Magnus Hirschfeld, Edward Wood and the coining of ‘transsexual’.

In Hirschfeld’s Die Transvestiten, 1910, the word he uses for what we might call transsexualism is ‘Geschlechtsuebergaenge’, which would literally be a sexual over-going. This word is translated as ‘transsexual’ in Michael Lombardi-Nash’s 1991 English translation of Die Transvestiten. Obviously 'sexual over-going' was not going to catch on in English.

In 1923, Hirschfeld did use the expression 'seelischer transsexualismus' (psychic transsexualism) in a journal paper, ‘Die intersexuelle konstitution’. Although, of course, one wonders whether it was his own expression, or one suggested by one of his minions.

Die Transvestiten was not translated into English until 1991, and ‘Die intersexuelle konstitution’ has never been translated. Kurt Freund, as a German-speaking Czech sexologist, probably read read both of them. Harry Benjamin, being German, could have read them, but he shows no evidence of taking the word ‘transsexual’ from Hirschfeld. There is no evidence of British or US doctors having read Hirschfeld.

The word ‘transsexual’ next appeared in Kinsey, Pomeroy, and Martin, 1948: 612, as a kind of homosexual considered as an intermediate sex.

The next year, 1949, David Cauldwell wrote a paper for Sexology about a girl who wanted to be a boy. He entitled the paper ‘Psychopathia transexualis’ (note the one S). This paper was not much noticed. Harry Benjamin later commented: "Whether I had ever read that article and the expression remained in my subconscious, frankly, I do not know". It was Louise Lawrence who introduced Benjamin to Cauldwell’s writings.

The word next turns up in Edward D. Wood, Jr’s 1953 film, Glen or Glenda. This is intriguing. Was the word in use among trans people before Benjamin started using it? Did Louise, having read Cauldwell, pass the word on to other transvestites? We do know that the word ‘homophobe’ was used in Screw magazine two years before it was officially coined in 1972. Probably by the early 1950s, the word ‘transvestite’ was sufficiently common that different people coined ‘transsexual’ independently.

Harry Benjamin first used the word in December 1953, and went on to popularize it, particularly in his 1966 book. He spelt the word with two-SS.

By the early 1970s doctors were dissatisfied with the word 'transsexualism' because it had lost its medical connotations, and so Norman Fisk in 1973 proposed 'gender dysphoria syndrome' to remedicalize the concept.

John Money pays homage to Cauldwell by using his one-S spelling, as does The Rocky Horror (Picture) Show, 1973 on stage, 1975 film (“I'm just a Sweet Transvestite from Transexual, Transylvania“. However the two-S spelling has proved more popular.

• Harry Benjamin. The Transsexual Phenomenon, New York: The Julian Press. 1966.
• Harry Benjamin. “Introduction”. In Richard Green and John Money (eds.), Transsexualism and Sex Reassignment, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press. 1969.
• David O. Cauldwell. ‘Psychopathia transexualis’. Sexology, 1949. 16: 274-280.
• Richard Ekins, Dave King. (2001) "Pioneers of Transgendering: The Popular Sexology of David O. Cauldwell". IJT 5,2, www.symposion.com/ijt/cauldwell/cauldwell_01.htm.
• Norman Fisk. "Gender Dysphoria Syndrome". In D. Laub & P. Gandy (Eds.) Proceedings of the Second Interdisciplinary Symposium on Gender Dysphoria Syndrome. 1974: 7–14.
• Magnus Hirschfeld,. Die Transvestiten; ein Untersuchung uber den erotischen Verkleidungstrieb: mit umfangreichem casuistischen und historischen Material. Berlin: Pulvermacher, vi, 562 pp1910. English translation by Michael A Lombardi-Nash. Tranvestites: The Erotic urge to Crossdress. Buffalo: Prometheus Books. 424 pp 1991.
• Magnus Hirschfeld. ‘Die intersexuelle konstitution’. Jahrbuch fuer sexuelle Zwischenstufen, 1923. 23: 3-27.
• Andrea James. “Magnus Hirschfeld”. Transsexual Road Map. www.tsroadmap.com/info/magnus-hirschfeld.html.
• Kinsey, A.C., Pomeroy, W.B., and Martin, C.E. (1948) Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Bullough and Bullough in Crossdressing, Sex and Gender, 1993: 257, state that "Hirschfeld in 1910 called one of his patients a psychic transsexual". They give no reference. Presumably they are confusing his book and his 1923 paper.

Pieter-Dirk Uys (1945 - ) performer, satirist.

Uys was born in Cape Town, the son of a Calvinist Afrikaner father and a Berlin-born Jewish mother. He was active in theatre in Cape Town and Johannesburg in the 1970s and 1980s. He has written and performed 20 plays and over 30 revues and one-man shows.

In 1976 his soon-to-be major persona, Evita Bezuidenhout, ‘the most famous white woman in South Africa’ appeared. Inspired by Barry Humphries’ Dame Edna Everage, she was used by Uys to satirize and expose the absurdity of the then Apartheid regime. Most of their work was not censored, indicating closet approval by members of the ruling class. They also lampooned the sometimes hypocritical white liberals.

Evita published her autobiography in 1990. After the first non-racial elections in 1994, Evita starred in a television series interviewing Nelson Mandela and other politicians.

Pieter and Evita are also active in HIV/Aids campaigning, especially in teaching Aids awareness to children. In 2001 they gained a Truth and Reconciliation Award.

They live in the town of Darling outside Cape Town where Pieter has converted the old railway station into a cabaret.

In 2009 they wrote a play MacBeki: A Farce to be Reckoned With, which satirized contemporary politics reading Duncan as Nelson Mandela, Jacob Zuma as Macduff and Thabo Mbeki as Macbeth.

• Lionel Friedberg (dir). Across the Rubicon. With Pieter-Dirk Uys. South Africa 54 mins 1987.
• Pieter-Dirk Uys. A Part Hate, a Part Love: The Biography of Evita Bezuidenhout. Sandton, South Africa: Radix, 1990.
• Julian Shaw (dir & scr). Darling! The Pieter-Dirk Uys Story. With Pieter-Dirk Uys, Evita Bezuidenhout, Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu. Australia 54 mins 2007.
• David Smith. “Jacob Zuma's ANC a target for South African satirists”. The Guardian. 19 April 2009. www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/19/satire-zuma-johannesburg-mbeki.
• “Pieter-Dirk Uys”. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pieter-Dirk_Uys.
• www.evita.co.za. www.pdu.co.za.

More on Wayne Dynes

I have previously written on Wayne Dynes here.

To recap:

In his Homosexuality: A Research Guide, 1987, he strangely chose to open his ‘Transsexualism’ section with an assertion in opposition to the facts:

Follow-up studies have shown that many postoperative transsexuals exist in a state of almost continual depression, and for this reason the operation is now performed less often.

He also gave an amazingly positive mini-review of Janice Raymond and ignored 90%+ of transgender biographies.

He was the major editor of the Encyclopedia of Homosexuality, 1990, and chose to write the article on ‘Transvestism (Cross-dressing)’. He repeats the common fallacy that Hirschfeld coined ‘transvestism’; repeats disinformation from Peter Ackroyd’s unreliable book, and concludes that “At its best, transvestism is a form of ludic behavior that causes society to take a fresh look at gender conventions”.

Let us look at the bibliography at the end of the article: Ackroyd, Bullough, Decker & van de Pol, Ellis, Feinbloom, Hirschfeld, Wheelwright, Woodhouse. Not a single trans person of any flavour.

Likewise, the preceding article by Warren Johansson on ‘Transsexualism’ has only Benjamin, Bolin and Pauly & Edgerton in its bibliography. Given all that had been published by trans persons, even as far back as 1990, not one is deemed suitable to consult. I doubt that either Dynes or Johansson would write on homosexuality and ignore everything written by gay writers.

Dynes has recently published an essay on his blog called “Shifting stigmas’ where he considers the status changes in the 40 years since Stonewall of the various groups that are adjacent to homosexuality. He particular, he observes that:

With some reservations, then, pedophilia, pederasty, and ephebophilia were UP a generation ago; transpeople were DOWN. These days that situation is hard to imagine, so much have the two groups changed in the eyes of the public. The relationship has been turned upside down.

I think that his observation is coloured by his New York residence, but let that pass. He wonders why the change happened. He considers the antisexual mood of the current zeitgeist in the US and that this fits with a common perception (true or otherwise) that transpeople have less sex. He also sees us as benefiting “from the postmodern emphasis on fluidity and transitional states--on avoiding fixed ‘essences’.” However he does continue:

Liminality may capture some of the interest, even enthusiasm that some outsiders feel for transpeople. However, it does not accord with the experience of many who are committed to the “trans” status. In particular, those who complete the full schedule of surgical intervention believe that they have attained the sex that “they were meant to be.” For them, there is no ambiguity. Likewise, many transexuals in the full sense reject the gay label; as they perceive the matter, they love those of the opposite sex. Some others pursue their own sex--that is, the sex of arrival--or regard themselves as bi.

And then:

At all events, trannies--of whatever variety--are seen as taking steps that affect themselves only. In this way their modus operandi accords with the dominant ideology of expressive individualism. One could even say that they are contributing to consumerism by their increased purchase of clothing, beauty products, and elective surgery.

This of course is much better than what he was writing in the 1980s. This is still however a comment from one who participates in gay discourse but does not consult the discourse among trans persons. Note how he uses ‘trannies’ and ‘transpeople’ (without the now required space) – in blissful ignorance of how some trans people react. He also uses ‘M2F’ and ‘F2M’ as nouns. What was it that Gore Vidal said about being homosexual, but not ‘a homosexual’?

The essay is then about the gay perception of trans people, not actually about real trans people. It was actually a pleasure to read the essay, locked as it is behind a firewall where the politics that divide the trans scene do not penetrate.

PS. Note the second comment by someone called John Lauritsen who says:

Of course it is impossible to change a man into a woman, or vice versa. A "male-to-female transsexual" is a man who has been castrated, and thereby transformed -- not into a woman, but into a eunuch. Such an individual has been *neutered* or *de-sexed*, not changed into the opposite sex. Likewise, a "female-to-male transsexual" has been neutered, not changed into a real man.

As one of the other comments says, Lauritsen is not only totally ignorant of what he writes, but he is in lockstep with the Church of Rome. This is the same Lauritsen who echoes now ex-President Thabo Mbeki and his Health Minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, known as Dr Beetroot, in that all three deny any link between being HIV+ and developing AIDS.

• Wayne Dynes. Homosexuality: A Research Guide. New York & London: Garland Publishing. xviii, 854 pp. 1987.
• Wayne Dynes et al (ed). Encyclopedia of homosexuality. New York: Garland Pub. Chicago & London: St James. xxxviii, 1484 pp, 2 vols. 1990. Also online at www.williamapercy.com/wiki/index.php/Encyclopedia_of_Homosexuality.
• Wayne Dynes. “Shifting Stigmas”. Dyneslines. April 20, 2009. http://dyneslines.blogspot.com/2009/04/shifting-stigmas.html.

Louise Lawrence (1912 – 1976) activist, building manager, artist.

++revised June 2016

Despite childhood desires to be a girl, Lew Lawrence married a wife, Virginia, at 18 in 1930, and they had a daughter. He was briefly a bank clerk. Virginia died five years later. Lew started corresponding with other transvestites.

He met Montez who at first accepted his cross-dressing, and they married in 1941. The strain of keeping the secret led to her having a nervous breakdownm and she divorced him in 1944.  Lawrence now transitioned to living full-time as Louise.  

Louise moved to San Francisco from Berkeley. She managed an apartment building for working women, and also sold some artwork. She also found a female partner, Gay.  She knew some of the performers at Finocchio's, attended gay drag parties, and worked with the homophile Mattachine Society.

She worked to educate the doctors who were interested in transvestites.  From the mid-1940s she worked with Karl Bowman at the Langley Porter Clinic.  She gave a presentation at the University of California Medical School at San Francisco, where a 33-year-old Arnold Lowman was in the audience and fascinated.  He obtained Louise's address and pestered for a meeting.  He gave his name as Virginia Prince as he lived on Prince Street.  She introduced him to other transvestites and to

Bowman, who took on Prince as a patient. 

From 1948 Louise worked with Alfred Kinsey.  Previously he was aware of only a handful of transvestites.  Louise introduced him to cross-dressers, professional female impersonators and eventually transsexuals.  She encouraged them to give their life histories to Kinsey. He paid her for typing up the life histories, and also for copying transvestite fiction, including petticoat punishment stories.  He asked her to “begin keeping a list of specific persons whom you know to be transvestites . . . [and] also of the cases you run across in the newspapers”; the lists, he hoped, could “give some clues to the number of transvestites”.  She listed 19 in the San Francisco area and 151 across the US.  Over several years she sent correspondence, her diary of her transition year (1944) scrapbooks of clippings and autobiographical writings.

Kinsey introduced her to Harry Benjamin.  Lawrence informed Benjamin of David Cauldwell’s earlier writings on transsexualism.  Benjamin began to introduce her to his trans patients, and she invited them to her home, and offered counseling.   The only prominant San Francisco trans person whom she avoided was Bunny Breckinridge.  His attention seeking was considered risky at a time when cross-dressing was still illegal. 

In 1952 Virginia Prince, Louise, Edith Ferguson, Joan Thornton met and put out the first incarnation of Transvestia.  They used Lawrence’s address book for its initial subscription list.  The group discussed who was a transvestite.   Louise had written that the group includes "heterosexuals, there are definite fetishists, sadists, masochists, voyeurs, homosexuals, etc.".   

A few years later Louise wrote: "I consider Louise to be my true identity even though the birth records say differently, and on this I will stand, for to me, as to most people who know me, I AM Louise. I maintain that people are personalities first and that the statistical facts are merely additional information." (Schaefer & Wheeler: 5)

When Virginia Prince revived Transvestia in 1959 with a more narrow definition of who was a transvestite, Louise was no longer involved. 
Louise even put Arthur Corbett in touch with April Ashley.

In 1964, Louise, José Sarria and four homophile leaders met with religious leaders in San Francisco to organize for gay minorities.

Louise continued to send material to the Kinsey archives, even after the death of Alfred Kinsey in 1956. 

She died aged 63. 

There is now a Louise Lawrence Collection of letters, photographs and other documents in the Kinsey Institute in Bloomington, Indiana.

*Not the fantasy novelist, nor the New Testament scholar.

• Janet Thompson [Louise Lawrence].  "Transvestism: An Empirical Study".  The International Journal of Sexology, 1951. 
• Duncan Fallowell & April Ashley.  April Ashley's Odyssey.  Jonathan Cape, 1982: 114-5. 
• Leah Cahan Schaefer & Connie Christine Wheeler. “Harry Benjamin's first ten cases (1938-1953): a clinical historical note”. Archives of Sexual Behavior 24:1 Feb 1995: 4. Online at www.helen-hill.com/pdf/hbfirst10cases.pdf.  Louise is referred to as Doris.
• Joanne Meyerowitz, . "Sex research at the borders of gender: Transvestites, transsexuals, and Alfred C. Kinsey." Bulletin of the History of Medicine 75.1 (2001): 72-90.
• Joanne Meyerowitz. How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States. Cambridge, Ma, London: Harvard University Press. 363 pp 2002: 70, 73, 92, 144, 154-5, 156, 171, 185-6, 187, 211, 227, 318n73-5.
• Peter Farrer. “The Louise Lawrence Collection”. Gendys Conference, 2004. http://www.gender.org.uk/conf/2004/04farrer.htm.
• Joanne Meyerowitz. “Lawrence, Louise”. Encyclopedia of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender History in America.Charles Scribner's Sons, 2005. 
• April Ashley with Douglas Thompson.  The First Lady.  John Blake, 2006: 159.
• Lillian Faderman. The Gay Revolution: The Story of the Struggle. Simon & Shuster, 2015: 103. 

____________________________________________________________

Louise and Virginia Prince were both born in 1912.

Louise is the real mother of organized transvestity in the US, and much more attention should be paid to her, rather than to Prince who does get the attention.

Diane Kearny (1940 - ) HBS activist.

Revised 4 Dec 2009, September 2013.

See also A short History of (Harry) Benjamin Syndrome.

Kearny was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, and as a teenager corresponded with Virginia Prince – who told her that anyone wanting a sex change was delusional.

Diane was a friend of the pioneering transsexual and prostitute, Patricia Morgan, and knew some of the drag performers at the 82 Club. She was down the street when the Stonewall riot erupted in 1969.

Later, as Diane, she was a patient of Harry Benjamin and Charles Ihlenfeld. She had only one psychiatric interview, and then had surgery with Roberto Granato Sr in 1972 in Brooklyn.

Being Catholic, she then successfully applied to have the name and gender on her baptismal certificate amended.

In 1984 she married.  They were married for 22 years before she was widowed. Diane ran her own business.

In 2004 Diane set up WATS, a transsexual forum.  In 2006 she encountered  Charlotte Goiar on the Australian WOMAN forums, and adopted Goiar's concept of Harry Benjamin Syndrome. Goiar participated in her forum, and she  and others set up harrybenjaminsyndrome-info.org, (which became derelict around 2008), and then harrybenjaminsyndrome.org (which also became derelict in 2010). Goiar and Kerny separated and each maintained a web site and a forum. Kearny's site contained material from Goiar’s www.shb-info.org, with small changes, and included a very similar Standards of Care.  Her Yahoo forum differed from Goiars in admitting only post-operative women, and harrybenjaminsyndrome.org, unlike www.shb-info.org, was in English only. The site defined HBS:

"Harry Benjamin's Syndrome (HBS) is a congenital intersex condition that develops before birth, involving the differentiation between male and female. It is believed that every 1/30,000 is born with this condition. Therefore a girl with Harry Benjamin's Syndrome would have a females brain sex but her genitals would appear male. The boys born under this condition have female genitalia even though their brains are male. So far it’s impossible to diagnose this condition at the moment of birth causing the babies to be raised in the wrong gender role. There are figures that confuse the rarity of HBS by including in the numbers those under the transgender umbrella who are not HBS or even true transsexuals but are better aligned with fetishists who 'went all the way' such as the autogynephilic thereby making it seem that the number of 1/2500 might be better applied."

Despite Diane’s Catholicism, the site had a religion tab that was heavily Protestant in that it cites the Bible but no Popes or theologians.  " In this way God is pleased for He sees a lessoning of suffering in His name by all who feel that in His eyes they did right and not a wrong".

Diane wrote to the American Psychological Association (included on the web page), and the press in general. In 2007, she and the others made a presentation at a WPATH Symposium in Chicago.


*Not the Diane Kearney who argued that Thomas Pynchon was Wanda Tinasky; nor the Hollywood costume and wardrobe person.

Diane, sometimes using the surname Logan, commented on various websites:

• Diane Logan.  "transgender Confusion".  San Francisco Bay Times.  Aug 31, 2006. www.sfbaytimes.com/index.php?sec=article&article_id=5465.  "Most transsexuals I know are not a result of being a crossdresser or a fetishist. They are people who knew from a very early age that something was wrong and bore the pain of that truth until relief was attained in the form of surgery. They did not link up with transgender behavior, which is obviously a satisfying sexual release, but had to bring their body and brain into harmony in order to simply survive. That is what transsexual actually is and so far removed from all of those transgenders I came across during my years before and since my surgery in 1972. Transgenderism has become farcical and in no way should be seen as being in any way, shape or form somewhat like the medical condition of transsexualism, or as we prefer to call it, Harry Benjamin Syndrome"
• Diane Kearny. Comment on “Transgender Folly”. The Jewish Press. Nov 15 2006. http://www.jewishpress.com/page.do/19917/Transgender_Folly.htm."Direct your angst toward those who use the confusion of transgenderism to further their forced imposition upon society. This proposal, if one looks closely, is a gay/lesbian/bi/transgender law. It allows people to simply identify as the opposite sex when not that sex at all. It will confuse the issue and even permit deceptive same sex marriages."
• Diane Kearny. Letters to the Editor. Salon.com. July-Sept 2007. http://letters.salon.com/8405f1978f69d63678799623f1e75cdd/author/.   "I had my corrective surgery in a Brooklyn, N.Y. hospital over 30 years ago. Of course I was considered to be in medical need whereas now with the influx of so many under the transgender umbrella we too are falsely listed as having some sort of dysphoria. Does this sound like someone suffering a mental disorder: graduated from college, legally married to the man I met 30 years ago, opened and ran my own business for 20 yrs, built up a comfortable circle of friends and had been certified physically and mentally a female in a County Hospital which was the requirement of the Health Dept. Board before they would change my birth certificate. All that is done so how then am I thrown under the transgender umbrella with fetishists and sex deviants as if I might be cousined to them? No, I refuse to accept that and will fight it to my dying days. I am not a trans anything...I am a woman."
• Diane Kearny. Comments on “Roman Catholicism And Harry Benjamin Syndrome (HBS)”. TS-Si. 18 Dec 2007. http://ts-si.org/the-discussion/2798-briefing-roman-catholicism-and-harry-benjamin-syndrome-hbs.html. "This is simply one of the area's where the TG's and our forced attachment to their banner has hurt many who have had surgery. Remember please that McHugh comes from a long line of radical functionaries at Johns Hopkins where the issue of gender has been placed in the pot of confusion not the least of which is exampled by the likes of Money who believed much like McHugh that brain sex is pliable. ".
• Diane Kearny. Comment on “With Apologies to Radical Feminists”. The Transadvocate. Feb 9, 2008. www.transadvocate.com/with-apologies-to-radical-feminists.htm#high_1."I have been attacked before and by the ignorant who take out of context things I have said and things doctors have advised me as facts on the one hand and possibilities on the other. I ignore their ignorance for I truly understand their need to demean all of us who might suggest they have no affinity with us in their attempt to use our medical legitimacy as cover for their own fetishism. That bothers them for they know deep down their masking deception has no connection with our reality."
• Diane Kearny. Comments on “Uh oh". The Billerico Project. May 5-13, 2008. http://www.bilerico.com/2008/05/uh-oh.php.   "Let the fetishists and the week-end thrill seekers keep transgender. I will not accept that term unless every other woman on the planet does as well."
• Diana.  Profile.  Creative Loafing Tampa. http://tampa.creativeloafing.com/gyrobase/Profile?oid=oid%3A354758.  "Those of us who had corrective surgery did not change our gender, it was inborn"
• Diane L. Logan.  "Few facts ignored about health care bill".  Lewistown Sentinel.  Sept 25, 2009. http://mobile.lewistownsentinel.com/page/wap.home/?id=515436.  "I am continually amazed that so many of the radical liberals attack everyone who is opposed to the Obama health care boondoggle. Recently argued by a reader were the so-called lies being perpetrated by Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Beck, Newt Gingrich, Hannity and the very long list of those who are vocal in addressing opposition to a plan that is falsely labeled as a “HEALTH plan” when, in fact, it is, but a political means to place power in the hands of the socialists in our government. Some like one of the czars, Van Jones, are even admitted communists."

See also the two comments below that are emails received from Diane after the first tentative draft of this article.

____________________________________________________________________

I believe that the Catholic Church never reissues baptismal certificates for transsexuals any more. After all, their official position, as advised by Paul McHugh, is that there is no such thing as changing sex.

Back in 1960, Jacqueline Dufresnoy was required to be re-baptised.

Diane insists that she never changed her gender although she lived as male for three decades.  She is of course failing to distinguish between 'gender' and 'gender identity'.  

Prince's reply to a teenaged trans girl was, obviously, rude and insensitive.  However Diane is still referring to Prince as "Charles (Virginia) Prince" apparently assuming that "Charles Prince" was Virginia's male-name (it was merely a temporary pen name) and falsely crediting her with coining 'transgender' .  I gather that Diane has not read either Richard Docter's nor my accounts of Prince, nor either my or Cristan Williams' accounts of the history of the term 'transgender'.   There are several serious criticisms of Virginia Prince, but Diane neither contributes to the criticism of Prince nor helps her own case by repeating  misinformation.  As I wrote here: "One can see why Yvonne Cook-Riley and Kimberleigh Richards wanted to credit Prince with something that she never did, and never could have. It is an irony of note that Diane Kearny, Suzan Cooke, Jenifer Usher and Cathryn Platine all want to support Cook-Riley and Richards in this endeavor.

Sally Barry (1926 - ?) Benjamin’s first transsexual patient.

Val (A pseudonym) had co-operative parents and lived much of her childhood as a girl. During grade school where special toilet arrangements were made, psychiatrists assured the parents that Val would outgrow the phase. High school authorities were not so co-operative and Val stayed at home.

Being frustrated in her desire to be female, she was given to tantrums and even violence: once even causing her father to be hospitalized.

At age 22, when, as Sally she was already living as a woman, she had gone to a hospital in her home state of Wisconsin for a psychiatric examination. She had read the few books available at the time on feminizing operations including Man into Woman on Lili Elvenes (Elbe). She requested surgery and refused any alternative that might remove her feminine desires. 30 members of the hospital staff met to discuss her case and recommended castration and plastic surgery. However the state attorney general’s office vetoed the decision as constituting mayhem.

The next year, 1949, she met and was interviewed by Alfred Kinsey in San Francisco as part of his research on sexual variance. Kinsey referred her to Harry Benjamin, who was staying in the same hotel, for help – this was Benjamin’s first transsexual patient - and he prescribed female hormones, x-ray castration and x-ray treatment to remove facial hair.

Kinsey arranged for her to have an evaluation with Karl Bowman at the University of California's Langley Porter Clinic. Kinsey arranged for her to have an apartment in the building run by Louise Lawrence. He also encouraged her to have a homosexual relationship with a man so that she would learn to value her penis. Bowman and Kinsey declined to endorse surgery.

With Benjamin’s encouragement, Sally finally had surgery in Sweden from 1953-8.

She and her mother later moved to Canada.

*Not the English sculptor.

• Harry Benjamin. The Transsexual Phenomenon. Julian Press, 1966.  Warner Books Edition 1977: 107, 299-307. PDF:49, 141-4.
• Leah Cahan Schaefer & Connie Christine Wheeler. “Harry Benjamin's first ten cases (1938-1953): a clinical historical note”. Archives of Sexual Behavior 24:1 Feb 1995: 4. Online at www.helen-hill.com/pdf/hbfirst10cases.pdf.  Revised as the Afterword to Randi Ettner. Confessions of a Gender Defender: A Psychologist's Reflections on Life Among the Transgendered. Chicago Spectrum Press, 1996.
• Joanne Meyerowitz. How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States. Harvard University Press, 2002: 47-8,171.

-------

In The Transsexual Phenomenon Sally is discussed anonymously in the main text and in detail  in the 'Lives' appendix where she is referred to as “H.”. Wheeler & Schaefer refer to her as Barry (as a forename) and then as Sally. In How Sex Changed by Joanne Meyerowitz refers to her as Val Barry (Barry as a surname). Susan Stryker in Transgender History denies her the dignity of any name and refers to her as the “mayhem case". In Wheeler & Schaefer’s revision of their paper for Randi Ettner’s Confessions of a Gender Defender she is called Van for the male phase and Susan afterwards.

Marsha P. Johnson (1944 - 1992) activist, drag mother.

Malcolm Michaels, Jr. grew up in Hoboken and Elizabeth, both in New Jersey. Malcolm would transform to Marsha on the commuter train into New York.


In 1966, Marsha moved to Manhattan for good. She was well-known in New York drag and arts scenes from the 1960s to the 90s. Sometimes she worked as a waitress, but usually she worked the streets. She was known for helping other transvestites and street people, was regarded as a drag mother, and in particular was a mentor to the young Sylvia Rivera. She panhandled and was often on roller skates. She was deeply religious and had visions.

In the early days she was known as Black Marsha, but then dropped the ‘Black’, and became Marsha P. Johnson. The P. as she loved to explain, including on one occasion to a judge, stood for “Pay it no mind”. The judge laughed and let her go.

She participated in the Stonewall riots in 1969, where she was observed dropping a heavy weight onto a police car. She was co-founder with Sylvia of STAR (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries) and was active in STAR House which attempted to feed the homeless and the street transies.


She was also a performer and a member of Hot Peaches, and did a London tour with them. She never got a female passport, and had to do male drag to go through immigration. She was photographed by Andy Warhol.

By 1979 she acknowledged several attempts on her life by johns, eight nervous breakdowns and innumerable arrests – after one hundred she stopped counting.

Marsha was rightly regarded as generous through the decades, but when Malcolm took over he could be quite nasty, and might even pick a fight with someone who said hello to him.

Marsha was probably murdered: her body was found floating in the Hudson River shortly after the 1992 Pride March, but the police declined to investigate.

Antony Hegarty’s band, Antony and the Johnsons, is named in tribute to Marsha.

• • Bob Kohler. “Rapping with a Street Transvestite Revolutionary: An Interview with Marcia [sic] Johnson” in Karla Jay and Allen Young. Out of the closets: voices of gay liberation. New York, Douglas Book Corp. 1972. New York : Pyramid Books, c1974. New York: Jove Publications, 1977.
  • Martin B Duberman. Stonewall. New York : Dutton, c1993. New York: Plume, xix,330 pp. 1994: 67-8,188,190,191,192, 204,235,237,251-5,259. 
  • Julian Fleisher. The Drag Queens of New York: An Illustrated Field Guide. New York: Riverhead Book. 1996: 35-6, 39,59-62. 
  • Leslie Feinberg. Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to Rupaul. Beacon Press, 1996: 130-1.
  • David Carter. Stonewall : the riots that sparked the gay revolution. New York : St. Martin's Press 2004. New York: Griffin 2005: 61, 65-6,162,188, 261.
  • Susan Stryker. Transgender History. Seal Press. 190 pp 2008: 86.
  • Amy Coleman. “The legendary Marsha P.Johnson…The Queen Mother”. www.amy-coleman.com/cab.htm#marshap.
  • “Marsha” TransyHouse. www.transyhouse.org/Marsha.htm. 
  • Michael Kasino (dir).   Pay It No Mind: Marsha P. Johnson, with Marsha P. Johnson, David Carter.  US 54 mins 2012.

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