Dr. Richard Docter announced at dinner last night, here at the Liberty Conference, that Virginia Prince had died at the age of 96. She was in good health and mentally acute until about a month ago when her health began a steep decline. Docter was her biographer
I met the grand dame here, in this Philly Airport Hilton hotel, about five years ago, and I am a little surprised by how moved I have been to hear of her passing. She was an imperfect person, as we all are, but rocked where it counted: having the cojones to be an out-transvestite in the 1950s. Her bravery is something we’d be fools, as a community, not to acknowledge.
Imperfect, problematic, heroic. You often don’t get one without the others. We have lost an important pioneer.
I first saw Virginia Prince when her spoke at an abnormal Psych class at UCLA in the early 70′s, waaay before I had the courage to go out. She had to wear a pantsuit, because it was still illegal for males to wear skirts and dresses in California. She was instrumental in changing that law. Just that made such a huge difference!
So here she was, with her ample bosom (thanks to hormones), trim figure, fully electro’d face, long hair and nice makeup giving a standing room only lecture in a large hall — but unable to wear a skirt!
Back when I was first starting to go out, in the late 1980′s, Virginia ran the Alpha chapter of Tri-Ess here in Los Angeles. I attended many of her meetings, and met several good friends there.
She was energetic and dogmatic, and very concerned with the theoretical underpinnings of TG ism, and would lecture on evolution, sexual selection, and all kinds of intellectual topics. Much of the time she simply Spoke, and we all listened.
I read a couple of her books, and they were very helpful. One was “How to be a woman though male”, which helped me with the basics of comportment such as: “Don’t reach down with your hands to lower yourself when sitting down”, and other tidbits I that were very helpful to a beginner back then.
I remember her telling me that she had a reverse mortgage. She got a monthly payment for life, in exchange for giving the house to the lender upon her death. Since she made it to 96, she made a hell of a deal!
RIP Virginia.
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