A Gender Variance Who's Who

Most countries use their postal systems to censor correspondence and publications.   This is in addition to censorship though the court system.  The usual excuse is that of security, but once censorship is in place it often extends to sex and gender topics.   And of course this censorship means that somebody at the post office opens your parcels to check inside.

Shaffer did a BS in biology at the California Institute of Technology. She was a college room-mate of Kay Brown. In 1979 Joy had transgender surgery.

In 1980 Mary Elizabeth Clark, Jude Patton, Joy Shaffer, Carol Katz, Dianne Saunders and Kay Brown founded the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Southern California Transsexual Rights committee, building on what Vern Bullough had done with the ACLU in the area on the 1960s.

Joy and Kay mid 1980s

In 1981 Joy started medical school, and had an MD from Stanford University in 1985. In 1995 Dr Shaffer founded Seahorse Medical Clinic in San Jose, California. She worked with Anne Lawrence, and introduced Lawrence to Kay Brown.

That same year she was quoted in an article in the New York Times on the brain research of Dutch researcher Dick Swaab which had made claims of a brain difference in MTF transsexuals. She said that Swaab's results corresponded to what she and her colleagues were finding using magnetic resonance imaging technology to scan brains.

Joy wrote the foreword for Transgender Care, 1997. Dr Shaffer was a member of HBIGDA/WPATH, the American College of Physicians, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine and the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association.

The clinic in San Jose continued until 2005, and was a major resource for transsexuals in that area.

Original February 2008. Revised September 2013. 

Vern Bullough was born and raised in Salt Lake City.  He and his high-school sweetheart, Bonnie Uckerman (1927 - 1996), left the Mormon Church as teenagers in protest against its then exclusion of black people.  Bonnie's mother left her family to live with a woman, Berry Berryman.  Vern found this fascinating and asked many questions and met their gay and lesbian friends.  Vern and Bonnie married in 1947, and had two children. 

After being in the US Army, Vern did a BA in history at the University of Utah and an MA and PhD in 1954 at Chicago University, using GI Bill Benefits. He specialized in the Middle Ages and did a dissertation on medical education.  He was hired the same year to teach at Youngstown University in Ohio. 

In 1959 he became a professor of history at San Fernando Valley State College  (which later became California State University at Northridge), and Bonnie, already a nurse, completed a PhD in Sociology.  Shortly afterwards Vern became associated with Virginia Prince.   He also became involved with the homophile organization, ONE, Inc and became head of the San Fernando Valley chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). 

Vern and Bonnie became friends with Prince and visited Virginia and his wife Doreen at home.  They attended the second meeting of the Hose and Heel Club in 1960.  Having published several articles and books on the early history of medicine and nursing, Vern felt that he could look at sex, and published The History of Prostitution in 1964.  Working with ONE, Inc, where he came to know Harry Hay, Jim Kepner and Don Slater, Vern was successful in getting the San Fernando Valley chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to adopt a policy of protection of homosexuals, transvestites and transsexuals.  He was chairman when the local ACLU was very involved in the struggle to desegregate Los Angeles City schools.

In 1965 ONE, Inc split into two competing factions, and Vern Bullough was one of only two people who were able to maintain working relationships with both sides.  In 1966 the national ACLU adopted a national policy re homosexuals, transvestites and transsexuals based on Bullough's draft.

He rode in an early gay parade in Hollywood in 1966 that Slater organized to demand that gays be drafted to serve in the Vietnam War. Bullough opposed the war but supported gays' rights to serve in the military.  That same year Vern was able to visit West Asia on a Fulbright scholarship.   However the trip was marred when his son David was killed in a hit-and-run accident in Jerusalem.  The Bulloughs subsequently adopted three children of different races, two of whom are gay.

Vern allied himself with gay causes, and was a founder of gay caucuses in the American Historical Association and the American Sociological Association. He was a charter member of the original Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG), which was founded in Los Angeles.  He established the Vern and Bonnie Bullough Collection on Sex and Gender, housed at the campus' Oviatt Library.  He “halfway encouraged” John Brown to do transsexual surgery, as he admits with chagrin. In 1974 Vern and Bonnie organized a conference in Los Angeles under the auspices of the Institute for the Study of Human Resources (ISHR, associated with ONE and sponsored by Reed Erickson) which brought together Virginia Prince, Christine Jorgensen, Zelda Suplee, Laud Humphries, Christopher Isherwood and Evelyn Hooker.  The same year he and Bonnie published, The Subordinate Sex, 1974. This was his first book sponsored by the millionaire trans man Reed Erickson, and the one in which he made the claim that Islam is a sex-positive religion.

In 1976 Vern Bullough, Dorr Legg and other members of ONE, Inc finally published their An Annotated Bibliography of Homosexuality: In Two Volumes, which also contained the largest bibliography of transvestite and transsexual material available at that time.  His Sexual Variance  of the same year was again sponsored by Reed Erickson.  It contains many examples of gay and transgender behavior showing that it differs across time and between cultures.

Bonnie progressed from sociology instructor to professor of nursing, chair of primary care and coordinator of the graduate nursing program.

In 1979 Virginia Prince gave a talk at Northridge and Vern introduced her to his colleague, Richard Docter.  Vern published his Homosexuality, a History, the final book sponsored by Reed Erickson.  Chapter 10 is called “Cross-Dressing: Transvestism, Transsexualism, and Homosexuality” in which only one real transvestite is named: his friend, the avowed non-homosexual, Virginia Prince. He also mentions the Chevalier d’Eon, Lili Elvenes (Elbe) and Christine Jorgensen who were not homosexual either. But only these few. For some reason, even at the price of damaging the logic of his book, he chose not to mention at all any of José Sarria, Sylvia Rivera, Marsha P. Johnson, Bunny Breckinridge, Jimmy Donahue, Miss Destiny, Tamara Rees, Patricia Morgan, Norma Jackson, Hedy Jo Star, Candy Darling, Minette, Rachel Harlow, Rae Bourbon, Francis Renault, Dawn Langley Simmons, Abby Sinclair, Angela Douglas, Perry Desmond, Lee Brewster, Liz Eden, Holly Woodlawn, Carlotta. This was the first sign that he was censoring the existence of gay/androphilic trans women.

Later that year Vern and Bonnie Bullough moved to the State University of New York at Buffalo where Vern was dean of natural and social sciences, and Bonnie was dean of nursing.  In 1981 Vern earned a Batchelor of Science in Nursing from California State University, Long Beach, and proudly put his Registered Nurse license number on his CV.    In 1992 he was honored by the International Humanist and Ethical Union, and was their chairman 1995-6.  He was also on the editorial board of Paidika: The Journal of Paedophilia. 

In 1993 Vern and Bonnie Bullough returned to Los Angeles after their retirement. Vern again taught at Northridge as an adjunct professor until 2003. That year Vern and Bonnie published Cross Dressing, Sex, and Gender, specifically on trans people and their doctors. In the chapter “Transsexualism” they discuss (only) 6 known transsexuals: Lili Elbe (surgery 1931), Alan Hart (1918), Roberta Cowell (1951), Michael Dillon (1949), Christine Jorgensen (1953) and Jan Morris (1972)– none of whom, incidentally, had a male partner. He does also mention Coccinelle (1958), who had three husbands after her operation, but he puts her in the “Drag Queens and Cross Dressing on the Stage” chapter rather than the “Transsexualism” chapter, and omits all mention of her husbands. There is no mention at all of April Ashley (1960) whose divorce by her husband set such an unfortunate precedent, but then she could not be mentioned without admitting that she had a husband. Almost all the people that I mentioned in a previous paragraph are still apparently unknown to the Bulloughs, as are the extra people who were in the news in the additional 14 years. Of those mentioned, only Jan Morris and Coccinelle transitioned later than Jorgensen in 1953. Thus in the 40 years prior to writing their book, the Bulloughs seem to have become aware of only two more transsexuals, although they knew of Michael Dillon from Liz Hodgkinson's 1989 biography rather than from the media kerfuffle in 1958. In the “Organized Transvestism” chapter, again, only his friend Virginia Prince is mentioned, and the equally important work by Louise Lawrence, José Sarria and Sylvia Rivera is totally ignored.  And one more thing: The Bulloughs ignore completely the organizations for female-to-males. Surely they would not omit Reed Erickson, his former sponsor? Actually they do. But the next major ftm organizer is Louis Sullivan. Okay, he is briefly mentioned (p306) as a female cross-dresser who finds men's clothing erotic. They suppress the fact that he transitioned to male, and – this fits the pattern - that he became a man to be a gay man, a role that he tragically embraced to the point of dying of Aids.

Bonnie Bullough died in 1996, just before the publication of the anthology Gender Blending edited by herself, Vern and James Elias.  Vern quickly re-married.

In 2004 Vern encouraged Richard Docter to write and publish his biography of Virginia Prince and provided a Preface.
Helen Boyd asked Bullough to comment on rumors that he must be a cross-dresser because of his strong interests in the transgender community. Others assumed that he was gay and were disappointed to learn that he was an avowed heterosexual.

"If I was everything I wrote books about, I would probably be a very screwed-up person," he said, mentioning his works on sadomasochism, pedophilia, masturbation and other forms of sexual expression. I consider myself a sex researcher, and I will admit to having a strong interest in the way people sexually express themselves."

In his final book with Ariadne Kane, Crossing Sexual Boundaries, 2006, Bullough's Introduction again - as we now expect - fails to mention any transsexuals with male lovers/husbands, as does the book itself which contains 18 mtf and 2 ftm autobiographical essays, but not a single one in which the person has a male spouse. As Kane has said: "We tried to involve contributors from all sectors of the gender spectrum, including androgynes, non operative and post-operative, individuals, spouses and close friends of ‘T’ people" --- and they could not find a single trans person with a male partner!!!

Bullough died later in 2006, of cancer.  He was 77.  

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Apparently Bullough was uncomfortable with transsexuals or transvestites who have male partners. This would explain why he was unable to name any gay transvestites or transsexuals in his 1979 book, and why Coccinelle is put in the other chapter in the 1993 book.  However this is odd in that he worked so well with gay organizations as well as with Virginia Prince.  He is even critical of Prince for proclaiming that transvestites are necessarily heterosexual.  And yet the omission is plainly there in his books.  I suspect somehow the influence of Prince, who apparently also had input into the non-presence of gay transvestites in Harry Benjamin's book and scale. 

Photo of Bullough, Prince, and Docter from Docter's book.

In his Preface to Richard Docter’s biography of Virginia Prince Bullough makes the claim – that surprisingly has been ignored in the debate about social construction - that “there is no evidence in Western culture of what might be called a heterosexual transvestite consciousness before the twentieth century”, and probably not before Magnus Hirschfield modified the term 'transvestite' in 1910.

Michel Foucault is associated with the claim that there were no homosexuals before that term was coined in 1869, and this claim is wrongly taken to represent the social constructionist position. The historian Rictor Norton has written extensively against social constructionism largely by demonstrating the many homosexuals who existed and had sex before 1869.

What a shame that Bullough made this claim only in a Preface to someone else's book. Could someone pay attention to the claim and either refute it or develop it?
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• Vern L. Bullough. Sexual Variance in Society and History. New York: Wiley 1976.
• Vern L. Bullough. Homosexuality, a History. New York: New American Library 1979.
• Vern L. Bullough & Bonnie Bullough. Cross Dressing, Sex, and Gender. University of Pennsylvania Press 1993. 
• Vern L. Bullough.  "In Memory of Bonnie Bullough".  The Journal of Sex Research, 33,3, 1996: 179-181.   
• Vern L. Bullough, Bonnie Bullough & James Elias (ed). Gender Blending. Amherst NY: Prometheus Books 1997. 
• Raj Ayyar.  "America's Foremost Historian of Sexuality: Vern L. Bullough, RN, PhD ".  Gay Today, 01/01/03.  http://gaytoday.com/interview/010103in.asp.
• Vern L. Bullough. “Preface” in Richard F Docter. From Man to Woman: The Transgender Journey of Virginia Prince. Docter Press xiv, 149 pp 2004. 
• Helen Boyd.  "Five Questions With… Vern Bullough".  en|Gender, November 16, 2005.   www.myhusbandbetty.com/2005/11/16/five-questions-with-vern-bullough.
• J. Ari Kane-Demaios (Ariadne Kane) & Vern L. Bullough (eds) Crossing Sexual Boundaries: Transgender Journeys, Uncharted Paths Prometheus Books, 365 pp, 2006. 
• Elaine Woo.  "Vern Bullough, 77; Prolific Author Was Scholar of Sex History".  Los Angeles Times, July 2, 2006.  http://articles.latimes.com/2006/jul/02/local/me-bullough2.
• Wayne Dynes.  "Vern Bullough, 1928 - 2006".  Dyneslines, July 02, 2006.   http://dyneslines.blogspot.ca/2006/07/vern-bullough-1928-2006.html.
• Jeremy Pearce.  "Vern Leroy Bullough, 77, Noted Medical Historian, Dies" The New York Times, July 3, 2006.  www.nytimes.com/2006/07/03/us/03bullough.html.
• www.vernbullough.com. 

 EN.WIKIPEDIA     AMAZON.COM     WORLDCAT   PHILOSOPEDIA    PHILOSOPEDIA(Bonnie Bullough)  BOYWIKI  

Part 1 – Youth and First marriage
Bibliography
Part II – Second Marriage
Part III – Femmiphilic activist
Part IV – Full-time Living
Part V – Transgenderist dowager
Jargon terms and general comments

Virginia Prince was an adviser to Harry Benjamin for his 1966 seminal The Transsexual Phenomenon, consulted on the transvestite types, but not on Benjamin’s type IV, nonsurgical transsexual, a role that Prince did not adopt until 1968. The three types of transvestite in Benjamin's schema: pseudo, fetishistic and true were a direct reflection of what Prince had been advocating, and left nowhere for gay transvestites, female impersonators nor for female cross dressers. Benjamin proposed a scale or typology divided into six types: Transvestite (Pseudo), Transvestite (Fetishistic), Transvestite (True), Transsexual (Nonsurgical), Transsexual (Moderate intensity),Transsexual (High intensity).

Prince responded with a seven-type scale (Benjamin: 40):

1. Fetishist
2. Low intensity TV
3. True femmiphile TV
4. Asexual type
5. Gender type TS
6. Intensive sexual type TS
7. Operated TS

As the book came out, Mr Lowman was being divorced by Doreen, and was selling his share of Cardinal Industries. He said that he sold it for 10 times his initial investment. Doreen retained more than half of the assets including the house in Nichols Canyon. Arnold moved to a small rented house in Laurel Canyon.¹ Harry Benjamin wrote to the US Passport Bureau in support of Prince's application for a passport in her female name. Without comment the request was granted. (Benjamin:169-170)

The same year Agnes confessed to Dr Stoller that she had indeed taken external estrogens, and that she was not intersex.

Early that year Prince urged FPE members to remember that homophile advances rebounded in their interest:

"The homophile community is on the march AND on the way to gaining acceptance…. Some of the more narrow minded of our sister TVs see nothing good in anything that homosexuals do, but we ought to remember that their persecution is our persecution and their victory will be our victory too…. So, personally I am all for their success and would cooperate in helping them to achieve it where I could out of pure self interest for our group if nothing else fails. There is, however, the broader interest of helping all minorities toward acceptance." (Transvestia #37, February 1966; Hill: 321)

The North American Conference of Homophile Organizations (NACHO) held its founding convention in San Francisco in August 1966. Prince attended as an observer. “I think it is in order that we keep an observer status in this field and stand by to aid their cause when it will aid ours and to extract from their experiences and their contacts with authorities and influential groups any contacts and opportunities that may be to our advantage."

Lavender Los Angeles p 65

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) adopted a national policy very similar to the one that Vern Bullough had drafted for the San Fernando Valley chapter, and following the amicus curiae brief that they had filed in the Felicity Chandelle case, that homosexuals, transvestites and transsexuals should be protected.

Prince and several FPE members attended a drag ball. Prince took an informal survey of sixteen drag queens, asking each ten questions that she had pre-devised. She hypothesized that the answers to these questions would distinguish homosexual queens from transvestites. However one of the 16 answered as if a femmiphilic. Prince informed him of that and introduced him to the FPE members. He later joined FPE. (Transvestia #41, October 1966; Hill:399-400).

In August there was a riot between trans women and the police at Compton's Cafeteria in San Francisco's Tenderloin district.

Another book that came out that year was Myron Brenton's The American Male, an early work of men's liberation. Prince felt that Brenton's arguments about masculine mystique, the arbitrary construction of gender norms, and the narrow stereotypes that men felt pressured to follow were much the same as she had been writing about in Transvestia for the last six years. She juxtaposed quotes from Brenton with references to her own earlier columns (Hill:390) Prince even spoke up for homosexuals as long as they did not attempt to join FPE: “Nothing is more basic to our insecurities, self-condemnation, and non-acceptance than the problem of homosexuality.”(Transvestia #41, October 1966; Hill:398)

FPE- Northern Europe was set up on the FPE model for the Scandinavian countries, at the initiative of Annette Hall from Sweden who had met Virginia in the US in the Spring of 1966. In later years it split into separate organizations for each country.

Late 1966 Virginia was interviewed for television in Hawai'i: "I was there as Virginia and was interviewed for about twenty minutes before I was asked what personal interest I had in the field—it had all been professional before that—and I dropped to my masculine voice and confessed all…" (Transvestia #42, December 1966; Hill:305-6.

Prince set up meetings with police chiefs and the heads of vice squads.

"I went as Virginia to see the Lt. who was public relations assistant to the Police Chief in San Diego. He then took me to the Lt. in charge of the vice squad. After about 45 minutes with him I left for an appointment with the City Attorney….The reason for my call on them was that San Diego is working on an ordinance which could make the wearing of the clothing of the opposite sex with the intent to commit an illegal act, illegal itself….Both the Lt. and the City Attorney made it clear that if a TV such as myself was just walking the streets, acting like a lady and minding his own business that no law would be being broken because there would be no ‘intent’….I urged them to try to get the ordinance through leaving out the clothing as a means to their ends. I don’t think I succeeded in selling them on this, but they did admit that I had a point." (Transvestia #38, April 1966; Hill:308). She usually started with an inquiry about the city's cross-dressing laws, and then stressed the harmlessness of heterosexual cross-dressers. She was always emphatic that they were different from homosexuals and street queens.²

On the last night of 1966 there was a drag contest at New Faces, a bar on W. Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles. Just before midnight many of the contestants crowded into the Black Cat, just down the street. At the stroke of midnight, as many of the men exchanged a traditional kiss, the LAPD rushed in and beat several customers brutally. They chased two back to the New Faces where they knocked down the woman owner and beat the two bartenders unconscious, one of whom then suffered a ruptured spleen and after recovery was charged with felony assault on a police officer. Six patrons were charged with lewd conduct for kissing, and were all found guilty by a jury. Two of them were later registered as sex offenders. In response, there were organized protests, and the convictions of the two were appealed as far as the US Supreme Court which declined to take the case. This inspired a new periodical, The Advocate, for gay and lesbian (including transvestite) issues. It was at first a Los Angeles publication, and then grew into a national publication. Despite the probability that some of the drag contestants were FPE members, FPE took no notice of the event.

In January 1967 Prince attended a combined party arranged by Theta Chapter (Madison) and Theta Tau (Minneapolis-St Paul). Later that year members of Theta-Tau joined Prince for a visit to the University of Minnesota.

The newly divorced Prince published a new edition of The Transvestite and his Wife later that year, a clear re-statement that Prince’s organizing is only for heterosexual men. The book is dedicated to Karl Bowman and Harry Benjamin, both of whom had helped Prince. "Through his [Benjamin's] education of other doctors, psychologists, and marriage counselors he has helped many hundreds of transvestites."
Prince claimed to have encountered few happier marriages than those in which the wife accepts and participates in the husband's transvestism; fewer more unsatisfactory than those in which the wife rejects it. If a wife should fail to understand, it is an indication of her immaturity stemming from her own unresolved emotional problems. Prince grades wives A-F on how well they understand and accept. "The femmiphile adopts feminine garb as a matter of personal internal expression – the homosexual 'Queen' does so for external effect – to attract males for sexual purposes and to ease the guilt of both." ³ "Females can and do wear masculine type clothing so openly and without social disapproval that the desire to do so is not frustrated and does not therefore present a problem."⁴

The British FPE offshoot, The Beaumont Society was founded with an initial membership of 7.

In August Prince appeared on the Irv Kupcinet show in Chicago in a panel with Paul Gebhard, director of the Kinsey Institute who had continued Kinsey's research into transvestites, the black novelist Richard Wright and a psychiatrist. "'For the first time over the air,' she proudly wrote 'a TV was treated as the intellectual equal of other persons with some stature and not as a sort of curiosity to be taken apart.' (Transvestia #47, October 1967; Hill:306). She received hundreds of letters of inquiry.

Sir Lady Java was fired from her employment as a performer and waitress at the Redd Foxx Club in Los Angeles. The ACLU, having been persuaded to aid transvestites, challenged the LAPD Rule that applied as unconstitutional. But apparently FPE did nothing. In New York, Mauricio Archibald, in female clothing and on his way home from a party, was arrested on a subway platform and charged under the same obscure law that Felicity Chandelle had been charged under. Despite his being heterosexual, and despite his obtaining an appeal hearing, no help was forthcoming from either Prince or Siobhan Fredericks.

The final Nationals Pageant, for professional and amateur drag performers, organized by Jack Doroshow/Flawless Sabrina,was held that year in New York as a fundraiser for the Muscular Dystrophy Association. This was filmed, and released the next year as The Queen, which became a sensation at the Cannes Film Festival. On this basis Doroshow, obviously openly transvestite, was hired as a special adviser on the films Midnight Cowboy, 1969, and Myra Breckinridge, 1970.

Prince informed her readers under the title “Life Begins at 54”:

“Virginia will be a freer soul now even if she has to crossdress as Charles now and then…. I’m going to do everything that will continue to broaden (literally and figuratively) my experience of life in my closing years. Everything with three specific exceptions that is, I draw the line at homosexuality, transsexuality, and a third marriage. (Transvestia #43, 1967)"

The Alpha group had its first open house in November 1967. This became an annual event. City leaders and public officials were invited to a catered dinner and a lecture by Prince. 50 guests turned up the first year. (Hill: 315)

The December 1967 issue of Transvestia was the only one ever to publish a photograph of an east Asian transvestite: Lili, a recent immigrant to New York from Shanghai.⁵

Prince took on a part-time assistant at Transvestia at this time. Mary’s mother had died in 1966, and she started electrolysis and hormones and gave up her male job with the intention of seeking surgery. However Prince gave her a hard time on the question of surgery. She did however start living full time as female. Her story was published in Transvestia, 62, Feb 1970.

From this point on, until 1982, Prince was a full-time activist and lecturer. She traveled across the US, to England, Scandinavia and Australia. She appeared on radio and television, lectured to college classes, gave newspaper interviews, delivered papers at professional conferences, and appeared at local FPE chapter meetings and social functions. Traveling and appearing as a woman in public as this entailed led to her decision in late 1968 to live full time as female. She encouraged members of FPE to contact their local networks to set up potential appearances. Prince appeared on either radio or television shows in San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Denver, Chicago, Madison, Minneapolis, Detroit, Cleveland, Toledo, New York, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Indianapolis, Houston, and Tulsa, among other cities. On these radio and television programs, she promoted her books, the magazine, and Phi Pi Epsilon. In Transvestia, she published photographs of herself with television and radio personalities and described her trips in extensive travelogues.

A handful of doctors and mental health professionals responded to Prince's growing reputation by referring transvestite patients to FPE and Transvestia. A similar shift had already occurred with homophile patients being referred to gay groups, and as already mentioned, Harry Benjamin had been referring patients to Siobhan Fredericks since 1963.

In 1968, Transvestia columnist Sheila Niles popularized the concept ‘whole girl fetishist (WGF)’ for members who did not pass well enough, particularly if it were for lack of trying. Over the next few years it came to be that those who failed or didn’t bother to fashion themselves as truly feminine were fetishistic.⁶ Susanna even estimated that the majority of members were WGFs (Transvestia #55, 1969).

From 1968 Prince wrote more columns about transsexuality than about homosexuality and fetishism combined. He strongly resisted the common assumption (endorsed by Harry Benjamin and others) that there was a continuum from fetishism to transvestism to transsexuality. Susanna Valenti held that many transvestites were incipient transsexuals who with the right circumstances would progress to living as women. Dozens within Transvestia's readership were opting for surgery, and it irked Prince that his advice was being ignored: “…the number of persons asking for and achieving it does not make me happy. I am disturbed”. (Transvestia#50, 1968; Hill, 137) He became quite mean-spirited on the subject, presenting transsexuals as failed individuals: “inadequate, inappropriate, inefficient, and uncomfortable in the masculine gender role and who were also inadequate and unhappy in the male sex role". They had failed at both the sex and the gender of being male. Several times Prince used the crude pun: “While I feel whole, transsexuals feel hole”.

FPE continued its policy of not accepting “bondage or masochistic people, amateur investigators, curiosity seekers, homosexuals, transsexuals or emotionally disturbed people”, Great emphasis was still placed on privacy and secrecy, and also on involving members’ wives.

Annette, whose photograph had been the first cover girl on Transvestia #5, invited FPE, as he did most years, to visit his remote ranch in Idaho. Most of the Seattle Chapter went, and Virginia drove up from Los Angeles. Katherine Cummings was present and observed that Virginia managed to alienate most of the wives by telling them that she was just as female as they were. (Cummings: 185).

WBI Boston 1968 with Dr Leo Wollman.  Presenter Bob Kennedy

Also 1968, Prince's mother, Elizabeth Arnold, died. By this time Prince had had facial hair removed by electrolysis and was taking female hormones again, and had had a legal name change to Virginia Bruce. She took an extensive six-week trip across the US meeting FPE members and even police officers. She emphasized that she took no male clothing with her. On her return she bought a spacious house in the Hollywood Hills. She trained as a glider pilot and purchased an Ultralite aircraft. She also bought a motorhome for her travels in the US.⁷

In August she wrote "My goal achieved" (Transvestia #49) about how she had attended a session of the then new nudist therapy led by psychologist Paul Bindrim, who had previously spoken at an Alpha Chapter meeting. Prince felt that it was an opportunity to present as Virginia while revealing her male anatomy:

"For about 20 hours I was as naked as the day I was born but for those same 20 hours I was still Virginia to myself and to all the rest. Although there could be no doubt as to my maleness (sex), nobody seemed inclined to doubt my femininity (gender), and I was treated in all respects as one of the girls by men and women alike."

This, of course, created a reaction from her readers. The August issue contained the following letter:

"Most of your readers think that you are everything good about TVism and are the ultimate in FPism and pure in all ways. What your article has done is to plant a great deal of doubt in their minds as to just what you are…. When all this is added to your story of running around in the nude, kissing a man, having him hold you and the other things, no matter what the occasion, I think that a lot of people think you have gone off the deep end. I would think that the GG’s who read it would all be set back…because you have given them proof that TVs just don’t want to put on a dress to express feminine feeling inside them but really want to go much further, and this is what they fear most”

In the June issue, Prince went so far as to denounce how male roles are connected to violence.

"The male citizen of our American culture, and to some extent but not to the same degree, the males of other western cultures, have elevated the cult of masculinity to the ultimate….In a world that venerates, honors, and rewards masculinity far above femininity and which at the same time equates strength, courage, determination, aggressiveness, and force with masculinity, what can we expect? Men are so frightened, so ashamed, so fearful of their gentler instincts and feelings that they shove them aside and elevate the current conceptions of masculinity to the dominant and determining place in their life philosophy. In order to deny femininity, a man will exaggerate masculinity well beyond its proper proportion in human life. What is the result in the world? The continued domination of the masculine ethic of force and violence, of solving problems with wars, pistols, or fists instead of with the head and the heart." (Transvestia #51, June 1968; Hill 391-2)

Prince wrote that she completely accepted herself 'genderally'.

‘I was then free to live my life as I wanted having no domestic or business responsibilities. I therefore crossed the line completely and have lived as a woman full time ever since’ ("Charles to Virginia: Sex Research as a Personal Experience” in Vern Bullough (ed), Frontiers of Sex Research: 172).

Despite the no-transsexuals policy, Virginia Prince, as she now was at age 55, was in effect what Harry Benjamin called a non-surgical transsexual, although she would never admit to the term. However Virginia's male persona was resurrected again for a revised version of A Survey of Chemistry for Cosmetologists.
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1. Laurel Canyon in 1968 had more than its share of both celebrities and of murder. There are two books about the neighborhood: , Michael Walker's Laurel Canyon: The Inside Story of Rock-and-Roll's Legendary Neighborhood, 2006. and Dave McGowan's Inside The LC: The Strange but Mostly True Story of Laurel Canyon and the Birth of the Hippie Generation, 2008-2012. Neither has anything to say about Prince. In addition to Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix and Frank Zappa as neighbors, there was Ramon Navarro who was murdered in his home by two intruders that very year.
   
2. Hill:308 commented: "I have found no evidence that indicates what exactly police officials thought about Prince—whether they took her seriously or as a complete joke or as another urban oddity whose voice they, as public servants, were obligated to listen to. Accompanying her many travelogues are photographs of Prince with prominent psychiatrists, doctors, and radio and television personalities. It may be telling that there is not one photograph of Prince posing with a police chief or law officer."
   
3. However, see footnotes 5 and 6 in Part II. Prince admitted to Stoller that attracting the attention of men was something that she specifically enjoyed.
   
4. Sex Changes: The Politics of Transgenderism was written by Patrick Califia before transition. Its section on Prince is based solely on a careful and insightful reading of The Transvestite and His Wife. "But this putative 'difference' between male and female sexuality has more to do with the repression of women's sexuality in general … than a shift in couture. I know what I feel when I am in male drag. My conversations with other women who cross-dress as men make it clear that I am not the only woman who gets a sexual rush out of appropriating a masculine image. A whole book could probably be written about the misogyny and homophobia that has led sexologists and other 'experts' to frequently state, as Prince does, that women can wear men's clothes without being punished, so they have no need to become transvestites. This is patently false. … As any stone butch or passing woman can tell you, the general public continues to be deeply disturbed by a biological female who appears in public in men's clothing. There is no difference between the discrimination, condemnation, and violence that is routinely inflected upon male and female cross-dressers, if they are exposed as such."
   
5. Lili took up with Susanna Valenti, and can be seen several times in Casa Susanna, 2005.
   
6. The FPs felt about the ‘whole girl fetishists’ in much the same way that not-TG persons today feel about those who do not pass, and whom they call ‘transgenders’.
   
7. Perhaps Prince was affluent after selling 50% of Cardinal Industries; or perhaps his mother left a bequest.
   

Part 1 – Youth and First marriage
Bibliography
Part II – Second Marriage
Part III – Femmiphilic activist
Part IV – Full-time Living
Part V – Transgenderist dowager
Jargon terms and general comments

Charles Leroy Lowman published his seminal work, Abdominal Fascial Transplants, in 1954. He remained Chief of Staff at the Orthopedic Hospital until 1955 when he was 75. His son Arnold had several ideas re cosmetics which he published as his second book, Chemistry in Your Beauty Shop, also 1955. With a partner he set up a business, Cardinal Industries, located on real estate owned by his mother.¹

With the encouragement of his mother, Arnold married a second time in 1956 to Doreen Skinner, of English origins, who had been his parents' housekeeper and after initial misgivings, was accepting of his cross-dressing. Arnold initially found Doreen to be unattractive because of her "dowdy attire, old-fashioned hair style and lack of makeup". He instructed her and she became more attractive. She told him that she had discovered photographs of his father cross-dressed. Arnold and Doreen went out socially as two women, and spent weekends in San Francisco like that. Doreen bought him a white satin nightgown as a wedding present. She also helped Arnold run his business selling grooming products for dogs and humans. They designed and built a house in Nichols Canyon. It included a special room with wardrobes, a sewing machine and several mirrors. (Docter: 35-7)

In a club in West Hollywood that same year, Rae Bourbon was billed as ‘not a female impersonator’, and was charged by the LAPD and convicted of impersonating a female. In January 1957 Confidential Magazine outed actor/dancer Dan Dailey as a transvestite: "The Night Dan Dailey was Dolly Dawn", which pretty well ended his film career, although he continued in television.

Arnold began using the male name of Charles (his father's name) Prince. In 1957 C.V.Prince wrote a paper for The American Journal of Psychotherapy where he was introduced by Dr Benjamin: "‘Dr Prince is known to me personally. I have met him in his male as well as his female role. I have had lengthy and stimulating discussions with him. He is highly educated with a fine cultural background". Prince presented three types of ‘males’ who may share ‘the desire to wear feminine attire’ (p82), that is homosexuals, transvestites and transsexuals. He was keen to dissipate the confusion of the three, but in its place propagated an alternate myth that ‘true transvestites ... are exclusively heterosexual ... Frequently they are married and often fathers”.

He was developing the concept of “femmiphilia” and was talking of his feminine self as “a real personality in her own right”. He also proposed “femmepersonator”. As he explained to Harry Benjamin (TSPhenomenon:53) the two words are to counteract the popular confusion with homosexuality, and to to take the sex out of if. He later wrote up these ideas in a pamphlet: An Introduction to the Subject of Transvestism or Femmiphilia (Cross-Dressing). He no longer thought of himself as the same kind as Christine Jorgensen, and started denouncing sex change operations. One of the first to receive this message was the teenage Diane Kearny who naively wrote to him and was told that she was ‘delusional’ in wanting such.

It was in 1958 that a 19-year-old, who had been taking her mother's estrogen pills, was referred to Dr Robert Stoller at the University of California at Los Angeles Medical Center. Stoller took Agnes to be an example of testicular feminization syndrome, and arranged for her to have corrective surgery.

In 1959, Virginia Prince established Chevalier Publications (named for D’Eon), and the next year revived Transvestia, which was now sold by subscription and later in adult book stores. The cover of the first issue contained the statement: "A privately Printed Magazine with three objectives – (1) To Provide expression for those interested in the subjects of exotic and unusual dress and fashion; (2) To provide information to those who, through ignorance, condemn that which they do not understand; (3) To provide education for those who see evil where none exists."

Louise Lawrence and Edith Ferguson with their more tolerant definitions of transvestite were no longer involved. Joan Thornton complained that Prince had stolen the name Transvestia. As in the 1990s with the term 'transgender', Prince took the word 'transvestite' and attempted to restrict its meaning to a narrow group. The first editorial offices of Transvestia were in the premises of Cardinal Industries on Pico Boulevard. (Docter: 74-7) Arnold published a revised and enlarged Chemistry in Your Beauty Shop, and also his new book, A Survey of Chemistry for Cosmetologists.²

While most of the content of Transvestia was submitted by readers, Prince used the forum to construct transvestism as he had presented it in his 1957 paper. Much of Lawrence’s material, such as bondage and petticoat punishment was never allowed in Transvestia, nor was anything that might be deemed fetishistic, such as wearing only female underwear. However the first issue January 1960 contained a letter from William Bessie Beck, a noted advocate of petticoat-punishment, and issue #2 had a letter from his wife, and two photographs of Bessie were in issue #4. (Farrer:14-5) #1 also included an In Memoriam to sexologist David Cauldwell who had died the previous year. From #5 Transvestia featured a cover girl. Potential cover girls were asked to supply several photographs and a personal history, and were requested to pay for their page of photographs. The first such was Annette of Idaho. #6 contained a description of the research questionnaire that Prince was doing with Peter Bentler that was finally published in 1972.

Prince did not want to be associated with queens of Bunker Hill who had organized transvestites in Los Angeles only a generation earlier, nor with the transvestite drinking clubs that Edward D Wood was involved in. In particular, transvestites as imagined were never to be homosexual or to desire a sex change. Prince early picked up the new usage of ‘gender’. “It is not the sex we are imitating, it is the gender—the quality of expression, the kind of living, the kind of personality that we associate with a lady.” In Transvestia, Prince repeatedly claimed that gender is between the ears, not the legs. (Hill:58), and argued that whereas homosexuals were ‘sexual deviates’, transvestites were ‘gender deviates’. Prince discouraged the use of established words such as ‘TV’, ‘drag’, ‘camp’ etc as they were associated with homosexuality: ‘femmiphilia’ (Transvestia, 7, Jan 1961) and ‘femmepersonation’ (Transvestia, 12, Dec 1961) should be used instead, and FP be the abbreviation of both words instead of TV. Also in December 1961, Prince claimed, that having coined ‘TV’, Prince could end its use. The terms ‘femmename’, ‘femmeself’, ‘femmelife’ and ‘femmetalk’ were also proposed.

Around the same time Vern and Bonnie Bullough moved to Los Angeles to teach at California State University, Northridge, and shortly afterwards they met Prince, and also became involved with the homophile organization, ONE, Inc. Vern also became head of the San Fernando Valley chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)

1959 was also the year that Jack Doroshow/Flawless Sabrina started his Nationals Pageants, which were drag contests. As local laws almost always prohibited cross-dressing, he would meet with officials and propose a charitable donation, and in return the town would pass a variance to permit the pageant. Usually the town officials did not understand that local people would be performing. In May of that year, at the all-night Cooper's Doughnuts on Main St, Los Angeles, the LAPD started arresting the queens among the customers, and a riot broke out.

Hose and Heels Club, Lavender Los Angeles: 65

Prince founded the Hose and Heels Club in 1960 for an initial 12 members who all arrived en homme at a house attached to a church property and put on their hose and heels simultaneously so that no-one had anything on anyone else. The second meeting, at the home of a member who was a dress designer, was attended by Vern and Bonnie Bullough. Bonnie commented: "There were 12 or 14 cross dressers in attendance who reminded me of a bunch of young girls at a wedding shower, giggling and acting like teenagers". Prince enforced a no alcohol policy. (Docter: 51)

One of the first other columnists in Transvestia was Susanna Valenti of New York, who had a more carefree style. She coined the metaphor the ‘girl within’ which became popular with Prince and the readers of Transvestia.

Hill (60) writes: “Prince recognized that both groups [transvestite and homosexual] shared a common problem with social intolerance and understood that the social gains won by the larger and better organized homophile movement would only benefit her group. In this regard, she called for mutual respect and cooperation while still maintaining that separateness must also prevail in order to build a distinct group identity for heterosexual cross-dressers. My sense is that there was rampant homophobia within the readership and that Prince was quite progressive on the issue of homosexuality, especially given the historical context.“ Prince did in fact work with homophile activists, Harry Hay and others.

Kate Cummings in Australia discovered Transvestia in 1960. "When it arrived I was overwhelmed by the potential wealth of transvestite material available to me by subscribing. There were scientific articles reprinted from learned journals; there was advice on what to wear, how to use makeup, how to act in public; there were letters from transvestites and their wives; there was wish-fulfillment fiction and there were even advertisements for booklets published by Chevalier Publications." Kate was the Cover Girl on Issue #8 as 'Joan from Australia'.³

Although the US supreme Court had ruled in 1958, re an edition of One Magazine, also from Los Angeles, that homosexual content is not obscene simply because it is homosexual, and in 1959 the US publisher of D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover won his case and its appeal against the US Post Office’s censorship, these were not taken to apply to transvestite content. In 1960 Nan Gilbert in New England, a publisher of petticoat-punishment fantasies had had his mail stopped and was fined $500. In 1961 Tito Valenti (Susanna's male persona) was summoned by postal officials. Two of her correspondents had been charged with mailing obscene materials, and Susanna’s name had come up. Tito pleaded respectability and denounced the obscenities. Prince was actually arrested re personal correspondence to another transvestite, who he thought was a woman sympathetic to male cross-dressing, who was already under investigation. Prince pleaded guilty in a plea bargain to sending obscene material through the mail. With a five-year probationary sentence, he was liable to be imprisoned if caught cross-dressed in public. However his lawyer persuaded the court to include educating the public about cross-dressing as part of the probation order. In the next few years Virginia lectured to service clubs in the Los Angeles area and participated in a few medical conferences. Transvestia #6 contained the announcement that "Flash … Important … Read Carefully .. Transvestia has been examined by Postal Inspectors and has not been found to be unmailable".(Docter: 78-80).

José Sarria ran to be a San Francisco Supervisor in 1961: the first openly transvestite person to run for political office.

Charles Lowman co-published Postural Fitness; Significance and Variances in 1960, and Underwater Therapy in 1961. Arnold's previous psychiatrist, Karl Bowman, along with Margaret Mead and Hal Call of the Mattachine Society, appeared in a ground-breaking documentary on San Francisco's KQED television channel, The Rejected, about homosexuality. Bowman argued that homosexuality is not a mental illness and should be legalized.

Mr and Mrs Lowman visited Doreen’s relatives in England, and Virginia used the trip to contact some English transvestites.

1962.  Plate 6 in JJ Allen.  The Man in the Red Dress

In 1962 Virginia attempted to organize Transvestia's readership into a nationwide group. FP (from FemmePersonator) also stood for Full Personality. What was needed was Full Personality Expression (FPE). That was Hellenized into Phi Pi Epsilon in the fashion of university sororities. The Hose and Heel Club became the Alpha Chapter. In Transvestia #15 Prince exhorted: "Haven’t you all read newspaper reports of police in various cities raiding some home or club and finding a bunch of ‘guys as dolls’? What prevents our groups being looked upon the same way? Nothing at all…except Phi Pi Epsilon… when we get organized to the point where we have something to point to with some pride." In subsequent issues its purpose was developed and proposals made on how it would be organized. FPE was for cross-dressers who have gone beyond the novelty of dressing up secretly. Social interaction would be fun, and would foster self-acceptance. "The sorority is here, for those whose development has taken them to the point of FemmePersonation, which differs from simple transvestism in much the same way as being a champion Olympic swimmer differs from the person who simply puts on a bathing suit and gets in the pool." Homosexuals, transsexuals and fetishists were not admitted. Soon afterward there were three other FPE chapters: Beta in Chicago, Delta in Cleveland, and Theta in Madison, Wisconsin.

Prince published the first edition of The Transvestite and his Wife in 1962, and a first version of the results of his survey questionaire, "166 men in dresses" was published in Sexology magazine. In March Darrell Raynor, in Los Angeles on business, having previously corresponded, met first Charles, and then was invited to dinner to meet Virginia and Doreen. He was chauffeured to the Prince home by Robert Stevens/Barbara Ellen who was also a business associate of Prince (Raynor: chp 1-4).

The program of the Alpha Chapter was two meetings a months. One was formal, without any members being dressed, at which Virginia or an invited psychologist would give a lecture, and serious discussion would ensue. The other meeting was a party, a dress-up affair (Raynor:135).

In 1962, Elmer Belt finally discontinued doing sex-change operations at UCLA Medical School. That same year, Prince gave a lecture at the UCLA Medical School, which led to being contacted by a psychiatrist at the School, Robert Stoller. He was interested in Virginia as a research resource. It was Arnold who appeared for the first session, as per the terms of his parole. Stoller was requested to send a letter inviting Virginia Bruce. However by the time of the second interview Arnolds's parole was ended. From then, for the next for 29 years, Virginia and some other Alpha Chapter members met with Stoller. In Virginia's case the meetings were twice a month and continued until Stoller's death in 1991. These sessions were taped, and some have been transcribed. She was emphatic about the distinction between sex and gender, and both Vern Bullough and Richard Green affirm that it was Prince's influence that led to Stoller's first two books being called Sex and Gender, Vol 1: On the Development of Masculinity and Femininity, 1968 and Sex and Gender, Vol 2: The Transsexual Experiment, 1974. (Docter: 62-5) Unlike Harry Benjamin and Vern Bullough, Stoller never named Prince in his books, although sometimes there is mention of an anonymous person who would seem to be her.⁴

While in her articles in Transvestia, Virginia played down the erotic aspects of cross-dressing, in the conversations with Stoller, she affirmed it. While she denied finding men attractive, she did enjoy being attractive to and flirting with men.⁵ She had a cross-dresser friend who was willing to play the male role and took her for lunch and drinks. Afterward they did mutual masturbation.⁶ She found kissing, hugging and affection from a man to be sexually rewarding. (Docter: 66-7)

Virginia was the major guest at the 1962 Halloween meeting at Susanna Valenti's Casa Susanna in upstate New York. The New York Transvestia subscribers had already been socializing with each other meeting in the apartments of Susanna and Gail Wilde. The Halloween meeting was also attended by psychologists Hugo Beigal and Wardell Pomeroy as well as Darrell Raynor, Felicity Chandelle and Katherine Cummings. Katherine Cummings later wrote that Virginia "was argumentative in the extreme. She had very fixed views on transvestism and proclaimed them with great force and no tolerance whatever of opposing views." While previously Susanna had not been in agreement with Virginia's insistence on respectability, they were in agreement in being appalled about one guest who didn't shave and wore a simple nightgown, and even smoked a cigar. Susanna later wrote that such members lacked the cultivation of an 'inner femininity' that distinguished a true transvestite from drag queens and clothing fetishists. (Transvestia #19, 1963).

Prince gave a speech that she did not regard herself or any other femmepersonator as emotionally or psychologically ill. Psychologists were not consistent with their research on gender when it came to labeling deviancy: "Further indication of the falsity of this arbitrary division [between genders] is evident in all the tests and devices which psychologists come up with to measure masculinity and femininity ‘indexes’ in each sex. They therefore give lip service to the presence of masculinity in the female and femininity in the male, but when it comes to practical and actual expression of this (at least on the part of the male) they raise their eyebrows…and start to work ‘helping’ the individual to ‘get back to normal’—to ‘adjust himself to society’ and, if possible, to stop being what he is…. FemmePersonation as we know it and show it is not a perversion, sex deviation, anomaly, obsession, or similar terms denoting that ‘something is wrong’.… It should be made clear that ‘statistically uncommon’ is not synonymous with ‘psychopathological,’ and ‘culturally impermissible’ is not necessarily ‘morally reprehensible.’ All a true TV or FP is doing is to seek to express some of the values and traits which, when they were drawn from the common human supply depot, so to speak, were arbitrarily assigned to the female.” (Also printed in Transvestia #19, February 1963; Hill: 310-1)

In the last Transvestia of the year, Prince urged co-operation with the homophile movement:

"Whatever the more highly organized homophile community does to improve their lot tends to improve ours and vice versa…. The homophile group is much better organized, larger, and has been at it far longer than we have. Thus where we can assist any general programs they have for breaking down prejudice and legal restrictions, we should do so. Where we can take advantage of any organizations or procedures which they have set up which can be of help to us individually or collectively, we should do so. We should establish and maintain contact with the organizational centers that are maintained by the homophile community, getting from them and giving to them such information and assistance as may be mutually helpful." (Transvestia #18, December 1962; Hill: 321)

In early 1963, Virginia fell out with both Barbara Ellen and Evelyn, a best friend for ten years. They started a competing group, and for a while it looked as if the Alpha Chapter would not continue (Raynor: Chp.17-18)

The most famous transvestite in Los Angeles that year was Miss Destiny who was featured in John Rechy's City of Night, and then in One Magazine the next year. FPE was only a small and specialized part of the transvestite scene. There were various kinds of trans women at the gay bars on Main Street, from the obvious to the passing. There was even a group for Pacific Islanders. Rex/Gloria, was an FPE member, but was also paying for younger trans women to fly to Dr Burou's clinic in Casablanca. (Gay LA:114-5) Edward D. Wood extended the lead character of his film Glen or Glenda in an unlikely direction in his first novel, Black Lace Drag (renamed Killer in Drag, 1965): Glen is doing contract killings to pay for a sex-change. The same year saw the publication of the transvestite novel Double Switch, which is attributed to Virginia Prince.

In New York, Siobhan Fredericks, who had quit FPE, started a competing magazine, Turnabout and made fun of the many femme* words that Prince had coined, and attracted cross-dressers who were critical of Prince and her ideas. Fredericks started a support group in her home, to which Harry Benjamin sent some of his patients, including Renée Richards.

Also new that year was the glossy magazine Female Mimics. Performer Kim August was on the cover of the first issue, and Coccinelle on the second. No statistics are available on how many subscribers to Transvestia also read Female Mimics. In San Francisco, The Black Cat bar, where José Sarria had performed, was shut down for permitting cross dressing.

That year Prince delivered her first paper to a professional conference, the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality in New York. She differentiated transvestites, transsexuals and homosexuals, introduced the term feminiphilia, explained that most professionals conflate sex and gender, and presented statistics from a 272-member survey that she had analyzed. She presented her group as the vanguard of men's liberation, and denounced aversion therapy: doctors should advise transvestites to accept themselves as they are. "There is no question but that persons with these types of histories [i.e. troubled] do exist and that they turn up in the offices of psychiatrists. Unfortunately, the psychiatrist only sees a specialized sampling of transvestites and therefore the conclusions drawn are based on a biased population of cases. Generally speaking, the only cases that go to a doctor are those that have been sent there by legal authorities, are forced to come by wives or parents, or are quite disturbed by their desires and seek help. The well adjusted, happily married and out-of-trouble transvestite does not go to the doctor, and he is therefore not studied nor counted in the population of cases from which most conclusions are drawn." (Transvestia #24, December 1963; Hill:309-310)

In 1964 José Sarria, in San Francisco, was part of the founding of the Imperial Court System, an alternate transvestite sub culture, albeit mainly for gays. Unlike FPE, the imperial Court was able to open branches in Canada and Mexico. With only a few exceptions, FPE and its later successor Tri-Ess and the Imperial Courts did not acknowledge each other. José Sarria's later successor as leader of the Imperial Courts was at that time a Los Angeles sex worker under the name Lolita. She was not of course invited to join the Alpha Chapter. In New York the short-lived Lavender & Lace magazine for transvestites came out – it had a much greater racial diversity than Transvestia. The Los Angeles Free Press started, which would provide an alternate voice for hippy, gay, trans and other minority voices. Vern Bullough, working with ONE, Inc was successful in getting the San Fernando Valley chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to adopt a policy of protection of homosexuals, transvestites and transsexuals.

Felicity Chandelle/John Miller was arrested for cross-dressing under an obscure New York law and lost her job: her male persona had been a pilot for Eastern Airlines for 25 years. Prince and Fredericks championed her case, persuaded the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to file a brief and raised over $1,200 to finance an appeal, which however was denied by the New York appeal court and by the US Supreme Court.

Prince started using Carl Jung's⁷ concepts of ‘anima’ and ‘animus’, but with the twist that each of us has both an anima and animus, and that they should be integrated. This need not necessarily be done by cross-dressing.

“There are, however, quite a number of us who have succeeded in recognizing our Anima sides, giving expression to ‘her’, originally through dressing, and subsequently simply through an integration of our inner selves in our daily lives. Dressing may still remain a very pleasant activity and a source of renewed emotional awareness and may continue with greater or lesser frequency all our lives. The important thing is not necessarily to conquer the dressing but to recognize what it is actually doing FOR us, and recognizing this, to actively attempt a greater degree of integration in our ordinary lives without any guilt feelings. I believe that this is the true goal and virtue of FemmePersonation. (Transvestia, 27, June 1964)”.

1964 was when Transvestia published its first photograph of a black transvestite (Diana, 28, Aug). The next would not be be until 1969.

In Transvestia #31, February 1965, Prince reacted to Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, not by empathizing with the problems of being a woman, but: “So who is going to write a book on the Masculine Mystique and the frustrations and psychosomatic disturbances that George and Harry have, because they too are trying to live up to an artificial and unsatisfying role forced on them by society? It seems to me that all of you who read Transvestia and myself are collectively, so-to-speak, writing such a book.”

Also that year, Chemistry in Your Beauty Shop was revised again and republished.

Until this point, Prince alone ran the organization out of her home and her work office, collected dues and handled membership applications. There were complaints about autocratic style, and profiting from the dues. Thus Prince appointed Fran Conners, president of the Theta Chapter in Madison, Wisconsin as executive secretary, and Sheila Niles of New Jersey to be field co-ordinator. Niles had a job that involved frequent travel around the US and was able to visit the various chapters. They divided the US, in fact the entire world, into regions, and appointed a regional counselor and deputy for each. The counselors were to encourage the renewal of dues, and also to meet with each new applicant to ensure that they were suitable – however vast distances made face-to-face meetings almost impossible, and some became members without being screened. Like the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis, FPE was a white, middle-class organization with concerns about being respectable. An applicant must purchase fives issues of Transvestia before applying. This was not just to sell more copies, but also to ensure that he was serious, and that, having read the issues, he was acquainted with the philosophy of femmepersonation. The application asked about sexual orientation, marital status, employment status and cross-dressing history. The applicant had to sign his legal name and write his home address, however these would not be passed on the the regional counselor. He also had to pledge to keep secret all information about other members.

Bonnie and Vern Bullough, visiting the Lowmans at home, noted that Virginia would act as the hostess, reducing Doreen to sort of a maid. (Docter: 37-8)

In 1964 Reed Erickson founded his Erickson Educational Foundation (EEF), through which over the next twenty years he donated hundreds of thousands of dollars into gay, lesbian, trans and New Age activities such as acupuncture, homeopathy, dolphin communication and altered states of consciousness. He donated to two friends of Prince, Harry Benjamin and Vern Bullough, and especially to the Los Angeles gay center, One, Inc, but never considered FPE as a suitable recipient.

In May 1965 members of Theta (Wisconsin) joined with members of Beta (Chicago) and Delta (Cleveland) in South Bend, Indiana for a Midwest Conference. However the turn-out was disappointing. Only fourteen FPE members and three wives made it to the event. The Alpha chapter in Los Angeles, although one of the most populous chapters, still had only 18 members.

ONE, Inc split into two competing factions, and Vern Bullough was one of only two people who was able to maintain working relationships with both sides.

In Transvestia #36, December 1965, Virginia reaffirmed the lifestyle of part-time cross-dressing:

"I have had the experience, now that Virginia lives as much as she does and gets about everywhere, of having people who know me as Virginia and see me as a relaxed and comfortable woman often say ‘why don’t you live that way all the time’. They are not thinking of surgery but just of living. Sometimes I am afraid the fascination of this new life gets out of hand and we lose the perspective necessary to enjoy it. When we go too far in the femme-direction we are riding up the other side of the pendulum swing…. So let’s not forget that we are all built in a male way and have been brought up in a masculine framework which has its costs but also its compensations and let us say a word for and give a little credit to the ‘boy without’ as both the source and the support of the ‘girl within’. (quoted Hill:172).

By this time Arnold's son, Brent, had come to live with his father and Doreen. He was having personal problems, probably drugs, and his presence added to the stress among the Lowmans. Virginia had been taking dancing lessons and attending public dances. An out-of-town male friend visited and they went dancing all night. (Docter:69) Doreen was also anxious in that Arnold had developed a friendship with a post-operative transsexual, Sherry, and she was concerned that he would go the same route. Virgina and Sherry went to public dances as two women. Doreen moved out, and in with Arnold's parents. Stoller, who counseled both of them, felt that Doreen was "emotionally exhausted" in her struggle over the possibility that Virginia would go full-time. Stoller reported that Prince said he was hurt that Doreen would "just up and walk out on me" – which perhaps implies a lack of empathy. (Docter: 38-40)

In December that year, Stoller dictated a description of how he saw Virginia, who was then 53:

"It's worth describing Virginia's appearance today which is typical of the way she usually looks: A light brown wig which is not startling but well kept, dangling silver earrings, pancake makeup, sharply red but not extravagant lipstick. On her neck, a necklace made of three strands of large silver balls, pretty garish when taken with all the rest of her appearance, with a V-cut dress out of which peaked the pushed-up bits of breast tissue looking like an old woman's breasts being shown when they shouldn't be with her brassiere showing and the straps showing, the inner side of the two shoulder straps of her dress; the dress, the upper part of it where her bosom is huge and the largeness is increased by a whole bunch of white flowery patterns on on a navy blue background, the lower part is just the navy blue. When she sits with her legs crossed you see up the outside of her thigh quite a long distance, it's not particularly attractive, her knees are bony and her legs although not masculinely muscled are not at all like a woman's; her arms have the muscular contour of a man's, they are very smooth and soft skinned though on her forearms they are darker brown while the upper part is light. I didn't really notice her shoes except that they were high heeled. The overall impression is that if this were in fact a woman, no woman of her age and appearance should show so much of herself and I would think there was something severely wrong in the degree of exhibitionism being revealed." (Stoller#4: 23-4; Docter: 70-1)

---

1. Cardinal Industries seems to have disappeared from history. It should not be confused with Cardinal Industries of New York which is a still active and successful company that makes toys. I could not find the name of Arnold's partner in any of the source documents.
   
2. I do find it strange, given the number of books that discuss Virginia Prince, that no-one previously – except the editors at WorldCat – had bothered to check if there were any book under the name of Arnold Lowman. Milady Pub. Corp is a real publisher, specializing in books about beauty. It is not a self-publishing like Chevalier Publications.
   
3. Kate Cummings also volunteered to be and was the cover of Transvestia #108, 1983, twenty three years later.
   
4. For example: Presentations of Gender, 1985:137. "For instance, for about twenty years I have had a friendly, more than therapy-oriented relationship with a transvestite man, In that time we have often talked of his childhood, his parents, his parents' personalities, and the relationships among the family members."
   
5. "While she denies finding men attractive, she does enjoy being attractive to and flirting with men." A subtle difference. I wonder how many cisgendered women could be likewise described. Has anybody done research into heterosexuality using this distinction?
   
6. Prince: "mutual masturbation … but never once was there any kind of anal or oral sex .. never". Was Prince unaware that a significant minority of gay men have exactly the same preference?
7. Prince probably related to the fact that Jung, in 1950, had dismissed transsexual surgery as having nothing to do with either medicine or psychology. Carl Gustav Jung, “Zur Frage der arztlichen Intervention” In. Das symbolische Leben: verschiedene Schriften. Olten: Walter-Verlag, 1995: 375-6. Quoted in Sander L.Gilman.Making the Body Beautiful: A Cultural History of Aesthetic Surgery. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999:271.