#virginia trial

[amicus-noctis]

Moravia once remarked that the most important facts of his life had been his illness, a tubercular infection of the bones that confined him to a bed for five years and Fascism, because they both caused him to suffer and do things he otherwise would not have done. 

[lonestarbattleship]

PCU MONTANA (SSN-794) conducts initial sea trials in the Atlantic Ocean.

Date: February 1, 2022

US Navy photo: 220201-O-NO101-150

[artemismatchalatte]

My January 2023 Reads!

I read the first five books and I'm still in the middle of the last three. Ford's The Good Solider and Woolf's The Common Reader are both from my grad class on Modernism. We only read pieces of The Common Reader so I wanted to finish reading the whole thing since it's one of Woolf's books that I haven't read completely yet.

Strange Weather in Tokyo and Convenience Store Woman are both novellas that are translated from Japanese.

The best of the books that I finished this month was Strange Weather in Tokyo.

[rnoonsetter]

you ever make something so good it scares you? like yeah i put a lot of work into this and i love it but it doesn't feel like i made it. or it's a fluke. it's /too/ good. i just. i was pretty easily able to tackle things i had struggled a LOT with in the past, with /some/ effort, but like, not nearly enough. i've done similar work in the past, and it never turned out half this good. i'm not even done with it yet. i'm scared to make the changes i want to make, in case i somehow fuck it up, even though it's digital art and i can easily undo it.

this isn't a humble brag, i swear, it's genuinely anxiety inducing, i just can't put my finger on why. maybe that it's that i'll never make something this good again.

[garochetarkinslicersimlish]

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"After the trial I was taken back to jail to await the action of the court on the motion for a new trial. While waiting, I learned something of the mental anguish and the physical torture that is endured by self-respecting persons, many of them without friends and without money, in one of our country’s innumerable, loathsome jails.

I learned something about the heart-broken youths, the first offenders, who, by some misstep of their own, or by some cruel prank of fate, are thrust behind prison bars for the first time. I saw the shame-faced effort to maintain courage, the futile struggle to keep up a brave appearance, the repressed tears of regret and repentance, and then the long, weary wait for that one day when the hoped-for justice, tempered with mercy, would prevail; then the tragedy of the delusion. It would require a heart of stone not to forget one’s own troubles, and at least desire to help an unfortunate youngster under such circumstances. Then there were the repeaters and the old-timers. They had gotten used to the stench and the filth, the hard bunks, and the vermin, the stale air and the coarse “‘chow.” They probably deserved all this and worse. They were generous with their advice: “No matter if you are guilty or not, you’d better ‘cop a plea’ of guilty and get out of it as lightly as you can.” Their argument is, “Once you fall into the clutches of the law, all the power of the state is arrayed against you, and you are almost sure to lose.”

They failed to convince me that I would not be set free in the long run, but they also made me aware that even they had a friendly feeling for their fellow beings, and that all persons sent to jail are not brutes, devoid of human feelings, and bereft of redeeming traits, as I used to believe, but were very much the same as folks on the outside.

There was little time in jail for me to attend to my own affairs during the day time. There were many visitors. Wives, mothers and sweethearts came, with mingled tears and smiles, to cheer someone to them so near and yet so far.

There were harmless pranks, idle chatter, coarse jokes, and that loud laugh that indicates the vacant mind. Then there were the visits of big, important-looking lawyers, with their stern manners and gruff voices, consulting with their clients, giving sage advice, and demanding big fees; and sometimes the jail doctor to leave some pills for a sick prisoner.

In spite of the coarse food, consisting chiefly of white beans, dry bread and black coffee, to many “chow-time” was not an unwelcome hour in the course of a wearisome day. The rattle of tin cups and pans announced the arrival of the turnkey, or the trusty, with the scanty chow. Sometimes the menu was varied, but it was mostly hope deferred, except for the occasional plate of hash—‘‘The evidence of things hoped for and the substance of things not seen.”

The arrival of a new victim provided the greatest diversion. The enthusiastic welcome accorded all new recruits was at once humorous and pathetic. The practice interested me greatly, and I was told that the custom prevailed in practically all the jails and detention homes in the country.

The “kangaroo court” sits in judgment, and tries the new arrival on the charge of “breaking into jail without license.” The standing officers, consisting of a judge, a sheriff, and a clerk, take charge of the victim. He is given little opportunity to defend himself. His conviction is a foregone conclusion. The penalty, or fine, depends largely upon his ability to pay—judged from appearances—and ranges from fifty cents to two dollars, and up. If the fine is paid, the debt is cancelled, but woe unto the unfortunate cuss who “breaks into jail’”’ without the means, or the inclination, to pay the fine! By the time the “initiation” is over, the gauntlet is run, the lashes are applied, and the “brand” is fixed, the new initiate is convinced that the mock trial and the punishment contain many elements of reality. The “officers” run the jail on a purely socialistic basis. The fine-money is placed in a common fund, and is used, except for the rake off which the officers get, for the benefit of all. It is used in the purchase of sugar, cigarettes, and other necessities and luxuries.

- Earl Ellicott Dudding, The Trail of the Dead Years. Edited by William Winfred Smith. Huntington, West Virginia: Prisoners Relief Society, 1932. p. 14-16.

[emmynominees]

peggy mccay as virginia bembenek in woman on the run: the lawrencia bembenek story

primetime emmy award nominee for outstanding supporting actress in a limited series or movie

[gurucave]

Jeffrey Epstein: New Revelations in Second Document Batch

A new wave of court documents has surfaced, shedding further light on the disturbing saga surrounding Jeffrey Epstein’s exploitation of young girls at his beachfront mansion. These documents provide intricate details about the recruitment process involving approximately 30 women, revealing a harrowing narrative of exploitation and manipulation. The testimonies within these filings, made public…

[trialbymagicks]

The Immortal Mike Mulligan and His Magic Steam Shovel

Mike Mulligan And His Steam Shovel is a classic children's tale about an American Adam and his mechanical familiar struggling to adjust to the changing times. But what else does this cozy story teach us?

How To Start A Blog Post

Some of you may be familiar with a little classic called Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, written and illustrated by Virginia Lee Burton, which you may have read as a child, or perhaps chances are you’re familiar with the movie and its gloriously persistent earworms.

But for the sake of the uninitiated and those who might need a refresher, Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel is a children’s book first published in 1939 during The Great Depression and later adapted into a 25-minute animated short film aired by HBO in 1990.

The book depicts the rise and fall of the steam shovel and its effect on the working class. Mike Mulligan, the symbol of then-modern industrial America, is made to face the reality that progress births new machines and he (as well as Mary Anne) must adapt to the changing times or fall into obscurity. Like in much of Virginia Lee Burton’s children’s books, the overlying theme is the importance of the power of friendship, and old-fashioned hard work and ingenuity in overcoming adversity and embracing change together. Or at least that’s a pattern I noticed in her stories that I’m familiar with.

The short film was animated in the style of Burton’s illustrations and is a very closely adapted read-through of the book interspersed with song sequences, so if you haven’t watched it yet and want to, it can be found on Youtube. Since the story is short and to the point, I will be spoiling all of it, so definitely go watch it first if you want to experience it for yourself before I ruin it.

But first, a brief history lesson!

A Rough Timeline Of The Steam Shovel’s Role In History

1796: Grimshaw of Boulton & Watt devised the first steam-powered excavator.

1833: William Brunton patented another steam-powered excavator which he provided further details on in 1836.

1839: William Otis received a patent for his steam shovel design and is credited as its inventor.

1854-1859: First large-scale use of steam power in North America is the construction of the Grand Trunk Railway Victoria Bridge over the St. Lawrence River at Montreal.

1861-1865: American Civil War happens. Although excavators are starting to be used in the construction of the foundation of city buildings, the initial cost of the machines was high and the funds were low, particularly leading up to and during the war. Section gangs of men (a method perfected for work on railroads) were paid the costly wages of manual labor instead of hiring bulky expensive machines that would be difficult to maneuver and power throughout the construction site.

1884: Changes to the popular shovel design have been made by this point, but here the full-swing 360° revolving shovel was developed in England and became the preferred model. Expanding railway networks in the US and UK create high demand for steam shovels. The Marion Power Shovel Company, an American manufacturer, was founded and I mention this because it seems to be where Mary Anne got her name from in the book. Cute Easter Egg reference there.

1890: By this point, costs of non-powered labor for the construction of skyscrapers had risen to the point where switching over to steam power was the only option and the practice took off from there.

1904 -1914: The US took over the Panama Canal dig from France (which had started in 1881 but quit due to engineering problems and high worker mortality rates). One hundred and two (102) shovels worked in that decade-long dig: 77 were built by Bucyrus; the remaining 25 were Marion shovels. The shovel crews would race to see who could move the most dirt.

1914-1918: World War 1 starts a mere 2 weeks and 3 days before the Panama Canal officially opens.

????: At some point during all this, shovels start being used for mining and quarry work around the world and become more present in general construction operations.

1920s: Shovels gain more traction with the publicly funded road building programs around North America. Thousands of miles of State Highways were built during this time period, together with new factories, docks, ports, buildings, and grain elevators.

1929: The Great Depression began with the stock market crash.

1930s: Steam shovels lost out to the simpler, cheaper diesel-powered excavating shovels that were the forerunners of those still in use today.

1939-1945: World War 2 happened and… power shovel technology just kept advancing until the relics of the past became monuments to history. But hey, at least the Great Depression ended.

A historic Marion Steam Shovel located on Gulf Road in the Town of Le Roy, New York, United States.

In Which I Summarize The Plot

The tale of Mike Mulligan is a variation on the compelling classic of an American Adam alongside the likes of Rip Van Winkle, Paul Bunyan, and John Henry who walked before him. This archetype is a solitary figure – a self-made man, representative of immense possibilities, who follows his own whims or moral compass and is made vulnerable by his own ambition and optimism. He has a vision for the future of America that is inevitably altered and shaped by his experiences throughout the story. Generally, the American Adam will find himself faced with a change in the status quo and will have to either fight for “the old way” or adapt, becoming a symbol for the people around him in the process.

Mike’s story begins with the steam shovel’s rise to fame. He and Mary Anne dug canals, they “moved mountains” to make way for railroads, they flattened the land for highways and airports to be built, and they dig cellars for city skyscrapers. Just the promise of getting to see Mike and Mary Anne in action is enough to draw crowds to their construction sites. After all, part of the romantic appeal of steam shovels was watching them work, as you could see its wires and gears move while it operated. In exchange, having an audience to perform for encourages Mike and Mary Anne to work faster and better – something they are both quite proud of.

But then everything changed when the gasoline, electric, and diesel shovels entered the scene.

These new models were cheaper to maintain and could therefore be worked harder for less expense. As a result, Mike winds up unable to find a job because he refuses to give up Mary Anne and the old way. Instead, he is more than ever determined to prove their worth. Mike had always said he believed Mary Anne “could dig as much in a day as a hundred men could dig in a week” and he gets his chance to prove it when he drives Mary Anne out to a small town that is looking to have a cellar dug out for their new town hall.

Before he can be turned away, he places his bet that Mary Anne can dig the cellar in just one day and offers to accept no payment if he can’t live up to that boast – a hard offer for any stingy capitalist to refuse. So, he starts digging at sunrise the following day and basically within the span of a song sequence five whole towns have flocked to this hole in the ground to watch them work, and naturally that means Mike and Mary Anne make the deadline just as the sun sets. The only catch is that they’ve forgotten to leave a way out of the hole, so they’re stuck and the sly selectman Henry B. Swap says they won’t get paid on a technicality.

Fun fact: this is where Virginia Lee Burton realized she had literally dug her characters into a corner until 12-year-old family friend Dick Berkenbush, inspired by the steam heating system in his father’s garage, suggested turning Mary Anne into a furnace for the new town hall. (For a little more on Dick, I recommend checking out Melinda Johnson’s picture book review.) Burton rolled with this idea and credited him with a footnote on that page of the book where a young boy is shown as presenting the solution of making Mary Anne the furnace and hiring Mike as the janitor.

Everyone agrees that this is a good plan and both of our heroes get to retire for the rest of their days, satisfied with their final accomplishment. It’s a nice and simple story, but I have some thoughts.

The Part Where I Overthink Children’s Literature For Fun

Mike Mulligan is clearly an immortal god who’s having a rough time adjusting to the changing times and it shows.

First of all, I cannot stress enough that Mike and Mary Anne were there from The Beginning. “It was Mike Mulligan and Mary Anne and some others” who changed the shape of the land “for years and years.” Looking back at our trusty timeline, this was progress that realistically took decades to accomplish and these two were there on the front lines to pioneer these developments! Neither Mike nor Mary Anne ever ages. She hasn’t suffered the wear and tear of years of hard work because Mike has been keeping her spotless and in tip top shape as if it were still the day she had been created for mass production. But you’re telling me that a man who smokes like a chimney still looks as baby-faced as he was in his youth after decades of dedicated hard labor?

I’m just saying there’s some kind of magic at work here that is only enhanced by the strength of their companionship. The more charisma they exude, the more people they attract to watch them work. The bigger the crowd around them grows to be, the better and faster and harder they work. The louder the standing ovation they receive from their accomplishments, the more they seem to glow in all their youthful glory. The years just melt right off them and it all hinges on this system they have developed between them! They have a very codependent relationship. One could not achieve this result without the other.

For one thing, Mike doesn’t seem to have a stationary home to return to at any point. The movie shows him in the garage of a house in the beginning, but according to the book he appears to live inside Mary Anne’s compartment and uses her to travel from one job to the next. There’s one scene after the “No Steam Shovels Wanted” segment where he’s sitting outside, moping about how no one wants him and Mary Anne anymore, which is honestly an understandable reaction from anyone who has just realized the job market has shut them out from continuing to make a living. But this man is never depicted as having any attachments beyond Mary Anne, so I am inclined to believe that he doesn’t have a family to miss him either, which would therefore make Mary Anne both his home and his family.

Speaking of Mary Anne, let’s talk about the fact that steam shovels and their electric, diesel, and gasoline powered counterparts are sentient in this world. When we see the steam shovels in the scrap yard, they even have faces like Mary Anne does. This was mass genocide! They were murdered and their corpses were tossed in a heap like it was no big deal. Just look at Mary Anne. She is horrified. No wonder Mike is so repulsed by the idea of condemning her!

Yes, this is a children’s book and, in a lot of children’s media, most inanimate objects and animals are given sentience as a way to encourage children to emotionally relate to them – the sun has a face and one of the horses even TALKS by the end of the movie – but come on… this was terrifyingly dark, especially when you look at the imagery. The other three antagonist shovels are so blissfully unaware of the fate that may one day await them in that pit. Sure, they are shiny and new and exciting now, but the moment they fail to live up to the standard set for them, their human overlords will reduce them to scrap metal just as quickly because they are all still machines after all… Sentient machines, albeit, but that evidently means nothing to the majority of mankind.

Furthermore, due to her sentience, Mary Anne can operate without Mike pulling her levers as long as the fire within her remains lit. Perhaps the fire is what keeps her alive, considering the major difference between her and the others in the pit is that their fires eventually went out and they were left to rust in a junkyard until their eventual dismemberment. This would seem to imply that the relationship between her and Mike is one of master and familiar. He keeps her fire burning and shares his eternal youth with her, and she does the physical labor for him in return.

But the big question that has yet to be answered is this: which of them is channeling the energy of the onlookers and converting it directly into power for Mary Anne while they work? Is Mike the catalyst or is Mary Anne?

Which leads us into the climax of the story and a lot more food for thought…

Five whole towns worth of people just take the day off from their jobs and their lives to watch this guy dig a hole in the ground. The fire department, the doctors, and even the police! I sure hope there aren’t any actual fires, public safety violations, or general health crises to tend to for the day because clearly this strange man and his steam shovel are far more important. After all, they’re going to need a lot of power to pull off this bet and if five towns have to become living batteries to do it – well! You only live once, right? You may as well see something worth your time!

So, if Mike spent the entire day from sunrise to sunset digging that cellar to the point where he left himself no way to get out of that hole, when and where did he go to the bathroom? Did he just hold it in the entire time? Did he pop a squat in a corner with everyone looking on? Does he just not have any need for mortal bodily functions? I don’t have the answers, but it warrants asking.

And then, the townspeople make a big fuss about what they’re going to do about leaving Mike and Mary Anne in the pit for a while until someone goes to get a ladder to climb down to talk to him as though they hadn’t just collectively been screaming down into the pit the entire time. He can HEAR you, you know! The moment they have his verbal agreement to the plan, they begin building the town hall around our two immortal heroes without further ado, so what I want to know is did they just shake his hand, then climb out of the pit and yoink the ladder up after them before he could climb up? “Sorry, buddy, we know you just accomplished this impossible task and honestly we’re not quite sure how to feel about it while the adrenaline’s still injecting itself straight into our hearts, but you’re stuck down there now. You live here.”

At least the construction is finished before winter, so he hasn’t been freezing down there in that hole for months, but how did they line the cellar with concrete while Mike was inside? Was he sitting in Mary Anne’s compartment the entire time while it set and everyone else worked? Did anyone feed him? Does he even eat? Mrs. McGillicuddy brings him a fresh-baked apple pie every day once the town hall is built, so I wonder if she has been doing this since that first day he arrived. Could that be all she feeds him? I will admit that there is something poetic about an American Adam sustaining himself on that coveted all-American apple pie life. It’s like two tropes being married into one concentrated dose of the American Dream so pungent it hurts.

Maybe Mary Anne is the source of his power after all and that’s why he can’t leave her. And now he’s stuck there with her in that cellar forever, trying to make the most of it. He didn’t get his job back, he didn’t get the exact happy ending he’d been hoping for, he didn’t prove steam power was better than the competition… but at least he has a sweet gig as a janitor in a town that hails him as a hero and he technically does have a fixed home now.

Mary Anne, on the other hand, has completely had her freedom taken away from her. She may not have been murdered and reduced to scrap metal in the junkyard, but she is unable to travel or go outside ever again. It’s supposed to be heartwarming that she and Mike have found a different way to be useful… a different purpose than the one they had had all their lives… but it does feel pretty morbid when you realize this was done to Mary Anne intentionally without her permission. But you know… it could be worse…

Some Sources and Interesting Material

You can find more information about Virginia Lee Burton’s work on the Houghton Mifflin website. The Virginia Lee Burton and Steam Shovel Wikipedia pages were also incredibly helpful for me while I was pulling together the context I needed to create a rough timeline, but you can read a briefer examination of Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel‘s historical context in this Newsweek article.

If you are interested in more in-depth reading material, I recommend Rise of the New York skyscraper, 1865-1913 by Sarah Landau. The excerpts I read to help fill out my timeline were fascinating. Alternatively, if you’re looking for something more philosophical to sink your teeth into, The Prindle Institute offers food for thought regarding the book’s themes.

Last but certainly not least, check out American Adam Myth for some other examples of characters in literature and how the trope evolved!

Note: This article was originally posted on WordPress on July 4, 2021.

[thundergrace]

‼️One more election post, because I'm officially about to mentally shut down until Wednesday:

The most important reason Donald Trump needs to lose is because of the power granted by the SCOTUS appointments. We stopped focusing on this, and that was a mistake.

Think about what he has accomplished since successfully getting THREE conservative judges in the court.

They overturned Roe v Wade. That was always the goal. Then after one of his numerous trials this year they decided that the president of the United States is IMMUNE from criminal prosecution while in office. POTUS is officially above the law! This is what people mean when they say Trump is running to stay out of prison. The man is LITERALLY out on bail and awaiting sentencing! But if he is elected, he will never be sentenced.

SCOTUS just approved the purging of votes in Virginia. It never stops.

This is what he managed because of ONE term and appointing THREE judges. Two judges are most likely retiring next term and we are FUCKED of Trump wins and gets to put FIVE judges in the Supreme Court.

Yes, every election that involves Donald Flop is "the most important election of our lifetime".

[artemismatchalatte]

Books read in February 2023.

I finished 6 books in February.

I forgot to add my copy of Tales in the City but I finished that this month too. I finished it the first week of this month and totally forgot. This February felt really long for some reason.

Quicksand by Nella Larsen was an audiobook I listened to.

Wow, most of the books I read this month were either very depressing or otherwise disappointing. Kitchen was the best fiction book I read. While both Hall's and Barker's biographies were well written, engaging and sometimes shocking, they were both pretty sad. After reading about their lives, I feel pretty bad for both of them.

I'm still reading One Last Stop, Old Man and The Sea and The Common Reader.

I DNFed two books (my textbook for a class I dropped and The audiobook version of The Art of Loving because it seemed extremely dated and didn't apply to me at all).

Hope everyone has a good March and that they find books that they enjoy reading!

[moonmausoleum]

The Greenbrier Ghost that Went to Court

Read the puzzling story about the Greenbrier Ghost that solved her own murder case and how it all went down. See you at #moonmausoleum 👻🖤 #paranormal #ghosts #haunted #truecrime

The Greenbrier Ghost the supposed ghost of Zona that returned from the dead to testify that she was in fact killed by her husband and wanted to see him jail. How do we explain unnatural occurrences that actually makes sense? This is a debate the people of Greenbrier dealt with in Victorian times when the story of The Greenbrier Ghost came about. There is something of a dissonance in the universe…

[reddyprasad]

[stealth-liberal]

Some good news from elections tonight:

1. Ohio enshrined abortion rights in its state constitution. Thus putting to bed any and all abortion bans in Ohio.

2. Democrats in Virginia maintained their majority in the half of the state legislature they already had and flipped the other section blue as well. This puts to bed discussed Republican abortion bans in Virginia as well.

3. Not election news, but Donald Trump continues to humiliate himself in his New York civil fraud trial. So... yanno... still good news.

[queerism1969]

Notable transgender people from history

Here's the list I put together for when people on non-trans subreddits claim we didn't exist until recently:

Ashurbanipal (669-631BCE) - King of the Neo-Assryian empire, who according to Diodorus Siculus is reported to have dressed, behaved, and socialized as a woman.

Elagabalus (204-222) - Roman Emperor who preferred to be called a lady and not a lord, presented as a woman, called herself her lover's queen and wife, and offered vast sums of money to any doctor able to make her anatomically female.

Kalonymus ben Kalonymus (1286-1328) - French Jewish philosopher who wrote poetry about longing to be a woman.

Eleanor Rykener (14th century) - trans woman in London who was questioned under charges of sex work

[Thomas(ine) Hall](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas(ine)_Hall) - (1603-unknown) - English servant in colonial Virginia who alternated between presenting as a woman and presenting as a man, before a court ruled that they were both a man and a woman simultaneously, and were required to wear both men's and women's clothing simultaneously.

Chevalier d'Eon (1728-1810) - French diplomat, spy, freemason, and soldier who fought in the Seven Years' War, who transitioned at the age of 49 and lived the remaining 33 years of her life as a woman.

Public Universal Friend (1752-1819) - Quaker religious leader in revolutionary era America who identified and lived as androgynous and genderless.

Surgeon James Barry (1789-1865) - Trans man and military surgeon in the British army.

Berel - a Jewish trans man who transitioned in a shtetel in Ukraine in the 1800's, and whose story was shared with the Jewish Daily Forward in a 1930 letter to the editor by Yeshaye Kotofsky, a Jewish immigrant in Brooklyn who knew Berel

Mary Jones (1803-unknown) - trans woman in New York whose 1836 trial for stealing a man's wallet received much public attention

Albert Cashier (1843-1915) - Trans man who served in the US Civil War.

Harry Allen (1882-1922) - Trans man who was the subject of sensationalistic newspaper coverage for his string of petty crimes.

Lucy Hicks Anderson (1886–1954) - socialite, chef and hostess in Oxnard California, whose family and doctors supported her transition at a young age.

Lili Elbe (1882-1931) - Trans woman who underwent surgery in 1930 with Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, who ran one of the first dedicated medical facilities for trans patients.

Karl M. Baer (1885-1956) - Trans man who underwent reconstructive surgery (the details of which are not known) in 1906, and was legally recognized as male in Germany in 1907.

Dr. Alan Hart (1890-1962) - Groundbreaking radiologist who pioneered the use of x-ray photography in tuberculosis detection, and in 1917 he became one of the first trans men to undergo hysterectomy and gonadectomy in the US.

[Louise Lawrence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louise_Lawrence_(activist)) (1912–1976) - trans activist, artist, writer and lecturer, who transitioned in the early 1940's. She struck up a correspondence with the groundbreaking sexologist Dr. Alfred Kinsey as he worked to understand sex and gender in a more expansive way. She wrote up life histories of her acquaintances for Kinsey, encouraged peers to do interviews with him, and sent him a collection of newspaper clippings, photographs, personal correspondences, etc.

Dr. Michael Dillon (1915-1962) - British physician who updated his birth certificate to Male in the early 1940's, and in 1946 became the first trans man to undergo phalloplasty.

Reed Erickson (1917-1992) - trans man whose philanthropic work contributed millions of dollars to the early LGBTQ rights movement

Willmer "Little Ax" Broadnax (1916-1992) - early 20th century gospel quartet singer.

Peter Alexander (unknown, interview 1937) - trans man from New Zealand, discusses his transition in this interview from 1937

Christine Jorgensen (1926-1989) - The first widely known trans woman in the US in 1952, after her surgery attracted media attention.

Miss Major Griffin-Gracy (1940-present) - Feminist, trans rights and gay rights activist who came out and started transition in the late 1950's. She was at Stonewall, was injured and taken into custody, and had her jaw broken by police while in custody. She was the first Executive Director of the Transgender Gender Variant Intersex Justice Project, which works to end human rights abuses against trans/intersex/GNC people in the prison system.

Sylvia Rivera (1951-2002) - Gay liberation and trans rights pioneer and community worker in NYC; co-founded STAR, a group dedicated to helping homeless young drag queens, gay youth, and trans women

Marsha P. Johnson (1945-1992) - Gay liberation and trans rights pioneer; co-founded STAR with Sylvia Rivera