Welcome to Volume 3 of the journal Chrysalis Quarterly! Please don't mind our dust. Our subhead is The Journal of Transgressive Gender Identities. We cover the waterfront on issues of gender identity and presentation. Our content includes investigative and historical articles, scholarly manuscripts, editorial material, reports of research, personal experiences, photo essays, reviews, interviews, poetry and fiction, artwork, and embedded audio and video. We are afraid of no topic and have been known to be deliberately provocative on occasion

A Never-Before-Told Tale of Intrigue, Enforced Secrecy, and Missing Transgender Archival Material. How important transgender history is, and how easily it can be misplaced!

Harry Benjamin was an endocrinologist and gerontologist who emigrated to the United States during the First World War. He is best known for his clinical work with transsexuals and as the author of 1966 text The Transsexual Phenomenon, which defined the clinical syndrome and argued for compassionate medical hormonal and surgical treatment in select cases.

Second Life A Virtual Playground for Therapists, Creativists, Healers, Educators, and Everyone Else By Niela Miller, M.S. (aka Marly Milena in Second Life) In the fall of October 2007 I was in Provincetown Massachusetts, sitting in a café with a friend and her partner at an annual event for transgendered people called Fantasia Fair. At the time, I had been doing group and individual work at the Fair for more than twenty years. My friend and her partner were telling me about Second Life, a virtual three-dimensional location on the web. How ironic, since many would view this transgender world as also being outside reality as they know it! In fact, these two had met in SL and have been partners there and in their regular lives for four years!

We’re happy to bring you Genderfork as our first featured website. The Genderfork website was created in 2007 by Sarah Dopp, “a genderqueer woman in San Francisco who likes to build websites.” She soon began including volunteers to help with the postings. Today Genderfork has outposts on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. Genderfork is a place where anyone can tell their story in brief or point readers to something they think is interesting. It’s amazing to scoll down through the entries and see the many ways readers define themselves. Take a look for yourself.

Just as it is impossible to imagine the study of Black history without the contributions of Black scholars, or the study of homosexuality devoid of the writings of gay men and lesbians, it has become impossible for there to be meaningful study of transsexualism or crossdressing without input from those who have been directly affected.

Photo by Jean Lewis. A missing transgender archive containing a considerable portion of the community’s historical documents has surfaced after having vanished for seven years. At the recent meeting of The World Professional Association for Transgender Health held in Atlanta in September, sociologist Aaron Devor gave a presentation in which he announced the acquisition of the collection of the Rikki Swin Institute’s extensive holdings by the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada. Dr. Devor said an official announcement of the new holdings will be made after the first of the year. In 2000 the newly-formed U.S. 501(c)(3) nonprofit Rikki Swin Institute purchased personal papers of Virginia Prince, Betty Ann Lind, Ariadne Kane, and Merissa Sherrill Lynn. Virginia Prince (1913-2009) was an activist who started a number of organizations for crossdressers and published the landmark magazine Transvestia, which launched in 196o. Betty Ann Lind 1931-1998) was publisher of the magazine Our Sorority and director of Fantasia. Fair. Ariadne Kane (1944-) founded and was executive director of The Outreach Society and was director of Fantasia Fair for many years. Merissa Sherrill Lynn (ca 1936-) was a founder of Boston’s Tiffany Club, Founding Director of the International Foundation for Gender Education, and the first editor of Transgender Tapestry Journal. The Swin Institute also purchased the historical and archival material of IFGE.

HBIGDA’s initial membership included no transsexual or transgendered members. They were simply not allowed. However, the organization, now called The World Professional Association for Transgender Health, has moved from a medical model of transsexualism to a transgender wellness model and transgendered and transsexual people are now fully integrated into membership and leadership positions.

Featured video by Joni Christian: It Gets Better... Really! When Joni Christian was a little boy, she prayed every day that God would change her into a girl. The Ursuline High School graduate got her wish with the help of hormone therapy and surgery at age 26. This November marked a milestone for Christian: 36 years as a woman, 10 years longer than she was a male. The process of gender reassignment, although a seemingly radical transformation, was Christian’s salvation, despite the ridicule, sarcasm and shunning she experienced when she returned to the life she once lived as a man. Women she worked with at General Motors Lordstown assembly plant circulated a petition to keep her out of the restroom; men stared and hurled cruel remarks.

Allowing admission to several people as representatives of the community will be a gesture of good will that will go a long way to improving relations with transgender populations at future symposia locations, will help educate those local populations about WPATH and the Standards of Care, and will hopefully prevent disruption of the symposia by protestors like the one at the 1997 symposium in Vancouver.

Phyllis Randolph Frye took everything life threw at her and came out on top. COMING SOON!

Late September saw three important conferences convening in Atlanta: The 21st annual Southern Comfort Conference , the 29th annual conference of the Gay & Lesbian Medical Association, and the 22nd International Symposium of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health. Southern Comfort's theme was "Come of Age." The theme of the WPATH symposium was "Transgender Beyond Disorder: Identity, Community, and Health." All three conventions were sizeable, with Southern Comfort arguably being the largest. At lunch on Friday the 23rd, I overheard SCC Conference Chair Alexis Dee tell another participant she expected attendance to top 1000, breaking previous records. On Sunday the 25th SCC and WPATH hosted a joint symposium on transgender health issues. Earlier in the week leaders of WPATH and GLMA participated with Atlanta activists in a community town hall meeting at the Southern Comfort Conference. The town hall was moderated by Faughn Adams of Emory University and Anneliese Singh of Georgia Safe Schools Coalition.