Why Did He Cut Off That Man’s Leg? (1999)
Dallas Denny, an Atlanta-based transgender author and activist who periodically posts warnings about Brown on the Internet, says that among transsexuals he was known as “Table Top Brown” for his willingness to operate in kitchens, garages and motel rooms.
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Of Men, Women, and Those Living Somewhere in Between (1997)
“When you get political, you get a great sense of pride in yourself,” says Denny, herself a transsexual. “People struggle with this, often for decades. It can’t be cured. It is not a disease. It is just a way to be human, People are just trying to live their lives with dignity and respect for themselves.”
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New Survey Changes Trans Politics, Activists Say (2002)
My feeling about the survey in questions was—and remains—that HRC hoped to gather data to back up their “we’ll come back and get you later, we promise” approach to ENDA—and it blew up in their face.
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Death From Silicone Injections in South Georgia (2004-2005)
In this century police and prosecutors have begun to pay attention to deaths from illegal injections of silicone. They occur with depressing regularity.
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A Stranger in My Pants (2002)
Today, transgender advocates are working to overturn not only rigid gender stereotypes, but the fundamental assumption—understood and accepted intuitively by any child— that there are only two sexes, and if you’re not one, then you’ve got to be the other.
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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.
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Transsexuals Just Want to Feel Comfortable in Their Own Bodies (1997)
It’s offensive when heterosexuals attempt to explain homosexuality, having never been there, and it’s equally offensive when nontranssexuals attempt to explain transsexualism. I’m sure Mr. Varnell’s intentions were good, but his opinion is ill-informed and in my opinion should never have seen print. Quite frankly, transsexuals neither need nor want facile analyses of transexualism by nontransexuals.
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Letter to the Editor, San Francisco Bay Times (1995)
Having been out for so long, perhaps Ms. O’Hartigan has forgotten that most post-process transsexuals become woodworkers and assimilate into mainstream society. While stealth transsexuals are fueled by shame, it is arrogant and harmful to not respect their decisions to leave anonymous lives. For this reason, it is incumbent upon others to be damn sure that someone is out before putting their names in print.
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Letter to the Editor, Southern Voice: Response to Chris Crain (2001)
Chris Crain has it backwards. Transgendered people will not be protected by an Employment Nondiscrimination Act (ENDA) without language protecting gender variance—nor will any gay man or lesbian whose dress, speech, or mannerisms vary from the ideal heterosexual norm.
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Letter to the Editor, Southern Voice (2002)
The results show great similarities in attitudes toward transgendered people and gay men and lesbians. In plain language, the same people who dislike you also dislike us, and your supporters are our supporters. These results significantly weaken arguments that the transgendered are a political liability for the movement. It would be an injustice to ignore them.
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Letter to APA Monitor (1998)
The murder of San Diego therapist Rita Powers by one of her clients and the subsequent suicide of the client was a tragedy, and we deplore the actions of the client. However, we find insensitive and unprofessional the Monitor’s use of male pronouns and descriptive terms like “gunman” and “the man” to describe the client.
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Letter to the Editor, RE Michael Alvear’s He Said, She Said, Washington Blade (2003)
Michael Alvear should be called to task for his bigoted “He Said, She Said” column of April 11, and the editor of the Washington Blade should think twice about allowing any more such transphobic drivel in future issues.
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Letter to Cincinnati City Beat: Got it Backwards (1997)
Mr. Hunter shows his true colors when he writes, early in his article, ” I believe in equal rights for all. But…” There is no such thing “equal but.” Either we are all equal, or a privileged elite looks down on and exploits the rest of us
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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.
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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.
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VIC-20 is a People Pleaser at Scales School (1986)
On April 14 the VIC-20s were going at Scales Elementary School in Brentwood, Tennessee, near Nashville. Members of the Nashville Commodore Users Group lined the walls of the cafeteria, each manning a VIC, and explained various aspects of the rainbow machine to fascinated members of the Parent-Teacher Association. One Machine played music, another spoke with the help of a Votrax Type ‘n’ Talk speech synthesizer, a third drew beautiful Super Expander graphics, and a fourth showed how helpful the VIC can be in keeping track of information like grades and attendance. One user had written a program that told where to look in the sky at any time to find satellites.
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Terrorism: 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.
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Mailing Letters After Midnight (1992)
Women inhabit different space than men, and one characteristic of their space is they have to protect it from unwelcome intrusions by men. That intrusion can come violently, as rape, and every woman learns a variety of protective strategies. High up on the list, somewhere between “Don’t climb naked on the bar’s pool table unless you want to get 8-balled” and “Have your keys out before you get to the car” is this invective: “Never, ever walk down the street in skirts and high heels to mail a letter after midnight.”
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A Resume for Your New Role (1990)
There are resumes and there are resumes. The format, style, and physical appearance of yours will make either a negative or positive impression on those who read it– it is, after all, a one or two page summary of your life.
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Traditional 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.
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Technologies of Transformation (2011)
The last half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth saw advances in medical procedures that made it possible for men and women to more effectively alter their bodies toward that of the non-natal sex. While none of these technologies were developed with sex reassignment in mind, they were easily adapted and modified by medical professionals and by transsexuals themselves and have come into common use to create somatic changes.
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ENDA Without the “T” is Toothless For All (2001)
This letter was a response to an editorial by he ever-clueless Chris Crain.
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Transgendered Won’t Stop ENDA (Letter to Editor, Southern Voice, 1999)
While a few trans activists are actively opposed to a non-inclusive ENDA, the rest of us are merely working toward our own inclusion
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Reed Erickson (1998)
Reed Erickson was an important in the history of transsexualism. It’s unfortunate he’s been almost forgotten, for he did more for transsexual people than anyone else, with the possible exception of Christine Jorgensen and Dr. Harry Benjamin. His story, although obscured by time and his history of protecting his privacy, is a fascinating one that was almost lost but is slowly emerging through the historical research of Dr. Aaron Devor, a Sociologist at the University of Victoria in British Columbia.
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“Tabletop” John Brown Gets His (1999)
An article by R.S. Spitz, published in Viva magazine in the mid-1970s, identified Brown as one of the worst plastic surgeons in the United States. Even then, Brown was doing male-to-female sex reassignment surgery— badly, I might add. He never lacked for customers, since his only criterion for surgery was whether the check cleared. He was famous for doing SRS in motel rooms and on kitchen tables, leaving his victim to wake up in the back seat of her car or on a couch in an abandoned house.
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The Problem (1991)
They tell me I’m a genius, and I suppose maybe I am, for I’m the only one I know who has singlehandedly changed herself from a boy into a girl. Laura Ann Sykes, Nobel winner in the new category, Self‑Initiated Sex Change. Thank you, thank you.
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Review of Marjorie Garber, Vested Interests (1992)
Crossdressers tell us about ourselves, and about society and culture by bending the rules of normative behavior and dress. Garber illustrates this point again and again, drawing examples from history, from Elizabethan theater, from rock and roll, from the personal histories of crossdressing men and women.
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