I Get Censored

Posted on Dec 20, 2011 in Editorial | 2 comments

©2011 by Dallas Denny
Source: Dallas Denny. (2011). I get censored: A never-before-told tale of intrigue, enforced secrecy, and missing transgender archival material. Chrysalis Quarterly, 3(1).

I Get Censored

A Never-Before-Told Tale of Intrigue, Enforced Secrecy, and Missing Transgender Archival Material

by Dallas Denny

Part I

Back Story: How Gender Education & Advocacy Found a New Home for Its Collection of Transgender Historical Material

In 2000 the 501(c)(3) nonprofit I founded in 1990 changed its name and method of operation, moving from a stamp-and-envelope model to electronic dissemination of information via a website.

That nonprofit was The American Educational Gender Information Service, Inc., which became Gender Education & Advocacy, Inc.

Gender Education & Advocacy, Inc. Website

One of AEGIS’ assets was The National Transgender Library & Archive, which was formed in 1994 when I donated my extensive collection to the organization. As AEGIS’ director, I continued to acquire material for the collection, and by 1999 the NTL&A filled two bedrooms of my home. Materials included some 100 community newsletters and magazines collected over a 20-year-span, more than a thousand books, several hundred mainstream magazines with transgender content, several hundred early transgender magazines from the 1960s and 1970s, flyers, pamphlets, program books from conferences and nightclubs, photographs, and extensive correspondence.

Highlights of the collection included two pairs of Virginia Prince’s shoes from the 1940s, a 1953 program book from Madame Arthur’s female impersonation club in Paris, a complete run of Transvestia, extensive runs of Female Mimics and Lee Brewster’s Drag, a special presentation copy of John Money and Richard Green’s 1969 edited text Transsexualism and Sex Reassignment donated by the widow of Dr. Leo Wollman, postcards and photographs dating from the turn of the XXth century, a score or more of autographed books, and personal histories of transgendered and transsexual people.

GEA’s decision to divest itself of the collection was not made lightly. We had no budget for storing the collection, much less displaying it, and yet we felt it needed to be accessible. And so as the new century dawned we sent a request for proposals to more than a score of archives, libraries, universities, and historical organizations and published the RFP on our GAIN news service; GAIN did then what AEGIS Online News had done before it and what the Yahoo group Transgender News would do in later years.

In the RFP we asked a number of questions. Why was the organization interested in the materials? Would it keep the entire collection? How would it be housed? Would it be catalogued, and if so, how long would cataloguing take? Would scholars and researchers have access to the collection?

After the RFP was released, we developed a formal list of in-house criteria designed to safeguard the physical and intellectual safety of the collection.

By the March 15 deadline we had 14 serious proposals from a variety of universities and nonprofits, including The Kinsey Institute, The GLBT Service Center in New York City, The GLBT Historical Society of Northern California, The University of California at Northridge, The University of Minnesota, The University of Michigan, Cornell University, and two universities in Illinois. We also had a proposal from the Rikki Swin Institute, which was then known as the Gender Education, Research, and Library Institute.

When the proposals were all in I made photocopies of each and mailed them in a package to GEA’s board, which at the time consisted of myself, Dr. Sandra Cole, Jamison Green, Gwendolyn Smith, Jessica Xavier, and the late Penni Ashe Matz. I asked the board members to use our checklist to evaluate the proposals and to think about any qualitative concerns they might have about choosing the recipient of the NTL&A.

Several weeks later we met in a lengthy telephone conference call. We discussed each applicant, using the checklist to narrow the field down to four institutions. I asked the board members to talk about their qualitative concerns.

It was soon clear that everything else being equal, we all would prefer the material remain with a community-based transgender organization. We all wanted to safeguard against our history becoming lost in a larger collection of GLBT or general human sexuality materials. But we all agreed physical and intellectual safety of the collection was of top concern– and that meant a recipient with long-term prospects of financial stability and a physical facility capable of storing and displaying the materials. No transgender organization offered this.

We had a special discussion about the Rikki Swin Institute. We each expressed concern about awarding our materials to a brand-new organization created and headed by a new and unproven community activist.

At that point Jamison Green told the board Ms. Swin had told him privately that she would fund GEA to the tune of $40,000 if her organization were to be awarded our collection.

We were stunned, but we all agreed not to let money influence our decision because our RFP had specifically noted that money would not be a factor and because the safety and accessibility of the collection was what mattered most to us all.

In the end it came down to three organizations– The University of Minnesota, The University of Michigan, and The GLBT Historical Society of Northern California.

We liked the idea of the Historical Society, but eliminated it because it had no hard funding. We did agree to ask our awardee to send all duplicate material to the Society.

That left the two universities. They had equally strong presentations, and we felt sure our materials would be safe at either. However, although the University of Minnesota was planning to build a facility that could house our collection, the University of Michigan already had one. This, in the opinion of the Board, gave Michigan precedence.

Because Dr. Cole was a retired professor at U. Michigan, we had a discussion about a perception of bias in the community and whether it might be best to make the award to Minnesota. In the end we did what was best for the collection and for the community and made the award to The University of Michigan.

The next morning I phoned Julie Herrada, curator of the Labadie Collection at the University of Michigan, to let her know of our decision, and sent out letters to each organization to thank them for their proposal and inform them of our decision.

Everyone took it in good grace except Ms. Swin, who phoned me to ask– it felt like a demand– to send a team to Georgia to photocopy every page of our collection. I took her request to the board and responded to Ms. Swin as directed by the board, saying as the collection was now the property of the University of Michigan, she would need to get their permission to make the copies. That was pretty much the end of that.

A month or so later Dr. Herrada flew to Atlanta and filled a large U-Haul truck with our boxed archival material and made the long drive back to Michigan. Within two years the collection was catalogued and online and available to researchers scholars. We had made a good choice.

Part II

The Rikki Swin Collection Vanishes

In 2000 Rikki Swin announced the formation of the Gender Education Research Library. The name was soon changed to the Rikki Swin Institute. RSI soon acquired IRS 501(c)(3) nonprofit status.

About Rikki Swin

RSI aggressive pursued existing transgender collections, offering cash. Long-term community activists Virginia Prince, Merissa Sherrill Lynn, and Ariadne Kane sold RSI their collections and the Institute acquired materials from Betty Ann Lind’s estate. RSI purchased the archival material of the International Foundation for Gender Education, including file copies of their journal Tapestry. As I already noted, Ms. Swin submitted a bid for our NTL&A collection.

In one fell swoop, Ms. Swin had purchased a huge portion of our community’s historical materials.

Ms. Swin celebrated the opening of her organization’s library concurrently with the 2001 conference of the International Foundation for Gender Education in Chicago. Conference attendees were whisked by busses to attend an elegant reception in a downtown three-story brick building Ms. Swin had purchased.

Her extensive collection of recently-acquired transgender historical materials was nowhere in sight, but we were assured it was in the building and would soon be available. One attendee, unimpressed with the brouhaha, or possibly with the hors d’oeuvres, said to me out of the side of her mouth, “Nice box. Wonder what’s in it?”

That comment stuck with me. When I got home I wrote an article suggesting Ms. Swin was acting out of personal vanity. It was one of only two times I have resorted to a pen name– in this case, “Lotta Hubris.” The piece was published in July in the Renaissance Association’s Transgender Community News & Views.

Nice Box. Wonder What’s In It?

Several of my friends and acquaintances told me they had seen Ms. Swin’s collection (most of it was boxed, they said) and two expressed concern about the safety of the material. Ms. Swin announced she had hired a librarian, but the collections were never made public or publicly catalogued. Then, a year or so after the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, Ms. Swin and her institute– and her extensive collection of transgender historical materials– simply vanished from sight.

I didn’t know it at the time, but Ms. Swin had relocated to another country– Canada– and was living on Vancouver Island in British Columbia. Word was she was having conversations with the University of Victoria about acquiring the collection, but it was only a rumor. The location and safety of the Rikki Swin Institute’s extensive holdings of transgender historical material was still very much in doubt.

Part III

The Editor of Transgender Tapestry is Censored

Because I was worried about the well- being of so much transgender historical material, I decided to take my concerns to the community. In 2004, in my capacity as editor of IFGE’s Transgender Tapestry Journal, I wrote an editorial called “Where Is Our History?” in which I took Ms. Swin to task over her irresponsibility with so much transgender historical material.

IFGE Executive Director Denise Leclair asked me to hold the editorial until the next issue, and I did. She did the same for the next issue, and the next, and the next, and I complied. Finally, in 2007 I insisted the editorial go to press. Ms. Leclair made it clear the editorial would never appear in Tapestry; this was the biggest factor in my resignation as editor. I refused to be associated with an organization that would withhold important information from the community it professed to serve.

My editorial was never published. Now, for the first time, it is seeing the light of day.

Where Is Our History?

Part IV

The Rikki Swin Collection Resurfaces in Another Country

In September 2011, at the international symposium of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health in Atlanta, sociologist Aaron Devor (pictured) gave a presentation at which he announced the acquisition of the Rikki Swin Institute’s holdings by the University of Victoria in British Columbia. Dr. Devor said an official announcement would be made soon.

For years, I had been hope for just such an announcement. It was a relief to know Ms. Swin’s historical material, which had been missing in action for some seven years, was  in the hands of such a respected institution, and apparently had been for some time.

U. Victoria’s RSI Transgender Historical Collection

I have reservations about an American collection belonging to an American nonprofit going to another country, but all-in-all I’m thrilled the material is safe and will soon be catalogued and available to researchers. Ms. Swin is to be commended for making the donation, especially since the material cost her tens of thousands of dollars. I only wish she had kept the community informed about the location and condition of her archive.

Part V

I Make the Decision to Visit the World’s Major Transgender Archives

It feels so good to be able to finally tell this story! It’s no fun being censored.

I’m grateful for the integrity of the board of Gender Education & Advocacy in handling our own historical materials, and pleased the University of Michigan has done such a great job cataloging our collection and making it available. Most of all I’m happy this story has a happy ending.

I find it amazing so much of our history was sold rather than donated. I can understand why Virginia Prince, Ariadne Kane, and Merissa Sherrill Lynn, all of whom were living in reduced circumstances, would sell their materials, but I’m less forgiving about those handling Betty Ann Lind’s estate and furious about IFGE’s divestment of its historical material. I’m not sure which I consider the greater betrayal: IFGE’s sale of the material or its later cover-up of news that the material had gone missing.

The surfacing of Ms. Swin’s collection and the happy accident of my having been in the room when Dr. Devor made his presentation led me to make a vow: over the next several years I plan to visit major archives of transgender material around the world and report on my adventures and finding in these pages and, if I can find the money to travel, at the 2014 WPATH symposium in Thailand. I’ll be visiting collections in British Columbia, California, Texas, Massachusetts, New York, Germany, Denmark, and Northern Ireland. This is no small undertaking, but I’m determined to do it. I’m not sure anyone has done it before.

Part VI

Preserving Our History

Before the mid-1990 transgender historical materials were in the hands of private collectors and archives of community organizations or scattered widely as single volumes in libraries. When organizations dissolved, so, too, did their papers. For instance, when the Erickson Foundation disincorporated, Executive Director Zelda Supple, at the instruction of Board Chair Reed Erickson, destroyed the organization’s correspondence and archival material. Privately-held collections usually disappeared when their owners passed away and were often purged during individual’s lifetime. Transgendered and transsexual people are, after all, infamous for purging.

Not only did researchers find it difficult and expensive to track down resources, most transgendered and transsexual people  were unable to find materials of any sort. Libraries– even those of universities– would have at best only three or four books, and bookstore finds were rare.

I suppose the reason I’m so passionate about trans history is because for years I was unable to find material– and when I finally did, it was horrible and inaccurate psychomedical books.

Today there are at least a dozen publicly available archives, some transgender-exclusive, and some significant portions of larger LGBT collections. And yet they represent only a fraction of the material out there.