Sports, Gender and Trans - Part 1: to 1945

Part 1: to 1945
Part 2: the Cold War
Part 3: recent developments

The first version of this three-part chronology was published in August 2012.   Since then I have become aware of many persons who were originally missed.   This is an expanded version.  As per my usual practice, additions are marked ++.

FSFI=Fédération Sportive Féminine Internationale.
IOC= International Olympic Committee
IAAF= International Association of Athletics Federation

Given that most sports that we do today were originally created and codified by men and that traits such as strength and speed, which enable competitors to win, are often regarded as masculine, it is no surprise that a) some masculine women including intersex women take up sports b) successful female athletes are now and them accused of being males in disguise.  Furthermore, a handful of female prize winners in the 1930s, most noticeable Mark Weston and Zdenk Koubkov publicly became men.  This led to Avery Brundage, who would later be president of the IOC, demanding proof that women were women.  Because the 1940 and 1944 Olympics were cancelled, this did not start until 1948.

Note that Dora Ratjen and Stella Walasiewicz, who both competed in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, were not outed until 1957 and 1980 respectively, and thus were not considered in the early discussions.

Three strands interweave in the events recounted below: 
1) Misogyny.  First women were simply excluded, and then were accused of masculinity if they won, particularly if they did not try hard enough at the constructedness of femininity such as makeup and hair styling.
2) Intersex women were the collateral damage of sex testing.  Some did not know they were intersex until they failed a sex test.  In addition the understanding of intersexuality by sports executives was usually quite deficient.
3) Some early transsexuals such as Michael Dillon and Roberta Cowell were sportive.  As transsexuals became more common, some of them wished to continued their sporting activities, and they found themselves in a system that did not know how to deal with them.

The sex testing imposed an undignified experience on female athletes for 30 years, and has never revealed a single male trying to pass as female.  The intersex women who were caught by the testing were women, and by modern rules none of them should have been excluded.  Even 17-year-old Dora Ratjen, arguably the closest to being a fraud, was in fact intersex.  The fact that she later, like Mark Weston and Zdenk Koubkov who also had been raised as girls, felt that he should really be male, does not make his younger self a fraud.    A stronger case can be made re Francis Anderson, who was considered a fraud by the standards of her time.  From our perspective it appears that she was a trans woman.  Today we would require that she took estrogens for a minimum of one year before competing against women.  This of course was impossible in the 1890s.

Fraud in the sense of a male athlete pretending to be female to score a top medal always was highly improbable.  As James Rupert  writes: “at any given time, there are only a handful of men in the world who could beat the best women, and most of them would be so well known in the sport that their disappearance would be noted, as would the sudden appearance in the top ranks of a previously unknown female competitor.  As well, a substantial conspiracy would be required, as the poser would need special hygiene and medical accommodations.  Above all, most men do not make very convincing women, (especially when wearing the minimal garb often worn in track events) and the chances of finding one who does and who is also an elite athlete seem minute.“

No male athlete has ever been obliged to prove his sex, even in sports like long distance swimming where women have a biological advantage.
         
Competitor’s names given are the names they used at that time.  Most competitors mentioned are trans or intersex or both.  However some who were not are mentioned because they were pioneering women or gay men etc.  For clarity the latter are described as cis on first appearance - it is possible that some of the these were cross dreamers, and if so, apologies of course.

Stella Walasiewicz and Mildred Didrikson in Jersey City, New Jersey on June 25, 1931.

1000 BCE	Games for Greek women dedicated to Hera.
766	First Olympics dedicated to Zeus.  Held every 4 years.  For men only and performed in nude.  Married women barred, but prostitutes and virgins were allowed to spectate.  However could not take place unless a priestess of Demeter present.
440	Kallipateria, a female boxing coach, sneaks in in male guise to watch her son compete.  Resulted in a new rule that coaches also must be nude.
392	Kyniska, a Spartan woman, owned winning horse and chariot. Proclaimed victor but not allowed to attend.
14 CE	Emperor Tiberius  turns the 4-yearly Augustine Games into an annual sporting event.
1st century	Martial told of Philaenis, who can out-wrestle men and lift heavier weights .
131 180s	Emperor Hadrian founds the Antinoeia Games in the city of Antinopolis and elsewhere dedicated to his lover Antinous, who had met an early death.  Emperor Commodus  does chariot and horse racing and archery as well as performing as a gladiator.  He likes to dress as Hercules in drag.
218	Hierocles, a charioteer, becomes lover of trans Emperor Elagabalus.
393	Emperor Theodosius I  abolishes as pagan: Olympic Games, Hyakinthian Games, Panathenean Games.
13th century	Ulrich of Lichtenstein  jousts in female clothing.
1612	Cotswold Olimpyc Games, first modern revival, held near Chipping Campden.
1720s	Elizabeth Stokes, professional boxer. Mary Welsh, professional sword fighter for prize money
1790s	Ozaw-Wen-Dib, a Saulteaux Chippewa A-Go-Kwa shaman and two-spirit., is the best runner in the tribe.
1855	Lucy/Joseph Lobdell, who ever met only one man who was a better shot, transitions to male.
1859	1st revival games in Athens
1860s	Jimmy De Forest, future fight trainer, is Mlle Petite De Forest, circus arielist.
1870s 1876 1880   1881	Sándor Vay  noted for riding, hunting and fencing. ++Steve Hart,  jockey is declared the winner of The Benella Handicap after a protest was upheld.  He is said to be the only person to jump a horse over the Wangaratta railway gates. He is known for his preference for female attire. ++Steve Hart, dies, with several of the Kelly Gang, at the famous siege of Glenrowan. ++Joseph Lobdell, shooter, admitted to Willard Asylum where his masculinity is taken as evidence of insanity. Frederick Taylor, efficiency engineer and female impersonator, is a winner in the first doubles tournament in the US National Tennis Championships.  He was also a cricketer.
1893	Calamity Jane/Martha Jane Burke, masculine woman,  shooter and horse rider at Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show.
1890s	Charles Winslow Hall  wins several shooting contests. Frances Anderson, first female billiards champion.
1894	International Olympic Committee (IOC) is founded by Pierre de Coubertin.
1896 Athens Olympics 1898	Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the gay father of the modern Games says: “Olympics with women would be incorrect, unpractical, uninteresting and unaesthetic”.  Zero women compete officially. Cis woman Stamati Revithi runs the men’s race by herself the next day.  The officials ignore her name and referr to her as Melpomene, the muse of tragedy. ++Toupie Lowther, masculine woman, at a widely publicised fencing competition and display held at The Military Gymnasium of the Army Camp in Aldershot, vanquished not only her lady opponents but also the army’s Sergeant instructor.
1900 Paris Olympics 1900 1901 1902 1903	976 men compete. 21 women compete in ballooning, croquet, golf, yachting, horse riding, tennis.  Held at the same time as the Exposition Universelle, and some confusion as to which was which. ++Toupie Lowther wins British Covered Court Tennis Championship. ++Toupie Lowther wins German Tennis Championship ++Charles Winslow Hall dies mid-Atlantic returning to US with his wife and is found to be female bodied.  ++Toupie Lowther wins British Covered Court Tennis Championship, and, at a fencing display in Paris, billed as “The Lady Champions of England and France,” she opposed (and worsted) the famous Mme Gabriele before a crowded salon. ++Toupie Lowther wins Monte Carlo Tennis Championship and British Covered Court Tennis Championship, and, engaged and held her own as a fencer against the Maître, or Prof. Yvon at the Civil Engineers Hall in Paris.
1900s	Sybil Mousey-Heysham, masculine woman, is declared to be one of the three finest duck shots in Britain.
1904 St Louis Olympics 1904	Chicago had won the bid, but the Louisiana Purchase Exposition  threatens to eclipse with a bigger sporting event unless the Olympics are moved to St Louis.  As in Paris the Exposition and the Olympics were confused. Co-incides with the Russo-Japanese War. Only 12 nations and 52 athletes from outside the US. 6 women contest. Women’s boxing is featured as an exhibition sport.  Women’s archery. Fewer than half of the events include athletes from outside the US. Cis man George Eyser wins 6 medals even though he had a wooden leg. ++Toupie Lowther wins Homburg Tennis Cup.
1906 Interim Games - Athens 1906	Danish women do a gymnastics demonstration.  Tennis is the only women's sport, and only Greek and French women take part. Considered an official Olympics Games at the time, but later downgraded. Unlike 1900, 1904, 1908 not overshadowed by an international exhibition. ++Toupie Lowther wins Cannes Tennis Championship and South of France Championship.
1908	Female bullfighters banned in Spain.  La Reverte claims that she is a man, and continues to fight.
1908 London Olympics	Rome had won the bid, but after eruption of Vesuvius in 1906, funds are diverted to disaster relief.  Olympics are transferred to London to be alongside the Franco-British Exhibition. 1971 male competitors, 37 female.
1912 Stockholm Olympics 1913 1915	2406 male competitors, 47 female. A 15-year British girl entered the pentathlon, but is rejected. Two swimming events and high board diving for women are included. ++Violette Morris, masculine woman, comes 5th in the 8 km French swimming contest – she was the only female competitor. ++Germany announces that 1916 Berlin Olympics will continue but only for its allies, and neutral countries such as USA.
1916 Berlin Olympics 1917 1918	As the Graet War was still raging, it was finally cancelled. ++Violette Morris sets the first French record in shot put. ++Toupie Lowther co-founds ambulance unit active on German-French front line. ++Violette Morris plays in the first official women's football match in France. In goal, she played with her head bare (as men did) rather than wearing the prescribed beret.
1919	14-year-old cis Lily Parr is recruited for a women’s football team at Preston, Lancashire.  Remained a star player until 1950, scoring over 900 goals. ++Violette Morris is admitted to the Fédération française de sports féminins (FFSF) ++Toupie Lowther and other members of her ambulance unit were awarded Croix de Guerre.
1920 Antwerp Olympics	Budapest had been scheduled to host, but Hungary, Austria, Germany, Bulgaria & Turkey are barred from competing as part of sanctions after the Great War. Soviet Union declines to participate. 2561 male competitors, 65 female.
1921.	Fédération Sportive Féminine Internationale  (FSFI) is formed on 31st October as IOC continued to refuse women’s athletics in the main Olympics. ++Violette Morris participates in the first Women's World Games in Monte Carlo in 1921 establishing new records for shot-put and javelin.
1922 Paris Women's Olympic Games 1922	Organised by the FSFI and attended by 5 nations.  Mary Weston  and Zdenka Koubková  compete, as does Stella Walasiewicz, who is known as Stella Walsh when she competes in US.    ++Violette Morris sets records in athletics, and comes second in 1,000 m swimming, and won a cycling race. ++Violette Morris takes up motor racing, and, the only woman entered, comes 4th in the Bol d'Or.
1922 Deutsche Kampfspiele -Berlin 1923	Being barred from the Olympics, Germany and it’s Great War allies put on an alternate games.  Repeated in 1926 and 1930. ++Violette Morris opens a car/motorbike accessories shop, Spécialités Violette Morris, at 6, rue Roger-Bacon,
1924 Paris Olympics	2954 male athletes, 135 female. The IAAF refuses to add more women's events to the programme, except for fencing.
1925	++Mary Weston  UK national champion in shot-put.
1926 Gothenburg Women's Olympic Games	9 nations attended: 100 participants After protests by the IAAF and IOC next Games  retitled the Women's World Games.  ++Mary Weston  6th in 2-handed shot-put.
1926.	++Joe Carstairs enters Duke of York’s trophy for speed boating.  After most competitors had fallen out, the Newg's propeller was caught by a submerged rope, but Joe managed to cut the rope, and completed the course to win the trophy.  won the Royal Motor Yacht Club International Race, the Daily Telegraph Cup, the Bestise Cup and the Lucina Cup. On Lake Windermere Joe set a world record of 54.97 mph for a 1½ litre class boat. ++Violette Morris indefinitely suspended from playing football. ++Toupie Lowther elected a member of the French Academie d'Armes.
1927	Stella Walasiewicz wins a place on the US Olympic team, but is disqualified in that she is not a citizen, and could not become one until age 21. Violette Morris, wins the Bol d’Or 24 hour car race. ++Violette Morris  suspended by the FFSF. ++Violette Morris practises boxing, sparring with Raoul Paoli (1887-1960), the Olympics athlete, boxer, rugby player.
1928	Frances Anderson, billiard champion, commits suicide, and is found to be male-bodied. ++Mary Weston  UK national champion in shot-put. ++Joe Carstairs competes in Harmsworth Cup for boating, but is thrown into the water and has a cracked rib.   He sets up his own boatyard in East Cowes. ++Toupie Lowther is main real-life influence behind FTM novel Well of Loneliness.  In his book Atalanta or The Future of Sport, G.S. Sandilands, writes that women’s Olympics are "extremely immodest. Girls appeared in running shorts and revealed great lengths of unclad legs. Even naked thighs were displayed - and displayed as if they didn't matter. . . . There was one disconcerting aspect about these public revelations: prurient people (i.e., all of us) discovered yet again that a woman's legs are far less indecent than her underclothing.”
1928 Amsterdam Olympics 1929	Germany is welcomed back.  German Athletics team leader is cis gay man , Otto Peltzer . The IOC and the IAAF agree to include women’s athletic. However, they agree only to the inclusion of a limited number of events, and only as an experiment.  The FSFI does not find this satisfactory.  2606 male athletes, 277 female. Violette Morris, expected to be on French team but is rejected because of the way that she dressed. ++Violette Morris has top surgery, using the excuse of fitting into a racing car, and also sues the FFSF for reinstatement and 100,000 francs in damages.  However her case is dismissed. ++Joe Carstairs competes in Harmsworth Cup, but hits a log. ++Mary Weston UK national champion in javelin, discus and shot-put.
1930 Prague Women's World Games 1930	17 countries.  Stella Walasiewicz Gold in 60 metres,100 metres and 200 metres for Poland.  Is voted the most popular Polish athlete. ++Joe Carstairs competes in Harmsworth Cup for boating, sets an American speed record, but breaks down in the actual race.
1930s	Bill Smith trains and rides winners in north Queensland horse racings. Laura Dillon wins Sporting Blue for rowing at Oxford.
1931	++Left-handed cis woman baseball picher, Jackie Mitchell, is recruited by Chattanooga Lookouts.  She strikes out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.  A few days later baseball commissioner bans women from playing as game "too strenuous".
1932	Lesbian tennis star Helen Jacobs first to play in shorts rather than a skirt. Cis gay man, Gottfried von Cramm wins German tennis championships.
1932 Los Angeles Olympics	1206 male athletes, 126 female. China participates for the first time. Because of the depression many could not afford to attend. Stella Walasiewicz for Poland, Gold 100m. Mildred Didrikson, cis athlete, 2 golds  (hurdling and javelin) and 1 silver (high jump) for US.  Her appearance is masculine, and she is rumoured to be a  man.
1933	Gottfried von Cramm co-winner of mixed doubles at Wimbledon.
1934	Maurice Wilson, in gender-mixed clothing, dies becoming first European to climb Everest. Gottfried von Cramm wins French Tennis Open. ++Elvire de Bruijn  Belgian, European and world cycling champion.
1934 London Women's World Games	19 nations: 200 competitors. Stella Walasiewicz Gold in 800 metres for Poland. Zdenka Koubková Gold in 800 metres, Bronze in Long Jump for Czechoslovakia. Her genitals are examined. She is stripped of her medals and banned.
1935	Robert Cowell drives in the London-Land’s-End trial run. Otto Peltzer sentenced for homosexuality. ++Elvire de Bruijn  Belgian, European and world cycling champion.
1936	Mary Weston becomes Mark with surgery at Charing Cross Hospital by Lennox Broster. Zdenek Koubkov has has an operation in Kiev with Milosh Kilcka, is declared a man and becomes a performer in New York. Gottfried von Cramm wins second French Open. ++Elvire de Bruijn  Belgian, European and world cycling champion. Avery Brundage, chairman of US Olympic Commission calls for female athletes to have their sex confirmed.  He is also against any boycott of the Berlin games, claiming that Jewish athletes were being fairly treated, and that there was a Jewish-Communist conspiracy to keep the US out of the Berlin Games.  He reassures his German hosts that he understands their position, as he is in a sporting club in Chicago that also bars Jews.
1936 Berlin Olympics	Boycotted by Ireland because Northern Irish not permitted on their team.  Boycotted by the Soviet Union. Spain boycotted because of the policies of the Nazi German government.  Spain also organizes an alternate Peoples’ Olympiad  in Barcelona (which had come second in bidding for this Olympics).  6,000 athletes (more than go to Berlin) from 22 countries (not the Soviet Union, but including German and Italian exiles) arrive, but the day before the opening ceremony Franco’s fascists launch a military coup and the Civil War starts.  The Peoples’ Olympiad is cancelled, and many athletes join in the battles against the fascists. The FSFI hands over full control of international women's athletics to the IAAF in return for the IAAF recognising all FSFI records, a complete programme of women's Olympic events, and the IAAF holding the fifth Women's World Games in Vienna in 1938. In the event, while the 1936 IAAF Congress agrees to recognise FSFI records, it otherwise only agreed to proposing a somewhat expanded programme of Olympic events to the IOC (the IOC refused) and holding a programme of women's events in the 1938 European Athletics Championships in place of the Women's World Games. The FSFI ceases operations without ever accepting or rejecting the IAAF's decisions. 3632 male athletes,  331 female. 1st torch relay from Athens to the host nation. 1st Olympics to be televised. Filmed by Leni Riefenstahl. Hitler wanted to exclude Jews and blacks, but other nations threatened a boycott.  The ‘No Jews’ signs in Berlin are removed for the duration.  All Romanies are arrested and sent to a Concentration Camp. Hauptmann Wolfgang Fürstner, commandant of the Olympic Village, is abruptly replaced at the end of June, awarded an Olympic Medal First Class, reclassified as Jewish and commits suicide. Gretel Bergmann, cis woman and Germany’s best high-jumper is excluded because she is Jewish.   She is replaced by Dora Ratjen who comes fourth. Stella Walasiewicz narrowly beaten by cis woman Helen Stephens, who is then obliged to submit to a genital inspection which she passes. Otto Peltzer banned from competing. Jesse Owens, a cis black US athlete wins 4 Golds and broke 2 Olympic records, to the irritation of the Nazis. The only two Jews on the US team are pulled on the day of the competition.  Rumour says that Avery Brundage did not want Hitler to be embarrassed by a Jew winning in addition to Jesse Owens. ++Jesse Owens is obliged to use the freight elevator at the Waldorf-Astoria, NY, to attend his own reception.   Unlike the other US Olympians, Owens is never invited to the White House.  He therefore campains for Negro votes for the Republican Party in the 1936 Presidential election. "Hitler didn't snub me – it was our president who snubbed me. The president didn't even send me a telegram."  ++Violette Morris said to be a special guest, but did not compete.  This is not confirmed.
1937	++Elvira de Bruijn,  again  Belgian, European and world cycling champion. Having heard about Zdenk Koubkov, de Brujin investigates and then becomes a man. Otto Peltzer again sentenced for homosexuality. Gottfried von Cramm has a phone call from Hitler just before 1937 Davis Cup, but doesn’t win. Pierre de Coubertin dies.
1938	Mildred Didrikson competes in men’s Los Angeles Golf Open with a good score but misses the cut.  There she meets her husband. Gottfried von Cramm sentenced for homosexuality.
1938 Vienna/ Paris European Championships	Men’s events held in Paris, women’s in Vienna (by then part of Germany). Stella Walasiewicz 2 Golds 2 Silvers. (see 1980 in Part II) Dora Ratjen wins in the female high-jump, setting a world record.  However is later genitally examined by a police doctor, after being arrested at a railway station. Medal and permit to compete are rescinded, but on grounds of violating amateur status. (see 1957 in Part II)
1939	Robert Cowell drives in Antwerp Grand Prix. Gottfried von Cramm is refused at Wimbeldon because he is a ‘convicted criminal’.  Also refused a visa for US Open.
1940 Tokyo Olympics	Tokyo is stripped of the Games in 1938 because of the Second Sino-Japanese War.  The Games then go to Helsinki.  This in turn is suspended in September 1939 when European War breakes out.  The Stadium is used for the annual Finland-Sweden games, with Germany invited to participate.
1941	Otto Peltzer returns to Germany, and sent to Mauthausen concentration camp. ++María Torremadé breaks Spanish records in 100m, 200m and 800m, and in high jump.  Is discovered to have internal male organs.
1942	Gottfried von Cramm, after military service and winning an Iron Cross, is dismissed from the military because of his conviction. ++19-year-old María Torremadé, having won Spanish and European awards in basketball and athletics and high jump, has surgery and announces that he, Jordi, is a man.  He marries in 1952, and moves to Paris in 1959.
1940s	Bill Smith trains and rides winners in north Queensland horse racings.
1944	Violette Morris is assassinated by French Resistance. Robert Cowell crashes his airplane in Germany and sent to Stalag Luft 1. ++Richard Raskind, age 10, wins  Sunrise Club tennis championship for boys. He was also considered as a pitcher by a baseball scout.
1944 London Olympics	Cancelled because of the war. The IOC organized many events to celebrate its 50th anniversary at its headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland.
1945	Robert Cowell released from Stalag Luft 1. Otto Peltzer released from Mauthausen concentration camp. Mildred Didrikson playes 3 PGA (men’s golf) tournaments.  She is still the only woman to ever make the cut in a regular PGA.

Zanzibar 1860

General Christopher Rigby, the best linguist in the British Army, was the British Consul in Zanzibar in 1860.   In paragraph 33 of his Report on the Zanzibar Dominion of that year he wrote (probably with less than full full understanding):

"Since the death of the late Imam [Syud Said] numbers of sodomites have come from Muscat, and these degraded wretches openly walk about dressed in female attire, with veils on their faces". 

• Christopher Palmer Rigby & Mrs Charles E. B. Russell. General Rigby, Zanzibar, and the Slave Trade, With Journals, Dispatches, Etc. New York: Negro Universities Press, 1970: 342.

Toupie Lowther (1874 – 1944) Part II: The Well of Loneliness.

Part I: sporting champion and war service
Part II: The Well of Loneliness.

Also in 1926, Radclyffe Hall wrote a short story, "Miss Ogilvy Finds Herself", although it was not published until 1934. It drew on Toupie's accounts of her life during the war, her masculinity and her lack of fit in society. Ogilvy, "My God! If only I were a man", who, even as a child had insisted that "her real name was William and not Wilhelmina", finds a role in the war leading an ambulance unit, but afterwards finds that again her masculinity has become absurd. She commits suicide.

A few years later Radclyffe Hall incorporated much more of Toupie into the life of her FTM invert anti-hero Stephen Gordon, who is an accomplished fencer, tennis player and motorist, in the ambulance unit in the battles at Compiègne, and is awarded a Croix de Guerre. The book was published in 1928 as The Well of Loneliness.

It was prosecuted for obscenity that same year. This had a side effect of outing the Hackett-Lowther Unit as being largely a lesbian organization. In his summing up, the barrister Charles Biron said:

“ ….according to the writer of this book, a number of women of position and admirable character, who were engaged in driving ambulances in the course of the war, were addicted to this vice".

For a while after the trial, Toupie took to dressing as an heterosexual woman: skirts, silks etc, and disassociated herself from Hall and Troubridge.

Toupie's brother, Claude, unmarried, but the father of one son, after a career as a right-wing Conservative, died the next year after a period of illness – the outing of his sister cannot have helped.

Toupie spoke of being the inspiration for Stephen Gordon and some books say that John and Una dropped her for saying so. Una wrote in her life of Radclyffe Hall:

“She passed out of our lives when John wrote The Well of Loneliness, and we afterwards heard that she had resented the book as challenging her claim to be the only invert in existence. Later still, when she was growing very old, I was told that she had moreover acquired the illusion that she had served as a model for Stephen Gordon.”

In 1935, Toupie's elder sister Aimée, an unmarried amateur thespian, died of tuberculosis.

Toupie retired to the village of Pulborough, Sussex. During the war years, a little girl needed a field in which to keep her shetland pony, and a vacant field was known to be available:

"The little girl made her way up the hill to Lowther Lodge, and knocked on the door. Which was opened by an elderly gentleman with short grey hair wearing a suit. Rather surprised Joanne asked if Miss Lowther was in. 'I am Miss Lowther' said the elderly gentleman 'come in'.

Toupie died in 1944, like her sister, of tuberculosis.
___________________________________________________________

Michael Baker's 1985 biography of Radclyffe Hall credits Toupie with a husband and a child. As DR Boodle clearly demonstrates, he had confused May Lowther (1874-1944) with her second cousin Barbara Lowther (1890-1979). This confusion was repeated in several later books. Eg. Sally Cline in her Radclyffe Hall – a Woman called John, 2010 writes:

“Barbara “Toupie” Lowther, another friend of Ladye’s – eldest daughter of the 6th Earl of Lonsdale, provoked a similar response in John on the matter of war work. Toupie, who had married Lieutenant-Colonel James Innes in 1914 and become the mother of two small babies, did not allow marriage or motherhood to restrict her activities. Even before she divorced James in 1921 she and  Norah Desmond-Hackett had formed a spectacular, women only ambulance unit, which despite opposition from the authorities, eventually drove alongside the French army on the Compiegne battlefront.”

Emily Hamer writes:

"In 1917 Barbara 'Toupie' Lowther began to set up an all-women ambulance unit".

Two authors, Kerry Greenwood and John Longenbaugh, have written murder mysteries with a fictional Toupie Lowther as a central character.

No-one else seems to have mentioned that Claude Lowther died within a few months of the Well of Loneliness trial.   Being such a right-wing Conservative, he cannot have taken it easily when his sister was outed.

In Halberstam's Female Masculinity, it is immediately after the discussion of Toupie Lowther that Halberstam writes:

"Toupie and Miss Ogilvy, the women in Havelock Ellis's surveys, and even Stephen Gordon seem much more closely related to what we now call a transsexual identity than they do to lesbianism.   Indeed the history of homosexuality and transsexuality was a shared history at the beginning of the century and only diverged in the 1940s, when surgery and hormonal treatments became available to, and demanded by, some cross-identifying subjects."

The game of more-trans-than-thou is a sterile road.  We could point out that Toupie Lowther was less down the road to manhood than Violette Morris and Joe Carstairs but all three had to make decisions without the options of hormones or surgery or role models.   To confuse such a comparison, remember that Morris did have top surgery but never took a male name.  We can wonder how each of them would have decided if hormones and surgery had been available twenty years earlier.

• The Evening Telegraph, 6th May 1898.
  
• Arthue Wallis Myers. Lawn Tennis at Home and Abroad. Scribner's Sons, 1903: 181-2.
  
• Regis and Louis Senac. Spalding's Athletic library, The Art of Fencing. American Sports Publishing Company, 1904: 29.
  
• Toupie Lowther. "Chapter VII: Ladies' Play". In Reginald F. & H. Lawrence. Doherty. On Lawn Tennis. Baker and Taylor Co.,1903.
  
• A. Wallis Myers. "Miss Toupie (Toupee) Lowther". The Bystander, 19 December 1906.
  
• Mary Dexter & Emily Loud Sanford. In the Soldier's Service: War Experiences of Mary Dexter: England, Belgium, France, 1914-1918. Houghton Mifflin Company, 1918.
  
• "Englishwomen with the French Army: Miss Toupie Lowther’s Unit". The Times, 15 August 1919.
  
• Una Toubridge. The Life of Radclyffe Hall. Arno Press, 1975: 113.
  
• Lovat Dickson. Radclyffe Hall at The Well of Loneliness A Sapphic Chronicle. Collins, 1975: 117-8, 174.
  
• Michael Baker. Our Three Selves: The Life of Radclyffe Hall. Hamilton, 1985.
  
• Emily Hamer. Britannia's Glory: A History of Twentieth-Century Lesbians. Cassell, 1996: 50-3, 99, 114-5, 207.
  
• Sally Cline. Radclyffe Hall A Woman Called John.   Faber and Faber, 1997:63, 74-5, 153-4, 163, 173, 177, 178, 181, 187, 193, 196, 201, 209, 221, 230, 251,263, 334.
  
• Diana Souhami. The Trials of Radclyffe Hall. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1998: 33, 40, 52, 66, 75, 111, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 127, 130, 132, 137, 144, 147, 159-160, 162, 198, 211, 242, 367.
  
• Judith Halberstam. Female Masculinity. Durham: Duke University Press, 2004: 83-5.
  
• Kerry Greenwood. Murder in Montparnasse - A Phryne Fisher Mystery. Crows Nest,2012.
  
• D. R. Boodle. Toupie Lowther 1874–1944: Her life - A new assessment. 12/6/2014. toupielowther.com.
  
• John Longenbaugh. The Pale Blue Ribbon. Kindle, 2015.
  

EN.WIKIPEDIA

Toupie Lowther (1874 – 1944) Part I: sporting champion and war service

Part I: sporting champion and war service
Part II: The Well of Loneliness

May Lowther, her elder sister Aimée (1869-1935) and elder brother Claude (1870-1929) were scions of the Lowther dynasty, which features the Earls of Lonsdale (see also, more) and many Conservative Members of Parliament.

May's father, William Francis Lowther (1841-1908), was a naval office who rose to the rank of Commander. When his father, William Lowther, the 2^nd Earl of Lonsdale, died in 1872, he retired and lived on an inherited trust fund. He did not inherit the title as his parents, his mother being the opera singer Emilia Cresotti, had never married. The 2^nd Earl also had two illegitimate daughters with different mothers. May's mother was Louise Beatrice de Fonblangue from Toronto (? -1922).

May was educated at Le Pensionnat Les Ruches, a private boarding school at Avon, near Fontainbleau in France. Natalie Barney and her sister also attended the same school. Lowther became fluent in French and gained a baccalaureate in sciences.

Using the name Toupie, she took up fencing at age 15. She preferred the Italian rather than the French style, and declined to fence in a skirt on grounds of practicality. She fenced with both men and
women.

In 1898 at a widely publicised fencing competition and display held at The Military Gymnasium of the Army Camp in Aldershot, Toupie vanquished not only her lady opponents but also the army’s Sergeant instructor. At a display in Paris 1902, billed as “The Lady Champions of England and France,” she opposed (and worsted) the famous Mme Gabriele before a crowded salon. In 1903 she engaged and held her own against the Maître, or Prof. Yvon at the Civil Engineers Hall in Paris.

She was an accomplished singer and composer. She set poems by Oscar Wilde and Alfred Tennyson to music, and her music was performed at the Wigmore Hall in London. The Waifs and Strays Society held a fancy Grand Benefit on 3 June 1899 with royalty in attendance. The program included "Incidental music by Miss Toupie Lowther".

At this time, brother Claude was with the British Army in the Boer War. He became a Conservative MP in 1900.

Toupie was also a keen tennis player and participated in championship games, especially those held at Homburg 1896-1901, and at Wimbledon where she reached the singles semi-final in 1903. She did win the British Covered Championships in 1900  and then again in 1902 and 1903. She also won the German Championships, 1901, the Monte Carlo Championships, 1903, the Homburg Cup, 1904, the Cannes Championships, 1906 and the Championships of the South of France, 1906. She was large, renowned for her lobs and said to have a man's stroke and a man's strength.

She was one of the first women to own a motorbike and lift weights.

Toupie was a friend of Mabel Batten (Ladye) (1856-1916) and John Radclyffe Hall (1880-1943) and is frequently mentioned in Mabel's diaries, 1910-5.

In 1917, at age 43, with Norah Desmond Hackett, Toupie sent a petition to General Petain at the Grand Quartier General to organise

“an ambulance section on exactly the same lines, subject to the same conditions as the allied men’s section … we should be allowed to do front line work under the same conditions as the men’s Units”.

This being approved the Hackett-Lowther Unit with 20 donated vehicles was incorporated into the French Army with permission to do front-line work. The drivers and the canteen women were ranked as private soldiers and paid 5 sous a day; Toupie Lowther and Norah Hackett as sous Lieutenants at 10 sous a day with one stripe on the sleeve. The drivers were all women, and some had already done similar work in Serbia, Romania, Greece and Russia.

They were heavily involved in the battles at Compiègne, in June 1918. They were then incorporated into the 1^st Army for the final advance into Germany. The Unit was twice mentioned in dispatches.

Several members of the unit, including Lowther, were awarded the Croix de Guerre. The Unit was disbanded 19 March 1919.

After Mabel's death, John Radclyffe Hall and Mabel's cousin Una Toubridge (1887-1963) became a couple. Again Toupie and her brother Claude were friends of John and Una, who were taken with Toupie's war record. In 1920, Una said that she thought that Toupie was a hermaphrodite. In 1922 in Brighton with Una Toubridge and Radclyffe Hall she bought an “Overland Tourer” and taught them to drive.  They referred to her as 'Brother'.

In the 1920s Toupie ran a lesbian salon, and writers such as Radclyffe Hall, Ida Wylie, May Sinclair and Vere Hutchinson (popular at the time) attended. Toupie loved to tell how, while motoring, she was stopped at the Franco-Italian border for masquerading as a man. On the return journey she wore a skirt and was arrested for masquerading as a woman.

In 1926, Toupie Lowther was elected a member of the French Academie d’Armes, the only woman to that date to be so.

________________________________________________________________________________

There is no mention that Toupie ever met either Joe Carstairs or Violette Morris.  With their shared interests in sports and motor vehicles and experience with ambulance uits in the war, they would have had a lot in common.

There are Wikipedia pages for both Toupie and Claude.   Claude's does not mention Toupie at all.   Toupie's - mainly about her as a tennis star, with a brief afterword about the ambulance unit, and no mention of The Well of Loneliness - returns the favour.

Penny Whetton (1958 - 2019) climate scientist

Peter Whetton was born in Melbourne, and did a BA in physics and a PhD, 1986, in climate variability at Melbourne University, where he met Janet Rice and they married. They had two sons.

After a few years in the Geography Department at Monash University, Whetton became a climate scientist at Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), and was the main contributor to, and editor of, CSIRO's Australian climate change projections released in 1992, 1996, 2001 and 2007.

In 1998, Whetton came out to Janet first as a cross-dresser and then as transgender, and four years after that in 2003 changed her name to Penny and had transgender surgery.

This was the same time as Rice, a Greens politician was elected to Maribyrnong council; she was elected Mayor in 2006.

Whetton was a lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Third Assessment Report, and of the Fourth Assessment Report which was awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize (jointly with Al Gore). She is contributing to the Fifth.

Rice was elected to the Federal Senate as a Greens member in 2013.

In an interview in 2014, Janet said:

“Look, I think we’re pretty normal. We’ve been married 28 years. Penny transitioned from Peter to Penny – we stayed married, we still love each other.”

In her maiden speech in the Senate, Rice said:

“The time for marriage equality in Australia has come. I'm here for all lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people and their families. We deserve recognition and respect in all aspects of our lives.”

++Penny died peaceably age 61

• "Gender changes, but a wife's love stays". The Age, September 9, 2007. www.theage.com.au/news/national/gender-changes-but-a-wifes-love-stays/2007/09/08/1188783562207.html.
  
• "Penny Whetton: Climate change science in focus". ECOS, 18 September 2013, www.ecosmagazine.com/?paper=EC13210.
  
• Matt Akersten. "New Senator's proud to be in a same-sex marriage". Samesame, 9^th Jul, 2014. www.samesame.com.au/news/11120/New-Senators-proud-to-be-in-a-same-sex-relationship.
  
• Tina Perinotto. "Penny Whetton and CSIRO on how 8 areas of Australia will fare under climate change". The Fifth Estate, 29 January 2015. www.thefifthestate.com.au/habitat/climate-change-news/penny-whetton-and-csiro-on-how-8-areas-of-australia-will-fare-under-climate-change/70998.
  
• "I still love her, we can stay married: The Senator and her transgender wife". SBS, 7 Feb 2015. www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2015/02/06/i-still-love-her-we-can-stay-married-senator-and-her-transgender-wife.
  
• Benjamin Law. "Transformers: the unique challenge of changing gender within a relationship". The Sydney Morning Herald, March 7, 2015. www.smh.com.au/good-weekend/transformers-the-unique-challenge-of-changing-gender-within-a-relationship-20150219-13jm4n.html.
  
• "Penny Whetton, wife of Senator Janet Rice, climate scientist and transgender woman, dies".  ABC, 2019-09-17.  www.abc.net.au/news/2019-09-17/penny-whetton-climate-scientist-and-wife-of-janet-rice-dies/11519308. 

EN.Wikipedia(Penny)    EN.Wikipedia(Janet)    GoogleScholar     TheConversation

Jayne County (1947 - ) Part III: London and Berlin

Part I: Atlanta
Part II: New York City
Part III:  London and Berlin

Wayne debuted at London's Roxy in March 1977, and renamed the band to The Electric Chairs. New Musical Express journalist Julie Burchill (who in later years would express anti-trans opinions) was very supportive of the band. They were the only punk act at the Reading Festival that year and played to an antagonistic audience.

After a gig with Adam and the Ants, Wayne was introduced to Derek Jarman who cast her as a transvestite rock star in his film Jubilee.

Safari Records signed the group who put out their first album, although the more controversial tracks were kept apart for a special EP, Blatantly Offenzive. Wayne's transition can be seen on the album covers of the first three albums. On The Electric Chairs, 1978, Wayne has a masculine appearance; on Man Enough to be a Woman, 1978, the two personae are juxtaposed; on Things Your Mother Never Told You, 1979, there is only a feminine version.

The second album, which was also issued under the name Storm the Gates of Heaven, contains "Man enough to be a Woman" but also songs against organized religion as well as a statement about County's belief in a god.

"When we recorded the second album, I was beginning to feel very strongly that I wanted to take the transsexual thing a lot further; I'd stopped doing hormones for a while and really toned down my appearance, but I wasn't happy with that. I'd got a lot of attention with the Electric Chairs, and I decided it was time to come out and be the first up-front transsexual in a rock band. The music press was really interested and supportive for a while; they'd never had this before, and they could see me changing right before their very eyes."(p126)

After a European tour for the second album, County stopped in West Berlin for a fortnight before returning to London for a nose job. However she ran into the wrong immigration official, was detained overnight and returned to West Berlin.

There, she was introduced to Romy Haag and her club. She had her nose done by a doctor on the Kurfürstendamm, who had worked on several trans women. When County returned to England at the end of Summer 1978, press reports suggested that she had had the full sex change, but she tired of explaining and let people assume as they liked.

"It bothered people. There was a distinct cooling of attitude, even among the fans; underneath that liberal attitude exterior, a lot of punk fans were really straight-down-the-line conservatives, and they hated the fact that I was actually living out the implications of my songs. Some of them even said 'You've betrayed your sex'." (p131)

Late in the year the band went to a farm in Wales to write the third album. Things Your Mother Never Told You came out to good reviews and was followed by a gruelling tour of Europe.

In Late summer 1979, Wayne fled to New York and decided that it was time to change her name to Jayne. She founded a new band, played CBGBs and toured. She also toned down her appearance.

Early 1980 Jayne returned to West Berlin to be in a play with Romy Haag. The play was a success, but Jayne and Romy fell out and remained so for many years. Jayne lived with PJ from San Francisco who had been in the Angels of Light before moving to West Berlin. However PJ decided not to continue as a woman and after being sacked by Romy returned to living as a male, and then her Turkish boyfriend did not want her any more.

"It was during my time in Berlin that I came closest to the idea of having a full sex change; it certainly would have been easy enough to arrange, and it's what everyone expected me to do. … The only reason that I can see for having the full change is so that you can move to a different town and marry a man and live completely as a woman, without anyone ever knowing what you are. But I don't think I could do that. Let's face it, if people know you're a sex change you'll never be accepted as a woman. … I'm happy in between the sexes; I'm comfortable and I actually like the idea. … I certainly wouldn't be happy with idea of being a man, and I don't consider myself a man, but I'm not going to try and convince myself that I'm really a woman." (p138-9)

Jayne was friends with Zazie de Paris (Solange Dymenzstein). She starred in Rock & Roll Peepshow. She also did a St Patricks Day concert at a US Army Base.

Jayne was introduced to the Latvian-born director Rosa von Praunheim and was cast in the film Stadt der Verlorenen Seele (City of Lost Souls) 1982 with Angie Stardust and Tara O'Hara.

In 1983, Leee arranged a gig in New York, and Jayne put on Rock & Roll Peepshow at the Pyramid, which led to the show Les Girls with Holly Woodlawn and Alexis del Lago, and International Chrysis.

Then Jayne returned to Germany for the City of Lost Souls tour, which was followed bt time in London where she was booked at the Fridge in Brixton, and she encountered Alan/Lanah Pelley during his transsexual phase.

She stayed in England until 1987. She recorded a couple of albums but they were not promoted.

On return to New York, Jayne took up with drag performer Constance Cooper, who introduced her to Sally's Hideaway off Times Square.

Jayne had not been home for 20 years. She phoned her mother and proposed a visit. She got a gig at Atlanta's Club Rio and attempted to find those she knew from the 1960s, but could find only Diamond Lil. She was introduced to the rising stars RuPaul and Deandra Peak.

To visit her parents she really dressed down. She ended up staying the summer.

"However much I may be Jayne County, my old personality, Wayne, is still there; it never goes away. … Jayne County is the one who's out there hustling and trying to do something with her career. But when I get home alone I can't wait to get the wig and make-up off, to put on an old t-shirt and my reading glasses and read my religious books or my history books or a horror novel, to eat cookies and drink tea." (p164-5)

Afterwards Jayne did a gig in Tel Aviv, and then returned to London for another four years. She became a regular at the Apollo Club in Wardour Street, where she met met old-time transvestites such as Francis Bacon, the painter.

She returned to New York at the end of 1992, and was in the Wigstock film, 1995. Her autobiography Man Enough to be a Woman came out the same year.

In 2014 Jayne was banned from Facebook for using the word 'tranny' a word that she has been using for 40 years. She spoke back in an article in Queerty:

"Tranny is not a slur word and I resent anyone trying to make it one. It’s the intent behind the word, rather than the word itself, that can be sometimes offensive. It may be a silly word, but it’s certainly not worthy enough to be banned. That is censorship, pure and simple and no better than right-wing Christian extremists or any other tyrants, who want to force their narrow-minded, conservative opinions on others."

Jayne has also been posting controversial opinions on FaceBook and on her blog,   rockandrollantirepublikkkanleague.    An article in Haaretz interprets them as simple support for Israel, but they are also anti-Republican.  

• "Rock on the Wayne!". Melody Maker, 6 October 1973.
  
• Pete Silverton. “A Self-Made Woman”. Sounds. 2 June 1979
  
• Jayne County with Rupert Smith. Man Enough to be a Woman. London: Serpent's Tail, 1995.
  
• Jim White. "Sometimes it's hard to be a woman ". The Independent, 19 June 1995. www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/sometimes-its-hard-to-be-a-woman-1587170.html.
  
• Kris Kirk. “From Wayne to Jayne” A Boy Called Mary: Kris Kirk’s Greatest Hits. Brighton: Millivres Books. 1999.
• "Why was transgender punk icon Jayne County banned from Facebook?". Dangerous Minds, 04.23.2014. http://dangerousminds.net/comments/why_was_transgender_punk_icon_jayne_county_banned_from_facebook.
  
• Jayne County. "EXCLUSIVE: Transgender Icon Jayne County Is Fed Up With Being Banned And Censored". Queerty, Jun 5, 2014. www.queerty.com/exclusive-transgender-icon-jayne-county-is-fed-up-with-being-banned-and-censored-20140605.
  
• Marisa Fox-Bevilacqha. "Famed Transgender Performer Stands Up for Israel" Haaretz, Aug 02, 2014. www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/jewish-world-features/.premium-1.608412.
  

www.jaynecounty.com    EN.Wikipedia    QMH   ArtofExmouth    IMDB      rockandrollantirepublikkkanleague      FaceBook     


German television, Rockpalast 19/12/1978

Jayne County (1947 - ) Part II: New York City

Part I: Atlanta
Part II: New York City
Part III:  London and Berlin

After a spell living at the YMCA, Wayne met the aspiring photographer Leee Childers (1945 - 2014) who invited him to share a coldwater walkup on 13^th St. Wayne hung out at the Sewer club on West 18^th St where he encountered members of Charles Ludlum's Ridiculous Theatrical Company, and also Holly Woodlawn, a friend of Tammy Novak. Leee had already photographed Holly and Tammy.

On the night of June 27 1969 Wayne was on his way to the Stonewall when he met Miss Peaches and Marsha P Johnson and realized that a riot was in progress.  He joined an impromptu march up and down Christopher Street shouting "Gay Power!".

Through Leee, Wayne came to know Jackie Curtis and Candy Darling, and the Andy Warhol crowd. After falling out with Warhol's screenwriter, John Vaccaro, Jackie moved into Leee's flat. Shortly afterwards, Holly also moved in. After Leee and Wayne had been to Woodstock, Wayne started going to Max's Kansas City at 213 Park Avenue.

Wayne's first on-stage performance was in Jackie Curtis' Femme Fatal, a women-in-prison play.  He wanted a stage name and took Wayne County, from where Detroit is located, in homage to Iggy and the Stooges. He was cast as a psychotic southern lesbian. Patti Smith played a mafia dyke, and Bunny Eisenhower was also in it.

Wayne wrote a play World – Birth of a Nation that had lots of sex and fetishes in it. It was produced, and one of the stars was Cherry Vanilla. Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey came to the opening night, and The Village Voice gave it a rave review.

Andy Warhol had been taping private telephone conversations, and he arranged for them to be transcribed and arranged into a play, that became called Pork. Wayne was to play a character based on Warhol Superstar Viva. The play got a big write-up in The New York Times, and it was taken to England, where it opened, August 1971, at the Roundhouse in Camden Town. This was the same time as the Oz Magazine trial for obscenity. The reviews in the British Press were completely negative, but crowds came anyway. Rod Stewart and Ron Wood came more than once. As did David and Angie Bowie.

Back in New York Wayne got a gig as the house DJ at Max's Kansas City, and did some more theatre. While playing a transvestite revolutionary in a play, Wayne thought about forming a band, which became Queen Elizabeth, which took a lot of ideas from the Ridiculous Theatrical Company and Jackie Curtis, and put them to music. They played with the New York Dolls and at Max's. David Bowie's manager Tony Defries put Wayne on a retainer, but never recorded the band.

In October 1973 Wayne was on the cover of Melody Maker, and was in David Bowie's 1980 Floor Show with Amanda Lear and Marianne Faithful. In 1974 Wayne started doing shows at the 82 Club.


At this time Wayne read Canary Conn's autobiography, and felt that she wanted to be more transsexual than drag queen. She was referred to Eugene/Jeanne Hoff (who herself was starting transition) at what had been the Harry Benjamin practice. Hoff advised

"You should only get a sex change if you are one hundred and twenty five per cent sure about it. If you have the least hesitation about it, don't do it".(p100)

After starting on female hormones, early in 1976, Wayne resumed being the DJ at Max's, and working with the new band, The Back Street Boys, and wrote the song 'Man Enough to be a Woman'. A proposed album with ESP records fell through, but they were included on the compilation album Max's Kansas City: New York New Wave.

While mainly a Max's performer, Wayne did a gig at the competing nightclub, CBGBs where she was heckled by ex-wrestler Dick Manitoba, singer in the band, The Dictators, shouting homophobic taunts.  Manitoba then climbed on the stage holding a beer-mug, and County hit him with the microphone stand.   County cut his hair short and wore a false beard, but was arrested for assault some days later and spent one night in jail.   Other musicians and performers including the Ramones, Blondie, Talking Heads, The New York Dolls, Jackie Curtis, Holly Woodlawn, Divine put on a benefit to meet County’s legal costs.  Three times Manitoba failed to show in court and therefore the charges were dropped.

Leee Childers was working in London, and phoned that Wayne should be also.

• Viviane K.Namaste. " 'A Gang of Trannies': Gender Discourse and Punk Culture". Chp 4 in Invisible Lives: The Erasure of Transsexual and Transgendered People. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. 
• Zagria. "'A Gang of Trannies': Gender Discourse and Punk Culture – a review of the chapter by Viviane Namaste". Gender Variance in the Arts, 05 March 2011. http://gvarts.blogspot.ca/2011/03/gang-of-trannies-gender-discourse-and.html

______________________________________________________________________

Viviane Namaste doesn't seem to have a feel for how trans and punk interact.    She takes the Dick Manitoba episode and attempts to deform it to fit her theoretical position.  This attempt is not helped by her getting most of the facts wrong, nor by her disinterest: "Yet I remain uninterested in a type of historical inquiry that would establish the presence of MTF transsexuals in punk culture”.

Jayne County's account of Stonewall has been added as a comment to that posting. 

Song by Wayne County

Jayne County, The Lower East Side Biography Project, excerpt from 28 minute biography from Steve Zehentner on Vimeo.