A Word from the Editor (Chrysalis, 1991-1998)
Here are the Word From the Editor/Publisher columns from the various issues of Chrysalis.
Read MoreThe 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 MoreMy 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 MoreIn 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 MoreProdigal 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 MoreAn 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 MoreMini-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 MorePsychology 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 MoreAn 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 MoreThe 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 MoreAEGIS 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 MoreThe 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 MoreHow 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 MoreReview of Shocking Asia (1991)
This film is the first I came across that had anything whatsoever to do with transsexualism.
Read MoreCQ’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 MoreNo 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 MoreWeight 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 MoreSex 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 MoreBeware Philip Salem (1991)
AEGIS’ first advisory was about a pill-peddler named Philip Salem.
Read MoreBeginning Year Number Nine in Chronic 1A (1987)
I used to want to ask Johnson how to control things, how to control even my arms and legs, but he would have only laughed. Johnson is convinced I’ve gone the same place as Hewlitt, that we have both surpassed the need for our bodies, that if he is dedicated enough he might someday be like us. Besides, he would have said, had I been able to ask, how was he to know I wasn’t a spy, sitting immobile in my wheelchair for eight years in order to trick him into revealing his methods?
Read MoreIf 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 MoreButcher John Ronald Brown (2002)
Three thousand miles away Dallas Denny read of the case and immediately recognized Brown’s handiwork. Denny called Stacy Running, the San Diego Assistant District Attorney, and told her assistant about apotemnophilia, a fetish identified by psychologist John Money, in which an individual is sexually turned on by missing limbs and sometimes wishes to become an amputee.
Read MoreJoAnn Roberts: On My Mind (2006)
“On my Mind” was JoAnn Roberts’ column as publisher of LadyLike. Here she remembers and eulogizes a number of transgender community publications, including Transgender Tapestry. I was editor of Tapestry from 2000-2008.
Read MoreAEGIS 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 MoreRoberts 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 MoreFor 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“Transsexual” Challenges Tri-Ess (1996)
I took continuing exception to the exclusionary membership policy of Tri-Ess, The Society for the Second Self. Gay men, bisexuals, and transsexuals were barred from full membership. I repeatedly asked the national leaders to open their membership to anyone would supported the organization’s focus on heterosexual crossdressers and their female partners.
Read MoreA Room of One’s Own (2004)
“There is a genre of transgender fiction that is primarily wish fulfillment. Such works are about seeing in the mirror a person (crossdressed) who approximates to some extent the internal reality of the individual. I believe many of our readers would just love for us to stuff this sort of thing between the covers, but I won’t do it. I want to expose the readers to good work.”
Read MoreLetter to the Editor, Femme Forum (2001)
In her interview in the October issues of Transgender Community News, Jane Ellen Fairax dodges the question of Tri-Ess’ exclusionary membership policy by making it appear that it is the focus of the organization which is under attack. No one, to my knowledge, challenges Tri-Ess’ focus on heterosexual crossdressers and their female partners
Read MoreLetter to the Editor, Out Magazine: Response to Biberpeople (1995)
Elizabeth Cohen’s article “Biberpeople” in the May, 1995 issue of Out reminds me of nothing so much as a 1920s National Geographic piece in which white North American journalists try to convey the essence of being African to other North Americans. My goodness!
Read MoreLetter to Editor Myrna Blyth, Ladies Home Journal (1997)
I happened to channel-surf onto C-Span a week or so ago as you were speaking on women in the twentieth century. You were talking about the internet, dismissing it by saying that in your opinion people primarily turn to and will continue to turn to print sources (i,e, I suppose, LHJ) for information and entertainment, and that electronic forms of communication will never replace them.
Read MoreLetter to Editor Jack Pelham, Etc. Magazine (1995)
There is an unfortunate tendency for female-to-male transsexuals to be reclaimed as lesbian after their deaths. In Brandon Teena’s case, as in Billy Tipton’s, who was discovered to have a female body only after his death, there is no room for doubt that they identified as men. It does them, and all transsexual people, a grave disservice to dishonor them after death by turning them back into women.
Read MoreTula: 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 MoreTwenty-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 MoreFTM 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 MoreAsk Dr. GenderFixIt (Tapestry No. 109) (2005)
My off-the-cuff advice from the infamous Dr. GenderFixIt!
Read MoreGiving Christianity a Bad Name (2005)
This American Taliban, these Western-Mullahs will not stop even when they have succeeded in packing the courts with judges who will not punish those who intimidate, harass, and kill us. They won’t stop when they’ve passed laws forbidding our behavior and mode of dress and outlawing our expressions of sexuality and gender. They won’t stop even when they have robbed us of the very freedoms for which our forefather fought and died.
Read MorePlain Vanilla (2005)
The transgender community is filled with kinky people. I just don’t happen to be one of them. And you know what? It took a while, but these days I’m happy being plain vanilla.
Read MoreThe Last Time I Dropped Acid (2006)
And so I proposed an experiment to a pre-op friend with whom I often talked gender theory—or she proposed the experiment to me, I forget which. We would drop the acid, and while we were peaking, we would look at ourselves, naked, in a full-length mirror. If we were frauds, fakes, creatures of artifice or perversion, “really” men, covert homosexuals, sinners, mockeries or stereotypes of women, if we were mentally ill or unnatural or self-deluding in any way, we would instantly know it; with our egos dismantled by the LSD, we would see ourselves as we really were.
Read MoreThe Naughties (2005)
It’s high time the decade was give a title, and I propose to propose one. Why me, you ask? Why not me? It’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it.
Read MoreAsk Dr. GenderFixIt (Tapestry No. 108) (2005)
Let Dr. GenderFixIt answer your embarrassing questions in a public forum!
Read MoreOn Brains and Transgender Rights (2005)
Many transgendered people—and for that matter, many gay men and lesbians— direct enormous energy (and sometimes money) to attempts to explain why we are the way we are. This is a guilt thing: if our hormones made us do it, if our chromosomes are the culprit, if our brains are female, it’s not our fault. We can’t help it. We’re not responsible, it’s our darn female brains. (My apologies to FTMs.)
Read MoreTen Years of Transgender Protests Against HRC— At An End? (2004)
On Saturday, 7 August, the Human Rights Campaign announced its Board of Directors had voted to pursue only federal workplace protection legislation that is inclusive of gender identity and expression.
Read MoreAbout the Front Cover of Tapestry No. 106 (2004)
This issue’s cover generated considerable discussion among those responsible for this magazine: myself, Art Director Dave Bryant, IFGE Executive Director Denise Leclair, and Board Chair Hawk Stone. We knew the photograph we were considering would evoke strong responses in some of our readers— after all, it had had that effect on each of us. We asked ourselves a number of questions, ranging from “What is the scope and purpose of Transgender Tapestry?” to “What will this cover say about transgender issues in general, and Tapestry in particular?” Ultimately, we decided to use it.
Read MoreAsk Dr. GenderFixIt (Tapestry No. 106) (2004)
Dear Dr. GenderFixIt: My wife is being unreasonable. She severely restricts the amount of female clothing I can keep around the house. I’ve had to move everything to a 20′ x 20′ storage shed. She lets me use only one closet for my femme stuff! Can you give her a clue?
Read MoreIFGE 2004 Conference (2004)
I knew I was in for a memorable time as soon as I looked up after taking my seat in the Delta jet at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson Airport. Making her way up the aisle was none other than 91-year-old Virginia Prince.
Read MoreConcerns About Dr. Anne Lawrence (2004)
In June 2003, Andrea James published on her website a disturbing article about Anne Lawrence’s behavior. Although James’ article is in part an ad hominem (i.e. personal) attack, her allegations about Lawrence’s conduct mirror our own long-held apprehensions and provide corroborating evidence to previous allegations we have received about Lawrence’s behavior.
Read More