Barbarian Venus by Paul Klee

Paul Klee (1879 –1940) painted this in 1921.

Lanier Graham says:

Barbarian's Venus by Paul Klee (1879-1940) is one of the most "barbaric" Androgyne images of the era.  She is a Venus with a penis. Klee was not a member of the Surrealist circle, but sometimes exhibited with them. He was associated with Kandinsky and Marc in Munich in 1911 and 1912, then took from Cubism and Orphism the concept of fluctuating planes. Klee was thought by some to be an Alchemist when he discussed the Absolute, Nothingness, and the Ground of Being. His students at the Bauhaus (only half in jest) called him "Heavenly Father." He was one of the first modern artists to explore Androgyny in tribal art. 

The painting is owned by The Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, California, but is not currently on view.  They describe the painting:

This androgynous Venus, with her direct gaze confronting and challenging the viewer, displays both female and male organs, thereby engaging us by flaunting her dual and "barbaric" sexuality.

• Lanier Graham.  “Duchamp & Androgyny: The Concept and its Context”.  Tout-Fait: The Marcel Duchamp Studies Online Journal.  January 2002.  www.toutfait.com/issues/volume2/issue_4/articles/graham/graham5.html 
• www.nortonsimon.org/collections/browse_title.php?id=P.1953.062

Elémire Zolla’s The Androgyne: Reconciliation of Male and Female

Elémire Zolla (1926 – 2002) was born in Turin to an Italian-French father who was a painter and an English mother who was a musician. He was raised in Paris and London, but then settled in Italy.

In 1956 he won the Strega Prize for his first novel, Minuetto all'inferno. He married a poet, Maria Spaziani, 1958, but they were divorced in 1960. From 1966 to 1978 he was Secretary of the Istituto Accademico di Roma and from 1970 to 1973 Director of the Istituto Ticinesi di Alti Studi in Lugano. In 1970 he wrote an introduction to the Italian version of Tolkein’s The Lord of the Rings. He was the long time director and editor of Conoscenza Religiosa, a leading Italian journal in religious studies. He taught Anglo-American and comparative literature at La Sapienza University in Rome and at the University of Genoa.

The Androgyne: Reconciliation of Male and Female, which was published first in English and only later in Italian, is an intriguing book that covers many of the aspects of the Androgyne in myth, but also features some items that readers may be puzzled about, such as decapitation and plunging into water.

Zolla proposes two paradigms of androgyny:
(1)
a) Suitors are slighted or a goddess is offended or mating is hindered, the hidden meaning possibly being that an esoteric use is made of sex;
b) A plunge is taken into transforming waters. Or contact is made with serpents. The currents of subtle inner energy may be alluded to in either case;
c) There follows a succession of switches in sex; one's self-reflection pivots on its axis of symmetry. In Tantric sex the two opposite currents are usually stimulated in turn;
d) The consequence is a loss of sight leading to the acquisition of spiritual or prophetic insight, or the granting of the gift of music, the mastery of rhythms. In the Narcissus myth the explicit discovery of the self-delusive quality of maya takes the place of the loss of sight. Tales such as Hermaphroditus, Teiresius and Narada fit into this paradigm, as does the Genesis tale of Joseph and Potiphar's wife, and the Buddhist tale where a chaste youth closes his ears to a woman's entreaties and she has him blinded out of spite.

(2)
a) A cosmic cavern or tree or anthill;
b) inside is concealed the androgyne, the Primal God, or the God who assumes the sex opposite to that of the worshipper;
c) violence of love blinds, bisects or beheads the androgyne;
d) The severed head or lost eyesight becomes a cause of trouble; a sacrifice has to be made;
e) Balance is restored, the androgyne made whole once more, the land healed.

His other books are: The Eclipse of the Intellectual, 1968. The writer and the shaman; a morphology of the American Indian, 1973. Archetypes: The Persistence of Unifying Patterns, 1981.

• Elémire Zolla. The Androgyne: Reconciliation of Male and Female. The illustrated library of sacred imagination. New York: Crossroad, 1981. London: Thames and Hudson, 96 pp 130 illustrations 1981. L'androgino: l'umana nostalgia dell'interezza. Arte e immaginazione, 8. Como: red edizioni, 1989.
• “Elémire Zolla”. Wikipedia, l'enciclopedia libera. it.wikipedia.org/wiki/El%C3%A9mire_Zolla.
• www.elemirezolla.org.

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The application of any of this to real-life trans persons is not at all obvious; nor if this is indeed androgyny, what should a person do who wishes to be androgynous.  Nor do I perceive any system in Zolla’s archetypes of Androgyny.  Surely by emphasizing different myths of androgyny, one could arrive at different archetypes. 

Unlike Joseph Campbell or Mircea Eliade, Zolla’s approach is neither that of a scientist nor of a mythographer, but that of an artist.  You relate to his presentation or you do not.  But there is no dialectic or doxy that will accept or reject it.

Madame X

This photograph is online at: http://www.photo.rmn.fr/cf/htm/CSearchZ.aspx?o=&Total=8&FP=46801092&E=2K1KTS6URHS5K&SID=2K1KTS6URHS5K&New=T&Pic=2&SubE=2C6NU0CVNJC3

It is exhibited at Toulouse, musée d'Art moderne et contemporain, les Abattoirs.

The author is Joël-Peter Witkin (1939 – ).

Title: Madame X.

While, of course it is a riff on the Venus de Milo, I think that it captures well the ambivalence of the male gaze with regard to androgyny.  The fact that it is a modified photograph, and thus more ‘realistic’ than a statue, that it combines ‘hermaphrodite’ in the art sense with body mutilation that accidentally happened to Greek and Roman statues over 2,000 years.   Wasn’t it the 1953 Julius Caesar, directed by Joseph Mankiewicz with Marlon Brando, that featured armless statues of the Venus de Milo type as if the Romans actually created them like that?

The films of Candy Darling

See the biographical entry on Candy.

 

 

Flesh 1968 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Women in Revolt 1972

There are no clips online from Women in Revolt.

 

Ricardo Parker (1867 - ?) emigrant.

The tale goes thus:

In 1884, the yacht Mignonette, on route from Britain to Australia, stopped for supplies in Madeira on June 2nd. Whilst there, Otilia Ribeiro, an orphaned flower seller, tried to sneak on board with the intention of getting to Australia. This resulted in Richard Parker, the junior member of the crew, hitting her on the head with a boat hook, and the captain rescuing her from drowning. The captain, Tom Dudley, refused her passage, but gave her a contact address in Sidney.

It was just as well for Otilia that she did not secure passage on the Mignonette, for on July 5th, in the south Atlantic, it sank in a storm. The crew members escaped in its dingy, and survived for twenty-four days before being picked up by a ship, only because they killed and ate Richard Parker.

Two of the others were put on trial, Regina v Dudley and Stephens, as an example, found guilty and sentenced to death, and then granted a royal pardon because of the extenuating circumstances.   This is a much cited legal precedent.

Tom Dudley then emigrated to Australia with his family to start anew, without the stigma of the conviction.   He ran a ships chandler shop in Sydney.

Otilia, calling herself Ricardo Parker, and as a man, travelled via Luanda and Goa and turned up in Sydney in 1887 to visit Tom Dudley. She and Dudley had an affair and an adventure on a Barrier Reef island.   Donald McCormick admits that this last part is “imaginative reconstruction”.

Dudley died of the plague in 1900.  

A co-incidence that was noticed at the time is that Richard Parker is also the name of the castaway sailor who is selected by lot to be eaten in Edgar Allen Poe's Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, which had been published in 1838.  This became known again in 1974 when Arthur Koestler ran a competition in The Sunday Times to find the most striking co-incidence, and the two Richard Parkers, suggested by a relative of the historical one, were declared the winner.

A great story.  The sinking of the Mignonette, the cannibalism, the trial and the co-incidence of the name are all true.  The major problem is that the only source of the Ribeiro/Parker thread is McCormick’s book.  He cites no sources, and in the early 1980s when Simpson asked about sources, he could not produce one.  However he did write to The Sydney Morning Herald in July 1961 seeking information about Ribeiro/Parker in Australia. 

We have met Donald McCormick before.  He cited (or is that invented) a reference in The Ochrana Gazette that identified Vassily Konovalov (otherwise known as Alexei Pedachenko) as Jack the Ripper.

Paul Metcalf later retold the tale as his own.

• Donald McCormick.  Letter to The Sydney Morning Herald.  July 25, 1961.  http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1301&dat=19610725&id=c1oVAAAAIBAJ&sjid=--UDAAAAIBAJ&pg=4119,5784254
• Donald McCormick.  Blood on the Sea.  London: Miller 1962.
• Leicester Cotton. “Cannibal in Sydney”.  The Sydney Morning Herald.  Sept 29, 1962.  http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1301&dat=19620929&id=6VoVAAAAIBAJ&sjid=EeYDAAAAIBAJ&pg=4428,8489711
• W. Brian Simpson. Cannibalism and the Common Law: the Story of the Tragic Last Voyage of the Mignonette and the Strange Legal Proceedings to Which It Gave Rise. The University of Chicago Press. 1984: 44,144, 292-4.
• Paul C. Metcalf. Collected Works. Minneapolis, Minn: Coffee House Press, 1996: Volume II: 284-8, 299-312.

Trans persons acting in soap operas, telenovelas and other dramatic serials on television up to 2009

This is a first cut as such a list.   Feel free to add what is missing.


Guilda played Chevalier D’Eon in L'amour humain, 1970, Cinepix.
Carlotta played Robin Ross in Number 96, 1973, Network 10

Carlotta, then pre-op, was already a star in the Les Girls revue in Sydney.  She acted six episodes under the name Carolle Lea, and her identity was kept secret from cast and crew.  When Robin’s boyfriend asks her to marry him, she admits that she had previously been male.  The next day the switchboard at Channel 10 was jammed by viewers wanting to know whether the actor was male or female.

Christopher Morley played Sally Armitage in General Hospital, 1980, ABC

Morley played a friend of one of the main characters for three months, and attracted flirtatious interest of a male character.  This was played straight until she revealed that she was a “man”.  Some say that this was the inspiration for the movie Tootsie, two years later, where the Dustin Hoffman character impersonates a woman to get a job in the soap opera Southwest General Hospital.

Lily Savage played Roxanne in The Bill, 1988-90, Thames Television
Jahna Steele played Candace La Rue in NYPD Blue, 1995, Fox.
Karen Dior played Artiphys in Xena: Warrior Princess, 1997, Universal
Karen Dior played Monica/Dennis in Veronica’s Closet, 1998, NBC
Alexis Arquette played Cleo in The Strip, 1999, Warner Bros
Florencia De la Vega played Florencia de la Suciata in Amor Latino, 2000, Central Park
Alexis Arquette played Jim in Felicity, 2000, WB Television
Alexis Arquette played Caligula in Xena: Warrior Princess, 2001, Universal
Letitia Winter played herself in Emmerdale, 2001, Yorkshire Television
Alexandra Billings played Lois in Karen Sisco, 2003, ABC.

Alexandra’s Wikipedia page says “She is the first trans woman to have played a transgender character on television”.  Which is obviously not true.

Florencia De la Vega played Laisa Roldán in Los Roldán, 2004, Televisión Federal
Alexandra Billings played Ms Mitchell in ER, 2005, NBC
Alexandra Billings played Donna Gibson in Grey’s Anatomy, 2006, ABC
Candis Cayne played Carmelita Rainer in Dirty Sexy Money, 2007-8, ABC
Alexandra Billings played Joanna in Eli Stone, 2008, ABC
Alexis Arquette played lady in jail in Californication, 2008, Showtime
Pequeña P. in El ángel, 2009, Universidad Iberoamericana

This was terminated by Pequeña’s real-life suicide.

Clara Vaughan, 1864 – a novel

R.D. Blackmore (1825 –1900) was one of the most famous English novelists in the second half of the nineteenth century, but since then his work has been largely forgotten except for Lorna Doone, 1869.

His first novel 'Clara Vaughan' was written in 1853 and published anonymously in 1864. The narrator is female and the Saturday Review, as part of an obsession of the period, was convinced that it had detected a female writer masquerading as a man.

'Another decided feature by which our lady novelists are wont to betray the secret of their authorship is the characteristic mode in which they unconsciously make sport of the simplest principles of physics, and of the most elementary rules or usages of the law.'

Some reviewers believed that the novel had been written by Mary Elizabeth Braddon who was popular at the time.

Blackmore was not only male, but he had practiced law in London for five years at that time.  The novel is now regarded as one of the very first detective stories.

• Elaine Showalter.  A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists from Bronte to Lessing. Princeton University Press. 1977: 91.
• “R.D. Blackmore”.  Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._D._Blackmore.
• “Clara Vaughan”.  Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clara_Vaughan.

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A male writer using the voice of a woman is an example of Narrative Transvestity or cross-writing.   It is sometimes referred to as Appropriation of Voice.

This example shows that attempts to detect the gender of a writer by style and by knowledge exhibited by the author/protagonist can lead to wrong conclusions.

Anna Madrigal (1920- ) landlady.

Anna Madrigal appears in Armistead Maupin's tales of San Francisco where it is revealed that she was raised in a brothel in Winnemucca, Nevada, and that she has a secret that she shares with her lover Edgar Halcyon when he is being blackmailed, although the reader is not informed of the nature of the secret.

She is also shown to be particularly concerned about one of her tenants, Mona Ramsey.

In the second volume she admits to being Mona's father.  Andrew Ramsey had grown up feeling like a girl.  He ran from home at 16, worked at various manual jobs and finally joined the army.  After the war he met a woman who proposed to him and moved with her to Minneapolis where he got a job in a bookstore.  Two years after the birth of their child, Mona, he left and never came back.

In 1964 Andy went to Denmark and came back as Anna Madrigal, taking her name from an anagram of 'a man and a girl'.  She ran a bookshop in San Francisco and then opened a boarding house.  When she saw that her daughter, Mona, enjoying a transitory moment of fame as an advertising whizz, was in San Francisco, Anna approached her and persuaded her to move in as a tenant.

• Armistead Maupin. Tales of the City. New York, N.Y.: HarperPerennial, 1978.
• Armistead Maupin. More Tales of the City. New York: Harper & Row, 1980.
• Alastair Reid (dir). Tales of the City.  Scr: Richard Kramer based on the novel by Armistead Maupin, with Olympia Dukakis as Anna Madrigal, Chloe Webb as Mona Ramsey and Gender as an unnamed trans woman. UK/US Channel 4/KQED/PBS 360 mins 1993.

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Of course Anna could not go to Denmark in 1964, because after the Jorgensen affair, Denmark had passed a law limiting gender surgery to Danish citizens.

The revealing of Anna’s gender past does not happen until the second novel, but is brought forward into the first television mini-series.

Transvestism by Tina

This somewhat strange drawing by Tina is found on p16 of Transvestism … men in female dress edited by David Cauldwell, 1956.  No information is given as to who Tina is.

Weapons of Mass Distraction

Directed by Stephen Surjik
Script by Larry Gelbart
100minutes 1997 HBO

Gabriel Bryne plays Lionel Powers
Ben Kingsley plays Julian Messenger
Mimi Rogers plays Ariel Powers
Jordan Ladd plays Letitia

Country of finance: US
Nationality of director: US
Location of story: Los Angeles
Filming location: Los Angeles

Synopsis

Powers and Messenger, both unscrupulous entrepreneurs, use blackmail, bribery and other crimes to get their way.  Finally both dig up enough dirt on the other that they have to become partners.   Except that the ‘dirt’ on Powers, which refers to his wife and their threesome with a younger woman, Letitia, is in fact nothing at all to be ashamed of.

Who are they?

Larry Gelbart was one of the writers on Tootsie, 1982.

Jordan Ladd is part of the Ladd acting dynasty.

Mimi Rogers was Agent Dana Fowley in the X-Files, and the mother in The Rapture, 1991.

Gabriel Bryne and Ben Kingsley are well known lead actors.

Conclusion

Alexei, from Leningrad, was sexually abused by his father, who faked paintings by famous artists.  When his father was sent to Siberia, he became a male prostitute.   She was a woman, Ariel, by age 25, and then emigrated to the US with her daughter Letitia.

Any husband should be proud to have a wife who has overcome such obstacles.  Even if, in modesty, she had never actually mentioned them.

Of course the cliché that trans women were sexually abused as children is done far too much in movies.   It is true in only a few cases.

I suppose that a cis actress had to be cast in this film, otherwise the 'surprise' would be anticipated.