A Gender Variance Who's Who

Stanley Biber was raised in Des Moines, Iowa by a father who owned a furniture store. He trained as a concert pianist and attended a rabbinical seminary. During World War II he was a civilian employee of the Office of Stategic Services and stationed in Alaska and the Northwest Territories. He graduated from the University of Iowa Medical School in 1948. He was an outstanding weight-lifter and just failed to make the US Olympic team. He was a MASH chief surgeon with the US army in the Korean War.

In 1954 he took a job at a United Mine Workers clinic in Trinidad, Colorado, a town where Frenchy Vosbaugh had operated a restaurant in the late nineteenth century, where Malvina Perry had been taken to court for her circus act, and just east of Segundo where Alice Baker had worked as a male teacher. Biber was the only surgeon in town, doing everything from gunshot wounds to Caesarian births to appendectomies.

He bought a small ranch and 25 head of cattle, and then expanded it. One year he took a bull to the Colorado State Fair and placed second in his class.

Biber did his first sex change surgery in 1968 for Ann, a social-worker friend who had been completing her real-life test without his realizing. Biber consulted with Harry Benjamin, who had started Ann on estrogens, and then sent to the Johns Hopkins Hospital for diagrams describing Dr. Georges Burou's technique.

Trinidad's only hospital was Mount San Rafael, a Roman Catholic hospital. After hiding the first few cases because of possible objections, Biber gave a series of lectures to the local Ministerial Alliance about the psychological needs of transsexuals and what his surgery entailed.

"Much to my amazement, there was no opposition. They were very understanding and accepting. All of a sudden, townspeople became very sophisticated and knew everything about transsexuals."

However there was some reaction: a colleague resigned, in part because of the transgender surgeries, he had problems with insurance, and was admonished for poor record keeping. On the other hand the surgeries brought in almost a million dollars a year and definitely helped the hospital remain financially viable. A local was reported as saying:

"After my hysterectomy, I went to Denver, and one of my friends said, 'You didn't let that doctor do it.' And I said, 'I certainly did.' They looked at me funny. 'But he does that kind of surgery.' And I said, 'Which proves how good he is. You have to be darn good to do that.' They never thought of it that way."

In the late-1970s when the Johns Hopkins Gender Clinic and others closed, Dr Biber became the major alternate source of transgender surgery in the US. Fletcher summarizes Biber's approach:

"First, patients must pass at least two psychiatric evaluations ensuring that they're not homosexuals or transvestites or simply people seeking fame and fortune on the talk-show circuit. True transsexuals, Biber says, are not attracted to members of the same sex and do not become aroused by wearing clothes of the opposite sex. True transsexuals consciously and subconsciously believe they are members of the opposite sex, trapped in the wrong body. ... Next, patients must receive hormone therapy for at least a year and live in the role of the opposite sex for the same period. If the adjustment is successful and another evaluation approved, plastic surgery is recommended. Then, and only then, will they get a consultation with Biber, who makes the final call. If he senses doubt, hesitation or confusion, which he does about 5 percent of the time, he sends patients home. As a consolation, he often performs minor cosmetic surgery first, such as an Adam's-apple reduction or breast augmentation."

He quotes the doctor:

"After doing so many of these, you develop a gut feeling. A bell will go off and you'll know something is wrong, even if they came with good evaluations. You certainly don't want to make a mistake. You've got to have a feel for if they're really worried about being a transsexual or if they're just scared of the surgery. It helps me in my own mind to know I'm doing the right thing."

Dr Biber went on to do thousands of the operation, resulting in Trinidad, Colorado becoming known as the “Sex-Change Capital of the World”, and also trained other surgeons in transgender surgery. He  became a celebrity and appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show, Sally Jessy Raphael Show, Geraldo Rivera Show, the Learning Channel, the Discovery Channel, the Playboy channel and the Guinness World Records Primetime TV show.

He and his wife had seven children, he owned the largest cattle ranch in the county, and served as a Las Animas County commissioner from 1990 to 1996.

Notable patients include:
1968 Ann.
1976 Yasmene Jabar,
1978 Diane Delia,
1979 Nancy Ledins,
        Joseph Cluse,
1980 Edie Lane,
1981 Susan Faye Cannon,

In 1910 Alice Baker was a school teacher in Harrah, Oklahoma. She left for Oklahoma City where a man paid attention to her. However he then reported to the police that she was a man. She was arrested for masquerading, but seized an opportunity and left town.

The next year, as James Arthur Baker, he was teaching in Segundo, Colorado, just west of Trinidad. Several of his schoolboys suspected that he was a woman disguised as a man. They took their concerns to the authorities who arrested Baker and lodged him in the women’s quarters at the local jail. At a court hearing ten days later, the prosecutor supplied evidence that Baker had gone by the names Madeline, Mabel and also Irene Pardee, and had corresponded both as male and as female. Furthermore Mrs Baker had deserted a husband and two children in Oklahoma. He also displayed items of female clothing taken from Baker’s trunk. However three physicians, who had examined Baker, testified that he was man, and the judge dismissed the case.

Baker arrived in Portland, Oregon in the spring of 1913. She arrived in men’s clothes but found refuge at the women’s Peniel Mission, where she explained that she had had to leave home in Idaho after a disagreement with her parents, and had traveled as a man with a fake moustache. Donations were made to her of feminine attire and a ‘transformation’ wig. There were even rumors that a local evangelical minister had proposed. However the wife of the Peniel Mission’s superintendent became suspicious, and a short stay in hospital resulted in the physician reporting to the superintendent and to the local authorities that she was a man. Baker quickly left town, on a ship sailing to California, with a man friend.

In late 1913 Baker was again arrested, this time in Kansas City, Kansas, charged with dressing as a woman. By this time she had a lawyer husband. The two had counterfeited gold certificates, and even travelled to Japan to exchange them for real gold.

Malvina was born at sea, on board the Oliver Mitchell, her father the captain, and her mother a North American aboriginal. She lived on the ship until age 15 when she eloped with one of the sailors, Edmund Perry. Both fathers found the couple and had their marriage annulled.

For five years Malvina refused to speak to her father, until they met by chance in New York. He appointed her the first mate on the Oliver Mitchell. However she had a falling out with the second mate, her brother George, and ran away again.

By this time she had a luxuriant beard, and was able to find circus work. Although only 5’4” (1.6m) she was able to easily lift 150 pounds (68 kg) above her head. She also did an act wherein the circus strongman broke a four-inch (10 cm) thick block of concrete over her head with a mallet. This was controversial, and in 1909 a court in Trinidad, Colorado issued a ruling that she was not to do it anymore. Instead she broke kitchen chairs over head. She disliked circus work, and only returned to it when she needed money.

She had four husbands in total. With her third, she had three daughters. However after seven years, he left her complaining that he was embarrassed in that she looked too much like a man.

She was reunited with Edmund Perry, married him again, but he was killed in the Great War.

In 1919 Malvina’s father died and left her the Oliver Mitchell. She had earned her captain’s license two years before, and took the ship to sea. She developed a relationship with one of her sailors, Joseph Cheelsman, and they became engaged. However the ship sank off the Yucatan in 1924, and they were separated.

Malvina lived in Detroit for a while, where she was brought to court for non-support of her son Robert. The judge accused her of perjury for claiming to be female, and she punched him and was imprisoned for contempt.

Malvina and Robert ended up in Baltimore. They accepted the hospitality of a Mr. Becker, but the situation ended in court after she refused his advances, and he claimed that she was a man. The police matron at the court examined Malvina, and declared her to be a true woman.

The newspaper story of this enabled Cheelsman to find her again, and they were married and lived with Robert, until he disappeared with all the household goods while she was at the Chicago Fair. Malvina returned to working as a bearded lady and strong woman on the Baltimore Waterfront.

Malvina died at age 53, confessing on her deathbed that she was a 'man', Melvin. This was confirmed by an autopsy.

• “”Mrs Perry, Bearded Wife, Loses Man ‘Took’ for Life”. The Border Cities Star, Oct 6, 1933. http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=MhA_AAAAIBAJ&sjid=yk4MAAAAIBAJ&pg=3039,1570473&dq=malvina+perry&hl=en
• “Lady with Beard now Proved Man: ‘She’ Confesses Hoax on ‘Her’ Death Bed to Doctor; Also Posed as ‘Mother’”. Los Angeles Times, Mar 3, 1934.
• “Noted ‘Bearded Lady’ Was Man: Confesses on Deathbed Hoaxed Baltimore Waterfront For Years”. The Calgary Daily Herald, Mar 5, 1934. http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=YhVkAAAAIBAJ&sjid=DXsNAAAAIBAJ&pg=2868,489271&dq=baltimore+1934+bearded+lady&hl=en
• “Bearded Lady Confesses”. Northern Standard, 29 May 1934. Online at: http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/49494214?searchTerm=Bearded%20%20lady&searchLimits=
• Elizabeth J. Anderson. “Malvina Emily Perry“. Phreeque, 1.21.09 http://phreeque.tripod.com/malvina_perry.html

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An unusual tale.  As Malvina always lived as female, I assume that she felt that she was a woman.  The inspection by the police matron can be dismissed as cursory.  The deathbed 'confession' because in 1934 there were no public concepts of transsexual or transgender.   But why the beard?  Most bearded women in the days before electrolysis, who did not work in circuses, shaved.  The beard got her circus work, but she was ambivalent about working in circuses.

Why did her father treat her as a woman from the start?  Why was an autopsy, rather than a simple look under her clothes, required to confirm her sex?  This sounds like she had some kind of intersex condition.

Katherine Vosbaugh was born in France to a well-off father who gave her an excellent business education. He died when she was twenty, but by that point she was an expert accountant and spoke four languages.

She assumed male guise when she moved to the United States with the ostensible reason of securing employment - although he stayed in the male role for the rest of his life.

After working in various cities, Frenchy settled in Joplin, Missouri where he worked for fifteen years as a bank clerk. He took a wife at this time. At least part of the reason was to save her good name for she was pregnant. However the child died after a few months.

After the child died, the couple moved to Trinidad, Colorado where they opened a restaurant.

The wife drifted off and Frenchy took a job as cook on a big sheep ranch, sleeping the same room as the other men.

At the age of 78 he contracted pneumonia and was hospitalized. The medical treatment led to the discovery that he was a woman. However he was allowed to remain in the hospital, working as a man, for what turned out to be the last two years of his life.

• “Woman Who Posed as Man 60 Years, Dead/Born in France/Only Reason Was to Secure man’s Work”. The Trinidad Advestiser. Nov 11, 1907. In Jonathan Ned Katz. Gay/Lesbian Almanac: A New Documentary, Harper & Row Publishers, Inc. 1983, Carrol & Graf Publishers, Inc. 1994: 323-4
• Louis Sullivan. Information for the female to male cross dresser and transsexual. Seattle: Ingersoll Gender Center. 1^st Ed Janus Information Facility. 20 pp1980.2nd ed 48 pp 1985. 3rd ed.. iii, 123 pp1990: 10.

Revised: 3 Nov 2009

Mark Bowers first attempted to transition at age 19, but with no support nor funds, was not able to.


He trained as a gynecologist at the University of Minnesota Medical school, and had a successful practice in Seattle where he delivered over 2000 babies. Mark has also served as Obstetrics and Gynecology Department Chairperson at the Swedish (Providence) Medical Center, and was named the only physician member of the Washington State midwifery Board.

He married a wife in 1986, and they had three children.

Bowers transitioned to female in 1997. She is still married to her wife.

Marci was named as one of "America's Best Physicians" for the 2002 to 2003 awards.

She took over Stanley Biber’s practice in Trinidad, Colorado, in 2003 including his genital reassignments, when he retired. She is the first post-op person to lead a sex-change clinic. She is doing around 130 genital operations per year. Two television documentaries have been made about her work, and she appeared in and consulted for an episode of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.

She has observed Dr Pierre Foldes in France who pioneered clitoroplastal reversal surgery to undo female genital mutilation. Marci is doing similar operations pro-bono.

• Jeremy Simmons (dir). TransGeneration. Scr: Mathilde Bittner, with Raco Ignacio, Gabbi Gibson, Lucas Cheadle, T.J. Jourian, and Marci Bowers. US TV Sundance 272 mins 2005.
• Chris McKim (dir). Sex Change Hospital. UK TV Channel 4. 6 episodes of 60 mins 2007.
• Chris Jackson. "The 'Transational' Dr Marci Bowers". Lavender: Minnesota's GLBT Magazine. 2008 www.lavendermagazine.com/archives/issue-340/the-%e2%80%9ctransational%e2%80%9d-dr-marci-bowers.
• Eve Conant. “The Kindest Cut”. Newsweek. Oct 20, 2009.
  www.newsweek.com/id/218692/page/1.
•  Jay Hodges & PJ Raval (dir). Trinidad.With Stanley Biber and Marci Bowers. US 2008.
• www.marcibowers.com.
• ·“Marci Bowers”. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marci_Bowers.

Original March 2007; revised March 2019.

The person who became Miss Destiny was born in Trinidad, Colorado, and raised in a nearby mining camp.  Her parents took her to California age 6.  "I simply loved my mother's clothes. I couldn't imagine why she dressed me as a boy.  Even then I wanted to talk to her about my feelings, but I just couldn't." (Drag, p13)

In her 20s she took the name, Miss Destiny.
She became famous in 1963 when she was featured in John Rechy's City of Night.  "Take John Rechy for instance. I can't recall whether I first met him in Pershing Square or in the 1-2-3. I do remember I had just turned 21. In fact on the eve of my 21st birthday I waited around the corner from the 1-2-3 until midnight and burst into the place at exactly 12:01 expecting to dazzle the girls and boys. It was the first bar I was ever in." (Drag p15)

She became part of the scene in Pershing Square, (map) Los Angeles.  John Rechy used her for a chapter in his book. A year later she was interviewed in the September 1964 issue of ONE magazine, and expressed scepticism of Rechy's masculinity.  "When I first saw Rechy he looked butch. ... I loved it because that was exactly what I wanted to see in him. I only had sex with him once, and he didn't disappoint me. But I was a silly girl in those days, and I couldn't stand to do the same one twice. Besides, I could see that he was really a queen."

As she was in her early 20s in the early 1960s, she will be in her late 60s now. Did she ever have completion surgery?  What did she do with the rest of her life? Neither Charles Casillo nor Lillian Faderman & Stuart Timmons have any extra information.

*not the band from Melbourne.

• John Rechy. City of Night. Grove Press. 1963: 94-119.
• “The Fabulous Miss Destiny”. ONE Magazine. Sept 1964. 6-12. Interview.
• "The Common Sense of Miss Destiny". Drag Magazine, 1,2, 1971. Online.
• Charles Casillo. Outlaw: The Lives and Careers of John Rechy. Advocate Book 2002: 93-7, 158-160.
• Lillian Faderman & Stuart Timmons. Gay L.A.: A History of Sexual Outlaws, Power Politics, and Lipstick Lesbians. Basic Books 430 pp 2006: 114, 115.
• John Rechy. After the Blue Hour.  Grove/Atlantic, 2017.