Genesis P-Orridge (1950 - 2020) musician and magickian.

++ revised 7 May 2011, April 2020

Neil Andrew Megson was born in Manchester, and raised in Solihull (map). He changed his name to Genesis P-Orridge whilst at Hull University, and made it a legal change in 1971. He was tutored in magick by Brion Gysin and worked with William Burroughs.

In 1976 he was condemned by the then Arts Minister Harold Lever as a ‘wrecker of civilization’ following the show ‘Prostitution’ at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA).

From 1975-81 he was with Throbbing Gristle, the pioneering industrial music band. From 1981 he was in Psychic TV playing psychedelic, punk, electronic and experimental music. They were also pioneers in Acid House.

Genesis had 2 daughters with his first wife Paula P-Orridge (born Alaura O’Dell) whom he married in Tijuana in 1981. Together they were into Body Modification as well as magick and religious movements.

In 1992 their home was raided by the police looking for evidence of Satanism, and they found a 10-year-old videotape which they took to be of a ritual murder. On lawyers’ advice, the P-Orridges relocated to California, and shortly afterwards, their marriage broke up.

Genesis further relocated to New York City with his second wife, Lady Jaye (Jacqueline Breyer). Partly inspired by the Mandy persona of comedian Dick Emery, Genesis and Lady Jaye started to modify their bodies into one ‘pandrogynous’ being, which involved resembling each other. Genesis had breast implants and referred to himself as ‘s/he’. A book of writings called Ooh, You Are Awful... But I Like You! (= Mandy’s catch phrase - see video) was published in Nepal.

In 1995 s/he won $1.5 million from producer Rick Rubin and his company for injuries sustained while escaping a fire, which left P-Orridge unable to play guitar or keyboards.

Lady Jaye died in 2007 from a heart attack connected with stomach cancer.   She died in Genesis' arms

Genesis has issued over 200 records.

In 2015 Genesis spoke out against Caitlin Jenner's pretense to be a spokesperson for trans people: “clueless” and “lives in her own bubble”.

S/he was diagnosed with chronic myelomonocytic leukaemia in October 2017,[140] and died in New York City on 14 March 2020, aged 70.

Throbbing Gristle 2009

• Genesis P-Orridge, Douglas Rushkoff (foreword), and Carl Abrahamsson (introduction). Painful but Fabulous: The Life and Art of Genesis P-Orridge. Soft Skull Press, 2002.
• Marie Losier (dir). The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye.  With Genesis P. Orridge and Lady Jaye.   US 72 mins 2011.
• "Genesis P-Orridge: Caitlyn Jenner should 'stop being a spokesperson' ".  The Guardian, 27 Aug 2015.  Online.
• Adam Sweeting.  "Genesis P-Orridge 0bituary".   The Guardian, 15 March 2020.   Online.

EN.Wikipedia   

Kurt Freund (1914 - 1996) Penile Plethysmographer.

A German-speaking Czech, Freund earned an MD and a D.Sc. at Prague’s Univerzita Karlova (Charles University), and then did research in its sexological institute.

He is mainly associated with the Penile Plethysmograph which measures sexual arousal. He did not invent it, but refined and popularized its usage. It was used to detect men attempting to avoid military service by claiming to be homosexual. He showed that men presumed to have gone straight were still aroused by images of men. He, and others, argued for the decriminalization of homosexuality (which was achieved in Czechoslovakia in 1961) and for the end of sexual conversion therapy.

After the failure of the Czechoslovak uprising in 1968, he fled to Canada and was employed at the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry where he founded a Phallometric Laboratory using the Penile Plethysmograph, which evaluated prospective transsexuals.

His work is the basis of Michael Bailey’s claim that there are no bisexuals in that men did appear so in Freund’s laboratory. He met Ray Blanchard while working with sex offenders at the Ontario Correctional Institute. They made plans to collaborate, and in 1980, Blanchard started working at the Clarke Institute. In 1982 Freund published “Two Types of Cross-Gender Identity”, in which he defines ‘transvestism’ as fantasizing oneself as the ‘opposite sex only when sexually aroused’, and he proposed the term ‘cross-gender fetishism’ (otherwise known as Fetishic Transvestism) for other such fantasizing, which Ray Blanchard identifies as the idea that he later renamed ‘autogynephilia’.

He committed suicide aged 82 while suffering from lung cancer. Ray Blanchard was his replacement.

• Kurt Freund, Betty W. Steiner, & S. Chan, “Two types of cross-gender identity”. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 11, 49–63. 1982.
• “Kurt Freund”. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Freund.
• Andrea James. “Kurt Freund on transsexualism”. Transsexual Road Map. www.tsroadmap.com/info/kurt-freund.html.
• Ray Blanchard. “Origins of the Concept of Autogynephilia”. Feb 2004. www.autogynephilia.org/origins.htm.

Alan Finch (1967 - ) changeback.

Alan Finch was born in Lancaster, England. He was bullied for his delicate appearance. His mother divorced his distant and violent father when Alan was 15. At 17, when Alan was working in a gay-run hairdressing salon, he read Tula’s first autobiography, and his mother took him to a psychiatrist, who found that Alan has a missing male chromosome. He started female hormones at age 18.

On migration to Australia at age 19 with his mother and sister, he changed to female with hormones and surgery at the Monash Medical Centre’s gender clinic. He failed the psychiatric evaluation the first time, but had learned the proper answers for a second evaluation. He transitioned to being Helen Finch.

She worked in tele-sales. Helen married (illegally by Australian law) an Israeli who was looking for residence in Australia, and was later in a relationship with a man which fell apart because the husband could not cope with her having been born a boy.

She took up transcendental meditation. She had an affair with a woman who encouraged her to revert to being a man, which he did in 1997.

His current psychiatrist is also a transcendental meditationer who ran for Parliament for the Natural Law Party. As Alan, he is now suing the Monash Medical Centre’s gender clinic.  This went to the Supreme Court in 2009.  This case caused a temporary moratorium on approving persons for surgery at the Monash. 

He was featured on Australian Story. He has set up an advocacy group: Gender Identity Awareness Association from which he voices his support for the Australian ban on same-sex marriage and the like.

• Tula. I am a Woman. London: Sphere Books: Rainbird, 167 pp 1982.
• Bunty Avieson. “Goodbye Alan, Hello Helen...and Happiness”. The Woman’s Day 19 Dec 1989.
• Christine Hogan. “Man who became woman wants to be a man again”. The Sun-Herald 31 August 2003.
• “Boy Interrupted”. Australian Story. ABC-TV 01/09/2003. Transcript at: www.abc.net.au/austory/content/2003/s937472.htm.
• "Monash Gender Dysphoria Centre Under Pressure". Melbourne Indymedia. Nov 28, 2003. http://www.melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2003/11/58139_comment.php. This article has several very interesting comments, including the text of The Woman's Day article.
•  MyfanwyMcDonald. "Telling the Story of Gender Transition: the Case of Alan Finch". Outskirts: feminisms along the edge.13, 2005. www.chloe.uwa.edu.au/outskirts/archive/volume13/mcdonald.
  

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Finch's case started in 2003.   What has happened since?

The only mention of work is that Helen was in tele-sales at the time of the first transition. Did Helen and later Alan stay in that line of work?

Rhonda Mae (1947 - ) machinist, pilot, manager, drag performer, Aids activist.

Ron Cox moved to Fort Worth, Texas, with his family when he was 11. At 20 he joined the US Navy in anticipation of the draft, and was a machinist in destroyers. While being trained to operate and maintain nuclear submarines, he met his wife.


After his military service, they moved to Fort Worth and he worked in management at General Dynamics. He also earned a pilot’s license and became involved with The Confederate Air Force which preserves vintage planes. He and his wife had a son and daughter.

He did not tell her of his femme side for six years. She thought that it was just a phase, but helped him with shopping for clothes. At first he dressed only at home, but then he started doing a country-and-western drag act as Evelyn. They divorced, amicably, in 1994.

Evelyn disengaged from General Dynamics, and took a job bartending en femme. She changed her name to Rhonda Mae at a customer’s suggestion. She moved on to management and performing in various bars around the city, getting closer to living full-time as a woman.

As Aids developed she became the organizer for raising money and distributing food to Aids patients. Then she came down with Aids herself. For two years she was on AZT and not able to leave her apartment, but then refused the drug and got better. She lives on disability benefit, but still does shows and helps to raise money for Aids patients.

• Jimmy Fowler. “Standing Tall for AIDS Victims”. Fort Worth Weekly January 02, 2008. www.fwweekly.com/content.asp?article=6587.

Wilhelmina Tiemersma (1950 - ) Organist.

This is a revision of the post that I put up in January. I have been in contact with Wilhelmina Tiemersma and a number of errors and distortions have been cleaned up. In addition she has informed me what she has done more recently.
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William Tiemersma graduated from Montréal's Conservatory of Music in 1976 as an organist, after studies with Bernard Bernard Lagacé, and after winning the John Robb Memorial Organ Comeptition, 1974. Tiemersma was hired by the downtown Unitarian Church of the Messiah in Montréal (at rue Sherbrooke and rue Simpson -- map), performed summer concerts at St Joseph's Oratory and made a number of broadcast recordings for radio, mainly for Radio-Canada.

Tiemersma transitioned and became Wilhelmina in 1984: surgeon Dr Hugo Ciaburro. She had been attempting suicide as far back as 1971. In May 1987, she was suffering hormonal mood swings compounded by anti-depressants. After an argument over beers with a friend she went to the Church of the Messiah and set it alight.

She wandered the streets of Montréal for six hours and then surrendered to the police. Two firefighters died in the blaze. Wilhelmina served three years and two months in a women's prison for criminal negligence causing death. She was allowed to practice the piano while in custody.

Since her release, Wilhelmina has performed major organ recitals in Québec and Ontario, usually in churches, often with media coverage. From 1995-2005 she was organist/choir director St. Barnabas’ Anglican Church in Pierrefonds in west Montréal's West Island. Since 2007 she has been with Saint Ansgar's Lutheran Church.   She has been heard on both CBC and the BBC.

Wilhelmina is mentioned in the Canadian Encyclopedia as one of the outstanding students of Bernard Lagacé.

• Charles W Eddis.   "The Story of a Sacred Space: from Creation to Ruin". Canadian Unitarian and Universalist Historical Society,  May 17, 1992. www.canadianuuhistoricalsociety.ca/Charles%20Eddis%20Story%20of%20a%20Sacred%20Space%20ver2.pdf.
• Ingrid Peritz. “A Transsexual’s Tragic Life”. Montreal Gazette/Ottawa Citizen July 7, 1997.
• Wilhelmina Tiemersma. Email 16 Mar 2008.
•  "Our alternate Organist".  Saint Ansgar's Lutheran Church.   www.st-ansgars-montreal.ca/1_3_Music.php.

CanadianEncyclopedia(Bernard Lagacé)

"OUR LADY GATE OF DAWN" Lithuanian Parish Choir, Montreal, Organist : Wilhelmina Tiemersma

Janine Roberts (1942 - 2016) journalist.

Raised in England by a Northern Irish family. At age 17 joined a Catholic order to prepare for the priest-hood. During the eight years of training, acquired degrees in theology and philosophy, and was ordained in 1967. Then did a B.Sc. in sociology at the London School of Economics.

Afterwards resigned from the priesthood, married a woman, and they moved to Australia. They had two daughters. Started working with Australian Aboriginals.

In 1975, she became Janine, although it took her another eight years to be accepted for surgery as she was still living with her wife and raising her daughters.

In 1976 her first book (editor and co-author), The Mapoon Books, on aboriginal culture and institutional racism was published. She works with aboriginal groups in resisting mining on their territory, and researched Granada TV’s World in Action program on the issue. In the 1980s she worked as a freelance journalist and documentary maker.

In the late 1980s she was working on a documentary on the diamond industry for Australian, US and UK television. She produced a program for BBC’s Panorama on the CIA, MI6 and KGB under Gorbachov, and The Sun outed her to attack her credibility. In 1992, when The Diamond Empire was two-thirds shot, her home was invaded and she was seriously beaten and was in hospital for two months. While she was on the critical list, the BBC took control of the project away from her. However in 1994 the program was shown on the BBC and in the US with her name on it. Pressure from the diamond monopoly, De Beers, resulted in its showing on Australian Broadcasting Company being cancelled, and in the BBC not selling it abroad, especially to South Africa.

She continued to research the diamond industry, especially in South Africa and Namibia where she was a guest of the miners’ union. This resulted in the book Glitter and Greed, 2003.

In 2002 she published The Seven days of My Creation on her own gender transition, and on the status of women through the Christian centuries. She has also published on the causes of AIDS and on problems with the polio vaccine. She was also a Wicca priestess.

Janine suffered a massive stroke in 2010, and died six years later at age 74. 


*Not the family therapist.

• Janine Roberts . The Seven days of My Creation: tales of magic, sex and gender. San Jose: Writers Club Press 628 pp 2002. Liskeard, Cornwall: Exposure Publishing 384 pp 2006.
• J. P. Roberts. Glitter & Greed: The Secret World of the Diamond Cartel. New York: Disinformation, 2007.  
• "Jan Roberts: Commemorating a true warrior".  MAC: Mines and Communities, 2016-03-02.  www.minesandcommunities.org/article.php?a=13279.
  
• www.sparkle.plus.com.
• www.witch.plus.com.

WorldCat    IMDB    AIDSWiki  

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What an amazing woman. I came across one of her web sites while googling for something on religion.

Nobody has done a Wikipedia page on her. She is not in any of those lists of outstanding transpersons that we find on the web.

Here is an excerpt from her documentary on the Diamond Empire.

Gareth Farr (1968 - ) musician and performer

Gareth was born in Wellington, New Zealand, and is an orchestral composer, percussionist, and drag performer.

He studied music at Auckland University and performed as a member of the Auckland Philarmonia. He studied further at Victoria University, Wellington, and then at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York State. He is an enthusiast of the Indonesian gamelan.

As Lilith Lacroix he was Miss Sweetheart 1995, first runner- up Miss Gay Upstate New York 1995 and second runner-up Miss Gay Rochester 1995. On returning to New Zealand Lilith developed a unique stage show, 'Drumdrag'. Ms Lacroix has also done commercials, and released pop singles.



Gareth works with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, and has released five CDs of his music. He appears in the New Zealand documentary, The Truth About Kiwi Men, 2001, and was the subject of Gareth - Farr From Heaven, 2005 on TVNZ. He also played a drag queen in Stickmen, 2001, and has composed the music for Dead Letters, 2006 and some television programs. He was made an officer of New Zealand Order of Merit in the 2006 Queen's Birthday Honours List.

• www.garethfarr.com.
• www.drumdrag.com.
• “Gareth Farr”. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gareth_Farr.