Holly Boswell was an author, a trans activist and a force in the evolving transgender community. She passed away in 2017. For all she did for promoting understanding of transgender issues she should have gained greater noteriety. Today our TGForum contributor Sophie Lynne admits that she had never heard of Holly Boswell. Then she mentions a few other people that should be well known in the transgender community.
Linda Jensen’s history of crossdressing as seen through her friend Linda’s eyes continues. Spoiler Alert: This supposed history of Crossdressing in the 1980s is going to read more like a history of Linda A. through the 1980s. However, a look below the surface will show how Linda’s life was reflecting the times. Btw, NSFW.
Earlier in her life Dana Bevan was working in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv. Today she shares memories of the city. While she was there, and still hiding her transgender nature, she attempted to contact members of the Ukrainian trans community.
Linda and her friend, Linda, go through the 1970s with barely a nod to the growing world of crossdressing but for one of them — the other Linda — there happens a relationship and a sexual awakening that allows her to slip into an active and ‘analyst-free’, guilt free CD lifestyle in the 1980s. Warning: this article borders on adult content. Tri-Ess members may be offended.
Back in the late 20th century TGForum under the leadership of Cindy Martin ran pictorials featuring the ladies who subscribed to TGF. Today we reach back into the Archives and dust off a lingerie pictorial from 1999, Satin Dolls. You can get a larger view of the photos by clicking on them. Click again to reduce the size and return to browsing.
The Lives of Crossdressers Through the Decades, 1960s Part 2. “Double your pleasure, Double your fun, Hear it from two Lindas, It’s better than one.” Linda Jensen continues her story of crossdresser’s lives through the decades as seen through her eyes and that of her friend, also a Linda.
Our Retro Rerun today is an interview conducted for TGForum and LadyLike magazine in 1996 with a noted female impersonator of the ’60s and ’70s, Pudgy Roberts. Ms Bob & Carol Kleinmaier conducted the interview over two days and cover Pudgy’s life from when he was a child dressing up and walking around his neighborhood to his long career in drag clubs and burlesque.
Linda had recently contacted another Linda — who had told her the story of growing up in the 1950s with trans feelings but very little realistic chance to act on those feelings. That is until one fateful Hallowe’en when three of the cool girls at school intervened to help set the other Linda’s life on an unexpected path. Got it? Linda was keen to learn more.
Our intrepid reporter Dana Bevan traveled to Cape Cod last month to attend Fantasia Fair 2021. It’s the grand dame of transgender conferences and has been going on since 1974. First it was just for crossdressers. Over the years changes have occurred. Dana tells you all about the inclusion in this report.
Dr. Dana Bevan finds threats to transgender people from the radical right–and from the radical left. In this post she dips into “Premodern” philosophy and the origins and evolution of Modernism and Post Modernism. How does all this affect you in your everyday life? Read on.
Dana Bevan has found that there are five transgender movements: Male to Female Transsexuals, Crossdressers, Indigent Street Transgender People, Female to Male Transsexuals, and Religious Recovery Movements. In this post she gives the story on each movement.
David de Alba was born and raised in Cuba until his family moved to Chicago in the mid 1960s. A hairdresser who noticed de Alba’s similarity in facial structure to the star Judy Garland made him up to look just like her. Soon David was doing shows at female impersonation clubs singing Garland’s songs, not lip syncing to a record. Read this interview with The Cuban Legend conducted by Shelley Anne Baker.
In the dusty halls of the TGForum Archives there are to be found many pictures of the female impersonators of days gone by. In the 1990s TGF editor Cindy Martin put together photos to create pictorials of those long ago stars. Here are just a few.
Our Retro Rerun today is from March of 1999. It was written by TGForum subscriber Stephanie K. Thomas after Ms. Thomas attended her first major transgender event, Fall Harvest in Minneapolis in November of 1998. Stephanie learned a couple of things at that event. For one thing she found she loved to dance the night away as Stephanie, and two, she realized that all her life she had needed to know the gender of anyone she interacted with. After meeting a variety of gender and sexual identities at the Fall Harvest she decided to abandon that position.
Back in the early days of TGForum Cindy Martin would put together pictorials of photos TG users sent in. (Side note: We’re working on a way to bring back the pictorials with 21st century tech.) This pictorial is from 1999 and it’s titled Friends. See if you can spot the current TGForum editor and a contributor among the friends pictured.
Shelley Anne interviews Margot Wilson, a Canadian anthropologist who runs a publishing business focused specifically on transgender manuscripts, both fiction and nonfiction. Ms. Wilson is a cisgender ally of the transgender community and is helping to preserve the life stories of aging members of the community, saving their history for others to read and perhaps be inspired.
It’s 1956 and Ramona is a transgender girl from Texas trying to make her way in the big city. To get by she has to utilize what she has at her disposal. Last week in a jazz club Ramona sat down at a table of gentlemen with instructions to cozy up to one of them. But the guy she’s supposed to fluff up looks as if he might have anger issues. She says she can handle him but Jack had a better idea. A quick move to another club not only avoids an eruption but let’s the group catch a hot act on the jazz scene.
Alice Novic was a TGForum member back in 1999 when she became the subject of a TGF Pictorial. We reach back to 1999 and bring your the photos from that pictorial.
The Covid-19 pandemic has affected our entire society but Dana Bevan focuses on the parts of the transgender community and how the pandemic has affected us. Things that provided relief to dysphoria, such as support group meetings, days long conferences, and simple things like hugs have all been suspended. Will those parts of our transgender culture come back after the pandemic?
Pauline Estelle takes a look at hosiery through the ages. From olden times when men wore leggings under their tunics to the shift is hose from men to women, the development of silk stockings, and on to rayon and nylon leg covering, Pauline covers our lower limbs throughly.
Dr. Aaron Devor, PhD, FSSSS, FSTLHE, has been studying and teaching about transgender topics since the early 1980s. He established and holds the world’s first Chair in Transgender Studies; initiated and hosts the international, interdisciplinary Moving Trans History Forward conferences, started the Transgender Archives at the University of Victoria and is the subject of today’s Tell Shelley Anne interview.
Shelley Anne interviews Mariette Pathy Allen, a photographer, author, activist, film collaborator and world traveler who has spent decades documenting the lives of the many people who fall under the umbrella term transgender. Ms. Allen first met members of the heterosexual crossdressing community in 1978. That led to many photos of that segment of the trans world and led her to explore crossdressing and the differently gendered in other cultures.
It’s TransTainment time! From online Christmas drag to and 11-hour drag marathon for New Year’s Eve, we’ve got all the news. RuPaul’s queens will be working overtime with online streaming events. Courtney Act stars in a live on stage play in London, and it’s been 50 years since the performance art theater group The Cockettes came into being in San Francisco. Find out all about it in this month’s TransTainment.
This is a short story about how we got here as free transgender people with political and economic rights. It is an overview of from a much longer, more detailed story. Although our pursuit of freedom and rights has not yet reached perfection, we have made great progress.
Today Katherine Diaz, our Columbian Correspondent, looks back briefly at the roots of drag as performance and part of street culture. As long as there have been different attire for the sexes there have been males who adopt feminine presentations to entertain, to express their own femininity, or to poke straight culture in the eye. And Katherine, as always, provides a video to go along with the blog.
Sophie Lynne takes a trip to a cemetery to indulge her appreciation for headstones and funereal monuments. There, while walking among the worn away sandstone grave markers, she has some thoughts about the impermanence of the flesh and how even memories carved in stone will over time fade away.
