Portal:Transgender/Selected biography
The following selected biographies appear on Portal:Transgender. The layout for new additions is at Portal:Transgender/Selected biography/Layout.
Selected biography 1
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Harisu (Hangul: 하리수) is the stage name of Lee Kyung-eun (born Lee Kyung-yup, February 17, 1975), a transgender pop singer, model and actress from South Korea. Assigned male at birth, she identified as female from early childhood, and underwent sex reassignment surgery in the 1990s. She is noted for being South Korea's first transgender entertainer, and in 2002 became only the second person in Korea to legally change their gender. Her stage name is an adaptation of the English phrase "hot issue".
Harisu first gained public attention in 2001, after appearing in a television commercial for DoDo cosmetics. The commercial was a success and ended up launching her career, allowing her to branch out into other fields such as music and acting. So far she has recorded five Korean musical albums, switching genres between techno and R&B, and her overseas releases have featured songs recorded in Mandarin. Her first major acting role was in the 2001 film Yellow Hair 2, and since then her credits have included Hi! Honey, a Taiwanese drama series, and Colour Blossoms, an erotic drama by Hong Kong filmmaker Yonfan.
Selected biography 2
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Christine Jorgensen 30 May 1926 in The Bronx, New York City, USA; died 3 May 1989) was famous in the USA for having been the first widely-known individual to have sex reassignment surgery—in this case, male to female.
The second child of George William Jorgensen Sr., a carpenter and contractor, and his wife, the former Florence Davis Hansen, Jorgensen grew up in the Bronx and later described herself as having been a "frail, tow-headed, introverted little boy [sic] who ran from fistfights and rough-and-tumble games".
Selected biography 3
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Georgina Beyer (b 1957) was the world's first openly transsexual Member of Parliament, and from 27 November 1999 until 14 February 2007 was an MP for the Labour Party in New Zealand.
Born George Bertrand in 1957 in Wellington, Māori of Te Āti Awa, Ngāti Mutunga, Ngāti Raukawa, and Ngāti Porou descent, Beyer spent her early childhood on her grandparents' farm in Taranaki. Later she shifted to Wellington to live with her mother, who had subsequently married Colin Beyer, a prominent lawyer and businessman. Shortly after leaving school at Wellington's Onslow College, Beyer discovered Wellington's gay scene, and at the age of 17 realised she was transgender.
Selected biography 4
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Jenny Bailey was the civic leader of Cambridge City Council in Cambridge, England. Bailey served her mayoral term from 2007-2008. Bailey became a member of the city council in 2002, when she was elected to represent the suburb of East Chesterton within Cambridge. She served the council continuously from 2002-2007, rising the ranks until she was chosen to become mayor in 2007. Prior to her appointment as full mayor, she acted as a deputy in 2006.
She was the first transgender mayor in the United Kingdom, with Varsity, the eldest of Cambridge University's newspapers, suggesting even the world. However, Bailey was keen to play down the significance of this, saying, "I don't want to let it define me."
Selected biography 5
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Chelsea Elizabeth Manning (born December 17, 1987) is an American activist and whistleblower. She is a former United States Army soldier who was convicted by court-martial in July 2013 of violations of the Espionage Act and other offenses, after disclosing to WikiLeaks nearly 750,000 classified, or unclassified but sensitive, military and diplomatic documents. These documents include the video Collateral Murder showing U.S. soldiers laugh during a firefight where they kill civilians and reporters and included more accurate, larger estimates of civilian casualties from the Iraq and Afghan wars than publicly available. She was imprisoned from 2010 until 2017 when her sentence was commuted. Manning was jailed again for 62 days in 2019 for her continued refusal to testify before a grand jury against Julian Assange. A trans woman, Manning released a statement in 2013 explaining she had a female gender identity since childhood and wanted to be known as Chelsea Manning. She also expressed a desire to begin hormone replacement therapy.
Selected biography 6
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Leelah Alcorn (November 15, 1997 – December 28, 2014) was an American transgender girl whose suicide attracted international attention. Alcorn had posted a suicide note to her Tumblr blog, writing about societal standards affecting transgender people and expressing the hope that her death would create a dialogue about discrimination, abuse and lack of support for transgender people.
Assigned male at birth, she was raised in Ohio by a family affiliated with the Churches of Christ movement. At age 14, she came out as transgender to her parents, Carla and Doug Alcorn, who refused to accept her female gender identity. When she was 16, they denied her request to undergo transition treatment, instead sending her to Christian-based conversion therapy with the intention of convincing her to reject her gender identity and accept her gender as assigned at birth. After she revealed her attraction toward males to her classmates, her parents removed her from school and revoked her access to social media. In her suicide note, Alcorn cited loneliness and alienation as key reasons for her decision to end her life and blamed her parents for causing these feelings. She killed herself by walking into traffic on the Interstate 71 highway.
Alcorn arranged for her suicide note to be posted online several hours after her death, and it soon attracted international attention across mainstream and social media. LGBT rights activists called attention to the incident as evidence of the problems faced by transgender youth, while vigils were held in her memory in the United States and United Kingdom. Petitions were formed calling for the establishment of "Leelah's Law", a ban on conversion therapy in the U.S., which received a supportive response from U.S. President Barack Obama. Within a year, the city of Cincinnati criminalised conversion therapy. Alcorn's parents were criticized for misgendering Leelah in comments that they made to the media, while LGBT rights activist Dan Savage blamed them for their child's death, and social media users subjected them to online harassment. Alcorn's parents defended their refusal to accept their child's identity and their use of conversion therapy by reference to their Christian values.
Selected biography 7
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Jake Zyrus is a Filipino singer and television personality. Prior to his gender transition to male, he performed under the mononym Charice. In 2007, after some appearances on Philippine television, Zyrus sang on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, and the following year, he made several international television appearances, including on The Oprah Winfrey Show. He then began performing in concerts with David Foster and Andrea Bocelli, among others. Zyrus released the studio album Charice in 2010; it entered the Billboard 200 at number eight, making it the first album of an Asian solo singer ever to land in the Top 10. The single "Pyramid" from that album, featuring singer Iyaz, is Zyrus's most successful single to date, charting within the Top 40 in a number of countries after its debut live performance on The Oprah Winfrey Show. Crossing over to acting on television, he joined the cast of TV series Glee later in 2010 as Sunshine Corazon. In 2011, "Before It Explodes", written by Bruno Mars, was released as the lead single from Zyrus's second international studio album, Infinity.
Zyrus was one of the four judges of the Philippine version of The X Factor, on ABS-CBN, in 2012. He first came out as a lesbian in 2013. He released further albums Chapter 10 in 2013 and Catharsis in 2016. He began using his current name in 2017 after beginning hormone replacement therapy.
Selected biography 8
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Nicole Amber Maines (born 1997) is an American actress, writer, and transgender rights activist. Prior to her acting career, she was the anonymous plaintiff in the Maine Supreme Judicial Court case Doe v. Regional School Unit 26, in which she argued her school district could not deny her access to the female bathroom for being transgender. The court ruled in 2014 that barring transgender students from the school bathroom consistent with their gender identity is unlawful, the first such ruling by a state court.
As an actress, Maines played Nia Nal on The CW superhero series Supergirl (2018–2021) in the fourth through sixth seasons. She is the first to portray a transgender superhero on television. She currently plays the recurring role of Lisa in the second season of Yellowjackets (2023–present).
Selected biography 9
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Gloria Hemingway (born Gregory Hancock Hemingway, November 12, 1931 – October 1, 2001) was an American physician and writer who was the third and youngest child of author Ernest Hemingway. Although she was born a male and lived most of her life publicly as a man, she struggled with her gender identity from a young age. In her 60s, she underwent gender transition surgery, and preferred the name Gloria when possible.
A good athlete and a crack shot, Gloria longed to be a typical Hemingway hero and trained as a professional hunter in Africa, but her alcoholism prevented her from gaining a license, and it ultimately cost her her medical license in the United States. Gloria maintained a long-running feud with her father, stemming from a 1951 incident when her arrest for entering a bar in drag caused an argument between Ernest and Gloria's mother Pauline Pfeiffer. Pfeiffer died from a stress-related condition the following day, which Ernest blamed on Gloria.
Selected biography 10
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Sir Ewan Forbes, 11th Baronet, MBChB (6 September 1912 – 12 September 1991), was a Scottish nobleman, general practitioner and farmer. Forbes was a trans man; he was officially registered as the youngest daughter of John, Lord Sempill. After an uncomfortable upbringing, he began presenting as a man in the 1930s, following a course of medical treatments in Germany. He formally re-registered his birth as male in 1952, changing his name to Ewan, and was married a month later.
In 1965, he stood to inherit the baronetcy of his elder brother William, Lord Sempill, together with a large estate. This inheritance was challenged by his cousin, who argued that the re-registration was invalid; under this interpretation, Forbes would legally be considered a woman, and thus unable to inherit the baronetcy. The legal position was unclear, and it took three years before a ruling by the Court of Session, which held him to be intersex, finally led to the Home Secretary recognising his claim to the title. The case was heard in great secrecy, with the effect that it was unable to be considered in other judgments on the legal recognition of gender variance, but has become more widely known since his death in 1991.
Selected biography 11
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Christopher "Christoph" Lee (September 4, 1964 – December 22, 2012) was an American transgender activist, and award-winning filmmaker in the San Francisco Bay Area community. He was also the co-founder of Tranny Fest, now called the San Francisco Transgender Film Festival (SFTFF). In 2002 he was the first openly trans man Grand Marshal of San Francisco Pride. Lee's death and the designation of his assigned gender at birth on his death certificate rather than his self-identified gender was the impetus behind the "Respect After Death Act", AB 1577, which was passed in California on September 26, 2014.
Selected biography 12
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Stephanie Byers (born February 5, 1963) is an American politician and educator who served in the Kansas House of Representatives from the 86th district. Her victory in the 2020 election made her the first openly transgender person to serve in the Kansas Legislature and the first transgender Native American person, a member of the Chickasaw Nation, elected to office in the United States, but she did not run for reelection.
Selected biography 13
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Raffi Freedman-Gurspan (born May 3, 1987) is a Honduran American transgender rights activist and the first openly transgender person to work as a White House staffer. She was also the first openly transgender legislative staffer to work in the Massachusetts House of Representatives. She served as director of external relations at the National Center for Transgender Equality, based in Washington, D.C. She is a longtime advocate and public policy specialist on matters concerning human rights, gender, and LGBT people.
Selected biography 14
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Peppermint, or Miss Peppermint (born January 31, 1980), is an American actress, singer, songwriter, television personality, drag queen, and activist. She is best known from the nightlife scene and, in 2017, as the runner-up on the ninth season of RuPaul's Drag Race. In 2018, Peppermint made her debut in The Go-Go's-inspired musical Head Over Heels as Pythio, becoming Broadway's first out trans woman to originate a lead role.
As a recording artist, she has released two studio albums, Hardcore Glamour, released in 2009, and Black Pepper, released in 2017, as well as five EPs, including A Girl Like Me: Letters to My Lovers, which was released in 2020. In December 2023, she was announced as a part of the cast of the second season of The Traitors.
Selected biography 15
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Sophie Xeon (/ˈziːɒn/; 17 September 1986 – 30 January 2021), known mononymously as SOPHIE (stylized in all caps), was an English music producer, songwriter, and DJ. Her work is known for its brash take on pop music and is distinguished by experimental sound design, "sugary" synthesized textures, and incorporation of underground dance styles. It would help pioneer the 2010s hyperpop microgenre.
Sophie rose to prominence with a string of breakthrough singles led by "Bipp" (2013); these were compiled on the singles collection Product (2015). She concealed her identity early in her solo career, but came out publicly as transgender in 2017. The following year, Sophie released the studio album Oil of Every Pearl's Un-Insides, earning a nomination for the Grammy Award for Best Dance/Electronic Album. She worked closely with artists from the PC Music label, including A. G. Cook and GFOTY, and also produced for acts such as Charli XCX, Vince Staples, Kim Petras, Madonna, Hyd, Gaika, and Namie Amuro.
Selected biography 16
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Jordana LeSesne, formerly known as 1.8.7, is an American musician and producer from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She now produces and performs as Jordana. She became known in the mid-1990s as a drum and bass producer. Vibe magazine called her "one of the most respected Drum ‘n' Bass producers in the US." In 2015, she was named as one of "20 women who shaped the history of dance music" by Mixmag. She is transgender and came out in 1998.
She has released over 50 tracks, including four albums, several EPs, and remixes under the alias 1.8.7. The 1997 album When Worlds Collide became known for its "dark pummeling assaults". She has licensed tracks for compilations as well as the Sci Fi Channel. Three of her albums charted in the Top 25 of both the CMJ (College Music Journal) and Mixmag U.S. (later Mixer Magazine, now defunct) for 1997 as well as 1998 and 1999. Her third album "The Cities Collection" debuted in the CMJ Top 5 climbed to the #2 position on CMJ Music Monthly's dance chart for June 2000.
Selected biography 17
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Satsuki Nakayama (中山 咲月, Nakayama Satsuki, born September 17, 1998) is a Japanese model and actor, known for his portrayal as Naki in Kamen Rider Zero-One and Shima Nishina in Kiss Him, Not Me. He started his modeling career as an exclusive model for the magazine Pichi Lemon and later became one of the standout models of Japan's genderless fashion subculture.
Nakayama initially came out as non-binary in 2019, but he later came out as a transgender man in 2021.
Selected biography 18
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Buck Angel (born June 5, 1962) is an American sex educator and former pornographic film actor and producer. He founded the media production company Buck Angel Entertainment. Angel is a transsexual man. He currently works as an advocate and educator. Angel served on the board of directors of the Woodhull Freedom Foundation from 2010 to 2016. The Foundation works to affirm sexual freedom as a fundamental human right through advocacy and education.
Selected biography 19
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Norrie, also known by the pseudonym Norrie May-Welby, is a Scottish-Australian transgender person who pursued the legal status of being neither a man nor a woman, between 2010 and 2014. The High Court of Australia ruled in April 2014 that it was in the power of the NSW Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages to record in the register that the sex of Norrie was 'non-specific'.
Selected biography 20
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Maryam Khatoonpour Molkara (Persian: مریم خاتون ملکآرا; 1950–2012) was an Iranian transgender rights activist, and she was widely recognized as a matriarch of the transgender community in Iran. Designated male at birth, she was later instrumental in obtaining a letter which acted as a fatwa enabling sex reassignment surgery to exist as part of a legal framework. Molkara became the first transgender person in Iran to legally undergo sex reassignment surgery with the permission of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
Selected biography 21
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Geraldine Batista Roman (born April 23, 1967) is a Filipina journalist and politician serving as Member of the House of Representative from Bataan's 1st district since June 30, 2016. She is the first Transgender person elected to the Philippine Congress.
She was named as one of the 100 Leading Global Thinkers of 2016 by US-based Foreign Policy magazine, and one of the 13 Inspiring Women of 2016 by Time magazine.