Octavia St Laurent (1964 – 2009) performer, singer.

As Octavia would openly admit in later years, she started with the name Jeffrey. A native New Yorker, she started walking the New York balls in 1982. She joined the House of St Laurent and at age 26 was featured in Jennie Livingston's seminal documentary of the balls, Paris Is Burning. She then had a small part in the film, The Saint of Fort Washington, 1993.

Afterwards Octavia, already HIV+ and addicted, moved to Connecticut and worked as a motivational speaker and HIV educator. She was a talented singer and worked with Connecticut resident Greg Field on a series of recordings. However Greg got an extended gig in Iceland, and the recordings were never released.

Out Magazine, 2005

In 2005 she was the hostess at the Pill Awards. Also that year she was quoted in Out Magazine as "embarrassed" to have appeared in such a "depressing and degrading film"; but Next Magazine quoted her: "Paris is Burning was huge for me and I loved it".

She did appear in the next ball-scene film How Do I Look, which came out in 2006, and was open about her struggle with drugs, and her sex work.

She died at age 45 after a battle with cancer.

• Jennie Livingston (dir) Paris is Burning, with Dorian Corey, Octavia St Laurent, Pepper Labeija, Angie Xtravaganza and Venus Xtravaganza. US 71 mins 1990.
  
• “Still Burning” Out, Oct 2005: 54-5. Online at: http://rodonline.typepad.com/rodonline/2005/10/still_burning.html.
  
• Gregory T. Angelo. "Strong Medicine: The Heavenly Angel Octavia Saint-Laurent Manolo-Blahnik hosts ADD-TV’s Pill Awards. Fourteen years after Paris Is Burning, her fire is still burning as bright- and as hot – as ever". Next Magazine, Oct 21, 2005. 
  
• Wolgang Busch (dir). How Do I Look, with Tracy Africa, Octavia St Laurent. US 2006.
  
• Michael Musto. "RIP, Octavia St Laurent". The Village Voice, May 19 2009. http://blogs.villagevoice.com/dailymusto/2009/05/rip_octavia_st.php.
  
• Xem. "The Legacy of Octavia St Laurent". XemSays, July 22, 2012. http://xemsays.com/?p=240.
  

IMDB      EN.WIKIPEDIA

Raven Kaldera (?–) shaman

Kaldera has congenital adrenal hyperplasia. Kaldera was introduced to Wicca by a boyfriend at age 14, and wandered through various pagan and earth-centered traditions including Dianic and Umbanda.

Despite being masculine, Kaldera became a wife and the mother of a daughter, and was planning to be a science fiction writer and a folk musician, until a near-death experience while battling with lupus.

"During this drawn-out illness, I had a massive vision of the goddess who had been involved with me throughout my life.”

She revealed herself as Hela, the Norse goddess of death.

"She hung me up, tore me apart like a butchered animal and rebuilt me. When I came to, I was different. I lost some fears, I lost some memories, I lost some personality traits, and there were some new things. I’d always been able to sense ghosts but now could see them much more clearly. I’d always been able to vaguely sense the presence of gods and divine entities, but suddenly they were there, like an electric fence."

Hela told Kaldera to become a man, an option he had already been considering. He took testosterone and had chest surgery.

“It was a gamble, it was a leap in the dark, but it was absolutely wonderful. For me it was sacred shape-shifting. OK, socially it’s been very difficult, but y’know, it’s hard to be a minority. The irony was that I went through my second puberty at 30, around the same time my daughter went through normal puberty.”

Later the god Baphomet arrived and talked to Kaldera.

"The reason that he, or she, liked me is that he’s a hermaphroditic god. He can shift back and forth, but he’s always mixed. I’ve lent him my body. In Afro-Caribbean terms, I’m a ‘horse’, in that I will lend my body consensually to god-possession under certain circumstances or rituals. He makes sure, while he’s using my body, to leave me a lesson of some kind.”

Raven is a northern shaman, mainly working in the Norse tradition, devoted to gods from all three pantheons: Aesir, Vanir and Rokkr, but with some input from other traditions. He sees his tribe as those who are transgender/ third gender. He is also into polyamory and the spiritual aspects of BDSM:

“If you put BDSM into a spiritual context, it’s not a question of if something deep will come up; it’s a question of when".

He is the leader or king of the Neo-Pagan First Kingdom Church of Asphodel. His wife of 13 years is Bella, a trans women. They own and run Cauldron Farm, a pagan homestead in Hubbardston in rural Massachusetts, where they live with his daughter, who still calls him 'Mum'.

Much of what he has written is controversial and is rejected by other neo-pagan groups, particularly the emphasis on ordeal, the fact that he has a boyfriend-slave, and is into domination that features pain and violence. He has written 33 books.

• Raven Kaldera. Hermaphrodeities: The Transgender Spirituality Workbook. Xlibris, 2001.
  
• Raven Kaldera. "Do It on the Dotted Line". In Joan Nestle, Clare Howell & Riki Wilchins (eds), GENDERqUEER: voices from beyond the sexual binary. Alyson Books, 2002.
• Helen Boyd.  "Five Questions With… Raven Kaldera".   en|Gender, October 12, 2005.  www.myhusbandbetty.com/2005/10/12/five-questions-with-raven-kaldera.
  
• Raven Kaldera. Dark Moon Rising: Pagan BDSM and the Ordeal Path. Hubbardston, Mass: Asphodel Press, 2006.
  
• Raven Kaldera. Five essays in Ruth Addams (ed). A Gift Of Maggots: A Devotional For Baphomet. Lulu, 2011.
  
• George Binning. "Meeting Raven Kaldera: George Binning meets Raven Kaldera, pagan shaman, herbalist, transgender god-slave and servant of Baphomet". Fortean Times, January 2012. www.forteantimes.com/features/fbi/6211/meeting_raven_kaldera.html.
  
• Jeffery Pritchett. "Raven Kaldera on the Norse Gods and Northern Tradition Shamanism". Examiner, October 17, 2012. www.examiner.com/article/raven-kaldera-on-the-norse-gods-and-northern-tradition-shamanism.
  
• "An Audience with Raven Kaldera". The Blog of Baphomet, October 21, 2013. http://theblogofbaphomet.com/2013/10/21/an-audience-with-raven-kaldera.
  

CauldronFarm   PaganBDSM   RavenKaldera   KingdomofAsphodel   NAFPS   RunatyrKindred    LGBTran    WorldCat    Amazon

The Eurovision Song Contest

++ Original May 2009, revised May 2014

The Eurovision Song Contest has a a good track record of including both transsexuals and drag composers and performers:



Wally Stott, the future Angela Morley, in 1962 and 1963 arranged and conducted the UK entries for the Eurovision Song Contest, ‘Ring-A-Ding Girl’ and ‘Say Wonderful Things’, both sung by Ronnie Carroll.

Cris Owen came second in the competition to represent Finland in 1989, and  wrote the Finnish Eurovision entries in 1992 and 1993.





Sharon Cohen, under her stage name of Dana International, came second in the Israeli selection contest in 1995; in 1998 she won with her song Diva, despite not getting the full support of her country. Orthodox Rabbis and the Shas Party tried to have her selection cancelled.  In 1999 she sang during the interval and presented the awards. In 2011 she represented Israel again, and reached the semi-finals.

In 2000, Gloria Gray performed at the German national final for Eurovision.








In 2002, the Slovenian drag trio Sestra came 13th.







In 2004, the Swedish drag act, After Dark, competed to be the Swedish entry with the song “La dolce vita” but came only third. They tried again in 2007 with “(Åh) när ni tar saken i egna händer” (which has masturbation suggestions), and they came fifth in the Swedish competition.




In 2007, the Danish entry was by the drag persona DQ of Peter Anderson. The song came 19th in the semi-finals.





Also in 2007, the Ukrainian entry by Verka Serduchka, the drag persona of Andriy Danylko, singing “Dancing Lasha Tumbai” came second. Verka Serduchka came second. A nationwide radio station and some members of Parliament objected to Verka’s selection which they saw as “grotesque and vulgar”. “Lasho Tumbai” is a somewhat made-up expression that Verka says sounds like the Mongolian for ‘milkshake’, but this was denied in Mongolia. To Russians it sounded like “Russia Goodbye” which caused offense.

Conchita Wurst, bearded and in drag, the Austrian entry, won in 2014 .  Russia, Belarus and Armenia had protested and threatened to block the broadcast. 

• “A Tranny Guide to the European Song Contest”. Vicky’s Vault. www.mf2fm.com/cellar/eurovision.php

Indian trans women tell drivers to fasten their seatbelt

Danielle O'L (1911?–?) bellboy, housewife

Daniel came from a family in Ireland which held the position of village postmaster for several generations. When he played house with younger girls, he would be the mother. Other boys called him 'mollycoddle' or 'sissy', but otherwise he was not picked on.

"I always liked to dress as a girl. At home they thought it was funny. It was the custom on the other side to dress boys as girls until they were six or seven but when it was time to get out of dresses I did not want to. … I liked to do housework but I wasn't allowed to because I had older sisters."   From age eight, he had relations with older boys "in which I played the part of a woman".

He emigrated to Boston at age 19. He worked as a grocery store clerk and as a bellboy. He found men who treated him like a woman, and mingled in gay circles and used makeup. He saved his money.

At age 21 he moved to New York where he again found men who were interested in him sexually. He dressed female to go to masquerade balls. He worked for a year in a men's club, but was frequently being pestered for sex. This led to an argument and he was fired.

Danielle took up with another who was as feminine and they lived off men. She met an Irish baker, four or five years older, in a speakeasy and he set her up in an apartment. He preferred to see her in female clothing, and gave her money for clothing and recreation.  She would always have a meal ready when he returned from work.  Danielle sometimes went with other men, usually for money. Sometimes the baker did not object, but sometimes he beat her.

Once she was entrapped by a policeman in a movie house: she served six days. Another time she was at a ball when it was raided, and they were all locked up overnight.

Danielle was one of the persons interviewed by the Sex Variants project in the late 1930s.

• George W. Henry. Sex Variants: A Study of Homosexual Patterns. New York: Hoeber, 1948: 425-38.
  
• Jennifer Terry. An American Obsession: Science, Medicine, and the Place of Homosexuality in Modern Society. University of Chicago Press, 1999: 228-9.
  
• Henry L. Minton. Departing from Deviance: A History of Homosexual Rights and Emancipatory Science in America. University of Chicago Press, 2002: 62-4, 71, 72, 291n33.
  ________________________

 "Daniel O'L." is a pseudonym assigned by the Sex Variants committee.   We do not know either her boy name or her real name.   I have called her Danielle to make the reading easier.

To our eyes Danielle is obviously an early-transitioning transsexual, or would be if the social and medical support available to us had been around in the late 1930s.  Danielle was 26 when interviewed by George Henry, and so was in her 40s when the Christine Jorgensen story broke and almost 60 in the summer of the Stonewall riots.  We hope that she was able to complete her journey to womanhood albeit in the latter part of her life.

Both Terry and Minton purport to stand up for the subjects of the Sex Variants project against the paternalism of the doctors who ran it.  However, in both books, Daniel O'L and the other pseudonyms are not in the index, and the books offer no way to find the sections about them.   I got around this by using Google's look inside feature - but that is not to the credit of either author.

Terry (p228) describes Danielle as a 'drag queen'.   What can she mean by that?   Danielle never performed on stage.   Nor does she get off on being read.  Could it be that for Terry any androphilic trans woman is a drag queen whatever type of trans she is: post-op, transvestite, performer.   This offense is further compounded by always referring to Danielle as 'he' and a 'man'.  As her book is published by the University of Chicago Press we can assume a peer reviewer who also failed to mention this to her.

Lydia Annice Foy (1947–) dentist, activist.

Donal Mark Foy, did a degree in Dentistry at University College Dublin, 1971, and set up a practice in Athy, Co. Kildare. Foy married a woman in 1977 and fathered two daughters.

As Lydia, she transitioned with surgery in Brighton, UK in 1992, after a judicial separation. The Irish Health Board System contributed £3,000. In 1994 she lost access to her children by order of the Circuit Court.

While her driving licence, and UK and Irish passports give her gender as female, her birth certificate still said male. In 1997 she began an action in a High Court contending that the Births and Deaths Registration (Ireland) Act 1863 did not justify the practice of using solely biological indicators existing at the time of birth to determine sex for the purposes of registration. The case came to court in 2000. Mrs Foy and the daughters contested the plea claiming that it could have "an adverse effect on their succession and other rights". Judgement was reserved for two years: Dr Foy’s claim was rejected due to the lack of Irish or UK legislation that would facilitate the overturning of the existing jurisprudence. Justice McKechnie called on the Government and Oireachtas to deal with the position of transgender people as a matter of urgency:

“Could I adopt what has repeatedly been said by the European Court of Human Rights and urge the appropriate authorities to urgently review this matter”.

Two days later, 11 July 2002 the European Court of Human Rights found in favour of Christine Goodwin's case to have a correct birth certificate (Christine Goodwin v. UK) and awarded costs and expenses of £14,685: “the unsatisfactory situation in which post-operative transsexuals live in an intermediate zone as not quite one gender or the other is no longer sustainable”.

Foy appealed to the Supreme Court, but in the meanwhile the Oireachtas passed the European Convention on Human Rights Act 2003 bringing the European Convention into Irish domestic law. However Foy was once again refused when she made an application to the Registrar General. She began new proceedings in the High Court seeking a declaration under the ECHR Act that Irish legislation was incompatible with the European Convention regarding the registration and issue of birth certificates. The case was heard in 2007 by the same judge as in 2000 who found the State to be in breach of its positive obligations under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights in failing to recognise Dr Foy in her female gender and provide her with a new birth certificate. This was the first declaration of incompatibility to be made under the ECHR Act.

The State appealed this ruling to the Supreme Court. In May 2010 the Government set up an Advisory group “to advise the Minister for Social Protection on the legislation required to provide for legal recognition by the State of the acquired gender of transsexuals”, and a month later withdrew its appeal to the Supreme Court. In 2011 the Advisory published its recommendations for gender recognition legislation. And then nothing.

In February 2013, Foy and others announced that they were returning to court to take the Government to task for inaction.

++In October 2014, the Government finally agreed to recognize her gender and awarded her  €50,000 in compensation.

• Ann O'Loughlin. "Dentist in new court battle to be called a woman". Independent.ie, 14 April 2008. http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/dentist-in-new-court-battle-to-be-called-a-woman-26266179.html.
  
• My name is Lydia Foy. Narrated by Colin Murphy, with Linda Foy and Louis Gooren. RTÉ Radio, 6 July 2011. www.rte.ie/radio1/doconone/radio-documentary-my-name-is-lydia-foy-transgender-transsexual.html.
  
• Louise Hannon, Orlaith O'Sullivan, Lydia Foy, Broden Giambrone. Trans Voices in Ireland. TENI, 2012.
• Michael Farrell. Briefing note on Lydia Foy case & Transgender Issues in Ireland. FLAC, 2012. www.flac.ie/download/pdf/foy_case_briefing_oct_2012.pdf.
• Orlaith O'Sullivan, Lydia Foy, Ben Power, Michael Farrell, Louise Hannon, Fergus Ryan, Broden Giambrone et al, Equality and Identity: Transgender and Intersex Experience in Ireland. TENI, 2013.
  

EN.WIKIPEDIA      TENI

Some observations on the tranny word

There have recently been two well-worth-reading articles on the word by Cristan Williams and Julia Serano. This is by the way of a supplement re aspects not mentioned.

Kate Bornstein has previously attributed the origin of 'tranny' to drag queens and transsexuals working together in Sydney in the 1960s. Maybe. I don't know an alternate origin claim. I came across the term in the 1970s when it existed in two forms: tranny and transy. People tended to opt for one or the other. I was in the latter camp on grounds of euphonics, that both transvestite and transsexual contained an 's' and that in the 1960s a trannie was the word for a transistor radio.

Today people talk in terms of umbrella words. I always felt that it was a matter of indeterminacy. I met people who were apparently transy some way or another, but it was rude to ask about genitals, and I had no way of knowing if the person was post-op, intended to become so or chose not to be. This was even more so when there was a transy in a film – probably because the part was underscripted. The one distinction that was immediate in my mind was between transvestites and drag queens: the former hated being read while the latter revelled in it. However both types were quite likely to progress to going full-time and becoming post-op.

Both tranny and transy are deeply embedded in our history. Tranny Roadshow, Trannyshack, Tranny Crew, Tranny Granny, Transy House, and in the biographies of our older sisters and brothers.

In the last few years there have been a few developments:

1. tranny and transy have both transmogrified into 'trans' or 'trans*'. However it is still the same word and concept.
   
2. In schoolyards and on the street the repressed meanies, the ones who who are terrified that they themselves should be seduced by homoeroticism or gender variance, the ones who previously put down others by shouting 'pouf' or 'fag' found that those they feared had created words for themselves: gay and tranny. So they thought it clever to take those words and use them as insults. The gay and trans communities have had completely different responses.
   
3. The gays use irony and cleverness to counter the meanies, but there is no question of surrendering the word.
   
4. A small but loud minority of trans persons decided to surrender the word 'tranny' to the meanies. This is a defeat, and a temporary withdrawal. The meanies use the internet also and will be using trans, transgender, transsexual (even HBS were it to enter common usage) in the same tone of voice.*
   
5. Strangely the repressed meanies have not picked up on the word 'autogynephile': it is the bullies within our own community who use that word for trans women whom they do not like. The soi-disant autogynephiles, like the gays, have stuck with their own choice of word despite others using it as an insult.
   
6. Having had a bad experience with the meanies, rather than use irony or cleverness, or stand up to them, the minority of trans women sought an easier target: their elder sisters. Many trans women have been using tranny or transy as a positive word of self identification – in some cases for over four decades. These older trans women were told that they could no longer use their preferred word for themselves because of interactions elsewhere that did not involve them. This is impertinent at best. Some would say that it is rude and insensitive.
   
7. For some reason, those who demand that tranny be expunged from history and discourse say nothing about a similar expungement of transy and trans. Probably because their agenda is derived from the meanies, not from intra-community discourse.
   

Those who demand that a word be no longer used do not understand how language works.  The attempt to ban a word gives it extra force and makes it attractive, not just to repressed meanies, but also to satirists, performers, historians and wordsmiths.   After not using the tranny variant for four decades, I have found myself using it in recent years.

For all of my life trans liberation has been struggling, with success, against the dogma that gender variation is a pathology.   Much of the demand that certain words not be used, even within the community, is also a dogma.   Are we building a new prison?    Let those who want say tranny or transy or trans or trans*.   It is not the word that ever hurts - it is the tone of voice.   Those who hate us can avoid any specific word and still be hateful.   It is our loss to lose the word.   It is not a loss to those who hate us.

---------------------------------------


*There is, of course that delightful scene in It's Pat - The Movie where Pat encounters a bunch of street thugs.   One of the thugs pulls out a battered copy of Camille Paglia's Sexual Personae and says: "Yes, that is what you are: you're androgynous".  

• Kate Bornstein. "Who You Calling A Tranny?". Kate Bornstein Is A Queer and Pleasant Danger—this is her blog, July 12, 2009. http://katebornstein.typepad.com/kate_bornsteins_blog/2009/07/who-you-calling-a-tranny.html.
  
• Cristan Williams. "Tranny: An Evidence-Based Review". The Transadvocate, April 28 2014. www.transadvocate.com/tranny-an-evidence-based-review-2_n_13593.htm.
  
• Julia Serano. "A Personal History of the “T-word” (and some more general reflections on language and activism)". Whipping Girl, April 28 2014. http://juliaserano.blogspot.com/2014/04/a-personal-history-of-t-word-and-some.html.