GenderLife Forum: The Information Exchange

Like many of you, I'd heard to transsexuals back when I was very young in the 1970s, but I hadn't heard of anyone specific until I saw an article on "A Current Affair" about a TS named Sarah who was stuck somewhere in the middle, because she couldn't afford her SRS. I learned about Tula Cossey almost at the same time, and about Rene Richards very quickly afterwards.

I had encountered transgendered characters in fiction before then, and I knew that there was a way to finalize, or make perment, the change, using surgery and hormones, but I had no real, concrete examples of people transitioning until after I'd graduated from high school.

The first TS I ever met was a post-op at my therapist's office. Being the sort of person I am, we hit it off and became as friendly as our glancing relationship permitted.

Renee Richards, followed by Wendy Carlos.

I disliked Renee (I was aware of the tennis controversy), but absolutely loved Wendy. I even toyed with building a synth in the late 70's because of my admiration for Wendy.

Paula Grossman

She was a teacher in New Jersey that was fired from her job after transitioning during the summer break. This was in 1968. It made the local newspapers because she was suing her local Board of Education over her dismissal. She won on appeal, BTW. There was a nice picture with her and her wife in the paper. I was starting third grade, and when I read about her, I knew I wasn't alone. I also wasn't sure where to go as I still remembered losing the "I'm a girl - no you're a boy" discussion with my parents a few years earlier.


The first TS I met was a woman that came into the store I worked in during high school. She was just beginning her transition and she had a lot of male qualities to her. This was in 1977 or 1978. Fascinated didn't begin to describe what I was feeling. It really, really hurt that the idiots that I worked with didn't understand what she was going through and just used her as a focal point for terrible jokes and abuse behind her back.

By the time that Renee Richards hit the news I'd already known about Wendy Carlos - we had her music in our high school radio station record library.

Caroline Cossey

In my early teens I some small factual information about transsexuals and specifically of Christine Jorgensen via gingerly offered inquiries to my Father, a surgeon specializing in otolaryngology. Sketchy information about Lili Elbe and others that followed came to me, what I tend to think of that as “head” knowledge gleaned in the pursuit of self-understanding.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christine_Jorgensen

http://www.christinereveals.com

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lili_Elbe

The arts and sciences were my true religion as a child. Books, guitar, piano the canon (kanon / κανών) instruments in the practice of my faith. Infinite progressions and cascading walls of light defined by prose framed the architecture of my hours. Slippery hours spent for the most part in solitude.

The person that comes to mind in answer to the question would be the first emotional connection I made with someone. It was a favored artist of mine, Wendy Carlos whose life story reached out to the kindred spirit in me. The knowledge of Wendy Carlos life as I headed into my 20s helped pull me out a depressive spiral, reaffirmed my resolve to seek medical assistance (2nd time) from my keepers to transition.

http://www.wendycarlos.com

She remains on that list of people in that back of my mind that I've always wanted to meet and thank for simply existing, for being who they are.

xox

Jan Morris was my first.

In 1983 my sister gave me a copy of Conundrum to read, and it was very enlightening. It was right after reading that book that I made my first feeble attempt at transitioning, which was quickly aborted thanks to a very poor choice in therapists.

I wont get into that here

Pam

Caroline Cossey "Tula" was the first that I was aware of.

Showing off your youth again Erika!! For me it was Christine Jorgensen back in the sixties - or maybe the fifties. Yeah - musta been the fifties because I remember that radio interview.

I have, if I can find it these days, a first printing of the transexual phenomena by Harold B. - picked it up in 1966 as a freshman in college.

Christine Jorgensen. It was 1967, I was 12, and I saw the paperback edition of her autobiography in the book rack at my neighborhood Lamston's (a 5 and 10 chain, sort of like Woolworth's, that used to exist in Manhattan). I stood there and read the whole thing, in a corner, hidden behind a column. (Because, of course, I wouldn't have had the courage to buy it in a million years.) I may have heard of her already, but this was certainly the first detailed information on any TS woman I'd ever seen. I still remember my heart pounding while I read it. And, after reading it, I at least had the glimmer of a realization that what I'd always wanted was actually possible. At least for her. Even though I didn't believe for many, many years to come that it was possible for me too.

The first *fictional* girl-who-was-once-a-boy-but-had-really-always-been-a-girl I ever read about was Ozma, in the Land of Oz. Which I read when I was 5, and which, for obvious reasons, was completely fascinating to me.

Donna