Monday, May 4, 2009
Virginia Prince: The Passing Of A Trans Icon
Posted by Vanessa Edwards Foster at 12:12 PM

http://transpolitical.blogspot.com/2009/05/virginia-prince-passing-of-trans-icon.html

We got word last night that we lost arguably the most important figures in the our community's history. An innovator. A true pioneer. A queen. A Prince.

Above all, she was the grande dame of the "Transgender" Community — a term she semi-coined. Virginia Prince passed away after a short illness this past month. She was 96. Dr. Richard Docter, who has been compiling her biography, broke the news to the Liberty Conference yesterday in Philadelphia.

Though she was never a lobbyist on Capitol Hill, she was certainly (in my opinion, at least) the pre-cursor to Transgender advocacy. It was ironic, considering that she was only crossdressing when she began this quest. The risk of such public outing of oneself is overwhelmingly anathemic to most crossdressers. Personal impact be-damned though, Virginia Prince was courageously public in educating the psychiatric community, the viewing public and even government administrators and the courts.

Takes note of the passing of another person I have met. Whatever else you could say about Virginia, she was a character.

 Virginia Prince: 1912-2009
by: Autumn Sandeen
Tue May 05, 2009 at 03:30:00 AM EDT

http://www.pamshouseblend.com/diary/10799/virginia-prince-19122009

Virginia Prince claimed to be a transgenderist her whole life, but even she ended up having surgical intervention: she had breast implants, and she did have her facial hair removed by electrolyis. The "transsexual surgery" that she never did have was genital reconstruction surgery.

The term transgender has evolved over time into a term that Virginia didn't envision. From the GLAAD Media Guide's Transgender Glossary (page :