You stated that “California law makes it illegal to publicise that an individual is a transsexual without their consent.” Asked for a cite, you said that you didn’t have a reference to “the case” and then you went on to describe it. And the details by which you described it are the details of the Diaz case. I therefore believe that it was reasonable to conclude that you were portraying the Diaz decision as outlawing publication of the fact that an individual is a transsexual without their consent. I therefore stand by the statement.
Have finally found the info on Billy Tipton, and other women who masqueraded as men. For those of you interested in where I found it, it can be found on pages 42-43 of “Uncle John’s Absolutely Absorbing Bathroom Reader” (volume 12).
"She’ll Always Be Dad To Me!"
What would you do if your gender prevented you from pursuing the career of your choice? Many women faced this problem in the past. For a rare few, the solution was, “If you can’t beat 'em, join 'em.” They literally lived their lives as men.
**DR. JAMES BARRY, ** British army surgeon and pioneer of sanitary reforms in medicine in the 19th century
**Background: ** Barry entered Edinburgh University’s medical school in 1808 when he was just 15 (only men were admitted to medical school then). He rose to become one of the most skilled doctors in England. As Carl Posey writes in Hoaxes and Deceptions , the “tiny, beardless doctor” was no shrinking violet:
Surprise! Shortly after Barry died in 1865, at the age of 73, acquaintances discovered why, despite his having spent 51 years in the army, no one had ever seen him naked: he was a woman.
Note: Apparently, not everyone had been fooled. "Many people seem to have known her secret all along,"Posey writes, “and simply – perhaps because of Barry’s powerful patron – declined to mention it.” CHARLIE PARKHURST,“one of the toughest stagecoach drivers of the Old West”
**Background: ** Parkhurst worked for the California Stage Company at the height of the Gold Rush in the 1850s. He was 5’7" tall, had broad shoulders, gambled, and chewed tobacco. “Once,” Carl Sifakis writes in Hoaxes and Scams , “this legendary master of the whip raced a team across an unstable bridge, reaching the other side just before it collapsed. Another time, stopped by highwaymen, Charlie shot the leader and escaped with passengers and goods intact.”
Parkhurst, who claimed to be an orphan, never grew any facial hair, something that friends attributed to a “fetish” for shaving every day. Unlike his rowdy friends, he also avoided prostitutes, and preferred to sleep apart from other men. Other than that, for all appearances he was one of the guys.
Surprise! In the last 1860s, an illenss forced Parkhurst into retirement, and on December 31, 1879, he died alone in his cabin near Watsonville, California. A doctor called in to investigate the death found not only that he had died of cancer, but also that he was a woman who had given birth at some point in her life. Who was this mystery woman? Nobody knows – that was one secret she did mange to take to the grave. BILLY TIPTON,jazz musician and leader of the Tipton Trio
**Background: ** Tipton was a popular jazz musician in Washington from the 1930s to the late 1980s. He married three times and his last marriage, to Kitty Oakes, lasted 19 years. He had three children, all adopted, a fact he attributed to an “injury” that he claimed made “normal” sexual relations impossible. Early in his jazz career, his baby face and high-pitched voice caused some listeners to joke that he was too feminine to be a man. But that was about as close as anyone came to suspecting the truth.
Surprise! After years of refusing to see a doctor despite his failing health, Tipton died in 1989 of a bleeding ulcer at his mobile home in Spokane, Washington. He was 74. The paramedics who responded to the call quickly discovered that Tipton was a female, something that apparently only Kitty Oakes had known.
It turns out that at the age of 18, Tipton had borrowed her brother’s name and began dressing as a man so she could work as a jazz musician. In those days, most women in jazz were “girl singers,” whose careers were short and of limited range.
Tipton’s children were shocked. “I’m just lost,” her son Jon Clark told reporters after learning his father was a woman. “The guy at the funeral home showed me a little yellow piece of paper where it was marked ‘female’ under sex. I said ‘What?’ and he said it was true. Even so, she’ll always be Dad to me.”