A Photo Essay of Transgender Community in the United States

Sexuality Research & Social Policy Journal of NSRC http://nsrc.sfsu.edu December 2007 Vol. 4, No. 4 Momentum: A Photo Essay of the Transgender Community in the United States Over 30 Years, 1978–2007 Mariette Pathy Allen As a photographer, writer, advocate, and ally of the Figure 1. Vicky West (in center of photograph) at the transgender community, I have presented slide shows at hotel swimming pool, New Orleans, Louisiana, 1978. a variety of conferences during the past 30 years. I have varied the slide shows according to the audience and, to challenge myself, asked various questions about my art. What fresh visual connections can I make? How do my newest images relate to earlier series? Shall I focus on indi- vidual heroes and heroines—community leaders—or on dramatic historical events that galvanized people to rethink their lives and demand policy changes? Is it appro- priate to show body images and surgery? Should I focus on youth and relationships? What about speaking of my life as an artist and how it connects to the transgender community? Long before I knowingly met a transgender person, I pondered such questions as, Why are certain character traits assigned to men or to women? and Are these traits in different directions except for one person, Vicky West, immutable or culturally defined? My cultural anthropol- who focused straight back at me. As I peered through the ogy studies offered some theories, but it was not until camera lens, I had the feeling that I was looking at nei- 1978, when I visited New Orleans for Mardi Gras, that I ther a man nor a woman but at the essence of a human came face to face with the opportunity to explore gender being; right then, I decided that I must have this person identity issues through personal experience. in my life. On the last morning of Mardi Gras, I came down to As it turned out, Vicky West lived about 20 blocks breakfast at the hotel where I was staying in the French from me in New York City. I accompanied her to parties Quarter to discover a room full of people in ball gowns, at Lee Brewster’s Mardi Gras Boutique, to clubs around cascading wigs, butterfly eyelashes, and other regalia. town for drag shows, and, finally, to Fantasia Fair in Lee Brewster, founder of Lee’s Mardi Gras Boutique and Provincetown, Massachusetts, the longest-running trans- of Drag Magazine, and also known for making drag gender conference in the United States. At Fantasia Fair, bars legal in New York City, had organized this annual I met Ariadne Kane (see Figure 2), who founded the fair, trip. The group invited me to join them for breakfast, identified as an androgyne, and referred to the transgen- after which they paraded out of the dining room and der community as the paraculture. lined up on one side of the swimming pool, striking Through Virginia Prince (see Figures 2 and 3), who poses. When I lifted my camera to take the picture in identified as a transgenderist, I came to see that anatomy Figure 1, I noticed that everyone in the group was gazing need not dictate sexual orientation or gender identity and Address correspondence concerning this article to Mariette Pathy Allen, 100 Riverside Drive, Apt. 15A, New York, NY 10024. E-mail: [email protected] Sexuality Research and Social Policy: Journal of NSRC, Vol. 4, Issue 4, pp. 92–105, electronic ISSN 1553-6610. © 2007 by the National Sexuality Research Center. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permissions to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Rights and Permissions website, http://www.ucpressjournals.com/ reprintInfo.asp 92 SEXUALITY RESEARCH & SOCIAL POLICY Journal of NSRC Figure 2. Maxine, Ariadne Kane, and Virginia Prince at outsider who encouraged them to express their feminine the Unitarian Church during Fantasia Fair, 1981. side and to use the shooting area, whether it was inside or outdoors, as the place to express themselves as full human beings. We experimented with feelings, move- ment, clothes, and makeup. For some, the experience of seeing themselves in a positive light allowed them to let go of years of shame and guilt, to move from self-hate to self-acceptance. Along with offering my subjects inti- mate, natural images of themselves, I started to present these photographs to the outside world, to counteract the negative images that most nontransgender people were familiar with. It was an opportunity to right a wrong while making art. As I came to know more people, I started making visual explorations such as photographing the same person as a man and as a woman (see Figure 4). I wanted expression. She began publishing Transvestia magazine to see how facial expression and body language changed in 1960 and started the Hose and Heels Club in 1962, when gender identity changed. Then I started pho- which she first renamed the Foundation for Full tographing individuals in relationships, first with trans- Personality Expression and then, in 1976, merged with gender friends, then with spouses and other relatives, Carol Beecroft’s group Mamselle to form the Society for and, finally, with their children (see Figures 5 and 6). the Second Self (Tri-Ess), a worldwide organization for I photographed with 35 mm Nikon cameras, using heterosexual cross-dressers and their wives. Virginia both color slide film and black-and-white negative film. Prince wrote many books and articles and is credited for Sometimes I decided beforehand whether a situation inventing the term transgender, although its usage has would be better portrayed in color or in black and white, since changed. but I usually photographed with both and then edited The primarily male-to-female cross-dressers I met carefully to decide which images worked best. All of the bore little resemblance to photographs I had seen of images in this essay are mine. transgender people: In those pictures, they had been During the 1980s, along with my work with cross- presented as isolated misfits, freaks, perverts, or exhi- dressers, (almost all were male-to-female), I also had the bitionists. I felt that the media had maligned the people opportunity to photograph various community leaders I knew and others like them; with my experience as a and icons. One of these leaders, Merissa Sherrill Lynn photographer, I realized, I had the opportunity to (see Figure 7), founded the Tiffany Club of New England, change this vision. I started to make portraits of indi- the International Foundation for Gender Education viduals. For most of the people I photographed, our photo sessions were their first experience with an Figure 4. Joe, and Joe as Diahanna, Bay Area, California, 1985. Figure 3. Virginia Prince at a Fantasia Fair seminar, 1992. December 2007 Vol. 4, No. 4 93 SEXUALITY RESEARCH & SOCIAL POLICY Journal of NSRC Figure 5. Amy and her husband, Rita, near Boston, Massachusetts, 1983. (IFGE), Transgender Tapestry magazine, and the IFGE Figure 7. Merissa Sherrill Lynn at Walden Pond, near annual conference. Boston, Massachusetts, 1987. In 1984, I joined actress and director Lee Grant’s crew as the still photographer for the documentary film on transgenderism she was making for Home Box Office. What Sex Am I? (1985) included Christine Jorgensen (see Figure 8), a fellow actress whom Lee Figure 6. Elayne with son Ryan, Iowa, 1985. December 2007 Vol. 4, No. 4 94 SEXUALITY RESEARCH & SOCIAL POLICY Journal of NSRC Figure 8. Christine Jorgensen in her living room, 1984. Figure 9. Steve Dain, Union City, California, 1984. knew. As they sat in Christine’s living room gossiping Lou lived in San Francisco and identified as a gay man. He about Hollywood, I had to remind myself that Christine died of AIDS in 1991. was the person known around the world for the media In 1988, I was awarded a grant from the New York storm that erupted in 1952 upon her return to the United State Council on the Arts for my work with cross- States from Denmark after sexual reassignment surgery: dressers. To my shock, the New York Post went on the “Ex-GI Becomes Blonde Beauty” quipped the headline attack regarding the validity of my award and three on the front page of the New York Daily News. Although others: “Tax $$ Paying for Men in Drag!” (1988) she was not the first person to have such surgery, she screamed the front-page headline. I discovered that the was the first to be given female hormones to enhance her only way I could sue the Post was through a new law femininity. Besides performing as an actress and a against the defamation of art. Because newspaper staff singer, she was generous in sharing her experience had cropped my images to suit their purposes, such a through lectures and interviews, giving hope to trans- lawsuit could have become a test case; however, the sexuals worldwide. I photographed her again at the last thing I wanted to do was expose transgender peo- very emotional 1988 IFGE convention, one year before ple to the Post’s negative scrutiny. I hired a lawyer and she died of cancer. we settled out of court. Steve Dain (see Figure 9), who also appeared in What One year later, in 1989, my first book, Trans- Sex Am I? (1985), had been fired from his award-winning formations: Crossdressers and Those Who Love Them, teaching job in California after his transition from Doris was published. I limited the book to photographs of cross- to Steve in the mid-1970s. When we met him, he had dressers and focused on presenting them in the daylight become a chiropractor.

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