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Read MoreBody of Work
I’m a prolific writer, and much of my work is archived here. You’ll find my books, essays, magazine and journal articles, book chapters, interviews, and presentations from conferences; my work as editor of two national journals and Executive Director of The American Educational Gender Information Service; and short stories, novels, plays, poetry, and songs. My entire creative output is online here.
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Read MoreBlogs
I’ve been blogging since 2006 and have writen thousands of image-filled posts. One blog is for whatever I find interesting or decide to write about. Another is about my tiny town of Pine Lake, Georgia, and yet another about the 3-D virtual world Second Life. Click Read More to learn about and visit them.
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Read MoreActivism
I’ve been writing about and advocating for transsexual and transgender people since 1988. In 1990 I founded AEGIS, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, where I published and disseminated materials, started a support group, and launched and maintained a telephone help line. In this century I’ve served and continue to serve in leadership positions in other trans organizations. I am still writing prolifically about trans issues.
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Read MoreEditing and Layout
In the 1990s I created, edited, and laid out a magazine called Chrysalis, four or five newsletters, and books. Between 1999 and 2008 I was editor of Transgender Tapestry, a magazine published by the International Foundation for Gender Education. In the early 2000s I edited and laid out a political newsletter in my tiny town of 800 souls. Now I’m designing and populating this website!
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Read MoreMusic and Creative Writing
Fiction and music are a big part of my life. I wrote my first short stories and poems in high school and haven’t stopped. I’ve been performing and writing songs since my teens. My best are posted here as rough demos. My short stories, novels, poetry, and plays are here as well. To view and listen, click Read More or use the menus at top.
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Read MorePhotography
For my fourteenth Christmas my parents gave me a camera. It was inexpensive and flimsy and wasn’t light-proof, but I loved it. These days photography is an absolute joy, thanks to my Canon digital SLR and my virtual camera in Second Life. Click Read More to view samples of my work.
Most Recent Articles
The Campaigns Against Transsexuals: Part I (2013)
Today I’m talking about a remarkable—and successful—plot to end sex reassignment in the United States. Yes, right here in River City! The year was 1979.
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Transgender Communities in the United States in the Late Twentieth Century (2006)
What were the historical roots of this larger transgender community, and how did it so quickly arise and so quickly grow? What kept these communities apart for so many years, and what eventually brought them together?
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First Contact: Transgender Community Educational Efforts in the Late Twentieth Century (Keynote, 2009)
Why is trans education important? Well, ask yourself if there was ever a time in your life when you badly needed information about who you were, what you could do about it, who you could be, and how you could plan your life. If you’re like me, you were at one time or another, and maybe even for half your life, desperate for such information.
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Current Concepts in Transgender Identity (1998)
Current Concepts is an edited textbook; I was privileged to be the editor. The text consists of emerging ideas about trans* issues authored by physicians, psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, historians, and advocates, many with decades of experience in the field. The work is in part an homage to Richard Green and John Money’s 1969 edited text Transsexualism and Sex Reassignment, which established early treatment protocols. Both Green and Money contributed chapters to Current Concepts. Of Current Concepts, Of just how much things have changed, Green wrote in his chapter, “I am struck at the outset that the biggest change with this new text may be that it is edited by a transsexual.”
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Black Telephones, White Refrigerators: Rethinking Christine Jorgensen (1998)
If she changed the world for nontranssexual people, Jorgensen had an even more profound effect on people who were like her. Her story galvanized many transsexual men and women into seeking the same sort of medical treatment. In 1953, Christine Hamburger published a paper in which he described receiving 465 letters from men and women, desperately begging for a “sex change.” Neither he, nor anyone else, was prepared to oblige them.
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Gender Variability, Transsexuals, Crossdressers, and Others (2007)
This draft differs in small way from the printed version. I was unable to scan the printed pages without breaking the book’s spine. The chapter appears here courtesy of Praeger Publishers.
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Coming of Age in the Land of Two Genders (1997)
I was honored to be asked to make a contribution to this book of autobiographies of famous sexologists.
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Terminology, Gender Diversity, and the Primacy of Gender (2000)
I’m grateful to Dr. Sandra Cole for allowing me to be second author of this chapter.
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Gender Identity: From Dualism to Diversity (2007)
This draft differs in small ways from the printed version. I was unable to scan the printed pages without breaking the book’s spine. The chapter appears here courtesy of Praeger Publishers.
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Discovering Who You Are (1991)
Much has changed since I wrote this series of booklets in the early 1990’s. Not only have I become older and hopefully wiser, but there has been a revolution in the way gender identity issues are viewed. The term “gender dysphoria,” with its implication of mental illness, does not accurately describe the transgender process for all of us, and for most of us, we are only dysphoric for a relatively short time.
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Deciding What to Do About Your Gender Dysphoria (1991)
Much has changed since I wrote this series of booklets in the early 1990’s. Not only have I become older and hopefully wiser, but there has been a revolution in the way gender identity issues are viewed. The term “gender dysphoria,” with its implication of mental illness, does not accurately describe the transgender process for all of us, and for most of us, we are only dysphoric for a relatively short time.
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Dealing With Your Feelings (1991)
This was the first of a series of booklets I wrote while executive director of nonprofit American Educational Gender Information service.
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A Word from the Editor (Chrysalis, 1991-1998)
Here are the Word From the Editor/Publisher columns from the various issues of Chrysalis.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Ariadne Kane Interviews Dallas Denny (2005)
I chanced across this video, which was made by LipTV in 2005. I had had no idea it was available online. In it, I talk with Ariadne Kane about Fantasia Fair and a little about myself.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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).
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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.
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Results 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. \
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The 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?
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Meeting 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.
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Whither 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.
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How 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.
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