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Pioneers of Transgendering:
The Life and Work of Virginia Prince
Dave King,
Department of Sociology, University of Liverpool

Richard Ekins,
Transgender Archive, University of Ulster at Coleraine
Gendys Conference, 2000

Drs. King and Ekins Introduction

are prolific writers
in this area.
For further details This is a brief presentation of a longer paper written by us which we hope will
see our bookshop: evolve as we are able to gather more material on its subject - Virginia Prince.
Male femaling
and as editor with Possibly only those with some knowledge of the transgender community before
Dr. Dave King: about 1980 will be aware of the central role that Prince played in its development.
Blending Genders Primarily a staunch promoter of heterosexual transvestism, her activities have had
a significant impact on the whole transgender community.

One of her more recent publications (Prince, 1997a), written when she was 82 years
old, is entitled Seventy Years in the Trenches of the Gender Wars and the
impression that comes across in this and in many of her writings is, indeed, of
someone who is a fighter, waging war passionately against "ignorance,
intolerance and bigotry" (Prince, 1997a: 469). It is not surprising, therefore, that she
has had both devoted followers and bitter enemies. Loved or loathed, though, it is
impossible to overestimate her importance, demonstrated in this paper by a brief
overview of her story and her philosophy.

A Transgendered Career: Virginia Prince

Prince was born a male on November 23rd 1912 in Los Angeles. She began cross-
dressing at about the age of twelve, at first using her mother's clothes. She writes
that by the time she was in high school, she "had progressed to the point of being
a girl in public and passing as such" (1997b: 348). There is a familiar story of the
pleasures and attractions of cross-dressing together with feelings of guilt and
wondering what was wrong with her; of pursuing it as far as possible, and of
giving up altogether (Prince, 1979: 170). She visited, she says, six different
psychiatrists (Prince, 1967: 5).

In 1939 she got her PhD in pharmacology from the University of California, San
Francisco. At around the same time, she met the woman to whom she would be
married, in 1941, with the again familiar thought that she would no longer need to
cross-dress, followed by the realisation that nothing had changed in that respect.
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The couple had a son, but the marriage "failed because of my transvestism" she
says (Prince, 1967: 143). This was probably in the mid-late 1940s (Prince's dates are
not always clear and do not always make sense).

Just after marrying, she returned to the University of California at San Francisco
as a research assistant and lecturer in pharmacology, and used the opportunity of
access to the medical library to become acquainted with the (then) small medical
literature on transvestism. She also attended some psychiatric case conferences
where she first knowingly saw another transvestite. Later making contact with
one of the people whose case had been presented, she took on the name of
Charles Prince to hide her real identity (Charles was her father's first name and
she lived on Prince Street) (Prince, 1997b: 350). It was here that she also encountered
Karl Bowman. Bowman was a psychiatrist, one-time president of the American
Psychiatric Association, and Director of the Langley Porter Psychiatric Clinic and
the California Sex Deviate Research Project (Freedman, 1987). Prince visited
Bowman several times seeking help and was surprised when he told her to, "stop
fighting it, it isn't so terrible. There are thousands of others like you and always
have been. Medical science hasn't been able to do much for them, so the best
thing to do is to relax and learn to accept yourself" (Prince, 1967: 5-6).

Prince married again (probably in the late 1940s) and, with her second wife, an
Englishwoman, founded and ran a business manufacturing and selling grooming
products for humans and dogs. Evidently the second wife was more accepting of
Prince's transvestism (Benjamin, Preamble to Prince, 1957: 80) which was thus able to
develop; ". . . as time went on and I had more and more opportunities to dress, to
go out, to learn more about fashion, grooming and feminine behaviour, I found
that my feminine self was beginning to become a real personality in her own
right." (Prince, 1969)

By 1956-7, Prince had begun to work out her philosophy of transvestism and had
begun her mission to educate the medical profession, transvestites themselves and
the rest of the world. As discussed below, this involved the development of the
idea of "femmiphilia", or, love of the feminine. Prince preferred to call herself a
femmiphile (FP) rather than a transvestite.

Alongside the consolidation of her cross-dressing and the emergence of 'Virginia'

as a real personality, the 1950s also apparently saw Prince develop her contacts
with other transvestites. In addition to the contact made through Bowman's clinic,
she was also contacted by others after her cross-dressing was publicised during
the reporting of her first divorce case (Bullough and Bullough, 1993: 284).

It is important to emphasise that at this time, in both America and Britain, there
was nothing like the level of information and support which is available to the
transgender community today. A few people managed to make contact with others
but, by and large, in the 1950s transvestism and transsexualism (few would even
have been aware of these terms then) were solitary affairs accompanied by guilt,
ignorance and secrecy. Little information was available in print, even in the
medical literature, and most people's 'knowledge' would have been gleaned from
newspapers such as the British People and News of the World.

One of the things which contributed to a change in this state of affairs was the
appearance in 1960 of Prince's magazine Transvestia which was published by
Prince's Chevalier Publications and was sold by subscription and through adult
bookshops. The message on the inside cover read: "Transvestia is dedicated to the
needs of those heterosexual persons who have become aware of their 'other side'
and seek to express it."

In 1961 Prince got together some of the subscribers to Transvestia who began to
meet in the Los Angeles area. Known initially as the Hose and Heels club, this
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evolved around 1962 into a national organisation called the Foundation for Full
Personality Expression, (FPE or Phi Pi Epsilon) with a magazine for members
called Femme Mirror (Prince, 1997b: 352). FPE was clearly aimed at those cross-
dressers who, like Prince (at that time), were heterosexual and married:
homosexuals and transsexuals were not admitted.

Transvestia gradually recruited subscribers from outside the United States,

particularly, England, Scandinavia and Australia, some of whom joined FPE. In
1965, a European group of FPE was formed. In autumn 1966, the three UK and
Irish members of FPE contacted each other to form a British branch . As Alice
L100 (1991: 37) puts it: "We chose the name Beaumont Society - after the Chevalier
d'Eon de Beaumont - a French 'travesti', who died in England in 1810." At about
the same time, FPE (Northern Europe) was formed and is still in existence (as, of
course, is the British Beaumont Society).

Over the years Chevalier Publications also published transvestite fiction, some of
it written by Prince herself. At some stage in her career she also began to market
various aids such as artificial breasts.

In the mid 1960s, Prince was arrested and found guilty of sending obscene
material through the post (Prince, 1997b: 353). She was placed on probation for five
years and was, apparently, in danger of being imprisoned if she cross-dressed in
public. Her lawyer persuaded the court to include educating the public about
cross-dressing as part of the probation order so that she could cross-dress
legitimately (Bullough and Bullough: 1996: 285; Prince, 1997b: 354). This she did and in
1968 had her first television appearance (Prince, 1997b: 354). So, as she put it, her
"'career' as friend, counsellor, philosopher and publicist for the CD [cross-
dressing] community got under way" (Prince, 1997b: 355).

The second marriage ended in divorce in 1968 for reasons, she says, unrelated to
her transvestism (Prince, 1967: 143). She sold the business at about the same time
and, as she wrote in 1979: "I was then free to live my life as I wanted having no
domestic or business responsibilities. I therefore crossed the line completely and
have lived as a woman full time ever since. I am therefore to be classified as a
'transgenderist' now and no longer as an FP."(Prince, 1979: 172)

In the same publication she also reported that "I have had my beard removed by
electrolysis and . . . as a result of a course of hormone therapy I now possess a
nice pair of 38B breasts" (Prince, 1979: 172).

Membership of FPE could be applied for after having subscribed to and read 5 or
more issues of Transvestia. Acceptance was then dependent on approval of the
application form, payment of dues and personal interview with an area counsellor
(Transvestia, 1972, vol. XII, no. 72). According to Feinbloom (1976: 62),
interviewers were cautioned against accepting "bondage or masochistic people,
amateur investigators, curiosity seekers, homosexuals, transsexuals or
emotionally disturbed people." In addition to the emphasis on keeping out those
who were not seen as 'real' transvestites, great emphasis was placed on
maintaining members' privacy and secrecy.

FPE continued until 1975/6 when it merged with a Southern Californian

transvestite group, Mamselle, to become the Society for the Second Self, or 'Tri-
Sigma' for short. Tri Sigma followed the pattern of FPE: it was, said Prince in
1976, "an organisation limited to heterosexual cross dressers and to those who are
not involved in other such behaviour patterns as bondage, punishment, fetishism
for rubber, leather, or other, or domination and humiliation." (Prince, 1976: 41)

Transsexuals were also discouraged from seeking to join and the emphasis on
security and the involvement of members' wives continued. But applications to
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join could be made after purchasing only three copies of Transvestia or Prince's
book Understanding Cross Dressing and there is no mention of an interview
(Prince, 1976: 42-43).

Prince continued her activities until 1980 when (as she puts it) "I retired both it
[Transvestia] and myself" (Prince, 1997b: 351).

Prince's Philosophy
In the pages of her magazines Transvestia and Femme Mirror and in occasional
articles in the professional literature, Prince has forcefully expounded her views
on transvestism. The psychiatrist, Hugo Beigel, referring to her as a 'prophet',
wrote that "transvestism is her creed and its acceptance by the world her mission"
(1969: 118-119). Benjamin (1966: 36), in a discussion of Prince's work, refers to her
as "teacher, mentor and spokesman for the transvestite 'sorority'".

Prince (1976: 3) claims to have been the first person to abbreviate the term
transvestite to 'TV' in about 1955. She also claims to have 'coined the words
"transgenderism" and "transgenderist" as nouns describing people like myself
who have breasts and live full time as a woman, but who have no intention of
having genital surgery' (Prince, 1997a: 469).

The distinction of three types of males who may share (in a beautifully dated
phrase) "the desire to wear feminine attire" (Prince, 1957: 82) is the main point of
her first short piece in the professional literature in 1957. Pointing out that
Havelock Ellis and Hirschfeld had distinguished transvestism from homosexuality
almost 50 years earlier, she argued that there was still a tendency to confuse the
two. The picture, she said, was further complicated by the discovery of
transsexualism and the possibility of sex reassignment surgery.

She distinguishes the homosexual and the transsexual from what she calls the
"true transvestite" (Prince, 1957: 84). The true transvestites are "exclusively
heterosexual. Frequently they are married and often fathers." She continues, "The
transvestite values his male organs, enjoys using them and does not desire them
removed"(1957: 85). She later began to call the true transvestite a "femmiphile"
(FP), defined as "lover of the feminine" (Prince, 1973: 22).

By 1967, Prince was evidently familiar with the gender terminology and concepts
which are taken for granted today. In an article written under the pseudonym
Virginia Bruce, she points out that sex is anatomical and physiological whilst
gender is psycho-social. Transvestism or femmiphilia, for Prince, is very firmly
about gender (Bruce, 1967).

She argues that sex - the division into male and female - is something we share
with other animals. Gender - the division of masculine and feminine - is, on the
other hand, "a human invention" and "not the inevitable result of biological
necessity" (Bruce, 1967: 129). But in their socialisation, children are pushed in one
or the other gender direction and consequently anything associated with the other
gender has to be suppressed, particularly in the case of males. Transvestism is the
expression of this suppressed femininity.

In 1967 Prince published her first book, The Transvestite and his Wife, repeating
much of what she had written elsewhere alongside some material from
Transvestia in an explicit attempt to 'educate' the wife who was less than happy
with her husband's behaviour. The wife was clearly seen as the problem. Her
husband was fortunate to be able to express his whole personality: "the only
stumbling block to their fortune", writes Prince, "is the fact that YOU, someone
very dear to them, do not share in this understanding and experience" (Prince 1967:

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37). AsBullough and Bullough (1993: 348) point out, compared to the prevailing
psychiatric literature, "Prince's approach furnished a more positive alternative, but
how helpful it was to wives is debatable".

Prince's second book, published in 1971, was called How to be a Woman though
Male, and the title immediately draws attention to the distinction between sex and
gender which Prince underlines at various points in the book as well as in a
dedicated chapter. The book is primarily a guide to changing gender for the
femmiphile, and includes a wealth of information about women's clothing, make-
up and so on, of thirty years ago. Some of this information is extremely detailed;
there are, for example, five pages devoted to shoe styles, three to hosiery and one
to gloves. There is also much information specific to FPs on such things as wigs,
and how to deal with beard growth and false breasts. There is also instruction on
how to behave appropriately as a woman. This, as seen below, involves Prince in
presenting what now looks like a very dated, traditional view of women and men.

Prince writes of her awareness of the fact that she is presenting a stereotype of
womanhood and that she agrees with the feminist criticism of some aspects of it
but she argues that this is how things are, not as they should be and this is what it
takes to be a woman in our culture (Prince, 1971: 116).

As in so much of Prince's writing, the style of her second book is a lecturing one;
she is not just presenting information for her readers to use if they so wish - she is
telling them what they should do, how they should dress, and how they should
behave and look. So Prince wags a finger at her readers and tells them; "if you are
going to appear in society as a woman, don't just be a woman, be a lady" (Prince,
1971: 135), and "it is the best in womanhood that the FP seeks to emulate, not the
common. Be the LADY in the crowd if you are going to be a woman at all, not
the scrubwoman or a clerk. It is the beauty, delicacy, grace, loveliness, charm and
freedom of expression of the feminine world that you are seeking to experience
and enjoy, so 'live it up' - be as pretty, charming and graceful as you can." (Prince,
1971: 137).

Prince's philosophy remained essentially the same, expanded and elaborated

somewhat, and reflecting the themes of the times. During the 1970s the influence
of feminism was apparent and Prince makes more reference to the hierarchical
ordering of men and women. This is seen as part of the reason why there are few
or no female transvestites. Girls and women, being at the bottom of the hierarchy,
are not so constrained as boys and men about expressing their total personality
because society cares less about what they do and also they can only move
upwards in expressing their masculine side (Prince, 1976: 15). Linking in to the
same theme Prince argues that, by expressing this suppressed half of their
humanness, transvestites are, "one of the leading edges of male liberation" (Prince,
1976: 27) and are ahead of their time, precursors of an age in which we will,
"become more totally expressive of our whole humanness, become more whole
persons" (ibid.: 30).

Although she admits to being attracted by the idea of sex reassignment for herself
at the time of the publicity given to the case of Christine Jorgensen (Prince, 1978:
271), the development of her philosophy that the issues were to do with gender
(psycho-social) and not sex (the body) led her to the view that it was "perfectly
possible to . . . be a woman without having sex surgery" (Prince, 1978: 268).

However, Prince not only described her own solution, she spoke out forcefully
against sex reassignment surgery and must have upset quite a few people by
arguing that it is not appropriate for about 90% of those requesting it, writing of
"so-called" or "pseudo" transsexuals. "Sex reassignment surgery is a
communicable disease", she has asserted (Prince, 1978: 271), arguing that

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susceptible transvestites are seduced, by the publicity given to the topic, into
thinking it is the solution to their problems.

On the topic of sex reassignment, the style which underlies all of Prince's writings
comes to the surface: she does not raise points for the reader to consider, rather
she tells you what is what; if you disagree, it is because you don't understand, not
because she is wrong; there is nothing tentative about her writing.

Conclusion
Prince's approach and philosophy has attracted fierce criticism over the years,
both from within and without the transgender community. It has been depicted as
homophobic and sexist and has been criticised for its failure to engage with the
issues of sexual politics raised by the women's and gay movements. The stance on
surgery has alienated many transsexuals and it has completely failed to address
the needs of transmen, despite their presence in some Prince-influenced
organisations. Nevertheless, Prince's contribution has been significant.

In the context of the 1950s and early 1960s it was a major achievement simply to
bring transgendered people together. Prince provided the means for such people to
contact others without jeopardising privacy and security. Prince's organisations
and their off-shoots provided a safe space within which a person could explore
and express their transgender feelings.

Prince's writings provided a positive philosophy of cross-dressing which aimed at

encouraging in her readers (as the inside cover of Transvestia puts it),
"understanding, self acceptance peace of mind in place of the loneliness, fear and
self condemnation they have known for too long". Prince's philosophy was not
only a positive one, she promoted the acceptable face of transvestism; it was
purged of anything that might offend, particularly anything sexual.

Prince also began in the 1950s, as we have seen, to enter into a dialogue with
leading members of the medical profession in this area, such as Benjamin. One of
the consequences of this, as Bullough and Bullough (1993: 302) point out, was that
the medical perspective on transvestism became framed in line with Prince's
views, even to the extent of incorporating them into the various editions of the
American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual.

This is where the main problem arises with Prince's approach. In affirming one
type of transgender experience, others were implicitly and sometimes explicitly
denigrated. However the conflicts and disagreements which this has engendered
have led to the expansion and diversification of the community.

In 1987, Prince's contribution was marked when she became the first recipient of
the Virginia Prince Lifetime Service Award, sponsored by the International
Foundation for Gender Education (IFGE).

Acknowledgement

We thank Wendy Saunderson for assistance with this paper.

References
1. Alice, L100 (1991), A History of the Beaumont Society, Beaumont Bulletin,
23 (3): 37-39.
2. Beigel, H. (1969), A Weekend in Alice's Wonderland, Journal of Sex
Research, 5: 108-122.

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3. Bullough,V. L. and Bullough, B. (1993), Cross Dressing, Sex, and Gender,

University of Pennysylvania Press, Philadelphia.
4. Bruce, V. [aka Prince, V.] (1967), The Expression of Femininity in the Male,
Journal of Sex Research, 3: 129-139.
5. Feinbloom, D. H. (1976), Transvestites and Transsexuals: Mixed Views,
Dell, New York.
6. Freedman, E. B. (1987), 'Uncontrolled Desires': The Response to the Sexual
Psychopath, 1920-1960, The Journal of American History, 74: 83-106.
7. Prince, C. V. (1957), Homosexuality, Transvestism and Transsexualism,
American Journal of Psychotherapy, 11: 80-85.
8. Prince, V. (1967), The Transvestite and his Wife, Argyle, Los Angeles.
9. Prince, V. (1969), Men who Choose to be Women, Sexology, 36: February.
10. Prince, V. (1971), How to be a Woman Though Male, Chevalier, Los
Angeles.
11. Prince, V. (1973), Sex vs Gender, in Laub, D. R. and Gandy, P. (eds),
Proceedings of the Second Interdisciplinary Symposium on Gender
Dysphoria Syndrome, Stanford University Medical Center, Stanford,
California.
12. Prince, V. (1976), Understanding Cross Dressing, Chevalier, Los Angeles.
13. Prince, V. (1978), Transsexuals and Pseudotranssexuals, Archives of
Sexual Behavior, 7: 263-273.
14. Prince, V. (1979), Charles to Virginia: Sex Research as a Personal
Experience, in Bullough, V. L. (ed), The Frontiers of Sex Research,
Prometheus Books, New York.
15. Prince, V. (1997a), Seventy Years in the Trenches of the Gender Wars, in
Bullough, V., Bullough, B., and Elias, J. (eds), Gender Blending,
Prometheus Books, New York.
16. Prince, V. (1997b), My Accidental Career, in Bullough, B. et al (eds), How I
Got Into Sex, Prometheus Books, New York.

Citation:King, D., Ekins, R., (2000), Pioneers of Transgendering: The Life and
Work of Virginia Prince,GENDYS 2k, The Sixth International Gender Dysphoria
Conference, Manchester England.

Web page copyright GENDYS Network. Text copyright of the author. Last amended 08.03.05,
26.06.06

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