,

Potter's Bibliography

Three recent books about Magnus Hirschfeld

There have been three recent books about Magnus Hirschfeld and the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft:  Rainer Herrn's  Der Liebe und dem Leid; Brandy Schillace's The Intermediaries and Daniel Brook's The Einstein of Sex.    My problem with all three books is that so many of the known trans persons who consulted Dr Hirschfeld are not even mentioned.

The best book on German trans persons in the Kaiserreich and Weimer Republic remains Herrn's previous book from 2005, so I have included it below for compatison.

Rainer Herrn.  Schnittmuster des Geschlechts: Tranvestitismus and Transsexualitat in der fruhen Sexualwissenscaft. 2005 Rainer Herrn.  Der Liebe und dem Leid: Das Institut für Sexualwissenschaft 1919-1933. 2022 Brandy Schillace. The Intermediaries: A Weimar Story,2025 Daniel Brook. The Einstein of Sex: Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld Visionary of Weimar Berlin. 2025 Alma de Paradeda  . . . . Max Tilke  ✓ . . . Hermann von Teschenberg  ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ Karl M Baer  . . ✓ ✓ Friederike Schmidt  . ✓ ✓ . Rosina Danner  ✓ . . . Katharina T ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ Willi Pape  ✓ . . . Josefine Meißauer  ✓ . . . Gerda von Zobeltitz  ✓ . . Ruth Fischer . . . . Emi Wolters/Luz Fraumann ✓ . . . Berthold Buttgereit  ✓ ✓ . . Alex Starke  ✓ . . . Dörchen Richter ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ Hertha Wind . . . . Joseph Einsmann . . . . Liddy Bacroft . . . . (Char)Lotte/Lothar Hahm  ✓ . . . Toni Ebel ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ Charlotte Charlaque ✓ ✓ ✓ Lili Elvenes Elbe ✓ ✓ ✓ Gerd Katter ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ Gerd Winkelmann  ✓ . . . Oskar Gades ✓ . . . Ossy Scho. ✓ . ✓ Helene N. ✓ . . ✓ Michel-Marie Poulain . . . .

Seppel Einsmann (1885 – 1959) factory worker

 Seppel was born Maria Mayer, the eldest child of a factory worker and a housewife, in Bruchsal, 20 km from Karlsruhe in the state of Baden-Württemberg. At age 27 in 1912, Mayer was working in Karlsruhe doing ironing, when she married Joseph Einsmann, a plasterer and one year older. The marriage did not go well, and they used the occasion of the husband’s military service during the Great War to separate. Herr Einsmann applied for an official dissolution of the marriage in 1923, but Frau Einsmann did not find out until much later.

During the War, Frau Einsmann worked in an ammunition factory in Pforzheim, and there met Helene Müller (né Banz) who likewise had separated from her husband during the war. When the War ended in late 1918, Frauen Einsmann and Müller and many others were obliged to give up their jobs in favour of the returning soldiers. Einsmann and Helene Müller moved to Mainz, in Rhineland-Palatinate, where they lived together. As in Pforzheim, the better jobs in Mainz were reserved for men. Einsmann had kept one of Joseph’s suits, and in one of its pockets were his pre-war identification documents. With a suitable haircut, Einsmann, using the name Joseph, obtained employment with the occupying French military forces – at a wage that supported two persons. Later Einsmann moved to a security and locking company. Einsmann was generally known to his fellow workers as ‘Seppel’. Helene worked as chambermaid.

In 1921 Helene gave birth to a girl, and Seppel registered the girl’s parents as Joseph and Maria Einsmann.

In 1925 Seppel took a position at Werner & Mertz which made shoe polish under the brand name Erdal. He was promoted to foreman supervising 20 workers. He was regarded as hardworking and always punctual, and was an active union member. He also sang tenor in two Mainz church choirs.

A second daughter was born in 1930. This time the Registry Office noticed that Joseph and Maria Einsmann were listed as divorced. Seppel therefore said that he had fathered the child illegitimately with ex-wife Maria Mayer, and the child was recorded with Maria Mayer as the mother. The tax office was notified so that Seppel paid less tax. He was regarded as a good example of a father.

In August 1931, Seppel had a work accident. His hand went into a cutting machine, and the little finger on the right hand was lost. The stay in the men’s ward at the hospital went smoothly. However the subsequent claim for temporary incapacity insurance ran into a problem. The Reich Insurance Office in Berlin realised that they had two disability cards both of which had been issued to a Joseph Einsmann and with identical data. This led to Seppel being questioned and thus outed. He was charged with false certification in changing civil status and lying about the parentage of the two daughters. There was also the matter that he had been Best Man at a wedding and thus signed that the marriage was legitimate. Seppel’s story was repeated in the press in subsequent months, both in Germany and abroad. 

Seppel sold photographs showing his masculine self, along with Helene and their two daughters. The court appointed two psychologists to give an opinion. The county medical officer Dr Wagner accepted Seppel’s claim that her cross-dressing was only to find work and to gain a family wage. Seppel was also sent to see Dr Felix Abraham at Berlin’s Institut für Sexualwissenschaft. Abraham diagnosed a „transvestite predisposition“. This opinion Seppel rejected.

The trial, 20 August 1932, lasted only three hours. Seppel, as obliged, was present in female clothing. The court accepted Dr Wagner’s opinion, not that of Dr Abraham. Maria’s ex-husband declined to testify. Both Einsmann and Müller were given suspended sentences – to the applause of the court visitors - but had to pay court costs. 

Werner & Mertz continued Seppel’s employment. Seppel, after consulting with the employer, took a vacation that was due, and then returned to work, this time as Maria. Maria and Helene continued to live at the same flat throughout the duration of the Third Reich, and moved to a different address in Mainz in 1945. Maria was referred to as ‘aunt’ by the children, and then by the grandchildren. She died in 1959 age 74. Helene died in 1991 age 98.

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Apparently Helene almost never spoke to her children about Seppel’s life as a man.

There is no record from Helene or elsewhere about who did father her children.

“Einsmann” means ‘one man’, but ironically was two.

Abraham’s diagnosis of “transvestite predisposition” was rather blunt, but as Seppel maintained his male persona outside work as well as in, and kept it up day and night 365 days a year, for 12 years, – and sang tenor in two church choirs - he probably was a type of trans. After 1932, social pressure and public knowledge compelled adherence to a female presentation. The mainstream press went along with the opinion expressed in the court that the male presentation dressing was only to find work and to gain a family wage. However Paul Weber, writing in the lesbian/trans Die Freundin shortly after the trial, wrote “For all of us this matter is no ‘exceptional case,’ but rather the dream of what the reality of a thoroughly masculine woman can look like.”

Would it not have been easier to list Helene Müller, the actual mother, as the mother on the birth registration?

• „Frau Vater. Eine als Mann verkleidete Frau arbeitet seit 12 Jahren auf dem Bauplatz und in Fabriken“. Mainzer Tagesanzeiger, 16 August 1931.
• “Feminine ‘Father’: Woman Who Worked as Man Since the War”. Birmingham Evening Despatch, 16 April 1932: 1.
• “12 Years Pose as Man“. Swindon Evening Advertiser, 22 August 1932: 4.
• "Maria Einsmann, eine tapfere Frau!".Mainzer Volkzeitung. 22 August 1932. 
• “Josef Maria Einsmann,” Die Freundin, 35, 2 September 1931: 2f.
• Paul Weber, “Das Urteil gegen Frau Einsmann,” Die Freundin, 36, 7 September 1932: 2.
• Katie Sutton. The Masculine Woman in Weimar Germany. Berghahn, 2013: 113, 115.
• Eva Weickart, (2020). "Die Frau in Männerkleidung. Der Fall Maria Einsmann. Presseberichte aus den Jahren 1931 und 1932". mainz.de, 2020. Online. (The enclosed PDF includes a lot of press reports on the cas)
• Barbara Trottnow (dir). Frau Vater – Die Geschichte der Maria Einsmann, ZDF German 29 mins 2022.

DE.Wikipedia(Maria Einsmann) EN.Wikipedia(Maria Einsmann)

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The expatriate writer Anna Seghers used Einsmann’s life as the basis of her 1940 novel Der sogenannte Rendel, written while she was in exile in Mexico. She also wrote a film script based on the story, Hier gibt's keine Katharina ('There is no Katharina here'), but it was never filmed.

Berthold Brecht, the German playwright, also wrote a fictional version of Einsmann, Der Arbeitsplatz oder Im Schweiße Deines Angesichts sollst Du kein Brot essen, which is included in the collection of the same name. It was translated into English in 1983.

Barbara Trottnow, a filmmaker from Mainz, made a film in 1995 based on parts of Segher’s script. 25 years later she made a 29 minute documentary directly about the Einsmanns, which included a contribution from Helene’s granddaughter, Erkens.

In 2014 the city-district of Mainz-Altstadt named a square after Einsmann and called it Maria-Einsmann-Platz, using only what should have been his dead name, and with no mention of his wife, Helene.

• Anna Seghers. Der sogenannte Rendel. Volk u. Wissen, 1940.
• Bertold Brecht. The job or By the sweat of thy brow shalt thou fail to earn thy bread. Methuen, 1983.
• Barbara Trottnow (dir). Katharina oder: Die Kunst, Arbeit zu finden. Scr: Anna Seghers, with Heidi Ecks as Katharina. ZDF German 80 mins 1995. IMDB
• Barbara Trottnow (dir). Frau Vater – Die Geschichte der Maria Einsmann, ZDF German 29 mins 2022.  Webpage.