Transsexualism: Religious Aspects (1978)
In the 1970s the Erickson Educational Foundation produced a series of booklets about transsexualism. Rights eventually came to my nonprofit American Educational Gender Information Service, and, in the early 1990s, we reprinted and distributed this and some of the other booklets.
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
AEGIS Advisory Board (1992)
The nonprofit AEGIS maintained an interdisciplinary advisory board from 1991 through 1998. Members were distinguished in fields that were important to transsexualism and transsexuals and were consulted on policy issues and the advisories we periodically released.
Read More
AEGIS Fact Sheet (1993)
The American Educational Gender Information Service, Inc. (AEGIS) is a 501(c) (3) nonprofit clearinghouse for transsexual and transgender issues. AEGIS actively supports the professionalization and standardization of services for transgendered persons; promotes non-judgmental, non-discriminatory treatment of persons with gender issues; advocate respect for their dignity, their right to treatment, and their right to choose their gender role; helps transgendered persons make reasoned and informed decisions about the ways in which they will live their lives; and provides educational materials, information, and referrals.
Read More
A Guide to the HBIGDA Standards of Care (1993)
In 1993 we developed this brief guide to the HBIGDA Standards of Care and sent it, along with the Standards, to people seeking information and support.
Read More
Pride Special (1994)
Member of the Atlanta Gender Explorations Support Group, including myself, passed out thousands of these flyers at Atlanta Pride events during the 1990s—and we distributed them to activists and organizations around the world for use at their local events.
Read More
AEGIS Provides Protective Shield (1990)
I believe this text from the community newsletter Renaissance News reproduces the text of the press release announcing AEGIS’ formation.
Read More
AEGIS Given 501(c)(3) Nonprofit Status by IRS (1993)
In a letter dated 13 July, 1993. the Internal Revenue Service notified AEGIS of exemption from Federal income tax as a 501(c) (3) organization.
Read More
Roberts Named to AEGIS Advisory Board (1992)
The late JoAnn Roberts was a founder of Renaissance Education Association, owner of Creative Design Services, and served as board chair of the nonprofit American Educational Gender Information Service Inc. Here’s an announcement of her appointment to the AEGIS Advisory Board.
Read More
For Transssexuals, 1994 is 1969 (1994)
As organizers for the Stonewall 25 march were completing their preparations, they found themselves facing a potentially embarrassing threat from an unexpected source. Angry at having been excluded from the march’s formal title— the International March on the United Nations to Affirm the Human Rights of Lesbian and Gay People— transgendered activists were planning to stage civil disobedience actions on the march route.
Read More
Transsexualism: Sex and Gender Dilemma (1991)
Between 1990 and 1998, I mailed many thousands of these tri-fold brochures.
Read More
NTL&A Dedication Ceremony Program Book (2004)
In 2004 the University of Michigan held a dedication ceremony for the National Transgender Library & Archive.
Read More
NTL&A Holdings at The LGBT Historical Society of California
When the Board of Gender Education & Advocacy, Inc. donated the National Transgender Library & Archive to the University of Michigan, we requested duplicated be awarded to the LGBT Historical Society of California.
Read More
The U-M’s Labadie Collection Now Includes a T-Shirt That Reads, “Boys Will Be Girls.” (2004)
Highlights from the NL&A will be on exhibit at the Hatcher Graduate library through May 29. Denny’s own favorite item is a 1953 program from Madame Arthur’s the Parisian transvestite cabaret. Herrada points out a pair of narrow, black high-heeled sandals with peach rosettes that were worn by Virginia Prince.
Read More
Library Acquires Materials on Transsexual/Transgender Movement (2001)
The National Transgender Library and Archive (NTL&A), a vast repository of materials documenting the history of the transgender movement, is now part of the University of Michigan Library.
Read More
The AEGIS Catalog of Publications (1994)
The nonprofit American Educational Gender Information Service maintained a mail-order bookstore with more than 60 products, many of which we produced ourselves. I edited and laid out this booklet, which dates from 1994 or so, and had thousands of copies run on newsprint. I would fill orders every other day or so and drop boxes and envelopes off at the post office on the way home from work.
Read More
Tula: I Am a Woman (1992)
International model Caroline Cossey, also known as Tula, has been in the news a bit lately. Actually, she’s been in the news a lot, ever since a British tabloid exposed her transsexual status. Before this “outing,” she was a very popular model, and had even appeared with Roger Moore in the James Bond film, For Your Eyes Only.
Read More
HBIGDA Standards of Care (1990)
In my capacity as Executive Director and person-in-charge-of-the-mails at the nonprofit American Educational Gender Information Service, I mailed thousands of copies of the 4th revision of the HBIDGA Standards of Care to those seeking information. It was economically feasible to do so because the document required only three sheet of paper! Version 7 of the WPATH Standards of Care, released in 2011, is 112 page long!
Read More
Library Opens Transgender Collection (2004)
Yesterday, Dallas was present at the Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library, where her personal collection of more than 1,500 titles related to transgender issues —the National Transgender Library and Archive — was officially unveiled as part of the University’s Labadie Collection.
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
GEA’s Request for Proposals for Award of National Transgender Library & Archive (2000)
Gender Education and Advocacy (GEA) is in search of a permanent home for its National Transgender Library & Archive (NTL&A), a large collection of books, magazines, catalogs, flyers, personal papers, and ephemera about transsexualism and transgenderism currently located in Atlanta, GA.
Read More
The Origin of the National Transgender Library & Archive (2004)
When I was fourteen years old, I went to the card catalogue of the public library in the small (pop. 30,000) southern town in which I lived and looked up the words transvestite and transsexual. I was scared to death.
Read More
(Needless) Health Risks of Transsexualism (1992)
While transsexualism is not as risky as, say, jumping over automobiles on a motorcycle, there are definite health risks associated with it. These risks are minimal, provided the person seeks psychological help and follows the Standards of Care. Risks increase when proper avenues of care by bypassed.
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
Preserving Our History (2001)
Ten years ago I came to realize that as a community we had little sense of our history. There seemed to be no libraries, archives, or repositories for transgender materials, and few of our national organizations maintained archival copies of their own materials. A few organizations, most notably Tri-Ess, had been wise enough to donate archival materials to universities and archives, but for the most part, our history was being discarded and destroyed on a daily basis.
Read More
Beware False Prophets (1997)
In March, 1996 a woman named Sandra Davis showed up at the IFGE conference in Minneapolis, hawking a book in which she made extravagant claims about being able to “cure” transsexual and transgendered people,
Read More
Trans Trading Cards: My List (1997)
In 1997 I tried to sell AEGIS’ board of directors on a set of transsexual and transgender trading cards. The board didn’t bite, and so they were never produced. Had I the funds, I would have had them printed anyway.
Read More
A Brief Guide to Atlanta (1991)
As executive director of AEGIS and a member of the planning committee of the first-ever Southern Comfort Conference, I turned this paper into a brochure for insertion into the attendees’ packet. Stephanie Rose did the layout. I’ve been unable to find a copy in the AEGIS archives.
Read More
Interview for International Transcript Magazine (1992)
I’m not certain, but I believe JoAnn Roberts’ magazine International TransScript folded just before this interview was scheduled to appear.
Read More
Codename ANGIE: The AEGIS National Gender Identification Explanation Card (1991)
In 1991 transsexual and transgendered people were routinely arrested when identified on the street. In some places anti-crossdressing or anti-masquerade laws were still on the books—and even when they weren’t, police officers would sometimes haul in transpeople on general principal. Happily, this situation was rapidly changing, and, after discussion with others at the IFGE conference, AEGIS decided not to release the ANGIE card.
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
Transition and Individual Choice (1999)
Much human misery is caused by the insistence of some people that things be done a certain way. Transsexuals have certainly suffered from such notions, which have been forced on them by helping professionals who were often neither helping nor professional. For many years, the coin of the treatment realm was subjectivism and caprice as transsexuals had their feet figuratively held to the fire by psychologists and physicians who required their transsexual patients to restructure their lives according to their often naive and sexist beliefs. It was not unusual for therapists to dictate to transsexuals the clothes they must wear, their occupations, the sex of their lovers, which surgeries they would and would not have, and even their names. If the patients didn’t comply, they were denied hormones and surgery.
Read More
Letter to NBC (1996)
This letter was AEGIS’ response to the Weekend Update feature on Saturday Night Live, 24 Febuary, 1996.
Read More
The Impact of Emerging Technologies on One Transgender Organization (2001)
In this paper I talk about the transition of the 501(c)(3) American Educational Gender Information Service from a brick-and-mortar provider of information to an online entity.
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: Information for the Family (1977-1993)
In the 1970s the Erickson Educational Foundation produced a series of booklets about transsexualism. Rights eventually came to my nonprofit American Educational Gender Information Service, and we reprinted and distributed this and some of the other booklets.
Read More
IFGE Consistently Disappoints (1998)
In 2011 the International Foundation for Gender Education quietly drained the “never to be touched” Winslow Street Fund of its approximately $100,000 USD balance and effectively disappeared as an organization. I called attention to this with a press release and published it simultaneously on this website and Transgender Forum. That wasn’t the first time IFGE had violated public trust by dipping into the Winslow Street Fund. I covered an early escapade in 1998 in AEGIS Online News—first as news, and then with an editorial.
Read More
AEGIS Internet News, March – April, 1998
In May, 1995 when I was Executive Director of the nonprofit American Educational Gender Information Service, I compiled and transmitted what I believe was the first transgender-specific online news feed. It was called AEGIS Online News. The News initially went out to several hundred AEGIS members and other subscribers as a plain text file over the fledgling internet.
Read More
AEGIS Internet News, February 1998
In May, 1995 when I was Executive Director of the nonprofit American Educational Gender Information Service, I compiled and transmitted what I believe was the first transgender-specific online news feed. It was called AEGIS Online News. The News initially went out to several hundred AEGIS members and other subscribers as a plain text file over the fledgling internet.
Read More
AEGIS Internet News, Nov. 1997 – Jan. 1998
In May, 1995 when I was Executive Director of the nonprofit American Educational Gender Information Service, I compiled and transmitted what I believe was the first transgender-specific online news feed. It was called AEGIS Online News. The News initially went out to several hundred AEGIS members and other subscribers as a plain text file over the fledgling internet.
Read More
AEGIS Internet News, June – October, 1997
In May, 1995 when I was Executive Director of the nonprofit American Educational Gender Information Service, I compiled and transmitted what I believe was the first transgender-specific online news feed. It was called AEGIS Online News. The News initially went out to several hundred AEGIS members and other subscribers as a plain text file over the fledgling internet.
Read More
AEGIS Internet News, May 1997
In May, 1995 when I was Executive Director of the nonprofit American Educational Gender Information Service, I compiled and transmitted what I believe was the first transgender-specific online news feed. It was called AEGIS Online News. The News initially went out to several hundred AEGIS members and other subscribers as a plain text file over the fledgling internet.
Read More
AEGIS Internet News, April 1997
In May, 1995 when I was Executive Director of the nonprofit American Educational Gender Information Service, I compiled and transmitted what I believe was the first transgender-specific online news feed. It was called AEGIS Online News. The News initially went out to several hundred AEGIS members and other subscribers as a plain text file over the fledgling internet.
Read More