Famous transgender people

[FusionChefGeoff]

DS10 has just had his transgender PHSE lesson but sounds like they're following the new guidance so it was a lot about stereotypes and gender is not the same as sex - woo hoo!

However, he started talking about famous transgender people and it made me think that I know lots of transwomen in the public eye but no transmen?

Also are there any famous transgender people just cracking on with life or are they all either sports cheats or fanatical TRAs??

Sophie Wilson CBE (and lots of other awards and honours), designer of the BBC Micro, is a transwoman.

Adele Anderson from Fascinating Aida I didn’t know she was trans until Dh and dd went to see them on tour.

I believe one of the presenters of the BBC show money for nothing was a trans man. He passed away a couple of years ago though. I forget his name, sorry.

Ah yes, EJ Osbourne. Very sad death from cancer, he came across as a really nice person & had had a rotten early life in Australia.

Ewan forbes wasn't trans. He had a disorder of sexual development (intersex condition).
Fascinating twitter thread on it all from leading QC Barbara Rich. The author (unsurprisingly a trans activist) really had no answers to the points put by Barbara et al.

twitter.com/BarbaraRich_law/status/1462576512658550785?s=20&t=kiyX8G4t0yiZc0jrkyTSlg

Caitlin Jenner and Elliot Page I think are important for being famous in their own right before transition.

The character of Matty Barton, a trans character in Emmerdale, is played by a trans man. I think this has been done well as I don't think a big fuss has been made out of it so it's just 'normalised' him as an actor x

And deny their child a mother 😢

"Neil Kinnock's granddaughter" is not being famous.
Jack Monroe was they/them for quite a while but I don't think she ever claimed to be a man. (Could be wrong on that)

There’s Jan Morris the writer, who died in 2020, who was one of the first people to undergo “reassignment” surgery.

Neil Kinnock’s grandchild is a transman.

A few accomplished transmen (I've included pre-transition names in cases where there's work in the public domain, by the individual's consent, under both names):

English-born Australian broadcaster, musician, and travel writer Ed Ayres. Ed first "realised he was a man" while on a bike trip around Pakistan at the age of 46, and transitioned a few years later.

Cooper Lee Bombadier: US/Canadian artist and writer. Genuinely famous (and brilliant) as a visual artist. Cooper's memoir Pass With Care has good reviews but I haven't laid hands on it yet.

Patrick (fka Pat) Califia. Sex writer/advice columnist/journalist. Well known in the USA pre-transition.

Gabriel Mac (fka Mac MacClelland): US journalist who works in Thailand/SEA, in particular with refugees from Myanmar. For those interested in the regional situation I really recommend For Us Surrender Is Out of the Question: A Story from Burma's Never-Ending War although it's a little old (2010).

James Morton, leader of Scottish Trans Alliance. An absolute misogynist disaster for women and girls, but one of Scotland's best-known transmen and I suppose very accomplished among those who love neoliberalism and hypercapitalism. If we're going to embrace equality it's only fair to show a transman being free to be an arsehole like everyone else, right?

Scott Newgent transitioned at 42 (is now 48) and had a lot of physical complications with the process, which has fuelled involvement with TReVoices and speaking out in the US press (a seriously uphill battle) about the downsides of physically transitioning children. Scott had a successful career in business/sales pre-transition, but was never in the public spotlight until speaking out about the transitioning of children.

Paul B. Preciado (fka Beatriz Preciado). Spanish academic working mainly in France. Did a DIY transition and wrote about it. Impenetrably academic language, but some people like that. Recommend An Apartment on Uranus as a starting point if you want to delve into Paul's world, although Testo Junkie probably made the biggest splash in the press.

And deny their child a mother 😢

Quite. The birth certificate is primarily the baby's document, to last them for their whole life - when does anybody ask YOU to produce your child's BC as proof of ID for yourself?

What a selfish, non-sensical vanity to want to claim that they just appeared without anybody having given birth to them.

James Barry is an example of a highly accomplished trans man who wasn’t known to be trans during their lifetime.

Wikipedia article

Wendy Carlos has won Grammy’s and has written music for some very big movies.

Italian actress Eva Robins has been working since the 80s but not well known in the UK.

No. Nor Joan of Arc.

Michael D. Cohen who played Schwoz in Henry Danger. He only came out as trans after the show had been running for ages.

I’m deeply uncomfortable with transing ppl after they died. James Barry wished to go to university & pursue a medical career something completely unavailable to women at the time.

James Barry wasn't a trans man FFS - Barry was a female sho posed as a male to get into university and become a doctor at a time when women weren't aklo

Argh!

At a time where women weren't allowed to do those things.

Chase Strangio, ACLU senior lawyer
Has said some awful things about women

Fox Fisher, photographer
Interviewed a male who runs a rape crisis centre in a Scotland - have a check for Midrul Wadha

Professor Stephen Whittle, Manchester Met
Has been influential with the GRA through Press for Change, featured in CBBC's I Am Leo, very dangerous in my view

Buck Angel, adult entertainment actor
Porn star, goes by the self-named Tranpa, be wary

Freddy McConnell, Seahorse documentary maker
Has actively worked to remove 'maternity' from NHS Brighton trust

When listing all these famous trans people it would be important to give background as to what made them famous (and even what made them 'trans') and suggest to your DS that he should consider whether or not these are good reasons for becoming famous.

Depending on your child's age, I think it would also be helpful to point out how many of these transmen were lesbians before transition and experienced homophobia as well as misogyny. Rejecting a sexual relationship with men is possibly the ultimate gender nonconforming thing any woman can do.

Also, even now, after well over a century of women's rights campaigning, there is deeply entrenched sexism in the world, and even more so in some other countries. The person mentioned above who decided to transition while travelling in Pakistan must have found it an awful lot easier to move about freely in that part of the world using a male name and dress. Not a million miles from the decision James Barry took, surely?

@BedTaker exactly. Back in the days when women weren't allowed to do stuff like study, join the army etc there are loads of examples of women and girls pretending to be men to do something they wanted. This absolutely does not make them trans!!

Why is this so important to learn? Are they also learning about, off the top of my head, the skateboarder Skye Brown or Kaffe Fasset (or whatever the modern equivalent is - and no it’s not the diver).

Are they explaining that there are some people who believe they wish to change their sex (and some of these opt for drastic cosmetic surgery and drug refine), and those who believe that by ‘wearing the uniform’ changes their soul/being/whatever?

Exactly!

If we say that women who had to pretend to be men because of sexist stereotypes really were men, that’s the absolute opposite of progressive. Like some idiot who said that Elizabeth I’s speech about having the heart of a prince meant she was trans.

She also had the ‘weak and feeble woman of a woman’. She didn’t mean it - and referred to herself as ‘king’ and ‘we princes’. It was the language.

I doubt anyone would have suggested to her face that she was actually a man (twice).

Yes! I saw something on Twitter about George Eliot. Only an utter numpty could think that a woman writer in the 19th century using a male pseudonym and breaking all sorts of social norms for women was actually choosing to have a male gender.