Anne Vitale PhD, Editor
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ANNOUNCEMENTS
GENERAL INFORMATION
MEDIA WATCH
LEGAL ISSUES
BOOKS, Etc...
ANNOUNCEMENTS Obituary-- Alexander Goodrum Source : Monica Helms Top Monica Helms writes:
I received a call from a friend in Tucson this morning that a good friend, and a true pioneer in our community, Alexander Goodrum took his life Friday night. Alexander had been suffering from depression and was in a community facility, where he apparently hung himself over night.
Some of you probably knew Alexander, and others of you may have heard of him. If it was not for Alexander, Tucson would not have had an anti-discrimination ordnance that was Trans-inclusive. I can still remember him telling me the story on how he stood his ground at a meeting on the city ordnance, insisting that gender expression had to be in the bill. I was impressed at his strength. He was one of the people early in my activism career who showed me, by example, the right way to be an activist. He helped mold me as an activist when I lived in Arizona. He also helped make me a better person.
He was a gentle man, but never wanted to be referred to as "Alex," because it did not sound as dignified as "Alexander." Some knew him by "John," and others by "Bear." I knew him as "Friend." He has always had a special place in my heart, and now, that heart is breaking.
Our community has lost a shiny beacon, in a state where Transgender activist are few and far between. Why he took his life is not for any of us to ponder. I feel sad that he could not see himself as his friends and fellow activists saw him. All we can do is to mourn, and to move on, remembering the lessons he taught us. And, here I sit, 2000 miles from Tucson, alone with my tears and my memory. I have a picture on the wall of him, and I have not yet brought myself to look at it. I may, one day.
Alexander was one of those rare souls who we get blessed with in knowing. He has helped many in his time with us. His work will go on helping many others who are not even born yet. They will be his true legacy.
Alexander John "Bear" Goodrum, we will always remember you.
Monica Helms
Atlanta, GA
[thanks to Terisa Gibson via transgendernews] Date: Fri, 20 Sep 2002 14:40:13 -0000 From: Terisa Gibson <terisa_gibson@hotmail.com> [1]USA: Washington D.C.--True Spirit Conference February 14-17, 2003 Top The American Boyz to Hold Seventh Annual True Spirit Conference Masculinity: The Magical Mystery Tour February 14-17, 2003 The Washington Court Hotel 525 New Jersey Avenue, NW Washington DC 20001 (202) 879-7936 (800) 321-3010 PRESS RELEASE Contact: Michael Woodward, TSC 2003 Media Director at michael@transcribes.org TSC2003 Information: (703) 924-2659 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - September 1, 2002 The American Boyz is pleased to announce the seventh annual True Spirit Conference (TSC), to be held at the Washington Court Hotel, Washington, D.C. from February 14-17, 2003. TSC focuses on the social, physical, emotional, spiritual and relational health of all gender variant people on the female-to-male (FtM) spectrum and their significant others, friends, family and allies (SOFFAS). The workshops and panel presentations to be held during this event will address topics such as relationships, health and wellness, legal, political and employment issues, spirituality and the specific concerns of special needs populations including youth, elders, people of color and individuals with physical challenges. Town hall meetings will provide large, highly focused group interactions with a panel of experienced facilitators and transgender activists, while workshops and support groups will provide participants with increased opportunity for in-depth discussion and examination of specific issues. Conference entertainment will occur nightly and is planned to contain a spectrum of activities from a variety show to a dance. This year's conference also features nightly keynote speakers, access to medical screenings with tran-sensitive providers and a film festival. Author readings and salons will round out the conference offerings. The focus of the True Spirit Conference is to provide a forum for individuals who were designated to be female at birth, yet who express masculinity along a wide and diverse continuum. TSC provides a space for FtM/transgender person's significant others, friends, families, and allies (SOFFAS) to join together for support, information and celebration. This past year's conference drew over 700 attendees from the United States and abroad. The transgender community is a growing and diverse group of people spread out geographically across the United States and abroad, and this conference provides not only education and support, but also networking opportunities for this increasingly politicized and visible community. Workshop submission requirements may be found on the website, along with increasingly detailed information as the conference date nears. Conference fees range from $50 to $90 and a discount is given for early registration. Representatives of the press are invited to attend TSC 2003 but are required to register as a press person as well as sign and comply with all TSC press and camera regulations no later than February 1, 2003. All registered press will receive a TSC 2003 press packet upon their arrival at the conference. The American Boyz, Inc. (www.amboyz.org) is a national organization for people who were labeled female at birth but who feel that is not a complete or accurate assessment of who they are (FtM) and our significant others, friends, families and allies (SOFFAS). Founded in 1994, American Boyz provides education, support, social events, newsletters, web sites, email lists, local meetings, political action and the annual True Spirit Conference. True Spirit Conference i P.O. Box 1, Falls Church, VA 22040 i true-spirit.org Top
From: Erika Bjune To: tgsv@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, September 26, 2002 2:33 PM [2]USA: California--Trans March in Santa Cruz Top The Trans March is looking for people to help, especially people who would be interested in speaking at the event. Contact Jorge Bru at Transmarch2002@yahoo.com or (831) 425-0869 for more information. 2nd Annual Trans March October 11, 2002
**EVENT: March for Transgender Rights in Downtown Santa Cruz Friday October 11, 2002
Friday, October 11, 2002 Santa Cruz County will come together to celebrate the diversity of the transgender community and help to bring awareness to trans issues.
The event will consist of a march down Pacific Ave., starting on Pacific Ave. (cross street Elm) by the Metro Center at 6 p.m. Walking north on Pacific Ave., participants will show their solidarity with the transgender community in the spirit of National Coming Out Day.
Prior to the march there will be a poster making party at Café Pergolesi at 5 p.m. located on the corner of Elm and Cedar. All participants are welcome to come create a poster with a statement to send a message to our larger community during the march and rally.
Following the march, there will be a rally held at the compass rose on the north end of Pacific Ave. Guest speakers, with an array of experiences, will be highlighted. Speakers include Terri Gilbert, founder of the first ever Santa Cruz trans group, Parkhurst Society, and board member of The Diversity Center, and Kevin West, founder of the Santa Cruz Trans March, and STRANGE youth activist.
A space equipped with an open mic will be provided for anyone interested in sharing their thoughts and feelings in reflection of the events unifying message.
An open house and reception will be held at the Diversity Center (177 Walnut Ave.) following the march and rally. This will provide participants with an opportunity to mingle, indulge in quality conversation and connect to the queer, and more specifically, the trans community. Come share this nationally recognized day of unity on a more intimate level. Refreshments will be provided.
This event is being organized and sponsored by STRANGE and The Diversity Center. STRANGE is a Santa Cruz Countywide queer youth group that meets weekly at the Diversity Center. STRANGE welcomes all transgender, bisexual, lesbian, gay, queer, questioning youth and their allies to create a safe and supportive space to meet new people and plan and/or attend events. The Diversity Center is a community center in its thirteenth year proudly serving the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community of Santa Cruz County.
This event is co-sponsored by SCOUT (Santa Cruz Organization Uniting Transmen), SOFFA (Significant Others, Family, Friends, & Allies of Trans Folks), UCSC GLBTRC (University of California, Santa Cruz Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, & Transgender Resources Center), Santa Cruz Countywide Task Force for LGBTQ Youth, & Youth Services.
For more information contact:
Jorge Bru (831) 425-0869
Transmarch2002@yahoo.com
[3]USA: MTV Looking for subjects Top Editor's Note--DISCLAIMER-- I am simply passing this message on in case it is of interest to one or more of the readers of this newsletter. It has nothing to do with my private practice as a therapist. To prevent any possible conflict of interest or possible breach of confidentiality, I have made it a practice not to respond to invitations from the media to participate in their programming. If anyone I am seeing professionally decides to respond to this or any other such request for subjects, they do so at their own risk. Felicia writes: Dear Dr. Vitale I am putting together some preliminary research for a possible one hour documentary about being a young transsexual. As with all our True Life series stories, the subject matter will be handled with sensitivity and presented for the purpose of informing and educating our young demographic. I am contacting you for a couple of reasons... A) We are looking for counselors, experts, medical professionals to be interviewed on camera. B) We are looking for young transsexuals who are in the process of transformation or considering it and who would like to share their story. Preferably Male to Female If you have any information or resources that may be of use to us, please contact me & feel free to pass this information on to anyone who may be interested. FYI: Below is a posting. True Life: I'm a Transsexual MTV's documentary series True Life is looking for a young adult in the process of, or considering, a sex change operation. Also seeking young men and women who have already gone through the process. Or did you have complications during your operation and would like to share your story? Tell us in detail and include age, location, and anything else that may give us a better idea of who you are. Tell us about your experiences to help others understand and accept. Contact: transsexual@mtvstaff.com Thanks, Felicia Top
GENERAL INFORMATION SOURCE Brenda Lana Smith R.af D. Japan Today Japan News - Features - Gays, tra... http://japantoday.com/e/?content=feature&id=321 Saturday, September 28, 2002 [4]JAPAN--Gays, transsexuals work for understanding Top Keiji Hirano TOKYO &emdash; Gays, lesbians and transsexuals in Japan are looking to cooperate to improve the Japanese public's understanding of them and the challenges they face. They are gearing up for legal fights to be guaranteed the same subsistence rights as heterosexuals. They also hope to set up a joint support center in the near future to offer each other advice on overcoming difficulties they have in leading their lives. "Transsexuals are asking to be allowed to change their gender in their civil registry, and homosexual couples are seeking rights and benefits equal to those of heterosexual couples," said Satoru Ito, a gay activist and Hosei University lecturer. "Each of us aims at different goals," said Ito, who also runs the Sukotan Project with his partner to promote public understanding of homosexuals. The Sukotan Project organizes lectures, arranges publishing and offers counseling to homosexuals. "But we believe we will be able to work in a coalition to achieve them through social as well as legal means," Ito said. As the first step, Ito recently edited a book with Masae Torai, a transsexual activist. The book consists mainly of essays by gays, lesbians and transsexuals. In "A Book for Understanding a Variety of Sexuality," transsexuals described how they have led difficult lives because their congenital gender differs from that with which they feel comfortable and to which they want to belong. Some said that out of concern over the public's view of them, they isolated themselves in their rooms at home. "I did not feel like going out because of my gender-neutral appearance with long hair and hormone therapy," noted one transsexual. Torai said some transsexuals work only part time because they do not want to submit to their employers their residence certificates revealing their sex. Others are reluctant to see doctors as they do not want to be stared at near hospital counters. As for homosexuals, one gay man noted it was difficult for him and his partner to rent an apartment in which to live together because landlords rejected their sexual orientation. Another said his parents cried when he told them he was gay. One lesbian said she dropped out of college due to mental stress before she herself had accepted her sexual orientation. Both transsexuals and homosexuals pointed out in the book that while many corporations in Japan rule out discrimination against the disabled and foreign residents, they avoid mentioning homosexuals and transsexuals. They also said they want to enjoy equal benefits guaranteed to ordinary couples, such as inheritance rights and visiting guarantees at hospitals when a partner falls seriously ill. In May last year, six people, including Torai, who have undergone sex-change operations filed lawsuits seeking to change their gender in the civil registry to be able to enjoy basic social benefits, including marriage. But a family court rejected a plaintiff's demand in August on grounds that there are still questions on the causes of gender identity disorder. Ito said while he himself plans to take some legal action to ensure human rights protections for homosexuals, he wants to support the legal struggle being waged by transsexuals. "Transsexuals and homosexuals have been acting separately on their own behalf, and we have not fully understood each other," he said. "But I think we can work together to promote mutual and public understanding and to ensure equal rights for everybody." "We also plan to establish a community center-like place, where gays, lesbians and transsexuals can get together and interact with each other," he said. For the past several years, Ito has held joint lectures with Torai at colleges and workshops for teachers. (Kyodo News) September 28, 2002 ©2000 - 2002 Top
Date: Sat, 28 Sep 2002 From: "Mrs. Petra Henderson" <petrahenderson@yahoo.com> [5]CYPRUS: Lawmaker unhappy over prospect of TS marriage Top --- In eurotransgender, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/eurotransgender "Terisa Gibson" <terisa_gibson@h...> wrote: Cyprus Mail via HR-Net (Hellenic Resources Instititute, voluntary organization) September 28, 2002 http://tinyurl.com/1olr http://www.hri.org/news/cyprus/cmnews/2002/02-09-28.cmnews.html#07 Transsexuals will not be allowed to marry in Cyprus, deputy insists By Alexia Saoulli TRANSSEXUALS will not be allowed to marry in Cyprus, a member of the House Legal Affairs Committee insisted yesterday. Following EU harmonisation directives, the committee was asked to examine and regulate the law on civil marriages before the end of the year, AKEL deputy Akis Agapiou said yesterday. According to reports, the committee was faced with a dilemma concerning civil marriages between transsexuals. Specifically, the deputies discussed to what extent a person born of one sex, but undergoing surgery to become another, could then marry. Agapiou said they could not. How is the civil wedding defined in Cyprus? "It is a marriage between a man and woman as we know them today," said Agapiou. In other words, the legal binding between two individuals of the opposite sex, that were born that way, he said. What if the couple did not mention one of the partners had had a sex change? "In order to get married, the couple must produce documentation proving who they are, including birth certificates. If they decide to give false papers - which is illegal - with the intention of duping the courts, then that is up to them. We will not be able to do anything about it, because we will not know. However, it is not something we will accept," he said. As for homosexual civil weddings, they will not be taking place for quite some time, although Agapiou said he hoped homosexual groups on the island wouldn't pose a problem to the contrary. "We have to take things one day at a time. Change takes place over time and very slowly, not overnight. Most European countries do not yet accept marriages between same sex couples and they are considered far more forward thinking than Cypriot society is," he told the Cyprus Mail. "Nothing is going to change concerning civil marriages. The law is merely being regulated in order to meet European Union stipulations. They will still be carried out at municipality registry offices as they always have. Only a few, minor technicalities will be amended in order to iron out the law completely," he said. But the fact remains that there are cases when individuals undergo sex change for biological reasons. Sometimes they are born with a hormone imbalance that may give them a male sex organ and yet they 'feel' like a woman. Moreover before they undergo surgery, they are psychologically assessed to determine whether or not the surgery is appropriate. Would a refusal to permit them to marry not be an impingement on their human rights? "I think we have more serious matters than that to discuss," Agapiou replied. Copyright Cyprus Mail 2002 Top
Source--Brenda Lana Smith R.af D Boston Globe Online / Metro | Region / Protes... http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/268/metro/Protesters_focus_on_Finneran_con ference+.shtml [6] USA: Massachusetts -- Protesters focus on Finneran conference Top House speakers set to gather By Rick Klein, Globe Staff, 9/25/2002 t's supposed to be a chance for House Speaker Thomas M. Finneran to showcase the best his hometown has to offer: a gala reception at the John Hancock Observatory, a speech by John Adams biographer David McCullough, a Duck Tour, a clambake at the USS Constitution, and dinners at the State House and the Boston Public Library. But when three dozen of Finneran's fellow House speakers from around the nation gather to check in to their rooms today at the Fairmont Copley Plaza, they'll be greeted by something the speaker of the Massachusetts House has become all-too accustomed to this year: a protest. A collection of groups fed up with Finneran's tight control of the House agenda is using the opening night of the five-day annual meeting of the National Speakers Conference to voice their frustration, and they're planning to jam a sidewalk in Copley Square with between 200 and 300 people this evening. ''While Finneran is hosting this national gathering, we think it's a perfect opportunity to call attention to his undemocratic grip on the Legislature,'' said Eric Weltman, organizing director of Citizens for Participation in Political Action, a liberal group that is coordinating an ''overthrow Finneran'' campaign this year. ''People are going to see that Finneran has squelched legislation concerning a range of issues, from affordable housing to gay rights to Clean Elections.'' About 35 House speakers and their top aides from legislatures across the country will be in town through Sunday for meetings and receptions that give legislative leaders a chance to network and share tips on governance. The event is being held in Boston because Finneran is serving a year-long rotation as the conference's president. Finneran could not be reached for comment yesterday, but he has expressed excitement about hosting this year's gathering. The protesters want to call attention to the speaker's leadership style, in addition to the way the conference is being paid for: by corporations. Invited to this week's receptions, including the kickoff event at the Hancock Tower tonight, are executives of 59 companies that helped pick up the tab for the speakers' festivities. The inclusion of members from the conference's Corporate Advisory Council has drawn concern from government watchdogs, who fear that business leaders' unfettered access to top lawmakers from around the country fosters favor-currying down the line. ''This is the kind of access that most citizens only dream of, and we all know that access is influence,'' said Pam Wilmot, executive director of Common Cause Massachusetts, a government watchdog group that is not involved in tonight's protest. ''Access isn't just having a policy discussion with someone, it's having a nice dinner. It's not fair, it's not democratic, and there are ways that we can change the influence that these corporate groups have on the political process.'' According to state records, 28 of the program's 59 corporate sponsors hire lobbyists to represent their interests in Massachusetts, including AT&T, Blue Cross, Raytheon, Verizon, and WorldCom. Corporate sponsors typically pay between $2,500 and $5,000 a year to the nonprofit State Legislative Leaders Foundation, which includes the speakers' conference, to help pay fees for speech-makers and for meals at the conference, said Stephen Lakis, the president of the Centerville, Mass.-based foundation. Lakis said the events that include the corporate representatives are chances for private and public-sector leaders to have informal chats, and said that no one brings up specific legislation as a general rule. The speakers all pay their own ways, from personal funds or campaign accounts, to get to Boston, he said. The sponsors are not allowed to participate in formal meetings scheduled among the speakers and their chiefs of staff, he said. ''They don't have any role in the classes or the discussions,'' Lakis said. ''It's a wonderful opportunity for both sides to key in and express their ideas. These are pretty professional people, and they conduct themselves professionally. We've put together a great program.'' But Finneran's legions of critics are hoping the Mattapan Democrat's time in something of a national spotlight will bring attention to the issues they're looking to advance on Beacon Hill. ''The setting just provided a great opportunity to get our word out, at a time when there's going to be increased scrutiny,'' said Jeremy Pittman, chairman of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Political Alliance of Massachusetts, whose group has been battling Finneran for years over benefits for gay domestic partners of public workers. ''We are hopeful that, as we continue to get the word out, that there will be changes in the leadership, either the way it is run or in the leader that the members elect.'' Rick Klein can be reached at rklein@globe.com. This story ran on page B3 of the Boston Globe on 9/25/2002. © Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company. Top
Source--Brenda Lana Smith R.af D. Local News - Winnipeg - canada.com network http://www.canada.com/winnipeg/news/story.asp?id={F5D710DF-DA3B-45C3-9F03-CF CFEE046EED} [7]CANADA --Man pleads guilty to assaulting transsexual Top Tuesday, September 24, 2002 WINNIPEG -- An Ontario man who nearly beat a transsexual woman to death after discovering she had male sex organs is going to prison. Randall Allan Viggers, of Brockville, was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison. He pleaded guilty Monday to aggravated assault for viciously attacking Alec McKay, also known as Alexis, in May. Court heard McKay and a drunken Viggers met in the washroom of downtown hotel. They talked and McKay agreed to perform oral sex upon Viggers in his room for $40. The Crown says Viggers discovered McKay still had male genitalia, became enraged and started beating her with a beer bottle and a table leg. She was saved when a friend broke down the door. Viggers surrendered to police two weeks after the attack. The Winnipeg Transgender Group is asking why police failed to identify the attack as a hate crime. © Copyright 2002 Canadian Press Top
MEDIA WATCH Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | When my b... http://www.guardian.co.uk/women/story/0,3604,799831,00.html Source Brenda Lana Smith R.af D. [8]UK: When my best mate became a woman Top If five phrases summed up Joe they would be: Stella Artois, snooker, cricket, Star Wars and Nottingham Forest FC. The word transsexual would not be on that list.' By Sean Thomas Friday September 27, 2002 The Guardian I am sitting in a riverside pub in west London when my old friend Joe turns to me and says: "I want to be a woman." I have been expecting this. A mutual friend has forewarned me that Joe has very recently come out as a transvestite, indeed a transsexual. But it is still a shock to hear it from Joe himself. This is because he is one of the blokeiest blokes imaginable. If five phrases could be said to sum up my college mate, they would be: Stella Artois, snooker, test cricket, Star Wars and Nottingham Forest FC. The word "transsexual" would not, hitherto, have figured in that list. And now here's my old chum Joe, old sports-mad Joe, telling me about his rather petite dress size (10). "It's very expensive being a transvestite," he tells me. "You have to maintain two wardrobes." "Er, right." "And wigs are really expensive. And bras don't come ch -" "Fancy a drink?" My head is spinning; I retreat to the bar and order a beer. Then I order a gin and tonic for Joe: he has switched from pints of lager to "girlier" drinks. This is one of the things I am going to have to get used to. There are other things I am going to have to get used to. One day in the future Joe will start coming to the pub in skirts and blouses. That will be a big change. At some other point in the future (once his hormone pills have kicked in), he will start to grow breasts. This seems to me an interesting scenario. It throws up the possibility that Joe might become the most ideal of girlfriends: someone able to talk knowledgeably and amusingly about soccer and cricket and old Arnold Schwarzenegger movies, but with breasts and hips to boot. But then I wonder if Joe will remain able to think like a man. Will his sex-change also feminise his personality, his attitudes, his spirit, and thus endanger my male friendship with him? To put it more bluntly, will he stop wanting to talk about football, and start wanting to chat about star signs? Back to the here and now. I have more pressing questions. When I take our drinks back to the pub table, I ask Joe to spell out when and where he first became a transsexual. It turns out that he has been aware he was different from a remarkably early age. When he was five or so, he heard a news story about a famous transsexual called April Ashley, and despite Joe's tender years he was immediately aware that something in April's experience chimed with his own outlook. This feeling grew stronger through infancy and adolescence: Joe remembers, as a boy, looking at girls with a yearning that wasn't sexual. He had an ache to be like girls, rather than with girls. "I didn't really have a puberty," says Joe. "I don't think I went through what most boys go through. I never had a desire for... penetration." Growing up as he did in a mainstream Midlands environment, he found it difficult to confess his secret to "normal" people around him, even - or perhaps especially - friends and family. But the necessity for subterfuge didn't put Joe off his quest for the accoutrements of girlhood. At the vulnerable age of 14, he used to go into women's clothes shops and ask to try on dresses. To me this seems incredible, and also incredibly brave. As Joe goes on I start to feel the first inklings of real admiration for what he is doing, and respect for what he has been through. What can it have been like, to be a 14-year-old boy trying on ra-ra skirts in the Nottingham branch of Top Shop? For a long time the salesgirls of the east Midlands were the only people who knew his secret. Even when he came south, to the alleged sophistication of London, and London University, he felt unable to reveal his true self. Even to close male pals like me. "I was scared you would all reject me," he tells me. "You were all so laddish. But now..." He pauses and looks me in the eye. "Now I believe I was wrong to doubt my mates. You wouldn't have rejected me... right?" I concur, vigorously. Our group of friends wouldn't have rejected Joe, mainly because most of us were semi-feral layabouts ourselves. How could we have rejected him for simply being as oddball as the rest of us? I put this point to Joe. He looks wistful. "You know," he remarks, "I could have come out long before." But he didn't. For years he maintained a double life. "You have to be a good liar to be a secret transvestite," as he puts it. That said, there were moments when the facade of normality nearly slipped. He took risks. One time, when he was living with a couple we both know, he experimented with wearing the girlfriend's ball-gowns whenever the couple were out. That could have been a bit peculiar if they had come back early. Another time when we were all sharing a flat, by absurd coincidence an old schoolfriend of mine, who was staying over, rang a transsexual chatline out of curiosity. Then the phone bill arrived and we all saw the chatline number itemised, and we all rounded on Joe and, jokingly, accused him of being the phoner, and therefore a transsexual. This was a big joke precisely because he was so obviously not a transsexual. Or so we believed. "I was trembling inside," Joe recalls. "I thought you'd all rumbled me. It was awful." No one did rumble him. Though, looking back, I do wonder whether we should have suspected something, given his lack of obvious girlfriends. But he used to convince us that he had had romantic flings, even though he hadn't, so he successfully maintained the facade of laddish normality in that respect as well. Now we are on this subject of sex, I am keen to resolve a puzzling aspect of all this. I'm curious to know if Joe is actually homosexual. He says not. He informs me he is, rather, a "lesbian trapped in a man's body". Apparently Joe's tastes run more to a kind of sisterly intimacy. The end of Joe's story, as he relates it, is poignant. A few years back he revealed his secret to a close female friend, whose warm understanding persuaded him to extend his psychosexual horizons. He moved up north for a couple of years and started to visit transvestite clubs in Manchester. At this point things were going well, he was taking things at his own pace; then came the sudden blow that forced him to open up to everyone. Joe was living in a shared flat in Liverpool. The flat was burgled by some local tearaways and his wardrobe was rifled, spilling dresses, skirts and "special interest" mags all over the floor. This meant the local kids knew his secret, and they weren't about to let him get away with it. "My life wouldn't have been worth living in that street," he says. "I had to get out that same night, move back to London. But I had to tell my flatmates why I was fleeing. And once I'd told them I thought I might as well tell you all. And so here we are." Indeed, here we are. I feel like giving Joe a hug, but I am not sure what that would say about our relationship. So instead I slap him on the back. Then I say my goodbyes, and step out into the riverine air of Putney. I take deep breaths. I'm a little stunned. That remarkable pub meeting was in the autumn of 1999. It is now high summer, nearly three years later, and it is the Covent Garden launch of my second novel. A lot of significant stuff has happened in that time, to me as much as Joe, but this night is particularly special for the both of us. He is going to be coming to the party as a woman. It will be the first time I've seen him in his full kit, in the outside world. That's not to say Joe hasn't become more womanly (quite apart from his clothing) in the intervening years. He has. In the past 30 months of hormone pills and elocution lessons, as he slowly builds up to possible sex-swap surgery, he has physically and mentally changed. He has longer fingernails. Less stubble. A different, less assertive walk. He has also changed somewhat in sensibility. In these years he has become a little gentler, more sensitive; in turn I am less abrasive with him, more solicitous of his feminine feelings. Put it another way: although our conversations are no deeper - or more candid - than they used to be, they do have a different dynamic. Within our relationship, we have slightly different personae. For example, Joe feels more able to be vulnerable: the other day he wept when talking about his dying mother. I am not sure he'd have felt the freedom to do that before. Equally, when he cried, I was able to be more understanding of him, in a mildly tender way. And yes, Joe is also developing breasts. Just recently I went out drinking with him and a friend, Pete. Pete took one look at the budding A-cups under Joe's unisex jumper, and reported that his own 15-year-old daughter's breasts weren't growing as fast as Joe's. Yet for all these changes, I haven't seen Joe as a proper woman in the real world. Until now. Feeling the tension, I pace the floor. Then eventually the door opens and Joe comes in. He is wearing a blue dress and a blonde wig. It is a sight I am conditioned to find comical, and so I do. But after a while I stop giggling, and I look at Joe more studiedly, and I begin to find the sight of him as a woman rather inspiring. Almost noble. What he is doing really takes guts. And heart. And courage. Good for him. Taking up my wine glass I go up to him. He stands there, with an unsure expression. "You know," I say. "You look OK... not bad at all." In his blue dress, Joe smiles, and sighs with relief. Then we start talking about football. · Sean Thomas's novel The Cheek Perforation Dance is published by Flamingo next month. Joe's story Although it is years now since I came out, I still find it extremely difficult to explain why I am doing what I am. Perhaps it is because I constantly question my motives. Day to day, sometimes hour to hour, I feel the need to justify to myself that I have made the right decision. And I always come round to the same old reason - changing sex is the only thing that I have ever really wanted to do. And the only thing that gives me the chance of getting rid of an itch that I have been trying to scratch since I was knee-high. But is that enough? Well, all I can say is that I hope so. So many things are still uncertain. So much can go wrong. I am well aware that only something like a third of people who start the treatment carry it right through to the end. Yet, what seemed for so long to be an impossibility, a pipedream, has, over the past few years become an achievable goal. And that is an exciting as well as a daunting place to be, as I know that however many pills I take, or however much surgery I choose to have, I can never be a woman in every sense of the word. The best I can hope for is to be able to live in a female role. And with the help of my friends and family, who have all been nothing less than wonderful throughout what has been a confusing time for them, I think I will be OK. · Joe's name has been changed. Special report Gender issues http://www.guardian.co.uk/gender/0,11812,670739,00.html -- © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002 Top
Source: Brenda Lana Smith R.af D. A gay history on west's main drag - smh.com.au http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/09/22/1032055035554.html [9]AUSTRALIA --A gay history on west's main drag By William Verity Top The Sydney Morning Herald. September 23 2002 Here is a picture of courage: you shave your legs, put on your favourite blonde wig to cover your short, black hair and, wearing your best skirt and blouse, you go shopping along the main street in Liverpool. Oh yes, and you are a middle-aged man. Many would say that the western suburbs are not generally seen as a friendly place for lesbians, gays and transgender people. An openly gay cafe that opened in Liverpool a few years ago was torched and did not reopen. Meeting places are limited to private homes, toilets and some nightclubs offering gay and lesbian nights in Parramatta and Liverpool. The west is a place where gays have been largely invisible. One man who differs from this view is the most prominent gay man from the west, Campbelltown solicitor John Marsden. As the head of the board of Liverpool Regional Museum, he is the instigator of an exhibition opening in October that is planned to coincide with the Gay Games. Just Sensational!: Queer Histories of Western Sydney has as its first stated aim the "reclamation of hidden and largely invisible histories". "Many of us who are gay or lesbian don't want to live in the enclaves of Surry Hills or Newtown, but we do have special difficulties," Marsden admitted. "By bringing out the history of gay people, we make people understand that we are not great big ugly people." The gay history of the west starts with the first European explorers who travelled up the Georges River in 1795 to set foot on land that was to become Liverpool. The letters between Matthew Flinders and George Bass which were first published this year reveal a relationship that - to modern eyes at least - has a strong homoerotic flavour. Flinders wrote to Bass: "There was a time, when I was so completely wrapped up in you, that no conversation but yours could give me any degree of pleasure; your footsteps upon the quarterdeck over my head took me from my book and brought me upon deck to walk with you ..." And then a year later, in 1796, the exhibition has uncovered what it believes is the first trial for sodomy in Australia. It involved one Francis Wilkinson, who was acquitted of sodomising Joseph Pearce, a 60-year-old German, at a drunken party near Windsor. Some 20 years later, The Sydney Gazette details the case of two women - Eliza Walsh and Rachel Cox - who had a farm on Richmond Hill. Under the headline "The Two Strange Ladies of Richmond Hill", the newspaper said of the cohabiting women: "Marriage holds no interest for these ladies and they shun the company of the male, preferring at all times to be with each other." Also preferring to be with each other were two soldiers based at Liverpool - Sergeant Haggart and Corporal Stone - who were caught in a physical embrace after a pub crawl in 1915. The army barracks at Holsworthy continued to be the centre of homosexual activity right up to the 1960s and 1970s, when Marsden remembers the road outside as a notorious pick-up spot. The most outstanding example of a transsexual so far uncovered was the case of Harry Payne, born Annie Payne in England, who lived in Lidcombe, was active in the Salvation Army and enjoyed two apparently happy marriages. On the death of his second wife in 1939, he had a nervous breakdown in the street and was taken to an old men's home in Lidcombe, where it was discovered that he was a biological woman. He - or she - ended her days in an insane asylum in Orange, forced to dress as a woman and knit. The fact that the exhibition is partly funded by councils in Liverpool, Parramatta and Blacktown is an achievement in itself, says the project manager, Ricardo Peach. "Particularly what we are trying to do is make people aware that lesbians and gays live out here," he said. Part of the aim is to change perceptions elsewhere, and to this end the exhibition has funds to print 10,000 catalogues for distribution through Sydney and NSW. The west is about to come out of the closet. © 2002. The Sydney Morning Herald. Top
Group Offers Stylebook On Gay Terminology http://www.editorandpublisher.com/editorandpublisher/headlines/article_displ ay.jsp?vnu_content_id=1661176 SEPTEMBER 05, 2002 [10]USA: New York City--Group Offers Stylebook On Gay Terminology Top PDF Can Be Downloaded From NLGJA.org <http://www.nlgja.org/pubs/style.html> NEW YORK -- The National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association (NLGJA) recently published its 2002 Stylebook Supplement. The Washington-based organization said the publication is designed to complement newsroom style guides and The Associated Press Stylebook with suggestions on terms relating to sexual orientation and gender identity. NLGJA's original stylebook was published in 1997 to help reporters covering gay issues and the battle over gay rights. New entries include civil union, commitment ceremony, ex-gay, and special rights. The publication also includes a list of gay organizations, including media contacts. A group of 10 journalists, working at publications such as Newsday, The Charlotte Observer, The Arizona Republic, and the San Francisco Chronicle, collaborated on the stylebook. A PDF version can be downloaded at http://www.nlgja.org/pubs/style.html. The publication can also be viewed online. Source: Editor & Publisher Online © 2002 VNU eMedia Inc. All rights reserved. Top
LEGAL ISSUES
Date: Tue, 24 Sep 2002
From: "Claire Ashton" <claire@c-ashton.fsnet.co.uk>
[11]USA: California --Transsexual man wins settlement against beautician school
SOURCE: Mrs. Petra Henderson [mailto:petrahenderson@yahoo.com]
--- In transgendernews,
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/transgendernews
http://www.sacbee.com/state_wire/story/4517538p-5537080c.html
http://tinyurl.com/1lt3
Transsexual man wins settlement against beautician school Published 8:20 p.m. PDT Monday, September 23, 2002 LOS ANGELES (AP) - A man who dresses as a woman said Monday that a beautician's school has settled a discrimination lawsuit he filed and will allow him to attend hair styling classes beginning Tuesday. The man, identified in court papers only as Sandy, sued the Marinello School of Beauty in Los Angeles, accusing the school of rejecting his application because he lived life as a woman. A message left at the school after business hours Monday night wasn't returned. School officials previously declined to comment. Terms and conditions were not disclosed as a part of the settlement. "Today, it's a big time for me," Sandy said in a statement released by his attorney, Gloria Allred of Los Angeles. "I am very happy about the result of my settlement. I hope people who are in my circumstance can have more chances and be treated in the right way, like I am in this moment. I want to be a hair stylist and I am very excited that I will have the opportunity to go to this excellent school." According to the lawsuit, filed Aug. 7 in Superior Court, Sandy, who lives in Los Angeles, enrolled at the school on July 18, passing a test and paying a $100 registration fee. But when he reported for class the following month, he said he was told to leave because the school did not have a restroom that could accommodate a man who identifies himself as a woman. Sandy said he offered to either use the restroom the school wanted him to use or not use the restroom at all while taking class, but the school refused.
BOOKS, Etc.... Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Move over... http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,3605,799319,00.html Source Brenda Lana Smith R.af D. [12] UK: Move over, Darwin Top 'I used to drive to a town 40-50 miles away. In a quiet spot, I would stop, put my wig and high-heeled shoes on, make up and generally make myself presentable. Then I would drive to town as a lady from the shire on a shopping trip' Francis Wheen Saturday September 28, 2002 The Guardian In 1971, the writer Colin Wilson received a 521-page typescript through the post. Since making his name in 1956 with The Outsider - a philosophical bestseller - Wilson had written more than two dozen books on sex, crime, philosophy and the occult. Surely he would see the point. In an accompanying letter, Charlotte Bach PhD explained that her text - Homo Mutans, Homo Luminens - was merely the "prolegomenon" to a projected work of about 3,000 pages which would demonstrate beyond doubt that sexual deviation was the mainspring of evolution. Wilson felt daunted by its length, its difficulty and, not least, by the fact that Dr Bach used an all-capital typewriter on orange paper. He glanced at the first 50 pages, groaned and set it aside. A few weeks later, confined to bed with flu, he tried again. "It was hard going," he recalled, "but my real misgiving was that she was just an absurdly conceited female. She dismissed everyone she disagreed with - Monod, Russell, Desmond Morris - with a lofty contempt... Yet as I persisted, this unpleasant first impression was outweighed by a sense of tremendous intelligence and an impressive grasp of European cultural history. Whether or not the theory was correct, there could be no doubt that she possessed a powerful and original mind." He wrote and told her so. "I feel rather as some of the critics of my Outsider professed to feel - startled that anyone can have built such a huge edifice so quietly, without help. Even more astonishing, if you don't mind me saying so, because it comes from a woman, who are seldom notable for great Hegelian constructions... I think it could well be Nobel Prize stuff . . . If you are right, then it could be as important as the theory of relativity." In reply, Dr Bach told Wilson that she had wept for joy on reading his comments. She signed herself, "Love, Charlotte". Who was Bach? On one of his visits to London, Wilson invited her to dinner. He encountered a broad-shouldered mammoth of a woman, about 6ft tall, with a deep masculine voice and a heavy central European accent. Afterwards, Wilson took her back to the flat of the painter Regis de Bouvier de Cachard, where he was staying. Over several more drinks, the two men began to learn something of her history. Charlotte had lectured in psychology at Budapest University, where her husband was a professor; they had been driven out by the communists in 1948. In 1965, her husband had died on the operating table, and only two weeks later her son was killed in a car crash. ("At this point she burst into tears," Wilson wrote, "and it took a good 10 minutes to soothe her.") The shock of this double bereavement had plunged her into depression and, in an attempt to fight it off, she began compiling a dictionary of psychology. While researching the section on perversions, she interviewed many people with unorthodox sexual tastes. And then came the Eureka moment: it dawned on her that perversion was the engine of human evolution. About two in the morning, Charlotte departed in a taxi, paid for by Colin Wilson. "I gave her a kiss, and she also kissed Regis. And when we got back indoors, he said: 'You know, when she kissed me, she stuck her tongue halfway down my throat.' We laughed about it. My own conclusion had been that Charlotte was probably lesbian, but this seemed to disprove it. It was only after her death that I realised that this was what she intended me to think." In the spring of 1972, Charlotte began giving weekly talks at a friend's flat in Belsize Park, which she advertised in the Observer and the New Statesman. About a dozen people turned up most weeks. They were expected to pay a "voluntary contribution" of 50p, which disconcerted some visitors, since Dr Bach was so obviously an aristocrat. Hardly anyone realised that she was probably the poorest person in the room. Charlotte's penury, though a nuisance, did not trouble her unduly. What preoccupied her was a craving for recognition. Introducing herself as the leader of a new intellectual movement, she wrote to journalists and television presenters - Katherine Whitehorn, David Attenborough, the chat-show host Simon Dee - proposing that they alert the world to her discoveries. All thanked her politely, but declined. She was too odd for most academics to accept her; too digressive and too damned difficult for the general public, even had they been able to get their hands on her magnum opus. And so she remained a cult figure, revered by a few devotees, but otherwise ignored. By the spring of 1981, the once majestic figure had shrunk to a frail, weary old lady who often complained of "having the shits" - brought on, she assumed, by food poisoning. Don Smith, a gay sadomasochist with whom she was collaborating on a book called Sex, Sin And Evolution, found her jaundiced and exhausted when he came to call on June 10. He alerted another of the inner circle, Dr Mike Roth. When Roth visited the flat the next day, he was forced to shout through the letterbox. "Go away," Charlotte commanded. "I want to die." On Wednesday June 17, noticing that she hadn't taken in her milk since the weekend, one of Charlotte's neighbours called the police. A constable climbed through a window and discovered a body lying across the bed. On the bedside table was a medical dictionary open at the page dealing with cancer of the liver. A postmortem concluded that this was indeed the cause of death, but also discovered something rather more startling. When the corpse was undressed in the mortuary, the ample breasts proved to be foam rubber, and the removal of her knickers exposed a penis. Karoly Hajdu, the child who became Charlotte Bach, entered the world on February 9 1920. His birthplace was a small, plain, one-storey dwelling in Kispest, a working-class town near Budapest. His father, Mihaly Hajdu (pronounced hoy-doo), worked as a tailor; his mother, Roza Frits, was a coalminer's daughter. In 1923, Mihaly moved the family to Budapest, renting a small tailoring shop on Raday Street. They were still poor, all living in one little room upstairs. Mihaly's customers, by contrast, included many rich and cultured gents, whose amplitude of knowledge and experience made a profound impression on young Karoly. Karoly started his elementary education in 1926 and progressed four years later to the Andras Fay Gimnazium, the Hungarian equivalent of a grammar school. He was an insatiable autodidact. "When I was 11 years old, I read a six-volume history of the world - 2,300 pages. At 12, I read Freud's Introduction To Psychoanalysis and The Interpretation Of Dreams. At 15, I read Kant's Critique Of Pure Reason. Mind you, I'm not pretending that I understood most of it; it's just that the Boy's Own type of reading did not appeal to me. I gave up reading novels at the age of 10." With such precocious interests, it is no surprise that Karoly had few friends of his own age: he was regarded as a very odd boy indeed. "Up to about 14, my best friend was my sister," Karoly Hajdu said. "After that, my brother." At the age of 15, he was transferred to the Bolyai Technical High School. It was also at 15 that he lost his virginity to a prostitute. His most resonant and abiding memory of this otherwise unsatisfactory encounter was the sight of the woman putting on her silk stockings afterwards, as she dressed for her job as a barmaid. In one of her manuscripts, Charlotte Bach reflected on the interior life of the cross-dresser. "Most transvestites mention, mostly with some pride, fairly long periods in their childhood, usually between the ages of six and 11, when they behaved as ordinary boys with no more than a minor predilection for girls' games and dressing up, though, unlike most boys, they always enjoyed girls' company. Then, usually about the age of 10 or 12, they come face to face with the larger realities of the external world." The boy has disappointed his parents, and is resigned to his inadequacy. Ambition wilts. He senses that if he were a girl, he would be loved more. "Then he comes across something soft and silky. This is something that has never left him. From early childhood, when his mother was in a not-so-close mood, he found solace in a soft, silky pillow or something soft and silky that belonged to his mother." Karoly Hajdu dropped out of school. Nor was he in any hurry to find a job. When his call-up papers arrived, after Hungary declared war on Russia in June 1941, Karoly somehow managed to obtain a "student exemption" for a year. Yet he was not entirely idle. At an early age, from observing customers in his father's shop, Karoly had realised that there were plenty of wealthy people who could be parted from their money. The trick was to meet them. In October 1942 he forged a birth certificate on which he renamed himself Karoly Mihaly Balazs Agoston Hajdu, son of the Baron of Szadelo and Balkany. He had cards printed with the baronial title, and acquired a cigarette case embellished with a coat of arms and the letters "SB". In 1943, German soldiers became a common sight in Budapest. The Hungarians had installed a collaborationist regime, but suffered what amounted to an occupation by the Nazis anyway. Jews were rounded up and sent to the death camps. Some of Karoly's relations suspect that he may have been looting abandoned houses. He certainly seemed remarkably prosperous, and said that he was "helping Jews". After the war, Karoly enrolled in the economics department of the Technical University in Budapest, but after the end of the first half-year semester, he seems to have given up attending classes altogether. His sister Vilma, who had been employed during the war by the electrical manufacturer AEG, left Hungary to start a new life in Venezuela when she heard that the communists were rounding up anyone who had worked for German firms. Karoly decided that he, too, must escape. On April 22 1948, after a long train journey across Europe, he boarded a boat to Harwich. Britain had plentiful opportunities, and he felt well equipped to seize them. He was tall, good- looking and smartly dressed. Unlike most of his fellow passengers, he spoke English. Britain still had an aristocracy: perhaps he could find a niche there. In the course of the journey he had anglicised his name to Carl and started working up the fiction that he had been a university lecturer. Carl's friend from Budapest, Joe Marfy, reached England a few months after him and was despatched to the Staveley iron and steelworks in Yorkshire. One cold winter's morning, the foreman told Marfy that an important person wished to see him in the general manager's office. It was Hajdu, impeccably attired in a tweed coat and velour hat. He winked, and murmured in Hungarian: "Call me Baron." Once they had been left alone, Carl explained that a title would enable him to succeed, adding that it had already given him an entrée to "good social circles". The flood of refugees into Britain ceased in April 1950, and with it Carl's duties as an interpreter at the Ministry of Labour office in Harwich. He found a job as receptionist and book-keeper at the Valley Of The Rocks Hotel in Lynton, North Devon, and then temporary work as a general assistant at the British Council in London. Two years later, at the end of 1950, his incipient transvestite feelings surfaced - prompted, it seems, by depression, or even desperation. He was living in a boarding house in Earls Court, but after finishing at the British Council he had no job and no prospect of one. One day a friend left a suitcase of his wife's dresses and underwear with Hajdu for safe keeping. Carl tried them all on. The next morning, disgusted with himself, he asked the friend to remove the case. It was in Brighton, working at the Hotel Metropole, that he met his future wife, Phyllis, a divorcee who dreamed of becoming an actress. He returned to London and found a job as a barman at the Pigalle, a famous nightspot in Piccadilly, and Phyllis followed dutifully, installing herself in a flat in North Finchley. Her seven-year-old son, Peter, who had been staying with an aunt, moved back with his mother. Short and plump, certainly no great beauty, Phyllis nevertheless dressed with theatrical panache. As a connoisseur of women's clothing, Carl admired her style. "When I married her, I was sure all my transvestism was over," he recalled, "yet for some inexplicable reason I didn't throw my things away, but put them into storage. For five years I paid half-a-crown a week for the contents of a couple of suitcases which I had no intention of using." Phyllis's brisk efficiency appealed to him, too. It was she who came up with the idea of starting an accommodation agency. Three months after the wedding, from a small office over a restaurant in Paddington, the K Bureau opened for business. Adverts for the bureau in the local paper offered rooms where "children and coloured people" were welcome. Had Carl been offering a fair deal, this inclusiveness would have been exemplary. But honesty was never his policy. This was the era of Rachmanesque landlords, and Carl was happy to capitalise on the plight of the homeless. The nemesis of Baron Carl Hajdu can be dated to January 13 1957, from the moment the Sunday Pictorial reached the news stands. Alongside a photograph of a dapper, mustachioed character (captioned merely "The Baron"), it carried the following story by Comer Clarke: A flat-finding agent who claims to be a baron admitted last night: "I have collected £2,000 for Hungarian relief, BUT - I am afraid I am going to have some difficulty in showing in the balance how it was spent." Pale, blue-eyed, Hungarian-born "Baron" Carl Hajdu, 37 - it is a Hungarian title, he says - runs the Apartment Lessors' Association, of Edgware Road, Paddington, London. When the Hungarians rose against the Reds last November, he organised the Hungarian Freedom Fighters' Assistance Committee. In two days he raised £2,000 to send a contingent of English "freedom fighters" to help the Hungarians. Scores of eager young men volunteered. But no "freedom fighters" went to Hungary . . . In the spring of 1957 Carl and Phyllis were evicted from their Chelsea house for non-payment of rent. In October he was declared bankrupt. How did Carl deal with this humiliation? Michael Karoly, another of Carl's personae, provides the answer. In his book Hypnosis, published in 1961, Karoly wrote of the liberation experienced by a transvestite (or "eonist", named after the cross-dressing Chevalier D'Eon) when he shrugs off man's attire: "He even thinks of himself as a woman, and in fact assumes another personality... This complete change of mental viewpoint creates a door through which the eonist can step into a nicer, more refined life, where his own feelings of inadequacy, originating in his lack of sexual vigour, are left behind with his manly personality. When he is a man he is, unlike the homosexual, masculine with all his manly virtues and shortcomings. When he is a woman he is the woman of his ideals, free of the grime of everyday life." During the crises of that year, Carl turned up at the Harley Street consulting room of the Canadian hynotherapist WG Warne-Beresford, complaining of "nervous problems". Carl Hajdu's aspirations had been comprehensively thwarted. Very well then: he would find new aspirations - and "another personality" which could embody them. Having approached Warne-Beresford as a patient, he soon enrolled as one of the hypnotherapist's pupils under the name of Michael B Karoly. Michael B Karoly was a far more dashing character than Carl Hajdu, with a taste for pork-pie hats, dark glasses and fast cars. To qualify for membership of Warne-Beresford's organisation, the British Society of Hypnotherapists, trainees had to study for a year and then sit an exam in "anatomy, physiology, biology, neurology and practical hypnotherapy". The results of Michael's class can be found in the Times of September 5 1958; his name is not among the successful candidates, but this didn't deter him from using the initials MBSH and touting for business. Few of his clients are now traceable. Only one is certain that he was successfully hypnotised: Michael performed the party trick of making the man lie across three chairs and then removing the middle one. But all felt that their money - £5 a session - had been well spent. No one would have paid for the psychological insights of an unsuccessful flat-agent from Paddington, but after acquiring an arsenal of bogus qualifications - "Michael B Karoly, ScSc (Budapest), D Psy, CPE (Cantab), MBSH", his writing paper now boasted - he suddenly found himself in demand as a man with something to say. After meeting Michael at a party in the autumn of 1960, the literary agent Peter Tauber recommended him to the features editor of Today, a weekly general-interest magazine, and by the following January he was a regular contributor - billed as "Today's psychological expert". He seemed able to turn his hand to anything: "My Frank Advice To Eva" (the divorce of Eva Bartok), "Should Big Girls Be Spanked?" (disciplining teenage daughters), "Is This Man A Brute?" (baby-battering fathers) and "Why Oh Why Do I Steal?" (shoplifting). Later that year, Michael started renting a small flat at 23 Hertford Street, London W1, in the shadow of the newly built Hilton Hotel. Intended only as a consulting room, whose Mayfair address might impress prospective clients, the flat soon became a more permanent refuge where he could escape from Phyllis's chiding and indulge his fantasies. The following story turns up in one of Michael's "case histories": I used to keep my gear [ie, women's clothes] in the office and sometimes, after a hard week, I would go in over the weekend pretending to do some urgent work. I would dress up and just lounge around for a few hours. It is impossible to describe the effect it had on me. A week's Mediterranean cruise or a month of golfing at St Andrews isn't a patch on it. Once I had a rather bad year. Nothing seemed to go right. Bills were piling up and money wasn't coming in. That's when I went out for the first few times. I used to get dressed in the office, put my shirt, tie, jacket and trousers on top, dash to the car and drive to a town 40-50 miles away. In a quiet spot I would stop, take off the top clothes, put my wig and high-heeled shoes on, make up and generally make myself presentable. Then I would drive into the town as a lady from the shire on a shopping trip... The "client" is eventually arrested when a passer-by guesses his secret and complains to the police. One would be tempted to dismiss this as another Karoly fiction, were it not for a news item that appeared in the Hertfordshire Mercury on April 26 1963: A man dressed completely in female clothing walked into a Hertford hotel on Good Friday, and was later arrested as he drove - still dressed as a woman - to Knebworth, it was stated at Hertford court on Thursday of last week... Karoly was 43 and alone in the world: his second adolescence had been sabotaged by the onset of a midlife crisis. He had once again been exposed in a Sunday newspaper, this time for a spurious therapy group he weas running, Divorcees Anonymous; he was parted from his wife, and Siobhan, a much younger woman with whom he had a brief, passionate affair, had left him. Shortly afterwards, his wife Phyllis died. And within a few weeks, her son Peter would also be dead, in a car crash. Michael shut himself away from the world in Phyllis's flat - waking at three in the afternoon, watching television continuously until closedown, then returning to bed and reading trashy novels, works of philosophy or whatever else he could lay his hands on. With characteristic self-aggrandisement, he later suggested that these few weeks were his equivalent to Jesus's 40 days in the wilderness ("an archetypal shamanistic crisis"). He also bought himself an automatic camera. When Charlotte Bach died, her dressing table drawers were found to be stuffed with dozens of photographs of the then Michael dressed in his wife's clothes, the earliest of which had been taken two months after Peter's death. There is the ageing tart with the come-hither look, giving the camera an eyeful of her long legs; the dutiful, domesticated hausfrau, forever ready with a brush and dustpan; and, rather more convincingly, the elegant and mature hostess, cigarette and wine glass in hand as she awaits the guests' arrival at her sophisticated salon. Michael claimed to have written three novels during his long mourning. The first was Siobhan - which, with breathtaking insensitivity, he despatched to the woman who had inspired it, even though she was now happily married to someone else. The second novel (and the only other one that he seems to have completed) was The Second Coming, a science-fiction saga. "I think I am becoming a woman," Michael told a friend at the Stanislavsky Studio in 1966, and his plot summary for The Second Coming confirms that such metamorphoses were a growing preoccupation. Gradually, Michael came to believe that the vicissitudes of his life, which had hitherto seemed no more than a "meaningless tangle" - the sexual and financial disasters, the battles with officialdom - had their own complex pattern. If only he could discern its shape, he would know what to do next. His persecutors were ready to assist, unwittingly, by precipitating yet another crisis. In May 1966 Michael was up before Bow Street magistrates charged with 13 offences of obtaining credit under false pretences and of carrying on trade as a psychologist under the name Michael B Karoly without disclosing that as Carl Hajdu he was an undischarged bankrupt. He was jailed for three months and then another month when the electricity board started legal proceedings and he was unable to afford the £150 fine. On the back page of his Pentonville prison notebook, Michael Karoly drafted the following letter: Dear Sir, I saw and liked your advert in the London Weekly Advertiser. I have recently moved to London and don't know anybody, so I'm taking a chance on replying to you. I am in my late forties, a widow, lost my only son too at the same time as my husband. To be frank, I have no intention of remarrying nor am I interested in sex for sex's sake, in fact not in any form. What I hope to find is a reasonably presentable and articulate friend as a theatre, cinema, concert, etc, companion - and nothing else - on an expenses shared basis. For your further information, I am rather tall (5ft 11), wear glasses and use a hearing aid and cannot by any stretch of the imagination be called beautiful. As against that, I think I am quite well-dressed and well-groomed, ie, suitable for a man to appear in public with, a couple of years at university (sociology and economics) to my credit, having stopped just short of graduating. If under these conditions you are interested, I am awaiting your reply. Unencumbered by family, Michael could now write his own script. As the letter shows, he was already preparing for his most daring feat of method- acting even before his release from Pentonville in February 1967. Charlotte greatly admired a passage from William Golding's novel Free Fall, in which the narrator asks a woman: "What is it like to be you? ... What is it like in the bath and lavatory and walking the pavement with shorter steps and high heels? What is it like to know your body breathes this faint perfume which makes my heart burst and my senses swim?" What modern science failed to notice, Charlotte argued, "is that this seemingly romantic and unimportant fantasising is the root of the entire evolutionary process". Many acquaintances of Carl or Michael had always thought him a bit odd, which may have made his final reinvention as Charlotte less of a shock. Even so, it is a tribute to his remarkable powers of persuasion that almost everyone accepted. The dreams of fame and Nobel Prizes may have been absurd, but by carrying her secret almost to the grave, she did "make the grade". Transvestism is not simply a matter of changing one's wardrobe: every aspect of behaviour has to be re-learnt, and a new sense of self created. The task was all the harder for Charlotte, with her deep voice and mannish physique. Yet she carried it off with style, conviction and courage. In her final identity she achieved an authenticity that gave her far more pleasure and fulfilment than any of the feckless personae she inhabited previously. Mightn't one reasonably conclude that it was her life as a man that had been the masquerade - that Baron Hajdu and Michael Karoly were the great pretenders, whereas Dr Charlotte Bach was not only her finest creation but also her true self? -- © Francis Wheen 2002 This is an edited extract from Who Was Dr Charlotte Bach? by Francis Wheen, published on October 7 by Short Books at £9.99. To order a copy with free UK p&p, call 0870 066 7979. -- © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002 -- Top
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