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 MoreResults of AEGIS Survey on Community Building (1998)
As AEGIS was winding down in preparation for rebaselining as Gender Education & Advocacy, I mailed a questionnaire to members, asking them to rate the services we provided. As you will see, respondents identifying as providing some sort of professional service to transsexual and transgendered people ranked items quite differently from respondents who did not identify as providing services. \
Read MoreThe Price of Inclusion (1998)
With transgender acceptance by the larger gay/lesbian/bisexual community now the norm, the question must be asked: can and will existing G/L/B organizations take on the support of transsexual and transgendered folks? Can they do a better job than the existing transgender organizations to meet our needs? And more importantly, should we hitch our wagon to organizations which were not interested in meeting our needs in the past and may not be interested in the future?
Read MoreMeeting the Information Needs of Transsexual People (1998)
We’ve been an important voice in transforming the treatment setting from one in which we were grateful for and unquestioning of whatever courtesies and services professionals chose to give us to one in which we have the same rights as other consumers—believe it, in 1990, this was not the case.
Read MoreWhither the Transgender Community? Whither AEGIS? (1997)
The growth of the transgender community, the changes in the ways we view ourselves, demand that our organizations evolve to meet today’s needs. It’s no longer possible for a volunteer-based agency to serve the many persons coming out about their transgender issues, or of persons in transition, or of helping professionals. We need professional organizations with paid staff.
Read MoreHow NOT to Get Rid of Unwanted Hair (1997)
One day, no doubt, some ingenious soul will figure out a safe, fast, painless, and inexpensive method of permanent hair removal. When that happens, those who have had electrolysis will of course be miffed because newcomers will not have to go through the same pain and expense they did. But until that day, it is only those who have had electrolysis who have thrown away their razors.
Read MoreDoes Laser Electrolysis Work? (1997)
Is it possible for coherent (laser) light to kill hair? Certainly. Has anyone yet devised a laser treatment system which kills hair permanently and safely? Perhaps. Has anyone demonstrated permanent hair loss with laser electrolysis. Not yet, at least not to our knowledge.
Read MoreMy Invited Comments on Proposed Revision of HBIGDA Standards of Care (1997)
In issue no. 9 of AEGIS News I took a look at helping professionals as part of the multi-issue Vision 2001: A Gender Odyssey. I expressed my concerns about the in-process revision of the Standards of Care of the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association. I drew heavily upon statements made by Dr. Stephen Levine, chair of the revision committee. Dr. George R. Brown, a member of the committee, took exception to what I wrote. I published his comments as a letter to the editor in AEGIS News No. 10.
Read MoreIs There a Price for Political Activism? (1996)
The transgender and transsexual community tends to fractionate along lines of opinions about political activism: is it a good thing, or a bad thing? Not surprisingly some of those most opposed tend to characterize activists as ego-driven, sensationalizing dunderheads and even to claim that activists’ efforts have set us back rather than moving us forward. Equally unsurprising, some activists show little understanding of or concern for those who wish to keep their identities secret.
Read MoreWinning Transgender Support and Acceptance at PFLAG (1996)
I didn’t think the best place to ask PFLAG, “What constitutes homosexuality when gender is fluid?” was in the hot sun in a milling crowd on a Sunday afternoon, so a week or two later I sent the Atlanta chapter a letter, accompanied by Chrysalis, the AEGIS Transition Series booklets, and other materials, respectfully asking that we begin talking about our common issues.
Read MoreOffice Care of Transgendered and Transsexual Clients (1997)
The very presence of transgendered and transsexual persons can have an impact on other clients and office staff. What should a clinician know about how to address the client, how to prepare billing records, what to tell receptionists and nurses, and which restroom to direct the client to? In other words, what is proper office protocol?
Read MoreAdvisory: Polycystic Ovary Syndrome in FTMs (1997)
This is one of several medical advisories issued by AEGIS after being vetted by our 30-member advisory board. It was released in August, 1997 and re-released in 2002 by Gender Education & Advocacy, Inc., the renamed AEGIS. It also appeared in August, 1997 in the premiere issue of AEGIS’ Transgender Treatment Bulletin, accompanied by an article on PCOS by Jamison Green.
Read MoreWhat is the Role of the Helping Professional? (1997)
This was the lead article in the first issue of AEGIS’ Transgender Treatment Bulletin.
Read MoreTransgender Treatment Bulletin (1997-1998)
In 1997 and 1998 the nonprofit American Educational Gender Information Service published three issues of the Transgender Treatment Bulletin. The bulletin addressed a variety of health issues faced by transsexual and transgender people and was meant to be read by both helping professionals and transfolk. I was editor and I did the layout and some of the writing.
Read MoreVision 2001: A Gender Odyssey (1996-1997)
In mid-1995 The International Foundation for Gender Education—the trans community’s largest organization—did an assessment of the transgender community. I thought it was the most ridiculous thing I had ever seen. Issue 6 of AEGIS News began my own assessment. It was fact-based, at least as much as possible considering the scant data that were available. The assessment ran four or five issues. Jessica Xavier was invaluable as a collaborator and author.
Read MoreOut of the Closet, With Style (1999)
Felix Carroll, the author of this article, didn’t understand how varied the attendance of Fantasia Fair was. To him, everyone was a crossdresser. Aside from that, though, it’s not a bad article. I do wish it didn’t consist almost entirely of one-sentence paragraphs.
Read MoreZum Thema Hormone, mal wieder (1994)
A half-dozen or so of my essays have been translated into a variety of languages, including German, Dutch, and Norwegian. The translations were web-published, and all seem to be gone now. I happened to make a copy of this German translation.
Read MoreTrans Activist Runs for Pine Lake City Council (2001)
The tiny town of Pine Lake, a former resort community located just outside 1-285 near Stone Mountain, will soon learn whether it will be home to another political first for Georgia and possibly the U.S. on Nov. 6.
Read MoreCobb Judge Denies Transgender Name Change (1999)
Cobb County, as Charles Dickens might have said, is a ass.
Read MoreAEGIS 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 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 Boy’s Own (1998)
Under the Benjamin model, it is easy for those who consider themselves to be “true transsexuals” to disparage those who do not profess a desire for those technologies as frivolous or non-serious or unsure of their identity.
Read MoreA Diary of Fantasia Fair (2002)
For more than twenty years Fantasia Fair has been the high spot of my year.
Read MoreFantasia Fair / Transgender Week (1999)
I wrote this at a time when the Board of Directors of Fantasia Fair was considering transitioning the event to a new format and a new name. In the end, it remained simply Fantasia Fair. I remain enthusiastic about the event.
Read MoreTri-Ess’ Moral Crisis (1996)
Tri-Ess needs to make a decision whether it is an organization which is truly for heterosexual crossdressers—in which case it needs to refer those experimenting with sexuality and gender issues to a place where they can get some support and to enforce its membership criterion on a strict definition of who is and who is not a heterosexual crossdresser—or to admit it has slowly evolved in an organization which serves a wide range of persons whose only common point of unity is that they are or once were heterosexual men.
Read MoreInterview 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 MoreClark in Three Parts (1991)
In 1991, in the pages of the Stone Mountain Computer Users Group newsletterm I told the story of my work with a physically disabled man I called Clark.
Read MoreTerrorism: Why Does it Frighten Us So Much? (1998)
Think the nineties made the sixties look like the fifties? Just wait. We’re all going to get even more seriously crazy as soon as 2001 rolls around. Hell, we may just jump the gun and do it at 2000. And if the past behavior of the U.S. government is any predictor, we can expect increased restrictions on our freedoms to travel, own guns, say what we think—which will just piss everyone off even more, and lead to more berserker rages and anonymous bombings.
Read MoreThe Biggest Breakthrough of All (1992)
I think about all these breakthroughs, and more, only to reject them in favor of the biggest breakthrough of all– the unique combination of social and psychological and medical factors which has for the first time in history made it realistic for large numbers of genetic males to live their lives as women, and for large numbers of genetic females to live their lives as men.
Read MoreShould All Transsexuals Publicy Identify Themselves? (1990)
This is my early take on transsexual stealth vs. being out.
Read MoreSex and Gender Characteristics: How Men and Women Differ (1990)
The average person is well aware that there are anatomical and behavioral differences in men and women, but when pressed may be unable to objectively describe any but the more obvious differences. It is the gestalt—the summation of characteristics—that causes us to identify a person as a male or a female.
Read MoreThe Standards of Care: What Are They? (1990)
Most transsexuals, and probably most physicians and psychologists, don’t realize there is a set of minimum guidelines for hormonal and surgical treatment of transsexual people. These guidelines were developed in 1979 and were last revised in 1981. They are called the Standards of Care.
Read MoreTransitioning (1990)
A word of encouragement to transsexuals who are early in their journey.
Read MoreWhat is a Transsexual? (1990)
This article was published, in slightly watered-down form, on page 10 of Insight, Winter, 1990. I wrote it in response to a letter of complaint from Catlin Kiernan, a member of the support group of the Montgomery Institute support group in Atlanta.
Read MoreHow I Changed My Name by Myself Without Even a Single Lawyer (1989)
Most transsexuals must sooner or later get rid of their birth name and replace it with a name of their choosing– one which is in keeping with their chosen gender. It is possible to change one’s name without resorting to the legal system (by using the new name exclusively for a period of time), but most of us do go through the courts. I recently changed my name in this way, but without using a lawyer; it saved me about two hundred dollars.
Read MoreFrom Dallas’ Desk (1990)
If I have learned anything in in my year as director, it is that transsexual persons should be good consumers— but often are not. Transsexual people tend to face the reality of their inner selves through a haze of doubt, guilt, insecurity, and ignorance; this is compounded by the apathy, distrust, prejudice, and ignorance of the general public— and, unfortunately, sometimes of service providers.
Read MoreSex Reassignment Surgery: A Matter of Individual Choice (1995)
The decision to have or not have genital surgery is the right and responsibility of the individual. It’s important, however, that at some point in their transgender or transsexual career, each individual realize that it is just that: an individual decision, and not a validation, not a merit badge, not a red badge of courage. Surgery, or the desire for it, is not a mark of one’s “realness” or dedication, but one of many options that we can choose from in our transgender careers. If we choose to have it, then we should be supported in our decision, and we should support the decision of others not to have it.
Read MoreMy First Time (1989)
In the late 1970s, desperate to find support for my transsexualism but unable to do so, I came across a television program that featured crossdressers from Tri-Ess, The Society for the Second Self. In hopes of getting referrals I wrote for information, telling them I was transsexual. I was put in touch with the late Virginia Prince who told me (or so I thought) I was crazy. Put off by the discriminatory membership policy, I never joined. Finally, ten years later, I sent Tri-Ess a check.
Read MoreTransition 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 MoreMillenimania (2000)
We’re about to turn a corner. A year is ending. A decade is ending. A century is ending. A millennium is ending. We all know it, and we’re all excited and a bit frightened by it. We’re wound up like clockwork toys, ready to party like it’s 1999, ready to see the great comet come out of the sky and smash into the earth. We’re prepared to meet Jesus.
Read MoreTraditional Families (1998)
In promoting their vision of the “family,” the radical right is not pro-family at all. What the right favors is a deviant 1950’s Ward and June Cleaver lily-white sensibility that sacrifices substance for style. Rather that acknowledging its diversity and facing its problems, the “traditional” family of the radical right sweeps everything under the carpet.
Read MoreThe T-Shirt That Changed the World (1998)
The Transexual Menace t-shirt doesn’t have universal acceptance. It’s upfront and in-your face, and some transpeople don’t like that. Certainly, not everyone would want to wear one, but then those who don’t want to wear them don’t have to. But they can, with pride and in relative safety. And that’s what the black t-shirt has given us.
Read MoreThe Transgender Community’s Lack of Consensus Around Identity Politics (1998)
When we fight for our rights on the basis of our constructed social identities, we of necessity exclude those with other identities. This leads to a series of political movements in which groups campaign separately for their rights rather than uniting to fight for rights which encompass all categories.
Read MoreMy Drug Habit (1999)
Of all the drugs with which I experimented, estrogen was without doubt the most potent. Not only was it psychoactive, opening doors of perception otherwise closed; it was a metamorphic drug, taking my body through the physical changes of the feminine puberty I had been denied. It reshaped by body and my mind. And subtle it was, marking changes not in minutes or hours or even days, but over months and years, so a decade after I had begun taking it I was an entirely different person than I would have been without it.
Read MoreJessica Xavier and Riki Ann Wilchins Are Taking Heat They Don’t Deserve (1998)
Jessica Xavier and Riki Ann Wilchins are taking heat they don’t deserve.
Read MoreThe Clarke Institute of Psychiatry: Canada’s shame (1998)
The Clarke is a Jurassic gender clinic, an anachronism. It is a national embarrassment, a holdover from the dark ages of the early gender clinics, when transsexuals were treated with contempt and impunity– a place which should be censured rather than licensed as Canada’s ultimate experts on transsexualism– for, you see, despite its opinion to the contrary, The Clarke in fact knows very little about transsexuals or transsexualism, and most of what it does know is wrong.
Read MoreNobody’s Transvestite Fantasy (1999)
My personal decision to change sex wasn’t an easy one. It was predicated on a number of factors, including the aforementioned feminine facial features, a long history of successfully passing in public while crossdressed, being unencumbered by marriage (Lynne and I were divorced in 1977), children, social circumstances, education, or career, and by my lifelong desire to be a woman.
Read MoreBeyond the Media Circus: A Perspective on Transsexualism (1999)
Rather than seeing transsexual people as crippled, we should see them as enabled. They have overcome or are setting out to overcome something that has made them miserable for their entire lives. They should be proud of themselves, and whether or not we approve of what they have done, we should be proud of them.
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