A Gender Variance Who's Who

Part I: life until first visit to Benjamin clinic 

Part II: Transition

Part III: comments

Raskin was looking for a writer to write her biography, and a friend suggested Irmis Johnson, a noted journalist whom the Hearst company had sent to Copenhagen in 1953 to meet Christine Jorgensen. This had resulted in five consecutive weekly articles in the the American Weekly, actually written by Johnson but attributed to Jorgensen. Johnson expressed interest and even gave Jorgensen’s contact details. Raskin as Edward phoned several times starting the next day, and Christine told Raskin that her autobiography was being filmed. During this period Raskin continued attempting his theatre career as Edward. Wollman told Raskin that she should start to live in female clothes

In May Raskin got a reply from Dr Money at Johns Hopkins. Money said that “I had to prove my capacity to earn, dress and live as a female before undergoing irrevocable surgery” (May 3, 1969). Raskin and Wollman dismissed this as ridiculous as thry thought that drag was illegal in New York State (unlike Maryland – where Johns Hopkins is – where it was legal).

After feedback from possible publishers re an advance or not, Irmis Johnson bowed out from the project.

The next appointment at the Benjamin clinic was with Dr Benjamin himself, as Wollman would in future be seeing his patients at his Coney Island practice – although Raskin did visit him there to have a mole removed. Benjamin revealed that a) Wollman had her down as a “Type 4 – Transsexual, nonsurgical” b) the pills that Wollman had prescribed were not estrogen but Dilantin. In Jan Wälinder’s 1967 Transsexualism: a study of forty-three cases, he had reported finding an abnormal EEG in 28% of a group of transvestites and transsexuals, and that an anti-convulsive drug had led to a cessation of the desire to cross-dress in some cases. Benjamin had tested this on a few volunteers, but Wollman had prescribed surreptitiously. 

Raskin asserted strongly that she was a “Type 6 – Transsexual, true, high intensity” and that the Dilantin had not decreased her urge to transition. Benjamin asked whether Raskin would still want to become a woman if she could not have sex afterwards. Raskin replied: “I said I wouldn’t but I understand once the vagina is created you can have fulfilling sexual relations”. Benjamin gave a subscription for real estrogen. (May 3, 1969)

The visits to Benjamin were $20 and the estrogen was $3.75 for fifty capsules.

At a final visit to Wollman’s office in Coney Island to finish the warts treatment Raskin expressed her displeasure at being classified as a Type 4, and over the Dilantin.

Benjamin transferred Raskin to his new associate Charles Ihlenfeld, and Raskin went in for hormone shots every second week. Benjamin wrote a letter to excuse Raskin from jury duty. Raskin finally started electrolysis having found an electrolysist who would do it for $10 per hour (most charged $20), and also started to let her hair grow. In September she bought dresses for the first time, and tried wearing them in the apartment. She finally had her nose job with Dr Rish. She spoke to Rish re sex change operations, and he claimed that he did not do them, but mentioned a Dr Jones who required a record of cross-living. A week later she wrote to Dr Burou in Casablanca to ask his prices.

In her diary she wrote: “I have definitely decided against having any New York doctors perform the sex operation on me. They require you to come to their office and have a castration done there — with only a local anesthetic. Then a month later they complete the surgery in a hospital.” (October 8, 1969). 

Two weeks after her letter, she received an answer from Dr Burou: 

“I received your letter of October 9. The cost of surgery and 15 days of hospital is $4000. You must send it before you arrive to the enclosed address. [It was a Swiss bank.] If you can come with another patient I can do the two operations for $7000. I have not a brochure or the itinerary for transportation, but you can find that in any travel office in New York City. You have not need to bring many things. Only your clothes. You can make operation of breast implant here, but is necessary that the Doctor see you before — and difficult for me to tell you what is the cost of the operation.

                                            Sincerely yours,

PS. Please if you think coming in April send to me a confirmation for reservation.” (October 20, 1969). 

In November Raskin wrote back and said that she could afford only $2000. 

For the first time, through a common friend, Raskin met with another transsexual, and compared notes. In January 1970 Look Magazine had a feature on transsexuals. Raskin felt chagrin in that she had approached them a year previously – however Look specifically featured transsexuals who had already transitioned.

Finally Raskin started wearing female clothing outside, but only after make-up sessions and shopping with female friends. Edward told the building superintendent that his sister Lyn would be staying in the apartment. Lyn met several transsexuals at a party given by her electrolysist. She was doing electrolysis as much as six hours a week. A friend suggested Maurice Girodias’ Olympia Press to publish Lyn’s autobiography. Girodias was in New York after being pressured out of Paris in 1963. Lyn presumably did not know of his practice of not paying his writers.

Both Lyn and Edward had a joint bank account, and the manager, citing a possible discrepancy, insisted that both Lyn and Edward come in together. (May 7, 1969)

Edward had met Zelda Suplee twenty years earlier in the town of Homestead, Florida. Lyn encountered her again as she was now the director of the Erickson Educational Foundation (EEF). Zelda was due to return to Florida, and said that she would visit Lyn’s father and explain things – although when there she was unable to do more than phone him. Zelda, Lyn, Dr Wollman, Constance (who had met Lyn at their electrologist, and had recently returned from completion surgery in Casabalanca) and cis actress Pamela Lincoln (who was purportedly seeking information about transsexuals and ten years later would be in the film Tootsie) were in a 28 minute filmed discussion sponsored by EEF. By this time Raskin had a job as Lyn, working from home doing sales promotion for a music company.

Constance had reported unhygienic practices at the clinic in Casablanca. However she had a history of lying; Zelda introduced Lyn to Bonnie, also back from Casablanca, who gave a much more positive account, and had negative accounts of three friends who had had problems after gender surgery in New York.

In June one of Lyn’s aunts supplied a check for $2500 (which Lyn suspected actually came from her father). She wrote to Dr Burou saying that she could afford only $1500, and that a flight was booked. This was accepted. Only then did Raskin apply for a passport – as Edward as stated on her birth certificate.

Lyn Raskin arrived in Rabat, Morroco and then Casablanca July 7, 1970. Three days later all was complete. She returned to her apartment in New York. She still had appointments with Dr Ihlenfeld, and also with Dr Rish as she wished to increase her vaginal depth. Rish sent her to Dr Roberto Granato, who found the urethra and vagina infected. She was in Rish’s Yonkers Professional Hospital several times: for an operation on the urethra, to have her ears pinned, breasts implanted and a facial skin-peel. She started having sex with straight men, usually without mentioning her past.

Lyn’s book, Diary of a Transsexual, was published by Olympia Press in 1971. We don’t know if Maurice Girodias did pay any royalties. 

Later that year the agony aunt Ann Landers was on the tail-end of the Dick Cavett television show following a pre-op trans woman enthusing about designing her wedding dress. Landers felt that that particular trans woman was inauthentic, and resented having to comment on her performance. When Patrick M McGrady, Jr wrote this up in his 1972 book, The Love Doctors, he added a comment from Raskin as a footnote: “They should not have had that sort of person. Ann Landers had a perfect right to be upset. It was like having a guy in drag.”

Nothing is known of Lyn Raskin after that.

• Roland Berg. “The Trans-sexuals: Male or Female”. Look Magazine, January 1970. Online.
• I Am Not This Body, with Zelda Suplee, Leo Wollman, Lyn Raskin, Constance and Pamela Lincoln. EEF, US 28 mins 1971.
• Lyn Raskin. Diary of a Transsexual. The Olympia Press, 1971.
• Patrick M McGrady, Jr. The Love Doctors. Macmillan, 1972: 165-6, footnote.

Part I: life until first visit to Benjamin clinic

Part II: Transition

Part III: comments

(Citation dates refer to entries in Raskin's book,  Diary of a Transsexual)

Edward Raskin, originally from Pennsylvania, was the fourth child of a father who became a Miami hotel keeper. He did an accounting degree at the University of Miami, where he was seduced by one of the professors. He then slept with many of the other students, and also with guests in his father’s hotel.

 In 1950 with dreams of making it as a playwright and lyricist for musicals, Raskin spent three months in New York before admitting defeat. 

In 1953 when the Christine Jorgensen story was in the press Raskin realized that she was more trans than gay, and went to see a doctor in Miami. The doctor said that Raskin was a perfectly developed male, and a sex change woule be possible only if she already had ovaries. 

Later that year the 25-year-old Raskin tried again to make it in New York. Shortly after arrival Raskin decided on the name ‘Lyn’ for her other self, and from then wrote her diary as if to Lyn. Edward left copies of his plays with agents and producers, and worked as a bookkeeper. There were false starts re producing his plays, but nothing came to fruition. Edward did get lots of gay sex, but was frustrated in that she really wanted to be made love to as a woman. 

“My frustration was not curbed by sleeping around as l have been doing, so I went to Bellevue Psychiatric Clinic for a free consultation with a Dr. Cassity, who I call Hopalong Cassity. He was always jittery, even when I was relaxed. I had about a dozen visits with him. He felt that of all his patients I was the one who accepted his homosexuality more than the others. Most of his other patients were latent homosexuals. However, he also knew my desire to be a woman. During my last visit, the receptionist said to go into his office, but the doctor wasn’t there when I walked in. They attempted to locate him, for he had just stepped out of his office moments before I arrived. They looked for him in vain. They never found him. I have a feeling he was an inmate in their psycho ward. He was probably nuttier than I was.” (September 24, 1955)

Raskin completed actor training at theatre school in 1964 but was unable to get cast as an actor. In 1966 he was working as a secretary. 

“l have been working as a secretary since last November. You know, it’s interesting being a secretary. I’m in competition with all women and I enjoy it. I feel more comfortable competing with women than I ever did with men. Being a part of the female world as I have been these past years, working as a secretary, I realize how much we have in common. I find I think very female. I envy their clothing.” (February 9, 1966). 

But the job lasted only a few months, although afterwards he did temporary secretarial work.

January 19, 1969 Raskyn ran into an ex-trick who told of a friend who was transitioning, and finally Raskin realized that the Miami gynecologist 16 years before may have been wrong saying that internal ovaries were required for a sex change. The next day Raskin phoned around and for the first time found out about Dr Harry Benjamin who had been actively aiding transsexuals since 1957. Benjamin’s secretary said that he was not practicing at that moment as he was writing, but gave Raskin an appointment for the next day with “Dr Len William” (actually Leo Wollman) at Benjamin’s office. This was shortly after trans philanthropist Reed Erickson had terminated his subsidy of Benjamin’s practice, which had therefore returned to smaller premises at 44 East 67^th St. Raskin commented: 

“Walking into Dr. W.’s office today was like walking into a chamber of horrors. It is a Park Avenue address but it is a dingy office. You have to walk down a long dimly-lit corridor to get to his office. When I entered the waiting room several other patients were already there. It looked like a movie set for a quack doctor's office.” (January 21, 1969). 

Wollman approved Raskyn for the operation, and said that it would take a full year. Each visit to Wollman cost $15, the initial physical was $35, the urine/blood tests were $43, and the operation would be $750. After her next unemployment check, Raskin purchased two copies of Benjamin’s 1966 book – one for her brother, and started dreaming about selling an exclusive about herself to a magazine such as Life. She also read Christine Jorgensen’s autobiography. Being unemployed, Raskin was reliant on monies from her brother and father, and so had to explain what she was doing. They spoke to their doctor in Miami who could find no listing for Drs Benjamin and Wollman, and suggested tests at Johns Hopkins. Drs Wollman and Rish (whom Raskin had seen about a nose job) pointed out the long waiting list at Johns Hopkins, but Raskin wrote to John Money anyway. The long waiting list was confirmed by a two-page article in the New York Sunday News that a friend clipped and sent. 

·         Jack Metcalfe. “They Change Men into Women”.  New York Sunday News, February 9, 1969:106-7.

Trigger warning. This 3-part article contains quotations from John Wojtowicz, the major protagonist. The quotations contain frequent misgenderings, and in the latter 2 parts traditional English swear words. Caveat Lector.

Benito Rish became licensed to practice in the State of New York in 1949. He was mainly a plastic surgeon, and became known as a urologist and for his rhinoplasty and other facial surgery. He worked at Yonkers Professional Hospital, 27 Ludlow St, Yonkers, NY, and in time became a part-owner of the hospital. Among other responsibilities he became president of its board of directors, chief of plastic surgery and head of the Gender Identity Center.

Both Harry Benjamin and Leo Wollman referred patients to Dr Rish for genital surgery. These included Erica Kay in 1968; Liz Eden and Puerto Rican Soraya Santiago in 1973; Mario Martino in 1977.

Dr Rish was also known as willing to sell female hormones without a prescription, if you looked trans. It is said that Candy Darling, Holly Woodlawn and International Chrysis used this service. ++Perry Desmond named her New York doctor as Dr Ritter (who is otherwise unknown);  it is probable that this was Dr Rish.

In 1971, Debbie Hartin spoke about her problems with ‘her family, her neighbors and her daughter’ at a meeting that was supposed to be the inaugural meeting of Transsexuals Anonymous held at Dr Rish’s office.

That same year Dr Rish was named to the advisory board of Reed Erickson’s EEF, and was subsequently on the list of surgeons sympathetic to transsexuals issued by EEF.

Dr Rish was sued for malpractice in silicone injections in 1972; for surgery in 1973 and again in 1974. In 1985 he was sued re a 1977 rhinoplasty and subsequent injection of silicone into the nose.

In 1980 Yonkers Professional Hospital was closed after a surprise state inspection, stood empty for almost a decade, and was then converted into apartments.

Dr Benito Rish went into partnership with Canadian Sonia LaFontaine as the Lafontaine-Rish Medical Associates. LaFontaine and her husband, Arthur Kissel, also ran a clinic in Toronto. In 2000 LaFontaine and Rish were taken to court charged with hundreds of thousands of dollars of fraudulent insurance claims. As the New York Daily News put it:

“Lafontaine herself, who has no formal training as a doctor, is charged with performing hundreds of procedures at the now-defunct clinic, from silicone lip enlargements to vein treatments”.

The most serious charge concerned an overweight Jersey City man who went for liposuction in January 1998 in the hope of becoming a New York cop. He died from complications due to anesthesia. The anesthesiologist, who already had a suspended license because of a morphine addiction, quickly surrendered her license. Dr Rish pleaded guilty to insurance fraud, admitted to allowing two unlicensed individuals to perform under his name, and surrendered his license.

Kissel was arrested in Toronto for working illegally in Canada. He appealed his extradition to the US in every way that he could, and was not tried in New York until 2009, by which time his wife had completed her sentence. Dr Rish had died in 2007.

• Benito B Rish. "Combined Defects Of The Cosmetic Profile: Corrective Rhinoplasty with Simultaneous Repair of Simple Retruded Chin". The Laryngoscope. 65, 1, 1955.
  
• Benito B Rish. "The Frontonasal Angle in Cosmetic Rhinoplasty". A.M.A. Archives of Otolaryngology. 65, 4, 1957: 337.
  
• Benito B. Rish. 1964. "Profile-Plasty. Report on Plastic Chin Implants". The Laryngoscope. 74, 1, 1964: 144-154.
  
• EEF Newsletter, Fall 1971. Online.
  
• Donna Joy Newman. “He Didn’t Know, Until He was 9, That He Wasn’t a Boy”. The Evening Independent, Sep 1, 1977. Online
  
• Anna Raschel v. Benito Rish, Supreme Court of New York, April 5, 1985. Online.
  
• Ellen Fisher Turk & Andrew Weeks (dir) Split: Portrait of a Drag Queen, with International Chrysis, Jerimiah Newton. US 60 mins 1993: from 24-25 minutes.
  
• Benjamin Weiser. “Report Links a Death at Plastic Surgery Clinic to Anesthesia”. The New York Times, March 7, 1998. www.nytimes.com/1998/03/07/nyregion/report-links-a-death-at-plastic-surgery-clinic-to-anesthesia.html.
  
• Benito B Rish, MD: Surrender of license, February 24, 2000. PDF
  
• Greg B Smith. “Bogus Docs, Fraud Eyed As Clinic Owner's Trial Begins”. New York Daily News, June 6, 2000. www.nydailynews.com/archives/news/bogus-docs-fraud-eyed-clinic-owner-trial-begins-article-1.874144.
  
• “Owner of Liposuction Clinic Guilty of Fraud”. New York Times, July 13, 2000. www.nytimes.com/2000/07/13/nyregion/owner-of-liposuction-clinic-guilty-of-fraud.html.
  
• Joanne Meyerowitz. How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States. Cambridge, Ma, London: Harvard University Press, 2002: 236, 338n41.
  
• Erica Kay & David Webster. ABSENCE OF JUSTICE: The Erica Kay Story, Chapter One. https://ericakayboundbetweenlove.wordpress.com/absence-of-justice-the-erica-kay-story-chapter-one.
  
• Adrian Humpreys. “Cosmetic Surgery Clinics’ Owner Pleads Guilty To Fraud”. National Post, September 05, 2009. Online at: www.immigrationwatchcanada.org/2009/09/05/cosmetic-surgery-clinics-owner-pleads-guilty-to-fraud.
  
• John Strausbaugh. “Liz Eden’s White Wedding”. The Chiseler, 2013. http://chiseler.org/post/21484529842/liz-edens-white-wedding.
  
• Snowflack. “That time Dr. Norman Spack was my endo, or, The “dollmaker” loves autogynephiles”. Snowflakeespecial, February 11, 2014. https://snowflakeespecial.wordpress.com/2014/02/11/that-time-dr-norman-spack-was-my-endo-or-the-dollmaker-loves-autogynephiles.
  
• “Soraya, precursora del cambio de sexo en Puerto Rico: Se operó hace 38 años y llegó a casarse”. El Nuevodia, 5 de marzo de 2011. www.elnuevodia.com/noticias/locales/nota/sorayaprecursoradelcambiodesexoenpuertorico-906474.

Yonkers Professional Hospital

________________________________________________________________

The trans persons whom we know had surgery with Dr Rish are not reported as complaining.

Are we discussing a one-time good doctor whose standards slipped over the years?

All-right, I will say it.  There is a question hovering about Dr Rish.   We know that two of his non-surgical patients died young:  Candy Darling in 1974 at age 29, possibly of side effects of taking the wrong hormones;  International Chrysis in 1990 at age 39.   Was Chrysis still a patient of Dr Rish in the 1980s after the Yonkers hospital closed?  There is no indication of that in Ellen Fisher Turk's documentary.

Perry was born and raised in Louisiana. His father was a pilot on a Mississippi River boat who was frequently drunk. His mother beat him once when she came home early and found him dressed in her clothes, but his great-aunt Edna let him dress up in her room. He was subjected to homophobic bullying at school, even in front of teachers who took no notice.

When he reached puberty several of the other boys, who had been rude to him, volunteered him as the one who would be sexually passive.

At Louisiana State University he found his first gay friends, but was ejected for being gay. He found a lover in Baton Rouge until his mother interfered. He then went to Southwestern Louisiana Institute (now the University of Louisiana at Lafeyette) and found another lover before being kicked out for doing so. In New Orleans he became a waiter and a prostitute, and as a kept boy started wearing female clothing full time, until his mother interfered.

He then joined the US Navy where he was a nurse, and married a woman from high school. However he found himself unable to have sex with her. He then told the Navy doctors that he was a woman, and was discharged within a week.

He returned to waiting, and did his first drag show at the My-O-My Club on Lake Ponchatrain. He was recruited for the Jewel Box Review because his size allowed him to take over the costumes of one who had left. He quit the Revue when his father was in hospital.


After that he opened a beauty salon, but then performed in various drag clubs. An agent in New York named him ‘The South’s Most Beautiful Boy’. In 1958 he and 142 others were arrested at a big costume ball at the Manhattan Center in New York. At the same time he came down with jaundice.

One day on the street he met an old friend who was close to completing transition, and demanded the name of her doctor. Perry then started on hormones injections from Dr Ritter in New York (probably Dr Benito Rish) , and started electrolysis. She also bleached her hair. She had a nose job and silicone injections.

Once she had breasts she passed easily as a woman, and went back to a mix of hooking and running a beauty salon. She gave that up to be a kept woman, but after a year of two-timing her husband, left him for the other man, Wayne.

In 1968 her father died, and she bought male clothing to attend his funeral.

She opened a new beauty salon in a haunted ante-bellum house in New Orleans, and then became a self-taught astrologer, and did lots of drugs. Her business evolved into an occult shop called The Age of Aquarius. She had her fortune read two or three times every day and constantly recalculated her horoscope.

After seven years together, Wayne beat her up and took off. Perry consulted a witch who sold her a spell to get Wayne to return.

After ten years on hormones, she contacted Dr Murphy Seeling in New York to be castrated. Wayne returned to go with her, and while she was there she had facial silicone implants as well. Seeling’s operation resulted in a painful abscess.

The next time that Wayne took off, Perry attempted suicide. Afterwards she bailed him out of jail and took him to a rehabilitation ward. In that ward Wayne embraced Jesus. After he got out, Wayne would not live with Perry because that would be a sin. He kept sending Christian leaflets to Perry and tried to get Perry to go to his church.

Perry found herself a new younger lover, but after a year of conflict with Wayne the new lover left for a ‘real woman’. This was 1974. Then her mother died, and wished to remember Perry ‘as you were’.

After an abortive visit to Wayne’s church she read the literature he had been sending to her, and approached the Baptist Church next to the laundromat. The minister visited her at home, and she converted, and was persuaded that to God she was still a man.

Perry reverted to male clothing, and he became a minister, and a celebrity on the Christian circuit. He became a pioneer in the Exodus movement. He supported the Anita Bryant crusade. He died of a heart attack at age 48.

*Not the singer, Perry Desmond-Davies   

• Randy Hammer.  "Brother Perry Trades Satin for Tracts". Pensacola News Journal (Florida), Jul 3, 1976: 28.
• James E Adams. "Transsexual wants to be male again". St Louis Post-Dispatch, Oct 7, 1976: 57. 
• Lester Lee & Good News Gang. And such were some of you (1st Cor. 6:11) : introducing Perry Desmond and the Good News Gang. New Orleans: Good News 1976.
• Perry Desmond & Dr. R. L. Hymers. Perry: A Transformed Transsexual. Ironton, MO: Metamorphis Books, 137 pp1978. Impact Christian Books 133 pp 2004.
• April Kupfer.  " 'Tranformed transsexual' begins life as a man again".  The Orlando Sentinel, Mar 31, 1979: 25. 
• Robin Witt.  "Cal Expo Evangelist Perry Desmond calls himself 'Eunuch for the Lord' ".  The Sacramento Bee, Jun 30, 1979: 23. 
• Elizabeth Mehren.  "Ex-gay wants a Humility Week".  The Tribune (Oakland), Jul 1, 1979: 12.  
• Lenita Powers. "Former gay delivers message of salvation".  Reno Gazette-Journal, Oct 27, 1980: 17. 
• Keith Lawrence.  "Evangelist abandons trsnssexual lifestyle to preach gospel".  Messenger-Inquirer (Kentucky), May 8, 1982: 8. 
• Perry Desmond. “The Final Transformation”.  No longer available.

Both Drs Ritter and Seeling are obscure. I cannot find any other information about them, nor any other transsexuals who used their service.

At the end of the book Perry issues a blanket forgiveness to the homophobic bullies and other who made his life difficult. Surely even within Christianity, forgiveness should only follow repentance -- which does not seem to apply here. This is more serious than it sounds in my summary of Perry's life. He mentions two female impersonators who were his friends, and who were murdered in really horrible ways by homophobes. Are we to take it that he forgives these murderers too?

From the way that Perry chooses Dr Ritter we see that she is impulsive on making such a choice. Therefore it is not strange that she chose a church equally impulsively. This is a shame for there are churches that accept transsexuals, but they are not usually the one next to the laundromat. It is an enormous pity that Perry did not find a trans-positive church before changing back.