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Virginia Prince

Virginia Prince (1912–2009), an American cross-dresser and publisher, helped popularise the terms "transgenderist" and "transgender" from the 1970s (source). Prince used those words for people who lived as women without genital surgery — not for transsexuals seeking surgery.

Who Prince was

Prince was born in Los Angeles in 1912 and registered male at birth, studied chemistry at Pomona College (1935) and obtained a PhD in pharmacology at the University of California, San Francisco in 1939 (source). Prince married in 1941, had a son and divorced in 1951; according to Prince, the marriage failed because of transvestism (source).

From 1960 Prince published the magazine Transvestia, which ran until 1980, and set up organisations for heterosexual cross-dressers, from which the Society for the Second Self (Tri-Ess) later emerged (source).

"Transgenderist": cross-dressing without surgery

Prince distinguished the "true transvestite", who according to Prince values his male organs and does not want them removed, from the transsexual who seeks surgery (source). Prince called someone who lived full-time as a woman without wanting genital surgery a "transgenderist". Ray Blanchard later described autogynephilia in some male-to-female transsexuals, sexual arousal at the thought of being a woman (source); that typology is disputed.

According to Wikipedia, Prince wrongly claimed to have coined the terms "transgenderist" and "transgenderism", but did help popularise the term "transgender" (source). Later, "transgender" became an umbrella term for diverse groups, from transsexuals to non-binary people and cross-dressers; see the overview of identities and the Yogyakarta Principles. Critics, among them Helen Joyce (Trans, 2021), point out that such a broad term merges clinically different groups (source). See also the rise in referrals from 2010.

Legacy

Prince's work stands at the beginning of the organised cross-dressers' movement in the United States. For the history of medical care, see Harry Benjamin, the WPATH Standards of Care and the American rollout.

The Cass Review (2024) calls care for young people with gender dysphoria "an area of remarkably weak evidence" (source). See also the WPATH Files.

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