Once a Pariah, Now a Judge: The Early Transgender Journey of Phyllis Frye
The New York Times presents a fascinating article on male to female transgender pioneers, and their struggles with friends, family, society and the LGBT movement.
In the summer of 1976, Phillip Frye, 28, living as a man, was admitting defeat in suppressing her gender identity. She had been forced to resign from the military for “sexual deviation.” She had been disowned by his parents, divorced by her first wife and separated from his son. Her new wife, however, helped her come out as the woman she was.
During that bleak, embittering time, Ms. Frye could not have imagined that someday this tiny transgender population would generate a hugely visible movement, and that she would be considered not only one of its pioneers but a pillar of her civic community — the country’s first openly transgender judge.
Phyllis became a lawyer and trans activist.
On the broad transgender alliance:
Ms. Frye never opted for full gender-reassignment surgery. Ahead of her time, she firmly believed that surgery did not “complete” a gender change and should not be imposed on transgender people to justify a legal gender change on identification documents. “For many years I have been about the business mostly of freeing our community from the legal need of the scalpel,” she said in a speech in the 1990s.
During that period, for personal and political reasons, she and others consciously adopted “transgender” as an umbrella term.
“We framed the relevant community as broadly as possible to make the case that we’re all in this together — not just transsexual people but people who cross-dress, butch lesbians, feminine gays and so on,” Mr. Minter said.
(Photo of Ms. Frye with the talk show host Phil Donahue in 1989 for an episode about people disowned by their families.)
There is also the fascinating story about president George W, Bush welcoming a trans woman to the White House:
In 2003, George W. Bush became the first president to welcome an openly transgender person into the White House.
It happened during a reunion for his Yale class of 1968. Making her way through the president’s receiving line, a woman in an evening gown extended her hand. “Hello, George,” she said. “I guess the last time we spoke, I was still living as a man.”
Mr. Bush smiled and graciously responded, “And now you’re you,” according to the woman, Petra Leilani Akwai.