Controversial Trans Pioneer Prince Dies at 96

[Shana A]

May 06, 2009

Controversial Trans Pioneer Prince Dies at 96
By Amita Parashar

http://www.advocate.com/news_detail_ektid82788.asp

Virginia Prince, a pioneer of the cross-dressing community and longtime activist for transgender rights, died on Saturday, May 2. She was 96 years old.

Prince's philosophies attracted fierce criticism, especially from transgender people. She was staunchly against sex-reassignment surgery, writing in 1978 that she believed it was "perfectly possible to be a woman without having sex surgery." She is widely believed to have coined the term "transgender" around 1970, but as a description exclusively for heterosexual people who did not wish to have reassignment surgery.

[Pica Pica]

interesting. I can see why she upset some people.

[ilikepotatoes]

I remember learning about her a few years ago. Definitely an interesting person. Won't miss her.

[tekla]

Won't miss her.

Awesome statement from someone who she did more for, than you ever did for her.  But.  Rest assured.  With an attitude like that, know that more people will miss her - even in her errors - then will miss you.  Not because she was better, but because she took a very public stand, and worked very hard (including fighting federal arrests) to try to give a voice to people she thought were persecuted, misunderstood, and harmless.

VP was a pioneer, which means that they may not have found the best way, or the only way, or the easiest way -- but when no one else even bothered to try to find a way, she stepped off the map, and into terra incognita, where before her all feared to tread.

Pioneers are not always right, but they are always first. And, right or wrong, I'll bet that people remember her long after they have forgot you.

Something to think about.

And, goodnight sweet prince.

[Vexing]

Won't miss her.

Agreed. Like every other person I have never heard of before and have never met, I have great difficulty missing them.

[ilikepotatoes]

Won't miss her.

Awesome statement from someone who she did more for, than you ever did for her. 

Virginia Prince hated transsexuals with a passion, and publicly advocated that medical transition was unnecessary, as if she was an expert on the subject. As a transsexual who plans on getting SRS in the next few years, I don't have fond feelings toward Ms. Prince and have good reason not to. I, on the other hand, have never done anything negative towards elderly crossdressers. So, yes, in a totally ->-bleeped-<- way she did do more for me than I did for her.

But.  Rest assured.  With an attitude like that, know that more people will miss her - even in her errors - then will miss you.  Not because she was better, but because she took a very public stand, and worked very hard (including fighting federal arrests) to try to give a voice to people she thought were persecuted, misunderstood, and harmless.

As long as they were people weren't transsexuals. She was a bigot.

VP was a pioneer, which means that they may not have found the best way, or the only way, or the easiest way -- but when no one else even bothered to try to find a way, she stepped off the map, and into terra incognita, where before her all feared to tread.

I have nothing against crossdressers and I am also willing to consider people with male bodies who don't transition trans and women if they want. Prince was hardly the first person to wear a dress while possessing a dick, if you want to give her that credit. RuPaul does it better anyway while always being a sweetheart to the MtFs.

Prince wasn't a pioneer for me. Lili Elbe was a pioneer, so was Renee Richards. When Calpernia Addams passes, I will feel sad. When Gloria Steinem passes, I will feel sad. Steinem has had some negative remarks about transsexuals when she was much younger--milder than anything from Prince--but has become someone inclusive of all women, and unlike, Prince, I owe her for being a pioneer.

Pioneers are not always right, but they are always first. And, right or wrong, I'll bet that people remember her long after they have forgot you.

I am not going to respond to further ad hominmen attacks.

[Vicky]

As one who has decided that "Tri S" is not really my "cup of "T" Tea" and also one who lived through the 1950's with the beginnings of my gender issues, the passing of Virginia Prince is the end of one chapter in the history of US gender investigation and development that needs to be acknowledged and evaluated for both the good and the ordinary that it brought.  To put in a plug for William Shakespeare, "The evil that men do in their lives long lives after them, the good is oft' intered with their bones, so let it be---"   (Marc Antony in Julius Ceasar)  As with many people, their best stuff is never what they really meant to say in the first place, but what someone else who never heard them say something, quotes them as saying.  I have attended several Tri S meetings as a "prospective member" in all openness and honesty and have found that my own needs will not be met under the circumstances and customs that persist in the people who do become members.  I do not see myself as a man who dresses in women's clothing, and do not want to be limited to that description of me, although by many other opinions thats what I am.  I am happy for the members of Tri S who do enjoy the program and do find fullfillment of their needs.   The idea of safe and constructive outlets for ALL of our variations in the non-cis-gendered community (tricky wording intentional) is very much needed, and once it has been shown that there is value, that much good has been done.

A minor parallel to this is the Alcoholics Anonymous program which is the grandfather of almost too many other addiction recovery programs.  There are even minor battles between those program as to which flavor of addiction is the right one for a person to use when they have multiple addictions that affect the same person.  Those who are not addicts are by the way, the quickest to KNOW which one is RIGHT for someone. Trust me-- I put up with it daily!!

I am not Transsexual in the way that I must have surgery and HRT or I will kill myself!!  I know I would be more true to my own nature if I could get rid of excess tissue, but most important for me is to find a self acceptance that I can carry from day to day on a given day.  I am not "transgendered" in Prince's direct definition, and while I have never had sexual intimacy with a male, I do not consider myself to be "heterosexual" in the many of its definitions.  I have been the sperm source of three known lives, and while their begetting did not fill me with horror and self loathing at the time it happened, I really wish I had been the other genetic parent. (All three are wonderful and socially productive adults now.)

A page in history has been turned, lets hope the great author makes the new chapter more exciting and fullfilling.  I think it will happen that way.

[tekla]

Wow, its too bad she came along before the internet and the TG movement, and could have had all of you people advise her and all.  ->-bleeped-<-, I know a way West from St. Louis a hella lot easier then the one Lewis and Clark took, 'ya know.  They just could have called me up and I'd whip out the old Rand McNally and say "dudes, just take I-80." 

I'd tell the Donner Party just to stop at Denny's too I guess.   

When she did this, she was just about the only one doing it.  It was Christine J. and her, and she had her views (Oh, boy did she) and she was very smart (PhD in some sort of chemistry, pharma perhaps), and kind of unsufferable on a personal level, she sure had the ability to rub people the wrong way, I'll give her that too. 

Still...

You can't blame her for coming up with both an explanation, cure and movement all at the same time that you don't like, because she was making the entire thing up out of whole cloth as she went.  There was no other notion for her to go on, so she just made one up. 

But, in doing that, I think she was a key person in beginning a dialogue about the possibility of choosing one's gender, or not being the right gender, and in particular using the word gender, as opposed to sex, she was there defining the conversation at the beginning, and she deserves, if not props, at least recognition, or at least not overt 'I'm kinda glad she's dead' stuff. 

Look, when she began this conversation, it was a conversation that was pretty much against the law to have.  She's out there before Compton, before Stonewall, and she's fighting for the right of people exploring gender to just have correspondence about it.  She had to fight federal charges of sending obscenity through the mail, and they didn't kid about that stuff in the early 60s.

OK, she was kinda not nice in some ways, and somewhat, if not a whole lot, pedantic too.  But she did do something important for the movement, and in the beginning she was a prime moving force  - she was at least 'important' enough for people still to be talking about her (and arguing about her, how she would have loved that) after she is dead, and that's no small feat in life.