A Word from the Editor (Chrysalis, 1991-1998)
Here are the Word From the Editor/Publisher columns from the various issues of Chrysalis.
Read More
The Shark in the Swimming Pool (1993)
Confronted, Willis claimed the increasing tensions within the group were the fault of the various group members, and certainly not his. He was insistent he was not the problem.
Read More
My Three Transitions (1996)
Ten years earlier, at age 18, the answer to the question “Will I someday pass?” would have been an unequivocal yes. Ten years in the future, at age 38, the answer would have been an unequivocal no. Looking at my thinning hair and hardening features, the best answer I could come up with was an unequivocal maybe.
Read More
In Search of the “True” Transsexual (1996)
In dealing with my own transsexualism. and in working with hundreds of other transsexual people, it has become clear to me that transsexualism, as conceptualized by Benjamin, is an invented way of looking at a much larger transgender phenomenon, and that the process of sex reassignment is but one way of dealing with that phenomenon.
Read More
Prodigal Son (1994)
My feelings about the rejection have ranged from bewilderment to sorrow to anger, but the overriding emotion, the one which came first and which has lasted longest, is disappointment. It reinforces my belief that my family was just an assortment of people I drew by chance, like one draws a roommate in a college dorm. My family is made up of imperfect human beings, unable to love unconditionally, unable to rise to a challenge, unable to communicate. I’m sad for them, for I gave them a wonderful challenge, and they have failed to rise to it.
Read More
An Interview with Anne Bolin (1993)
Is the feminist movement a threat? You’d better believe it. It’s a big threat. When my male students get concerned in my classes on gender and sex, I tell them. “You bet it’s a threat. It’s going to change everything.” But what do you get from it? You get partnerships in life. You’re both on equal footing. You can work it out with your partner according to your different likes and dislikes, strengths and weaknesses.
Read More
Mini-Interview with Dr. Michel Seghers (1993)
Dr. Michel Seghers is a plastic and reconstructive surgeon who practices in Brussels, Belgium. The following interview was conducted on Sunday, 4 October, 1992, at the Southern Comfort convention in Atlanta, Georgia.
Read More
Psychology as Art; Psychology as Science; Psychology as Pseudoscience (1992)
Holly Boswell did a good job of critiquing Glenn Humphrey’s doctoral dissertation. I was outraged enough by Humphrey’s analysis to critique it myself. I was not gentle.
Read More
An Interview with Dr. David Gilbert (1992)
Dr. David Gilbert is a plastic surgeon and microsurgeon who is co‑founder of The Center for Gender Reassignment in Norfolk, Virginia. His wife, Deborah, is a registered nurse, and Coordinator of the Center. Plans were to interview both Dr. and Mrs. Gilbert at Southern Comfort, but Mrs. Gilbert became ill shortly after arrival, and was still under the weather on Sunday afternoon, the last possible time for the interview. Dr. Gilbert, who was obviously worried about his wife, nevertheless gave us what we believe to be the finest interview on sex reassignment surgery which has ever appeared outside, and perhaps inside, the pages of a medical journal.
Read More
The Care and Feeding of the Neovagina (1992)
Those who are lucky, and who have chosen wisely, will end up with neovaginas which are virtually indistinguishable from natural vaginas. And guess what? They will have most of the disadvantages of natural vaginas: susceptibility to infection, sanitation problems, increased vulnerability to STDs—everything but menstruation (and pregnancy, which is only a disadvantage under certain conditions).
Read More
An Interview with Carolyn Cossey (1992)
Caroline has dealt maturely and wisely with a burden that generally only those who do not pass well have to face—identity as a “known transsexual.” To show our support, we hosted a reception for her at Atlanta’s Petrus night club (the same place where she was given Mayor Jackson’s award) in October. We presented her with a nonrescindable award for service to the gender community and welcomed her to our advisory board.
Read More
AEGIS Public Service Advertisements (1990s)
AEGIS designed a series of public service ads, which ran on the inside front covers of Chrysalis Quarterly, the house journal. We also distributed them as flyers. The ads addressed assorted health issues of transsexual and transgendered people, including silicone injections, overuse of hormones, and HIV/AIDS. Margaux Schaffer designed the first two ads.
Read More
The View from the Other Side of the Treatment Fence (1991)
This article is best read in situ, as it is a counterbalance to my article The Politics of Diagnosis and a Diagnosis of Politics: How the University-Affiliated Gender Clinics Failed to Meet the Needs of Transsexual People.
Read More
How to Shop for Service Providers (1991)
In 1991 professional help for transsexuals was so hard to find we tended to be grateful for anything offered—whether good or bad.
Read More
Review of Shocking Asia (1991)
This film is the first I came across that had anything whatsoever to do with transsexualism.
Read More
CQ’s Quotations From the Literature (1991-1993)
The first six issues of Chrysalis Quarterly contained a short feature called Quotations from the Literature. In each, I highlighted one or two offensive, stupid, or absurd (and in some cases insightful) passages from articles in textbooks or professional journals.
Read More
No Regets: The Standards of Care (1991)
The Standards are a road map for service providers, telling them what they must do, at minimum, to provide competent care to transsexual people. To the majority of service providers, who are ignorant about transsexualism, the Standards can serve as a cookbook, giving them the necessary confidence to treat men and women they might not otherwise agree to serve.
Read More
Weight and Transition (1991)
Extreme weight is a counterindication for any form of surgery; medical risk is increased dramatically. Here I interview a transsexual woman who committed to lose an extreme amount of weight so she could meet the weight requirements for sex reassignment surgery.
Read More
Sex Reassignment, Hormones, and Health (1991)
The theme of the first issue of AEGIS’ Chrysalis Quarterly Journal was transsexualism and disability. This was the lead article.
Read More
Beware Philip Salem (1991)
AEGIS’ first advisory was about a pill-peddler named Philip Salem.
Read More
Perfectly Modular Male (1995) (NSFW)
This song, is of course, about packing—using a prosthetic device as a phallus. It’s something every FTM knows about. The song is influenced by a book by science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein—The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. In it, the protagonist uses a variety of prosthetic arms, depending upon need. He has a social arm with fingers and simulated a skin, an arm for manipulation of small objects, and an arm designed for brute power. So—why limit oneself to a single packie?
Read More
If For Transsexual People (1991)
Any number of people have taken liberties with Rudyard Kipling’s poem If, which was meant as an inspiration for young boys. Is it any wonder I couldn’t resist? My most profound apologies to Mr. Kipling.
Read More
Twenty-Nine Linear Feet! (2013)
Twenty-nine linear feet! If you’re a book geek, if you’ve spent a lot of time in libraries and archives, you’re already excited. If not, let me the space a collection takes on a library’s shelves is described in linear feet. In this case it’s the cumulative length of the pamphlets, flyers, and correspondence of The National Transgender Library & Archive materials at the Labadie Collection at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Thousands of books and hundreds of journal titles are housed elsewhere in the archive and aren’t counted in those twenty-nine linear feet.
Read More
FTM Conference a Huge Success! (1995)
The weekend of 18-20 August, 1995 saw more than 360 transsexual and transgendered men, their partners, and helping professionals assembled in San Francisco for the first FTM Conference of the Americas. Conference organizers had hoped for 125 attendees. It was a great success and spawned several more national FTM conferences. I made it possible.
Read More
The Politics of Diagnosis and a Diagnosis of Politics (1991)
This is one of my most-cited articles.
Read More
From A to Zeta (1996)
“I always take survey results with a grain of salt, but I find it remarkable that a Tri-Ess chapter has 64% of its membership who would like to magically transform themselves into women; 36% who would like to live full-time if circumstances were perfect; 21-24% who have experimented with female hormones or electrolysis; and a huge 73% who have even fantasized about TS surgery. That’s a helluva lot of real and fantasized transforming going on in an organization devoted to the ideal of heterosexual crossdressing without a taint of transsexualism in its ranks. A less diplomatic person than myself might even say this particular sorority of Tri-Ess girls are a bunch of secret transsexuals.”
Read More
When Heteropocrisy Comes Home to Roost (1996)
Tri-Ess is not really an organization of and for heterosexual crossdressers. It is an organization with a membership and a leadership which contains a significant number of underground transsexuals and bisexuals. Those who are willing to lie about their gender and sexual issues and those who for all practical purposes have a sex change but describe themselves with the words “heterosexual crossdresser” are welcome; while those who are honest about their issues or use other terms to describe themselves are shown the revolving door. The organization is based on a fundamental deceit.
Read More
Heteropocrisy: The Myth of the Heterosexual Crossdresser (1996)
Because of their steadfast denial of the true nature of their members, many organizations for heterosexual crossdressers are at bottom hypocritical organizations—heteropocritical organizations, I would say. Their mission statements are at considerable variance with the actual nature and needs of their members. They exist to serve heterosexual crossdressers, but many of their members identify as something other than heterosexual males. They serve only by turning a blind eye to the actual needs of their members, and by excluding many who would help them to serve their focus population of heterosexual crossdressers.
Read More
Remembering JoAnn Roberts (2013)
I knew and admired JoAnn Roberts. I wrote this piece a week or so after her death on June 7, 2013.
Read More
Transsexualism at Forty (1993)
Forty years ago, Christine Jorgensen was in Copenhagen, Denmark, and not just to see the sights. She was undergoing the final stages of a series of hormonal and surgical treatments that would enable her to live the rest of her life as a woman, even though she had been raised as a boy, had duly grown into a man, and had even served a hitch in the U.S. Army. Her “sex change,” as it came to be called, was hardly the first, but when the story was leaked to the newspapers, the headlines shocked the world, creating a media circus which has lasted for forty years.
Read More
Chrysalis Quarterly Issues (1991-1998)
Chrysalis Quarterly was the house journal of the nonprofit AEGIS, The American Educational Gender Information Service. It averaged sixty pages, with glossy cardstock cover. The cover, and, when we could afford it, the interior pages, were printed with gray ink and a burgundy spot cover.Each issue was themed.
Read More
How To Start and Maintain a Gender Support Organization (With Holly Boswell) (1992)
For many of us, finding a support group is the lifeline we need, for there we meet people who we scarcely dared believe existed— those who are like us.
Read More
Night Ride (1993)
Bicycles have changed, and yet they are the same. They are still silent running and breezes in your hair and sweaty palms from holding onto handlebars too long. They are leaning into curves and riding without hands, pumping hard when you go uphill, and coasting when you can find a downhill. Modern bikes only remotely resemble those I rode when I was a kid the first time, but the old-time feeling is still there, fresh as ever it was and ever will be.
Read More
Review, Sheila Kirk, How to Be a Good Medical Consumer (1992)
There is very little material available to educate and train transgendered men and women to make sane and rational decisions. Dr. Kirk’s booklet is a start.
Read More
Review of Sheila Kirk, Hormones (1991)
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Hormones undoubtedly do pose significant health risks. The studies which would clearly show those health risks have, unfortunately, not been done. But remember– until a few decades ago, studies had not conclusively shown the health risks of cigarette smoking.
Read More