Christiane Völling (1960 - ) nurse.

Thomas Völling was born in West Germany with indeterminate external genitalia as a result of virilizing adrenal hyperplasia, and was raised as a boy.



However even as a child he identified as a girl. During an appendectomy at age 17, his uterus and womb were discovered, which led to his fully-intact female internal organs being removed the next year, without his being properly informed. He was also subject to attempts at penis construction and prescribed male hormones.

The surgeon wrote to the German military authorities that Thomas should be excused military service because he was “genotypically female” and “has not been fully informed about the extent of his condition”.

Thomas has worked as a nurse in Düsseldorf, and has been working towards a change to female, but has been treated as transsexual rather than as intersex. Völling did not understand that she was intersex until 2006 when a urologist gave him a questionnaire as part of a national study on intersexuality.

In 2007-8 Christiane sued the surgeon who removed her organs, and sought €100,000 in compensation. The Cologne Justice, Dietmar Reiprich, ruled that the surgeon had acted illegally. She is also applying to have her name and id changed.

• “Gender Warrior Wins Case Against Surgeon”. Deutsch Welle 06.02.2008. www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,3111505,00.html.
• “German Gender-Assignment Case Has Intersexuals Hopeful”. Deutsch Welle 12.12.2007. www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,3000902,00.html
• "Christiane". Organization Intersex International. http://www.intersexualite.org/Christiane.html#anchor_11
• Curtis Hinkle. "The Chatty Cathy Approach to Intersex Activism". Intersex Pride. April 22, 2008. http://intersexpride.blogspot.com/2008/04/chatty-cathy-approach-to-intersex.html

Jimmy Treetop (193? - ) quack.

A quack doctor in New York City in the late 1970s-early 1990s who worked the clubs where drag queens hung out and sold a syringe of female hormones and B-12 for $15, or 6 for $60.

He was also a photographer and a drug retailer and a pedophile with young children frequently visiting his small apartment in New York’s Hells Kitchen. He decorated his apartment with photographs of the best looking of his feminized customers. Those who could not pay, exchanged sexual services for the hormones.

Patients included Anji Xtravaganza, Rosalyne Blumenstein.

• Michael Cunningham. “The Slap of Love”. Open City #6. 1993. www.opencity.org/cunningham.html.
• Rosalyne Blumenstein. Branded T. 1stBooks 350 pp 2003: 70-4.

James Herndon (1889 – 1983) orderly.

As a child James was taken to the Good Samaritan Hospital in Lexington, Kentucky for an eye injury and left there.

He became friendly with the hospital superintendent, who provided a room. He began by delivering the hospital mail, and playing his ukulele for the patients. In his teens he learned the profession of orderly, and worked at the hospital as an orderly for the next 40 years. He was regarded as the best orderly at the hospital and trained new orderlies.

He eventually moved to a home in the black neighborhood close to the university, which he filled with antiques. Given that all of his working life was under segregation, he had a relatively good income for an African-American. He did various shades of drag, using the names ‘Sweet Evening Breeze’ and ‘Miss Sweets’, and was rumored to be a ‘hermaphrodite’. Sometimes his dress was a mix of male and female.


He frequented the local tearooms, and his home was a gay meeting place. He was one of the few older black gays to socialize in the white gay bar scene. His triumph was a drag show at the Woodland Auditorium where he was lowered from the ceiling in a basket and danced the ‘Passion Dance of the Bongo Bangoes’.

Around 1960 he and a teenaged drag, Leigh Angelique, were arrested for wearing makeup. They performed a mini-drag show for the guards, who tipped them, and spoke to the judge on their behalf. Sweets spoke up against the discrimination that women could wear make-up but men could not, and the case was dismissed.

He was active in the Pleasant Green Baptist Church and left it a bequest in his will. The Imperial Court of Kentucky named its highest award the James Herndon Award, and the

Lexington Men’s Chorus named its singing ensemble Sweet Evening Breeze in his honor. He appears as a character in Cormac McCarthy's novel Suttree, 1979.

*Not the California teacher and writer, nor the media psychologist, nor the gospel singer.

• Jeff Jones. “Sweet Evening Breeze”. Gay Kentucky. Nov 14, 1997. www.geocities.com/unusualkentucky/herndon.html.
• Jeffery Alan Jones. “James Herndon of Kentucky: An Uncommon Life” in Blacklines, Chicago: Lambda Publications, Spring 1997.

Georgia Ariana Ziadie (1949 - ) socialite, writer.

George William Ziadie was born to a Jamaican elite family of mixed European/Lebanese heritage. He was born with a genital defect which resulted in his being raised as a boy. At his all-male school he was taunted for being a ‘boy-gal’.

At age 21, she had corrective surgery and legally changed her name to Georgia. She moved to New York, and became a socialite and model.

In 1974 she met Lord Colin Campbell, younger brother of the Duke of Argyll. They were engaged on the first night and married within a week. And divorced the next year, with Lord Campbell citing his distaste that she was transsexual, and Lady Campbell complaining that he wanted money from her father. While she proclaims that she finds her ex-husband loathsome, she continues to use his name, that is ‘Lady Colin Campbell’, in her public life even 30+ years later.

She has published two books on Diane Spencer, Princess of Wales, and also an autobiography and a novel, Empress Bianca, that was pulped when billionaire widow Lily Safra threatened to sue because it too closely resembled her own life. In 2004, Georgia sued Taki Theodoracopoulos of The Spectator who had written that she had "persuaded her former husband to marry her by passing herself off as a woman". Taki paid damages and legal costs.

Lovers since her divorce have included Oliver Eden, the 8^th Baron Henley who was a minister under Prime Ministers Thatcher and Major, and the actor Larry Lamb.

She has adopted two Russian baby boys, Dima and Misha.

She lived in France to escape the Blair years and became a champion of Robert Lund, a British expatriate who was convicted of murdering his wife.

• Lady Colin Campbell. A Life Worth Living: The Autobiography Of Lady Colin Campbell. Little, Brown & Co. 1997.
• Marianne MacDonald. “Inside Stories”. Independent on Sunday. 29 June 1997. Online at: www.pfc.org.uk/node/970/print.
• “A very unlady-like Lady: Why high society is terrified of Lady Colin Campbell”. Daily Mail 9th January 2008. www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html?in_article_id=507141&in_page_id=1879  

 EN.WIKIPEDIA   

Letitia Winter (1948 - ) magician.

with the then Prime Minister.

Oliver Winter was born in Holloway, north London. He was in sales and then a motor-cycle messenger, worked as a lab assistant, and in fashion. 

She transitioned to Letitia in her 30s, finding a route through drag pubs, the Porchester Drag Balls and Friend TV/TS Group.  She decided to go into showbiz, but couldn’t sing, so she took up magic under the stage name of Fay Presto.

She has been a great success, and has performed for all senior royalty and many rock stars and actors.

She was the subject of a 1994 BBC profile, Illusions of Grandeur. In 1998 she was voted ‘Party Entertainer of the Year’ by Tatler Magazine. In 2001, she played herself in the ITV soap opera, Emmerdale. One of the few women members of The Inner Magic Circle.

She was on the board of the transsexual rights organization Press for Change.

• Kris Kirk and Ed Heath. Men In Frocks. London: Gay Men's Press. 1984: 78. 
• George Sally (dir). Illusions of Grandeur. BBC TV 40 mins 1994.
• Sasha Slater. “Kitchen Sink Drama: Fay Presto” The Express Saturday Magazine. 30 Oct-05 Nov 1999. Online at: www.pfc.org.uk/pfclists/news-arc/1999q4/msg00037.htm. 
• www.faypresto.com. 

Yelizaveta Petrovna Romanova (1709 - 1762) Empress.

Empress of all the Russias from 1741, Yelizaveta took Russia into the War of Austrian Succession, (1740 –48), and the Seven Years War (1756-63). She encouraged the foundation of the University of Moscow and the Academy of Fine Arts in St Petersburg, and the building of fine buildings such as the Winter Palace and Smolny Cathedral. She remains popular because she excluded Germans from the government, and not a single person was executed during her reign.

Charles d'Eon de Beaumont was part of the French embassy to Russia during her reign, but the claims that he first practiced crossdressing at her court seem to be without foundation.

Ekaterina Romanova, Yelizaveta's successor, comments on life under Yelizaveta in the mid 1740s: 'In those days, there was a sort of masquerade at court every Tuesday. ... The Empress had decreed that, at these masquerades, to which only those persons had access who had been selected by her, all the men had to be dressed as women and all the women as men. I must say there could have been nothing more ugly and at the same time more laughable than most of the men so disguised, and nothing more miserable than the women in men's clothing. The Empress alone, who was best suited to men's clothing, looked really well; thus costumed, she was, in fact, very beautiful.'

While Yelizaveta's body was rather heavily built in the upper half, she had a well-shaped pair of legs, which at that period could be shown only in a male costume.

Yelizaveta was known for her intolerance of any member of the court who dressed as she did, or outdid her in any way. When the beautiful Mme Lopukhin appeared at a ball wearing a rose in her hair, exactly like the Empress, Yelizaveta not only cut off the rose, and the attached hair, but she boxed the woman's ears in front of the assembled court. It was not easy to avoid dressing like Yelizaveta for she would change her dress several times a day.

In this light it is not surprising that the courtiers did not transvest with the enthusiasm that is required for success. Success might be costly.

The Russian writer Barsukov, in his Annals de le Patrie, says that the masquerades took place twice a week. He also says that Yelizaveta decided to be the dresser at the court theatre, where all female roles were played by young men. He cites an instance in 1750 when the Empress personally dressed a young cadet who was to play a female role in a tragedy by Sumarakov.

When she died, Yelizaveta left 15,000 dresses, as well as a selection of male clothing.

• Cynthia Cox. The Enigma of the Age: the Strange Story of the Chevalier d'Eon. Longmans. 1966: 24-5

EN.Wikipedia.

Mildred M. (1908 - ?).

A male-bodied person desiring a transsexual change was recorded, photographed and exhibited to medical students in Chicago in 1942.

She had desired to be female from early childhood, and strongly desired to be loved by a man. She had learned all the skills of a woman such as cooking, sewing, housekeeping. However she had been compelled to impersonate a man, and had married a woman and they had children.

The case was written up in in 1944. The doctors reporting emphasize that Mildred had been cruel to her wife and family, and that in her cross-dressing had boasted of her disregard for society or criticism. They interpreted her quandary as ‘emotional frigidity or callousness … seldom encountered even in a psychopath’.

• D.M. Olkon and Irene Case Sherman. 'Eonism with Added Outstanding Psychopathic Features: a Unique Psychopathological Case' Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease. Vol 99 no 2: 159-67, 1944.
• Jonathan Ned Katz. Gay/Lesbian Almanac: A New Documentary, Harper & Row Publishers, Inc. 1983, Carrol & Graf Publishers, Inc. 1994: 587-90,718 n24.