A Gender Variance Who's Who

Anatoli Misura was born in Belgium to Ukrainian refugees, who later ran a dairy farm in Mont St. Grégoire, Quebec. By age 18 Anatoli was reading about and identifying with transsexuals. He trained as a mechanical designer and worked as a manager of a construction crew, and was married for seven years.

She transitioned as Christine White in 1993, reportedly spending $60,000. She had genital surgery with Dr Michel Seghers in Brussels, a nose job, breast implants and three operations on her vocal cords. She was then unable to obtain work in the construction industry. She worked a little in Edmonton, Alberta as an escort and manicurist.

However she felt that she was entitled to recompense. She robbed 31 banks across Canada taking an estimated total of $80,000 between May 1997 in Edmonton and November 1998 when she held up the Scotiabank in the Quinte Mall, Belleville, Ontario, and was pursued in a high-speed chase.

Her initial approach was to disguise as a man, and pass the teller a note from a day-timer book. Sometimes she had a fake bomb. The robber was described as an effeminate man, or a masculine woman in men's clothes: the Toronto Police referred to her as the Unisex Bandit. However the police had been looking for a man, and she was living as a woman.

After a protracted trial during which White successively fired five lawyers, she pleaded guilty in 2002 and was sentenced to eleven years minus three for pre-trial custody. In Burnaby prison and then Joliette prison outside Montréal, psychological counselling brought out her feelings of persecution. She studied computers and construction health and safety. She also sued her arresting officers for assault, the doctors who initially treated her after her arrest, and Legal Aid Ontario when it refused to finance her suits. She befriended notorious killer Karla Homolka.

She was granted parole in 2007.

*Not the racing commissioner, nor the actor, nor the anthropologist.

• Don Campbell. "Transvestite arrested in robbery rampage: Gender-bender allegedly looted 31 banks in two years". The Ottawa Citizen, 20 Nov 1998.
• "Unisex robber pleads guilty in bank heist". Kingston Whig-Standard, 18 Sep 1999.

• Erin Anderssen. "Confessions of the Unisex Robber It was a near-perfect subterfuge. Christine White was Bonnie and Clyde rolled into one". The Globe and Mail, 20 Dec 1999.
  
• Marnie Ko. "Big hands and female parts: The 'unisex bandit' repudiates her 30 bank robbery guilty pleas". Report Newsmagazine, 27, June 19, 2000.
  
• Tracy Huffman. "Robber jailed 8 years for spree ; Unable to earn money, transsexual turned to crime". Toronto Star, 12 June 2002.
  
• "Edmonton robber befriends Karla Homolka in jail, says she poses no threat". Canadian Press NewsWire., 19 Jan 2004.
  
• Doug Beazley. "Bookworm bandit". Maclean's, 117, 1 Mar 2004: 46.
  
• "Canada’s Bookworm Bandit". Country Facts, March 29^th, 2010. www.kwintessential.co.uk/articles/article/canada/Canada-s-Bookworm-Bandit/2728.
  
• Jeremy Ashley. "Unisex Bandit to learn fate of civil suit today". Ottawa Mens Centre, October 15, 2004. www.ottawamenscentre.com/news/20041015_unisex_bandit.htm.
  
• "Parole board approves transsexual bank robber's release". CanWest News Service, January 26, 2007. www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=b3911c56-a0b3-4c19-bf08-7682ae70e579&k=47103.
  
• John Schmied. "The Case of the Gender-Bending Book Bandit ". Mississauga Life, June 2011. www.mississaugalife.ca/2011/06/the-case-of-the-gender-bending-book-bandit.

Charles McGuire Jr. Was born near Corpus Christi, Texas, the son of a construction business man. From age 9 he worked for his dad’s business. He played football as a teenager, went hunting at weekends and dressed as a girl in his spare time.

He married at 20 and he and his wife moved to Houston and raised two children. He built up a construction materials company, M&C Consolidated Inc as the major seller of stabilized sand in the city.

His wife, a born-again Christian, who had known of his dressing from early on, divorced him in in 1981. McGuire then developed his life as Kathryn, started taking female hormones, had electrolysis and had her nose restructured.

For four years M&C Consolidated Inc was investigated by a federal grand jury for price fixing, and the investigators found out about Kathryn. This became a frequent source of jokes among county officials, and witnesses interviewed by the investigators were all asked questions about McGuire’s lifestyle. McGuire went to the press in 1988 and a color photograph of Kathryn was on the front page of the Houston Chronicle with her claim that she was being persecuted because of her lifestyle.

Following this Kathryn frequently appeared on the Stevens and Pruett show on radio station KLOL where she was noted for her grace in responding to audience comments. She was featured in all the Houston papers. In 1989 she ran for Houston City Council - the first open transvestite to do so - and came second out of three. She gave considerable donations to Houston AIDS organizations, and was on a board to find a cure.

The price fixing investigation was closed in March 1991, with no indictments. Shortly afterwards Kathryn flew to London. Her stay in a hospital to be operated on was filmed by documentary maker Brian Huberman.

Afterwards she lived in in Prague with the idea of opening a restaurant. Then she lived in Amsterdam, then Philadelphia, Atlantic City and California.

Her gay son, James, wrote his first play, Daddy Kathryn, about their relationship. Kathryn turned up for the opening night, and was the center of attention. In 1999 she said of her male persona:

"That wasn't me. That was just a shell I was in, or an image I was projecting to make everybody happy."

In 2002 Kathryn published a novel about a female Jesus with a transsexual mother.

She died at age 68.

*Not the film actress.

• Bob Sablature. “Price-fixing probe called a vendetta/Transvestite's accusations rejected”. Houston Chronicle, 10/08/1988: a.22. www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl/1988_575599/price-fixing-probe-called-a-vendetta-transvestite.html.
• Brian Huberman (dir). The Last Days of Charles/Kathryn. US PBS 1995.  www.brianhuberman.com/filmography/the-last-days-of-charleskathryn.
• Bonnie Gangelhoff. “American Woman: Prague's a lonely town, when you're the only transgendered Astros fan around”. Houston Press, Jun 1 1995. www.houstonpress.com/1995-06-01/news/american-woman.
• James McGuire. Daddy Kathryn. 1999.
• Brad Tyer. “A Star is Reborn, Again”. Houston Press, Apr 15 1999. www.houstonpress.com/1999-04-15/news/a-star-in-reborn-again.
• Kathryn McGuire. Texas Jesus. Victoria, B.C.: Trafford, 2002.
• Richard Connelly. “R.I.P Kathryn McGuire, Houston's Transvestite Socialite”. Houston Press, Feb 7 2011. http://blogs.houstonpress.com/hairballs/2011/02/rip_charles_kathryn_mcguire_ho.php.
• Mike Tolson. “Transgender exec remembered as a role model”. Houston Chronicle, Feb 12, 2011. www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Transgender-exec-remembered-as-a-role-model-1691496.php.

Elizabeth, from Philadelphia, had a small but memorable part in the John Waters’ film, Pink Flamingos, 1972, where she fully reciprocates when approached by a flasher.

Elizabeth & Maralyn, Philadelphia drag queen, in Nickels, p57

She was in the late stages of transition at the time, and in fact had her surgery a week later.

Waters says that he cast her because “I knew that she had a wonderful sense of humor”, and that “I was especially glad to know that she had the first sex change in Maryland that was paid for by welfare. At last, my tax money was being put to a good use”.

She was also in Water’s next film, Female Trouble, 1974. as a death row inmate.

She later moved to Chicago, married, adopted a child, and managed an all-male traveling construction crew.

In 1985 she appeared as the one female in Divine’s music video, Walk Like a Man.

• John Waters. Shock Value. New York, N.Y.: Dell Pub. Co, 1981: xi, 129.
• Thom Nickels. Gay and Lesbian Philadelphia. Charleston, SC: Arcadia, 2002: 57. 

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