Uranian Rights

up until that point, during the day lily continued to dress in masculine clothing and even attended galleries showing gottlieb’s paintings of her. which was kind of iconic. she got to stand in a room full of people who were marveling her beauty, not knowing she was right next to them. it must have been such a cute little secret for them as a couple.

here’s gerda and lilly together

not to mention that for most people there is no real “after” to a transition. especially for these trans historical figures who had to balance identity and safety at all times.

i think having a wife paint these portraits must have felt really amazing for lily. to be able to see herself through the eyes of someone who loved her. i’m very much seconding op on the getting teary eyed.

here are some of my favorite gottleib lily paintings

“Doctor Magnus Hirschfeld

On Thursday, 11 July you will hear Magnus Hirschfeld speak in Zurich at the Schwurgerichtssaal; it is an evening to which you can look forward. I should like to tell you something about our doctor in Berlin. He is not just our doctor, he is also our host; his consultations end in beaux jours, the ailing forget their neuroses and for the healthy patient an afternoon in his delightful waiting rooms provides pleasing stimulation for the nerves. There in the middle of the Tiergarten amid stout chestnut trees and whispering acacias lives Medical Councillor Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld. Not that he likes us calling him that. ‘Children, just call me “Doctor”.’ Nevertheless, he confessed to me that his appointment to the Medical Council on the occasion of his fiftieth birthday, greatly disputed and contested among the medical profession though it was due to his exceptional position, had pleased him. Beaming like a child, he showed me all his presents. We call him our doctor. And unto our doctor my playmates and I delivered an exquisite serenade on the eve of his birthday revels. Touched, the revellers came out onto his balcony to hear our songs accompanied by accordion and drum. The concluding chorus: ‘I should like to carve it in every crust…’. He is amused by our exuberance, because – being earnest – Dr Hirschfeld understands jest, he is not some serious professor with an oak-leaf beard. Now, I must confess to you dear students that, to my shame, I am not familiar with any of the many famous books that the doctor has written (essentially I only read my own), but can nevertheless judge them from his incomparably interesting lectures, these thrilling medical, historical novels, standard works that never turn stale. Doctor Hirschfeld is the advocate of sincere love of any kind, opponent of all forms of hatred. A gentle forensic physician who seeks to understand everything. All compassion, he sacrifices his strength, his time, his good heart to the departing soldier. At the railway stations one often sees our doctor cultivating entire tobacco plantations, distributing numerous boxes of cigars and cigarettes as he farewells them in their field grey. He is a man whose goodwill is truly blind to class. He rushes to those who summon him. I once ambushed him myself, and managed to get him away from his great practice to accompany me to a wounded friend in Pomerania. Gentlemen, I am pleased to sing the praises and wonders of our Doctor Hirschfeld. When he is away from Berlin it is as though our father confessor were missing. We all long for his words of comfort, for his cosy, warm green chambers which are as soothing as the man himself.”

- Causes and Essence of Uranism, Magnus Hirschfeld, x

"But the Court asking her why she went in Mans Apparel, the Prisoner replyed, She went to Wooe a Widow. Upon the whole Matter the Jury brought her in not Guilty."

Paola Revenioti: The Greek transgender activist on blowing up sexual taboos in the name of art

If you remember the character Tadzio, from the movie Death in Venice, that’s how I looked then, with my long blond hair. Boys there were nothing like the self-indulgent Athenian boys. They knew how to seduce you. I remember my grandmother showing me a piece of land one summer and saying, ‘This will be yours’ – a small yard, but a forest in my eyes. But for my father’s family it was a legacy I didn’t deserve; I was a ‘faggot’, shameful to them. I wanted to be independent and escape that family environment, so I joined the navy. I never had the opportunity of a proper education. In life I met extraordinary people and educated myself. 

I was in my 20s when I moved to Exarchia in Athens. It was an oasis of painters, poets, musicians and intellectuals. A revolutionary neighbourhood. Most of the friends I made back then became famous for something. We wanted to change the world. I got officially involved with politics – as the first transvestite to run as a candidate for the Alternative Party of Ecologists. My beliefs were closer to anti authoritarianism and anarchism. We occupied universities, held demonstrations. 

I began running my own pirate radio in Exarchia with money from prostitution. I’d go to work around nine in the evening and by 11pm I’d had about 25 customers, so I was making enough to run the station from midnight till 5am. I always played hard with the police. I was arrested twice for the station – the first time I hid the equipment with communists living next door. The whole of Athens was listening to ‘crazy Paola’. I’d receive live calls, start philosophical conversations on air, even arrange blind dates. I was evicted from my flat because every night dozens of boys would hang out on my doorstep, making too much noise.

I started my magazine Kraximo because there was a need for another voice to be heard. They were tough times: the police would arrest transvestites for fun. When it’s illegal to be yourself, you have no option but to fight back. I published police brutality reports – remember there was no internet then. In slang, Kraximo translates as ‘gaybashing’. Those were conservative times. People would scream names like ‘whore’, ‘scum’, ‘antichrist’... I wanted to guide people afraid of their sexuality and values, create something fresh and revolutionary. I gathered articles, paid friends to write or translate, spent hours creating the layout, blackening my fingers, copying and cutting. I remember one issue sold out in a single day. It was like an action movie, getting unique interviews with intellectuals and combining them with artists and photographs I took of boys around Greece. once I needed signatures to help a case about a murderer who was being accused, not for his crime, but for being a homosexual. Many journalists and politicians helped the campaign.

Kraximo was not easy to fund. Pseudoactivists who pretended to be friends never helped when bigots were suing me – I was dragged to the courts for Kraximo four times, for silly causes like nudity or blasphemy. And it wasn’t easy to get advertising with my content. Prostitution was the only way, even if I never saw it as a job, but more as a challenge, a stance, even a way to have fun. I’d chase cultural figures to support me. But the truth is I was publishing it by bending in the dark, spending nights on cheerful but tough roads.I remember one incident with a cop – I was waiting for a customer, and a man in casual clothes asked me to get in his car. I refused – instinctively I didn’t like him. He tried to violently force me to get in. I started screaming and my friend Boubou came round the corner, we started beating him, he was pulling our hair, slapping our faces. A priest came to help the guy, and they took us to the police station. All-night cops were cursing and spitting at us, ‘So you’re the bitches who tried to beat our fellow officer.’ So we found the metallic cap of a Coca-Cola bottle and scratched our hands and necks, blackmailing them that if they wouldn’t let us out, we’d accuse them of torture. 

I never thought I was documenting my city, I was living my city, wildly. I wish then I could have imagined a future as an artist. My first camera was a Soviet brand called Zenit, bought in a market. later I met a junkie who sold me a – probably stolen – Nikon F20 for $50. I’d photograph these ordinary but sexy boys who were spending time with me. Besides the erotic pictures, there were political ones, photos inside the court where some anarchist friend or lover was being tried, photos of policemen I knew beating up trannies, photos from the first organised political acts for gay and trans rights. I wanted to force public opinion to listen and change its views. Today social media plays a big role in protests. Back then we only had our nerves and freedom to sacrifice.

The first attempt at gay pride in Athens in the 80s was a failure. Nobody came. Homosexuals were afraid to shout it out loud. I restarted gay pride after 1990. They weren’t commercialised then, they were like Dionysian festivals. Many people came: aristocrats, soldiers who knew me well, straight people. Of course they were all getting laid in the bushes. The parties took place in the Athenian woods, known as ‘cruising parks’. I took to the streets with a bucket of glue, pasting my posters, ‘Miss Paola Presents’, on every wall. I arranged bands, raves. Imagine sleeping in a hypocritical, conservative city and one shiny morning, waking up to that. 

Today, the economic crisis means I’m scared to count my money. Before, I’d spontaneously escape the city, cook for friends. We used to share because we had plenty, now we share because we have so little. I’m not optimistic, but I know it’s usually in dark times that the arts explode. 

With my Paola Project I make films about migration and politics, or male prostitution in Athens. I travel long distances in my broken car, pay the extreme price of gas, but now they even watch my videos in Uganda, where homophobia is such a problem. I do films on ancient Greek history because it’s being manipulated by Golden Dawn, the Greek neo-fascist party, as some kind of sick branding. Sometimes I feel afraid – I live next to their offices. But I’m ashamed of these modern Nazis, who are probably uneducated psychopaths with erection problems. Our politicians are using the fear of immigrants as a scapegoat, without finding a solution to this financial crisis. 

Gay transgender activist Lou Sullivan spent years researching the life of Jack Garland, an obscure early 20th century transgender man who evidently loved men. He rifled though archived newspapers and letters in local libraries for any scrap relevant to Jack, and finally managed to get the completed novel published only very shortly before his death by AIDS in 1990. The book made a single run from a now-defunct publishing company, so a very limited number of copies of the book exist today. Approximately 30 libraries carry it across the US and certain sellers have another handful of copies available for upwards of $200+ each. However, I could afford to shell out that $200, and I think Lou would want his book to be accessible to the modern trans population. So I've bought a copy and scanned it and converted the pages into a PDF,

which is now public on google drive

Ironically, the military also contributed to the establishment of a larger lesbian subculture when it became less lenient in its policy toward homosexuals once the war was over. Thousands of homosexual personnel were loaded onto “queer ships” and sent with “undesirable” discharges to the nearest U. S. port. Many of them believed that they could not go home again. They simply stayed where they were disembarked, and their numbers helped to form large homosexual enclaves that were beginning to develop in port cities such as New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Boston. Historian Allan Bérubé wryly remarks: “The government sponsored a migration of the gay community.”

If you want to learn more about Polari, check out the fun book Fabulosa! The story of Polari, Britain’s secret gay language:

What’s important to note in terms of rhetoric, discourse and theory— and which Laqueur stops short of, because of his periodisation— is that the concept of a separation between sex and gender- in the contemporary sense- derives from medical professionals working after Freud: John Money, Madison Bentley and Robert Stoller (an older but quite accessible text on this is How Sex Changed, by Joanne Meyerowitz, but also Jules-Gill Paterson does current work and writing around this period). Their theories were then taken up and co-opted outside of their original (if debatable) scientific context, filtering into both feminism(s) and academic fields (gender studies, women’s studies, queer studies etc). So arguably, most people discoursing about gender now are merely working with not only received knowledge, but something that’s emerged like the end of a game of telephone: sex is biological fact, gender is identity (i.e. mental and/or emotional) isn’t exactly what was said in the beginning, but it’s what we wound up repeating at the end.

So while the sex/gender split echoes the binary divisions common in English, I think it’s less a product of linguistics and more the use and abuse of theory. As Paterson notes in her post:

“Actually, the word “gender” didn’t mean at all what it does today until the 1950s. Before then, the word “sex” had to do all the heavy lifting. But in that decade a cohort of psychologists, endocrinologists, and plastic surgeons who had been forcing horrifying experiments on intersex infants and children for decades needed a new theory of human development and identity to save the binary.

…

The new word gender, by which these researchers meant our deeply felt sense of being a boy and/or a girl, was supposed to fix that conceptual weakness, to give the binary new teeth. And it did, with a kind of sleight of hand that we are still trying to outsmart all these years later. John Money, a psychologist at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, knew that finding a biological basis for sex could never be the justification for enforcing a match between anatomy and identity. Instead, he changed the terms of engagement. From now on, the issue was not if humans were biologically binary, but rather “the life adjustments of patients in our series”—how normal they felt, or how well they adapted socially. With that twist, a gender identity that did not conform to a binary body could be subject to medical control because it might lead to social stigma, not because there is anything unnatural or unhealthy about it.

Of course, however, ‘gender’ as a concept was then picked up and utilised by ‘cis people’ even more broadly (Paterson problematises the term in her article) for analyses that were not only un/non-scientific, but which bolstered the absolutist notion of a sex/gender dichotomy throughout numerous fields and ideological approaches across the political and philosophical spectrum. In other words: like the one-sex and two-sex models, the sex/gender dichotomy is simply the most recent (pseudo-scientific/theoretical) construction that we’ve come up with and, in reality, is less than a century old.

The new conceptualization of female orgasm, however, was but one formulation of a more radical eighteenth-century reinterpretation of the female body in relation to the male. For thousands of years it had been a commonplace that women had the same genitals as men except that, as Nemesius, bishop of Emesa in the fourth century put it: "theirs are inside the body and not outside it." Galen, who in the second century A.D. developed the most powerful and resilient model of the structural, though not spatial, identity of the male and female reproductive organs, demonstrated at length that women were essentially men in whom a lack of vital heat -- of perfection -- had resulted in retention, inside, of structures that in the male are visible without. [...]

In this world the vagina is imagined as an interior penis, the labia is a foreskin, the uterus is a scrotum, and the ovaries are testicles. The learned Galen could cite the dissections of the Alexandrian anatomis Herophilus, in the third century B.C., to support his claim that a woman has testes with accompanying seminal ducts very much like the man's, one on each side of the uterus, the only difference being that the male's are contained in the scrotum and the female's are not."