Denise Michele Magner (1951–2012) was a transgender computer programmer and internet troll who sometimes claimed to be intersex. She was a key “autogynephilia” activist, primarily through her transkids.us hoax site and through her collaborations with Alice Dreger and J. Michael Bailey.
Like many “autogynephilia” activists, Magner was an eccentric hoarder living in desperate poverty. Dreger and Bailey are notorious for exploiting these kinds of people, who seek validation and attention from those they see as authority figures.
Magner used a multitude of aliases and sockpuppet accounts as part of her trolling. The primary ones were:
- Denise Magner
- Deni
- Denise Tree
- Kiira Triea (pronounced “KEER-uh TREE”)
- Ariika Aeirt
- Janelle Laren
- Reykja Kirby Sigurdson
- Stephanie Alexandra Velasquez
- Gisle Benediktsson
Though she falsely claimed she was born as late as 1964, she was born September 2, 1951 and died November 2, 2012 at age 61.
Denise Magner’s lifetime of lies
This was written in November 2012 in response to published eulogies repeating lies and unsubstantiated claims made by Denise Magner.
Denise Magner, one of the handful of transgender people active in the “autogynephilia” movement, died in November 2012. I had to hold publication of this piece until Magner’s death could be independently confirmed. Magner was also known as Kiira Triea, and Denise Tree, and a host of fake online personae centered around the hoax website transkids.us. Anything Magner ever said or wrote needs to be independently confirmed by an uninvolved party before it is believed. Basic information she claimed about herself that I fact-checked against government and medical records turned out to be false. Even basic facts she claimed about herself that were printed in books and articles have turned out to be false. Throughout her life, she lied to journalists, to academics, to activists, to her closest friends, to her family, and to herself.
I’m sure the sexologists who exploited Magner are rushing to eulogize her in their house organ, the Archives of Sexual Behavior, so I thought I’d pre-emptively refute their testimonial about her as some teller of great truths. I have much more to say on this down the road, but this summary will suffice for now. Magner’s fraud is very complicated and spanned decades, so bear with me as I try to summarize.
Background: exploitation of transgender youth
“Autogynephilia” is a disease made up by gay psychologist Ray Blanchard in 1989. Blanchard ran one of the last “gender clinics” in North America until his retirement. Blanchard’s mentor was preoccupied with dividing people into “homosexual” and “non-homosexual” categories, and Blanchard extended that preoccupation to his own studies of “male gender dysphorics, paedophiles, and fetishists.”
Blanchard claims transgender women are either “homosexual” men or “non-homosexual” men. He believes the second group in this two-type taxonomy is motivated to transition by “autogynephilia,” the thought or image of themselves as women, a paraphilia similar to sexual attraction to children (pedophilia), animals (zoophilia), corpses (necrophilia), rape (biastophilia), etc. The idea that transsexualism is fetishistic is not new; second-wave feminists like Janice Raymond claim that trans women “rape women’s bodies by reducing the real female form to an artifact, appropriating this body for themselves.”
Blanchard did not get a lot of notice until his ideas were popularized in the 2003 book The Man Who Would Be Queen by J. Michael Bailey. You may recall Bailey is that professor at Northwestern University who used to teach their intro course on sexuality until he held an exploitative live “fucksaw” demonstration in 2011 as part of a course. The intro course is now taught in the gender studies department, because Northwestern’s entire psychology department has consistently demonstrated that they are unable to maintain an acceptable level of academic rigor or ethics in matters of human sexuality.
Bailey’s book is framed by the case of Danny Ryan, the world’s most famous published case report about a gender-nonconforming child. Bailey witnesses that Danny is no longer gender-nonconforming at the end of the book, suggesting that gender non-conformity is either just a phase or something that can be fixed through “curing” with reparative therapy espoused by Bailey and Blanchard’s colleague Kenneth Zucker. Danny’s case is used to bolster Bailey’s theories. Bailey’s ideological nemesis, sexologist John Money, also exploited a child with a similar case report that made his career. Money reported for decades on the successful case report of David Reimer, a boy raised as a girl after a circumcision accident in infancy destroyed his penis. Money used his famous case report to bolster his theories that gender roles are socially conditioned. Bailey holds the opposite view, so he created a case report with the opposite conclusion of Money’s. Money was later exposed as a fraud whose results were fabricated. Bailey’s case report has not been independently fact-checked by anyone to date. Given the remarkable parallels with Money, there’s an extremely strong likelihood that Bailey’s case report is a fabrication as well, although he denies it. Sexology is not well-respected inside or outside academia because the few ethical researchers in their field are apparently unwilling or unable to stop unethical ideologues from making things up out of whole cloth in order to promote themselves and their careers.
During his book tour, Bailey was giving an exploitative lecture using images of gender-variant children that provoked laughter from attendees. The book and Bailey’s exploitation of our children were a galvanizing moment for the trans community; we almost universally condemned both. One book on LGBT history said the successful protests against the book “represented one of the most organized and unified examples of transgender activism seen to date.”
I played a role in the protests, and I have since been branded an enemy of “academic freedom” by Bailey’s allies for going after everyone involved and working to expose the facts in this sordid affair. The whole thing had pretty much died down until Bailey’s colleague, “ethicist” Alice Dreger, got mad that I was invited to speak at Northwestern University in 2006. Dreger unsuccessfully tried to suppress my speech (so much for “academic freedom”). After I mocked her attempts to stop me, she went nuts, spending over a year trying to get back at me by constructing her own version of the book protest. In 2008, Dreger unsuccessfully tried to suppress a panel refuting her version of the facts at an academic conference (so much for “academic freedom”).
In Bailey and Dreger’s world, “academic freedom” apparently means “being able to make up anything you want without consequence.” That explains why both were closely tied to Magner.
Denise Magner, the self-hating trans woman
Bailey did have a few supporters among transgender people. The backlash against our backlash was spearheaded by Magner. She and a few others found Blanchard’s transgender taxonomy appealing, usually because they believed it put them in a category that is more socially desirable. This taxonomy appeals to three small subgroups of transgender people:
1. People who would be considered “non-transsexual” under other taxonomies but self-identify as transsexual.
2. People who would be considered “non-homosexual” by proponents of this taxonomy but self-identify as “homosexual transsexual.”
3. People who would be considered “non-intersex” but self-identify as intersex.
Magner was part of the second and third subgroups, depending on when you asked her. Trans supporters of this taxonomy believe it improves their social standing, because these terms create a false hierarchy, from best to worst:
1. Intersex
2. “Homosexual transsexual” (or “primary” or “true” transsexual)
3. “Non-homosexual transsexual” (or “autogynephilic” or “secondary” transsexual)
4. “Pseudotranssexual”
Magner’s bogus life story changed so often you need a scorecard. She has always reminded me of a poor man’s Laura Albert, the middle-aged non-trans woman who made up transkid JT Leroy out of whole cloth and created an elaborate series of identities to keep her literary hoax going. When I saw the film Catfish I was again reminded that many people like Magner exist in the world. Magner was highly dysphoric and deeply troubled. That’s about all that can be said with certainty.
Will the real Denise Magner please stand up?
Magner, like most of the major figures in the “autogynephilia” movement, was a hoarder living in abject poverty, but she had an extra level of idiosyncrasy. When she would fixate on something, she would appropriate it as her identity. When she got fixated on the computer programming language Linux, she claimed to be from Finland, where the Linux founder is from, and took a Finnish-sounding name. She created fake friends with Finnish names. When she was into music, she created fake bands she claimed to be in. When she got fixated on intersex issues, she started insinuating herself into that community, creating fake personae like Kiira Triea and Arika Aeirt. When she got fixated on underage and young adult transgender youth, she created several she claimed to know, even going so far as to set up multiple USENET and LiveJournal accounts and ultimately the website transkids.us, to entice them to contact her and befriend her.
Transkids.us quickly became a repository of attacks on Bailey’s enemies, and Bailey and his allies referred to it heavily in their work, as if it were legitimate. Bailey didn’t limit his exploitation to unconsenting trans youth. He actively sought out attention-craving eccentric adults like Magner to exploit, in order to further his argument that transgender people are mentally disordered. Bailey ultimately co-authored a paper with Magner, mainly a rehashing of the attacks found on transkids.us.
Magner was part of the “lost generation” of transgender people; those who transitioned between the late 1960s to the late 1980s. Many of these people were forced to go through one of a few regressive “gender clinic” programs in North America. Before the rise of the gender clinic, trans people found a sympathetic physician and got the health services they requested. These centralized clinics were started by people who had various agendas. Many of these clinics were interested in sex offenders and were looking for data on chemical and surgical castration while skirting the ethical problems of unconsented castration. Others had various “nature vs. nurture” theories about sexuality, sex roles, or gender roles, and they saw trans people as a great way to further their aims.
One such clinic was the Johns Hopkins Gender Identity Clinic. John Money, who ran the Clinic, invented the term “gender role” and had a major role in promoting the term paraphilia for non-normative sexual interests. It’s not clear whether Magner actually attended the clinic as an adult, but she was certainly not there as an adolescent. Magner’s aunt Nancy Henley studied at Johns Hopkins, so Magner may have just fixated on Hopkins and appropriated the identity as symbolic of her alienation. One of these days I may get around to writing a piece called “How HIPAA Helps Hoaxers” to discuss the problem of people like Magner who appropriate intersex identities because they see it as socially desirable. Because of the way medical privacy laws are now structured, people like Magner and Bailey and Zucker know they can make up whatever they want and no one will be able to refute them. At any rate, Magner was connected with Johns Hopkins via her aunt and via her computing skills, and she had an email account there in the early days of the internet. That’s when she first started creating fake online “friends,” a habit that was a full-blown compulsion within a decade.
Besides being a compulsive liar and compulsive hoarder, Magner had other compulsions as well. She did a stint with Baltimore Substance Abuse Systems. Her drug use led to a pattern of idealizing, then devaluing relationships. Like many unstable people, Magner lived on the verge of homelessness at times. She had some sort of self-described breakdown in 1993, and things continued to get worse from there, exacerbated by her ability to use the internet to play out her anger via multiple personae. I had not had a lot of dealings with low-functioning people like Magner until Bailey’s book fiasco, but they really came out of the woodwork for that dramafest.
The eulogies
The first eulogy of Magner I read was by a transgender woman in the “autogynephilia” movement named Candice Brown Elliott. Elliott, also known as “Cloudy,” promotes “autogynephilia” via the website transkids.us and via a blog called Sillyolme. The transkids.us site was initially started by Magner and a couple of other transgender women in the “autogynephilia” movement, and it is currently maintained by Elliott. Magner and Elliott are kindred spirits: both have been heavily involved in computing and technology, a hallmark of “autogynephilia” according to their psychologist friend Bailey (see page 192 of his book and run your own test score for Elliott). Both Magner and Elliott are part of the “lost generation” and both claim to have attended gender clinics around the same time. Both have insisted they represent transgender youth and insisted they would not be classified as “autogynephilic,” even though it’s painfully obvious both would be labeled as such by proponents of Blanchard’s taxonomy. Elliott describes a sad encounter when she flew Magner out for a visit. Elliott is clearly not the best judge of character. One of her other “friends” stole one of her airplanes a couple of days after I wrote about Elliott’s involvement in the transkids hoax, eventually ditching it hundreds of miles away and being arrested.
Dreger wrote the other eulogy I read: http://alicedreger.com/losing_kiira.html
Dreger and Magner are also kindred spirits. Both are not-too-clever charlatans who have managed to dupe some people with their assertions. Dreger wrote a book about intersex issues (she nicknamed herself “the hermaphrodite monger”). Magner became fixated on intersex as a concept at the same time Dreger was doing her work, and Magner assumed intersex as an identity in the early 1990s.
Magner sought and got attention and money from Elliott and Dreger through skillful manipulation. Dreger is the kind of gullible chump that people like Magner seek out. Blinded to the truth by their own incompetence. Highly susceptible to flattery. Extremely thin-skinned. Willing to believe anything from anyone who agrees with them. Willing to believe anything from anyone who disagrees with a perceived enemy.
Magner claimed she was born in 1964. She was actually born in 1951. She claimed she was at Johns Hopkins Gender Identity Clinic in the mid-1970s, having genital surgery at age 14. She was not at Johns Hopkins at age 14. She did not have surgery at age 14. She did not know or interact with John Money’s famous case report David Reimer in any way. There is no independent evidence that Magner was ever even at the Johns Hopkins clinic or the Psychohormonal Research Unit. It’s entirely possible Magner cobbled together her story from the work of her aunt, Nancy Henley, who got her Ph.D. there and went on to research women’s issues as a career. Magner made countless other bogus claims about herself, many of which she later tried to scrub from the internet when the lies piled up so deep they began to contradict each other.
I have received many letters from people duped and manipulated by Magner, and I have published a few previously. Here’s what one person told me when she met Magner at her home, expecting to meet an edgy artist and activist and her many young trans friends like Janelle, Inoue, and Magner’s main fake persona, Stephanie Alejandra Velasquez, or Ale. Here’s how she described what she found upon arriving at Magner’s:
I think Kiira is quite pitiful actually, her house was in a huge mess and she probably suffers from depression. I had to put in quite abit of effort to help her clean it up :X But essentially me and my friend cut ties because we felt disturbed as the whole fracas drew on. I wouldn’t be surprised if Kiira roped in others after us… but yeah. I think she’s like a lonely old lady in some respects. 🙁
The one thing I always remember being shocked by together with my friend was that how old Ale sounded on the phone. She did do an about turn after admitting both ale and janie were fake… I’d be honestly surprised if both ale and janie are real. Its just a little disturbing though that she goes through so much effort to maintain so many identities. :X
I think she’s essentially a nice person who messed around with drugs and alcohol and just spiralled into some bipolar, schizo state.
Its complicating but… I’m not sure why after Kiira/Ale talked to me I got convinced on stuff and like somehow my mind was mentally framed to like side her views. She’s very good in asking questions about me and deflecting those about her. Its weird now, instead of feeling *hateful* i actually pity her. She’s extremely perceptive in picking out my insecurities? And like somehow I told her everything about my life etc. I feel, it might be some convenient attempt to find “a place”.
I seriously don’t understand why Kiira does why she does. The weird thing I feel though as much as she is a scam, she actually believes what she talks about *despite* all appearances and behavior. But yes, she is quite good in manipulating people with pseudo empathy of sorts, that you’d want to believe the good in her.
This brings me back to Dreger, the incompetent patsy who desperately wanted to believe Magner because it helped her career. Dreger plied her with attention and money, the two things Magner needed most, right up to the end in exchange for helping her with her career by giving her a veneer of legitimacy. Dreger even cited Magner and her fake personae in her published work as if they were different people. Dreger is the kind of needy person who loses her virginity to an exploitative high school teacher. Bailey is also very good at this form of seduction with former students, and his manipulation of Dreger and her desire to please him seem very similar to her high school behavior. More on Dreger’s weird fixation with presenting herself as sexually desirable in the future.
Sadly, Dreger is what passes for an academic these days. A clueless hack who allows people like Bailey and Magner to continue their lies unchallenged because she is too incompetent or lazy to do the most rudimentary fact-checking. She’s also blinded by her own histrionic self-righteousness. She has made a name for herself in the age of trolling with academic drive-bys, where she tries to stir up old controversies to make a quick buck and get the attention she craves as much as Magner did. Daddy was probably a strict disciplinarian, and Dreger found the best way to get attention was to get in trouble. (I’ll tell you a funny story about Dreger’s brief undergraduate stint at Georgetown one day.) Dreger, like a lot of Christians, thrives on feeling persecuted. That’s why she keeps picking fights. She can’t get anything done unless she feels persecuted/angry, so she tries to pick fights with people who threaten her livelihood or veneer of credibility.
Magner’s manipulation from beyond the grave
It’s probably bad to laugh out loud at a eulogy, but I am amazed at how Magner is able to play Dreger like a fiddle even from beyond the grave. When Dreger tried to pick a fight with another person, Heino Meyer-Bahlburg of Columbia University, Magner knew just how to manipulate Dreger, who writes:
“Kiira and her bandmates recorded a version of Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight” that exactly captured the terror and anger we both felt. I must have listened to it a thousand times, especially the part we both knew was about the way she felt toward Money and Heino.”
Because Magner was such a pathological liar, I immediately determined that this cover song was not recorded by Magner and her friends. Magner had no lasting friends, and she never recorded music professionally (she just hoarded second-hand gear). Magner appropriated the song she gave to Dreger from the metal band Nonpoint. In fact, here’s the version Dreger has on her playlist:
That’s right, Dreger listened to “Magner’s” song “a thousand times,” never once stopping to wonder how a 60-something reclusive hoarder and drug addict might be able to create a professionally-produced studio recording. That’s a perfect analogy for what’s going on here. Magner was such a skillful liar and fraud, and Dreger is so incompetent and blinded to the truth, that it didn’t even occur to Dreger she’s been duped by Magner for over 20 years (and counting). Dreger asks rhetorically,
“How many times did we talk about the ‘pack of lies,’ Kiira?”
Such staggering irony. Magner made no deathbed confession of her lies, apparently, and Dreger will of course never bother finding the truth because it will make her look like an even bigger dimwit.
Why is Dreger so easy to exploit? Why is she so eager to spread misinformation and lies without checking them? Everything Magner claimed about her life was a lie or exaggeration designed to manipulate people like Dreger. Apparently Magner’s first lie was such a big success that she had an encore performance of playing Dreger like a fool. Dreger writes in her hagiography of Magner:
“A couple of months before they finally made the terrible diagnosis of cancer all through her body, she wrote and recorded a new song, “Kali’s Day,” a song she told me was about her and progestin, and simultaneously about me and dex. I’m crying too hard to explain that whole song. I’ll just say here that the refrain is this:
Is this the end of the story finally coming?
Is this the end of the story, finally?
It’s the longest way to the shortest ending.
It’s the longest way to the shortest ending.”
I will chuckle the rest of my life when I hear either song, which any simpleton with an internet connection could quickly ascertain Magner stole from the same band who did the Phil Collins cover. Magner’s song “Kali’s Day” is of course “The Shortest Ending,” also recorded by Nonpoint:
When I think of Dreger crying as she pecked out that fact-free eulogy of Magner to this song, I marvel at what a virtuouso scam artist Magner was. Magner appropriated these songs just as she appropriated her fake intersex identity and the biographical details of young trans women she tricked into befriending her. Dreger then makes up a fake history for the song, like so many other fake histories she has concocted in the past few years. It’s the perfect analogy for Dreger’s life’s work.
Looking ahead
Magner’s lifetime of lies is over, a sad end to a pathetic, angry life. I take no joy in her suffering or death, and I would not wish cancer on anyone. However, I am not going to whitewash the fact that she was a very troubled person who caused a lot of harm to the youth in my community, certainly more harm than good, and she continually hurt the people who wanted to help her the most by lying to them and manipulating them. There’s no nice way to say that.
To quote Nonpoint, Is this the end of the story, finally? Not yet, I’m afraid. J. Michael Bailey is an even bigger and better liar than Magner, and he’s been playing Dreger even more masterfully. Maybe Dreger will soon wake up to the sunk cost fallacy of doubling down on Bailey, and she’ll rat him out to save herself. Or maybe she’ll wait to go down with him. Time will tell. I have some other truths to divulge on all this, but I am holding it back for now. There’s going to be a moment in the future when the time is right. To quote Phil Collins, I can feel it coming in the air…
In the meantime, I’ll end with what I told Dreger to her face in 2008 when she tried to suppress an academic panel refuting her bogus “history” of the Bailey affair:
Danny Ryan doesn’t exist, and when all that comes out, that’s when your career is over.
—
Originally published 12 November 2012
Archival profile of Magner
This was written when Magner was alive. I will retain the information below for historical purposes.
Introduction
Around the time she stopped using the name Denise Tree online, Magner was an early activist in the intersex movement, but in the ensuing years she has moved away from making positive contributions. For decades Triea waged a long-running online war of words with transgender people she disliked. In 2007, Triea shifted her highly fluid identity from intersexed lesbian to heterosexual “transkid,” which prompted this overview of her bogus life story.
Triea was the owner and author of transkids.us, a hoax website created in December 2004 and currently maintained by Candice Brown Elliott. It promotes a taxonomy of transwomen proposed by Ray Blanchard, J. Michael Bailey, and Anne Lawrence. Bailey and Lawrence had links to it on their sites within minutes of its publication, suggesting a coordinated effort between Triea, Bailey, and Lawrence. Triea claimed the material was written by “homosexual transsexual” (HSTS) children she knew. Since most of the material published by these “transkids” is pseudonymous and anonymous, we were simply supposed to take Triea’s word that it’s all true. So… let’s take a look at how truthful Denise Magner / Denise Tree / Kiira Triea was (hint: not very).
This report examines:
- Kiira Triea’s frequently changed birthdate
- Kiira Triea’s frequently changed medical history
- Kiira Triea’s frequently changed sexual identity
- Kiira Triea’s many names, associated personae, pseudonyms, and friends
Basically, Triea was an older and less successful Laura Albert, the musician wannabe and notorious hoaxer who created “transkid” JT LeRoy out of thin air, eventually even pretending to be LeRoy in person as well as online. As Laura Albert did, Triea was able to dupe several lesser academics and authors with her fabrications, most notably Alice Dreger and Simon LeVay, both of whom cite Triea in their published work. J. Michael Bailey even coauthored with Tree in 2007.
Unfortunately, most of the information in this overview was self-reported by Triea and not independently verified. This article reports on what Triea has claimed in various published statements, which were not necessarily true. Tree’s claims that could be independently verified have often turned out to be false. Given the inconsistencies, all statements by Triea and those she claimed to represent should be verified independently with third-party documentation, even those reported by journalists and sloppy academics, before being considered factual. Getting Triea’s many claims gathered in one place was the first step to debunking most of them.
Date(s) of birth
Triea claims to have been born on Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines [1], a “Navy brat.” [2] Depending on the point she was trying to make at the moment, Triea claimed to be born anywhere between the late 1950s and mid 1960s:
- In 1996, she claimed to be born “in the late fifties.” [3]
- In 1998, she was claiming a 1960 birth, [4] [5] reiterated on GenderTalk. [8]
- In 1999, Triea told two different reporters she was 35 (born in 1964). [6] [7]
- In 2000, a sociologist wrote that Triea claimed to be born “in the mid-1960s,” [9] reiterated in 2002. [10]
2007 legal troubles led to published proof that Triea was actually born on September 2, 1951. She shaved over 13 years off her real age over the course of her various versions of her life story. The date of birth was an important aspect of Triea’s claims about the age at which she presented at Johns Hopkins, as discussed below. Later birthdates are used when she wants to claim an earlier age for medical intervention.
Early life
Triea states she was assigned as a boy at birth: “I am an XX person who was exposed to progestin prenatally and assigned as a male, no surgery, at birth in the late fifties.” [3] In other versions, she told reporters she was “assigned as a boy at age 2.” [11] She claimed her biological father is Finnish, and that she was raised in Finland until age two. [12] She wrote that at some point her mother married, and Triea and her sisters lived with her stepfather in Baltimore. [13]
Johns Hopkins
Triea told a reporter she “did not learn of her intersexuality until puberty, when she began to menstruate through her phallus.” Triea claims “I was raised as a male until age thirteen,” [3] at which time she “began to menstruate.” [14] Triea told a sociologist she was “reassigned female at age 14 when she experienced a feminising puberty.” [9] She claimed she was diagnosed with “progesterone-induced female pseudo-hermaphroditism.” [10] She claimed she was a patient of sexologist John Money at the PRU “from age 14 to 17; this was in the mid-1970s.” [11] Other versions report she was “treated in the mid-through-late seventies.” [9] Triea was of course in her late 20s in the late 1970s. Triea claimed she was injected with testosterone before being given the option of a vaginoplasty:
Since I had been raised as a male I was given testosterone, to see how I reacted. I cannot describe the sense of horror and the feeling that my entire being was being raped, which I experienced from being endocrinologically mutated against my will. I reacted so badly that they decided it might be better if I were a girl and so now I was given that choice. The surgery was explained to me… I was a girl and now I would “be like other girls”. I was so afraid by then that they were going to rip out my ovaries and start with the mutating drugs again that vaginoplasty sounded like the best course of action. [3]
In 1997 she told reporter John Colapinto she had vaginoplasty at age 17 [11], but later claimed that was “misstated,” and that she had vaginoplasty at age 14. [15] She claimed the procedure was performed by Howard W. Jones, Jr. in 1974. [16]
Family problems
Triea claimed her condition led to the breakup of her family:
My mother has all the damned answers in the *world* why her “little boy” died … it is in my medical records that I am an XX person who was exposed to progestin. This does not enable her to love me… no. My family was literally blown apart at the seams because of my intersexuality. Do you think that my mother and stepfather went “well gee we have an intersexed child and that’s that”. ?? No they didn’t. Before puberty my stepfather cared about me, took me to ball games and tried to be a good father… like a “real” father. After I had surgery he bagn to verbally abuse me in front of my mother and sisters… and hit me with his closed fist. Do I need to go on? I really don’t think so because I bet this all sounds *very* familiar to many people on this NG. When my mother left him she said “Come on girls”. And left me in the house with him. (emphasis mine) [17]
Triea did not describe how long she was left to live alone with her stepfather Joe after her mother and sisters left. Later in life she described a reconciliation of sorts with her mother Dorothy Main Magner and her grandmother Estella Ziegenhein Main (Triea’s post identified her as “Estelle”). [18] Triea has stated her aunt is UCLA Professor Emerita Nancy M. Henley, who got her Ph.D. in Psychology from Johns Hopkins in 1968. [19] After her mother died in 2006, she stated in an online journal “all three of my parents are no more in my life.”
Early adulthood and “breakdown”
She claimed to have lived a life of lesbian separatism shortly after getting out of the Hopkins program. “When I was a teenager in Berkeley I lived in a communal house with a band called Bebe K’Roche, The Berkeley Women’s Music Collective.”[20] Like many musician wannabes, she had reasons she never recorded with her housemates: “I was 17 and I didn’t *care* if solos were androcentric or not I just wanted to crank up the 50 watt plexi and punch in my Univox Super-Fuzz and ruin my hearing. I’d been playing since I was 11 and gigging since I was 15 and I was obsessive about practicing. I think I was ahead of my time truthfully, I hadn’t even heard of April Lawton. The next band I played in was a Latin/Funk/hard rock bunch in Philadelphia with a horn section. Woo woo! Bebe K’Roche did a record on Olivia. I’m glad I wasn’t around because it sucks.” [21] The “rock bunch” she described as a “Hispanic/Finnish rock band” called Moon and Sun allegedly included another guitar player named Ceasar Lopez. [22] She also claimed “I played in gospel street bands in N. Philly and recorded crickets off the back porch in N.C.” [23] Remarkably, Triea also claimed she underwent a “detransition” in her 20s: “I am an XX person with functioning ovaries… though I was born intersexed because of my exposure to progesterone and I tried living as a boy in my 20’s. It pretty much didn’t help. When I discovered my sexuality I also discovered my identity. It was nice.” (emphasis mine) [24] By 1992 she claimed she was attending Towson State University in suburban Baltimore as a biology major, but was very interested in computers, eventually switching to a computer major. By 1993, she was so involved in Linux activism that she was chosen as editor of Linux News for about six months. [25] It was also during this time that Denise Tree got an email account at Johns Hopkins. [26] However, a major event was on the horizon:
On February 28, 1993 something happened and I awoke, I don’t know why. I experienced what I can only describe as a constructive breakdown. The intense awareness of my life and the implications of being intersexed ripped through my existence and the implosion hurt. I couldn’t continue in school with my math and computer science degree. (emphasis mine) [27]
The day after her “breakdown,” Triea wrote that earlier in her life she was referred by a private physician to a very competent surgeon:
I have to second this and my experience with clinics is first hand. I was assisted by a private clinical psychiatrist and obtained surgery from a very competant surgeon because of her referral. A clinic _may_ be able to help but then again they may be more interested in their own a grindinges and their own beauocracy (sp). Health care is not free after all and you have the right to “hire” someone who will do what _you_ need. A competant clinician will admit that they are unable to help if they are not TG aware and refer you to someone who can. Just remember… if someone acts and talks like they are full of crap, it usually means they are full of crap. (emphasis mine) [28]
This description of Jones immediately after her “breakdown” is in stark contrast with Triea’s later comments about the quality of her surgical results:
I seriously doubt that Dr. Howard Jones, who performed genital surgery on me, paid any consideration at all to that function. I have no clitoris at all; whatever was there before seems to have been relocated, perhaps entered into the witness protection program and now living in Arizona. Jones seems to have taken care though, to ensure that I was able to be penetrated, as my “vagina” seems to be deep enough to allow for that. Part of my left upper arm was pressed into genital duty here, which bothered me greatly when I came out of surgery. I wish I’d been consulted, or at least informed. Of course, why would I need to be informed? The objective was to make the hermaphrodite fuckable. (emphasis mine) [29]
“They wouldn’t listen, even when I returned as an adult and made it clear that I desperately needed help.” (emphasis mine) [30]
Name changes
She used many variants of her female name as an adult, starting with Denise Tree and moving over time to Kiira Triea after the “breakdown,” mixing and matching the two. Magner/Tree/Triea made several statements noting that her aunt is Nancy Henley (a psychologist trained at Johns Hopkins) [19], her mother’s name was Dorothy [18], and that she had sisters [17]. She has also stated her mother died in early 2006. The January 17, 2006 obituary in The Baltimore Sun, states:
On January 14, 2006 DOROTHY MAIN MAGNER, a retired Medical Administrator and artist and devoted mother of Denise Tree, Mary Malloy, and Bernice Magner. Loving grandmother of Amy Malloy. Sister of Edyth Anderson and Nancy Henley and aunt of Christopher Henley. Also survived by 1 nephew and 2 nieces. Friends are invited to call at the Burgee-Henss-Seitz Funeral Home, Inc. [emphasis added]
Later she began posting as Dr. Arika Aeirt, an anagram which is roughly “Triea, Kira” spelled backwards.
| Name | First documented use (online) |
| (names from birth through teens) | no documentation to date |
| Denise M. Magner | State of Maryland public records |
| Denise Tree | June 21, 1992 [31] |
| Denise M. Tree | January 25, 1993 [32] |
| (“breakdown”) | February 28, 1993 |
| Denise Michele Tree | April 24, 1993 [33] |
| Kira Triea | August 17, 1993 [34] |
| Kira D. Triea | November 25, 1993 [35] |
| Kira Denise Tree | June 10, 1994 [36] |
| Kira Tree | September 29, 1994 [37] |
| Kiira Triea | November 22, 1997[38] |
| K.D. Tree | March 16, 1996 |
| Arika Aeirt/Ariika Aeirt | September 7, 1999 |
Kira was a popular name with geeks in 1993, the surname of a character played by Nana Visitor on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Triea took the name the year the series debuted, later giving it a Finnish spin. Triea gave this etymology: “Kiira is the Finnish spelling of Kira which is actually Russian derived name. My biological father was Finnish and I was raised in Finland until the age of two. I changed the spelling when I learned this… one of those “back to my roots” things.” [12] She has also stated “I am from Finland” many times. [39][40][41][42] Of the pronunciation, she said “Yes with two ‘i’s. No not “Ky-ruh”. It’s “Kear-ah”. No not “Try-uh”, it’s “Tree” as in leaves and limbs. Yes Finnish does have a lot of vowels”. [43]
Triea’s fixation on all things Finnish coincides with her fixation on Linux, created by Finnish software engineer Linus Benedikt Torvalds. See Associated personae section below for more on Triea’s many Finnish friends from the “House of Benedikt,” like Gisle Benediktsson. Finnish readers took issue with Triea’s claims of Finnish heritage:
No sighting of Kiira in Finland 2002-2004! That is too bad, because Finland has a pioneering ts/is -support group. Surprising that a member of ISNA has no contact with us. “Triea” is not a Finnish name. None holding that family name has ever been recorded in Finland. Also “Tree” is an unknown family name in Finland. “Benediktsson” yields less than five occurrences. As a comparison, my uncommon surname gives 2687 hits.
Athletics and hobbies
Triea claimed to be a competitive runner who held a national record set at the Millrose Games:
“That laughing. The Gym Class Laughing. It’s all the fault of those ball sports. I fixed them… I ran track. I got to hear that gym teacher say “If you beat Kiira you get an A”. Ha! My 9:47 2 mile time at the Melrose Games stood for 12 years as a national record.” [44]
Later she claimed to be an experienced bicycle maker. Like many of her hobbies, she was more fixated on the jargon and technical aspects of the equipment than the hobby itself. [45] She also claimed to be a metalworker who does bicycle welding/brazing (she said her father is a welder) and owned her own lathe. [46]
From activist to middle-aged recluse
She claimed to be an early member and webmaster for Intersex Society of North America (ISNA). [47] An article she wrote appeared in the first edition of their newsletter Hermaphrodites With Attitude, [25] and she sometimes signed letters as a representative. [48] In 1994, she claimed she was moving to Tucson, Arizona. [35] Kiira’s “friend” Stephanie Alejandra Velasquez also claims to be from Tucson. In 1995-2001, Triea was doing computer work at Baltimore Substance Abuse Systems, Inc. [49] She has lived near Johns Hopkins for many years. [50] In 1997, she started signing posts with “Guitars and Vocals – ‘Sex Kosmologie’” [51] (an unsigned, unreleased band similar to Laura Albert’s defunct group Thistle). According to Triea, the Sex Kosmologie singer was named Jannelle Seryonsovin. [20] No online outlet seems to carry works by either Sun and Moon or Sex Kosmologie. [52] By the end of 1997, she used the affiliation of an organization she started, Coalition for Intersex Support Activism & Education (CISAE). [53] She went on to use this in letters to the editor, etc. [54] This “coalition” was little more than her website with anecdotes from others. It was never recognized as a non-profit and faded away after a few years. It was around this time that Triea began to get a lot of validation from J. Michael Bailey, who allowed Triea to join his closed SEXNET mailing list. She claimed to have lived in Finland [55] for over two years in 2002-2004, returning to set up her home recording studio, Treehouse Studios.
Sexual identities
In a paper she coauthored, she identified thus:
For instance, one of the authors (Kiira Triea) identifies as “intersexed lesbian female” while explicitely [sic] rejecting being simply labeled a “woman”, as this label implies a socio-medical / biological history which is quite different from the experiences of an intersexed female. [56]
However, this is just one of many ways she has identified, depending on the point she wants to make:
“But when I acquired a sense of sexuality I imagined myself first to be heterosexual because of the nature of my sexuality, then bisexual and finally “empirical lesbian” seemed to fit best. This was at age 32.” [16]
She claimed that at 17 she agreed to undergo feminizing surgery to create female genitals, but when she became sexually active for the first time, at age 32, her erotic orientation was toward women. [11] She claims to have been “too traumatized over body and sexual issues to attempt sexuality (my situation until age 36.” [4] She was firmly identifying as a lesbian for many years: “So I went with my mom to see my grandmother at the nursing home yesterday and my grandmother asked me if I had a boyfriend. Of course I replied that I didn’t because I was a lesbian but I was in a committed r’ship with another woman, and my mother just about hit me. She got this really uptight tone of voice and said “Well I would hardly call you a *lesbian*.” Meaning I guess that I am actually just your everyday garden variety Martian or something. Time to get out the “I *AM* a lesbian” button I guess. I had intended it’s use to be educational for straight guys, not my mother. You would think she would be used to this… I’ve not been sexually involved with a man in my entire life.” (emphasis mine) [57] She occasionally claimed bisexual interests when posting on bisexual forums: “I’m shy too but only bi in my fantasy life… and also the fantasy life of my mother. I am the only lesbian in Baltimore. I’m 37 and my mom treats me like I am 14.” [58]
However, Triea’s most remarkable shift has been from intersex lesbian separatist to heterosexual transkid as of 2007:
For instance, I am an adult former “transkid” and I am also technically intersex and my medical diagnosis would be something like “progestin affected female” so if I talk about medical aspects of that group of people with doctors and academics I would use that term to explain my etiology, I would speak their language. But socially, I am a heterosexual woman who was also raised as a boy until age 14 when I redefined my socio-sexual identity as female. Intersex people who redefine themselves to a more workable sex do so for the same reasons as HS transkids. But we all have to learn to communicate in the most effective way with the people who can help us better with our situation. So we have adopted the medical terminology which is used because it is the effective thing to do. (emphasis mine) [59]
Taking a page from the Laura Albert playbook, Triea moved from being an alleged intersex ally for “transkids” to being a “transkid” herself. As soon as Laura Albert started pretending like this, she got busted. I am not the first to point out that Triea’s adamant claims of not being transsexual are especially interesting in light of which “type” she was under her buddt Bailey’s classification scheme. Triea displayed many hallmarks of others who claim to have “autogynephilia”:
- Strong interest in technology (especially computers)
- Affinity for language
- Interest in music
- Hoarding and other compulsive fixations (in her case, computer code, electronics, and audio equipment)
- Exaggerated claims about accomplishments and importance
- Difficulty interacting with others
- Online trolling as a preferred method of interaction
- Use of aliases (sockpuppets) to bolster claims
- Attracted to women but claims an attraction to men
- A deeply felt fixation on and identification with young attractive transwomen
- A deep need for validation and attention from “authority” figures, especially academics
Triea lashed out at anyone who challenged the people who have validated her by promoting her work. That’s probably the way she was most like Laura Albert, who began lashing out, even at former supporters, when things began to unravel. It’s also notable that Triea has harshly slammed Laura Albert. This is a common theme in Triea’s life: slamming people who share remarkable similarities with her. The fluid identities, the blatant lies, the immersion in whatever she was fixated on at the moment, whether it was a country, a hobby, or a sexual identity… all of it raised serious concerns about her credibility. Denise Magner is, to put it bluntly, not to be believed. Yet she was still able to fool her supporters, who had ulterior motives for ignoring the truth about Triea.
Conclusion
“It would be better if anonymity were used as a stepping stone, rather than a rostrum for one’s fantasy life.”
— Kiira Triea [60]
Like Laura Albert, Triea downplayed all the fluid dates and names and outright fabrications as playing with identity or some sort of pseudo-academic attempt at subverting discourse, etc. She laterl blamed the lying on family problems, or Johns Hopkins, or her perceived enemies, or society,or drugs, etc. This overview obviously leaves readers with more questions than answers. It shows the danger of letting someone speak for others. As we saw with John Money and J. Michael Bailey, this kind of anonymized anecdotal report by proxy easily leads to abuse in service of ideology. We live in a day and age where legitimate scholars and researchers fact-check their stories and first-hand reports, and the more fantastic the story, the greater need for independent confirmation. Sadly, some people can’t be taken at their word like Money, Bailey, or Kiira Triea and her many “friends.” The Alice Dregers [61] and Simon LeVays [62] of the world will always take claims like Kiira’s at face value, unltimately undermining their own credibility when the truth inevitably comes out. Just ask everyone taken in by the JT LeRoy hoax. Triea’s compulsion ultimately hurt the very people who tried to help her most. It’s sad and pathetic, but too common among lazy academics who can’t take the time to confirm the most basic information in this “publish or perish” world.
Acknowledgement
Thanks to all who have contributed information to this report. This is only the start of a long process of debunking these ongoing “transkid” hoaxes. Other hoaxes have typically taken about five years from start to finish, like the “boy2woman” hoax that we finally got removed from the web in late 2006. If you have any information you’d like to share, please send it along so we can get this hoax settled once and for all.
Appendices
(click chart to enlarge)
GenderTalk transcript
Triea appeared on the radio show GenderTalk #250 with hosts Nancy Nangeroni and Gordene O. MacKenzie on March 20, 2000. Listen at the link above or read the Kiira Triea interview transcript.
Email addresses
Triea posted on USENET for about ten years from 1992 to 2002, which gives a good sense of her evolving interests.
Top-level domains used in approximate chronological order:
| Towson University (towson.edu) | (March 1992 – August 1994 / Summer 1995) | |
| tree@midget.towson.edu | March 17, 1992 – May 20, 1994 | 98 |
| tree@zeus.towson.edu | May 11, 1995 – July 16, 1995 | 6 |
| Johns Hopkins University (jhu.edu) | (January 1993 – August 1994) | |
| tree@syzygy.cs.jhu.edu | March 1, 1993 – April 20, 1994 | 56 |
| tree@cs.jhu.edu | January 10, 1993 – August 2, 1994 | 55 |
| tree@whatever.cs.jhu.edu | June 10, 1994 | 1 |
| tree@voronoi.cs.jhu.edu | July 27, 1994 – August 2, 1994 | 2 |
| tree@zebra.cs.jhu.edu | July 31, 1994 | 1 |
| tree@server.cs.jhu.edu | February 19, 1993 – June 15, 1993 | 7 |
| compu-net.socal.com SoCal.com, West Coast Computer Products, Culver City, CA | ||
| denise.tree@compu-net.socal.com | June 10, 1994 | 1 |
| Clark Internet Services, Inc, Columbia/Ellicott City, MD | ||
| kira@clark.net | October 13, 1994 – March 26, 1995 | 9 |
| ABSnet Internet Services, Inc. (abs.net) (later Charm Net, now DataPoint, Baltimore, MD) | ||
| kira@abs.net | September 16, 1995 – March 16, 1996 | 43 |
| Quantum Internet Services, Inc. Manchester, MD 21102 | ||
| triea@eclipse.qis.net | August 12, 1997 – December 14, 2002 | 322 |
| triea@qis.net | November 23, 1996 – January 14, 2000 | 608 |
| cisae@cisae.org | (referenced in 1997) cisae.org Coalition for Intersex Support Activism & Education (domain apparently owned, no site) | 1 |
| Sonic.net, Santa Rosa, CA Heike Boedeker | ||
| cisae@sonic.net | October 29 1997 – June 30, 1999 | 21 |
| Baltimore Substance Abuse Systems, Inc., Baltimore, MD | ||
| kiira-t@mail.bsasinc.org | June 12, 2001- August 22, 2001 | 17 |
| dtree@bsas.org | ||
| denise.bsasinc.org | ||
| treehouse.bsasinc.org | ||
| Paul Moscatt, Jr./Little Shop of Hardware, Baltimore, MD | ||
| kiira@ns1.2tough.com | March 17, 2003 | 2 |
| kiira@2tough.com | ||
| transkids.us | December 14, 2004 to present | |
| transkids@transkids.us | Created on Dec 17 2003 | |
| miscellaneous | ||
| uglogirl | ||
| CTCCOM.NET uglogirl | 66.152.232.29 (used in 2006) | |
| thenightair@email.com | kook archiver | |
| anon-23093 | Arika Aeirt Dec 6 1998 – Jun 2 1999 | |
| anon-22628 | ||
| gjb@csn.org Gisle J. Benediktsson | Gisle Benediktsson | |
| gjb@teal.csn.org | Gisle Benediktsson | |
| tree@midget.towson.edu | Gisle Benediktsson |
Her eBay name was kiira-t. One unhappy buyer put up a website about her at emdee.ath.cx/kiira/ (the victim is mdestiny @ comcast – net).
In 2007 she sold a lot of audio equipment and apparently took up sewing. Apparently, she’s not the most reliable seller:
- Sep-01-07 (Item 270132188912) Buyer gyroscorpian writes: “$93 ITEM NEVER RECEIVED – OVER 2 MONTHS NOW – WORST EBAY EXPERIENCE EVER!!!!!!!!”
- Aug-21-07 (Item 270127224608) Buyer jan-nana writes: “Seller said sewing machine i good condition.Arrived no power cord.PoorConditn”
- Jul-11-07 (Item 270132199413) Buyer dhj_at_nospam-dot-com writes: ” Took a while, packing protection marginal – luckily no damage. OK transaction.”
- Elna Sewing Machine Custom Cam/Disc # 05 9 April 2007
- Elna Sewing Machine Custom Cam/ Disc #02
- Elna Sewing Machine Custom Cam/ Disc #01
- 1 Pair/Premium 7 in./Gold Toledo Sewing Scissors/VGC !
- Complete Vintage Working Elna Supermatic Sewing Machine
- ELNA SUPERMATIC SEWING MACHINE MANUAL
- Vintage Pink-King Pinking Shears in Original Box LNew
- Womens DEXTER blue suede Leather MOC shoe 7.5 Made USA
- Vintage ELNA SUPERMATIC Sewing Machine PORTABLE Classic
- 18 Antique Glass Buttons 3/8″ Lavender NR
- Set of 16 Vintage Buttons Colorful Abalone Shell NR
- VINTAGE GRIFFON PINKING SHEARS – EXCELLENT CONDITION
- 12″ Gauss 2840 bass/keyboard/pa, very heavy (seller)
Associated personae
This section is in progress and will be significantly expanded.
Reykja K. Sigurdsson
Main article: Reykja K. Sigurdsson.
Woman of Icelandic heritage living in Colorado and active on USENET in 1992-1993. Friends with Gisle J. Benediktsson.
Gisle Benediktsson
Main article: Gisle J. Benediktsson.
Woman of Finnish heritage living in Colorado and active on USENET in 1992-1994. Friends with Reykja K. Sigurdsson. Triea wrote a lot of love poems to Gisle.
Cheryl Chase
Cheryl Chase is founder of Intersex Society of North America, and with Alice Dreger, is the chief architect of renaming intersex Disorders of Sex Development.
Chase and Triea have remarkable similarities in their life stories:
- Progestin-affected females
- Assigned male at age two
- Childhood surgical intervention
- Interest in foreign languages
- Computing and programming skills
- Lesbian
- Difficulty getting medical records
- “Breakdown” that led to activism
- Name change at start of activism
It’s amost as if Triea appropriated elements of Chase’s life story for her own, the way someone might appropriate information about a culture or language in order to pass herself off as part of that group.
Ariika Aeirt
Dr. Ariika Aeirt is an alter ego Triea has used.
“I am a former Baltimore City paramedic. We once brought in a young woman who had suffered a shotgon blast to the stomach. We had pulled her out of an ongoing gunfight and gotten MAST trousers on her and gotten her to Hopkins ER alive. At the ER they removed the MAST trousers and she died on the spot – of course. After her death a crash cart routine was enacted… it’s called CYA. A big city ER is a very busy place and every once in a while someone makes a very bad decision and then someone dies. This may have been what happened with Tyra Hunter, meaning that ER personel realized their neglegt too late
Dr. Ariika Aeirt”
LOL. “I blame-ah myself” Please don’t start calling yourself AGP Heike or you’ll totally screw up my AGP/wannabe gestalts.
BTW – are you and Ray pals now? The Clarke really *does* treat trannies “PRU style” there and I’m sure he Ken or Maxine will never listen to me if *I* draw that to their attention. vilpitomasti, Dr. Ariika Aeirt
Janelle Laren
“Janie” is one of Tree’s first trolling personae on transkids.us. See Janelle Laren
Stephanie Alejandra Velasquez
This is one of Triea’s favorite trolling personae. See Stephanie Alejandra Velasquez
Deni
This is one of Triea’s first trolling personae in 1998. See Deni
Jenni Niska
Jenni Niska was listed as secretary of CISAE.
Paul Napoleon Moscatt, Jr.
Owner of Little Shop of Hardware in Baltimore, where Triea occasionally does some work. Listed as host of the domain she’s used.
Candice Brown Elliott (aka Kay Brown, aka Cloudy, aka Sillyolme)
Major contributor on transkids.us under the name Cloudy. One of the self-proclaimed “homosexual transsexuals” who would not be diagnosed as such by proponents of that taxonomy. See Candice Brown Elliott.
Heike Boedeker (aka Heike Spreitzer)
Between 1998 and 2000 Heike Bödeker described herself as “Kiira’s partner” [19d] “This is what happens when one’s gf lives in Germany” April 25, 1998
- Michal Rachel Nahrnan (August 2000). Embodied Stories, Pragmatic Lives: Intersex Body Narratives on the Net.
- Both CISAE and GMSSG and EZKU used to be hosted on this domain.
- Wrote pro-autogynephilia piece in response to Becky Allison
- Wrote article on Native v. White gender variance with Triea
- http://www.sonic.net/~boedeker/ (now Heike’s mother’s site)
- Boedeker has gone to considerable effort to erase her presence from the net.
- boedeker@netcologne.de
Teresa Binstock
Binstock coauthored with Triea and Bödeker in 1998 (but was removed as an author eventually). She has written about autism and the etiology of transsexualism. See Teresa Binstock
Jenn Ross
Ross helped Tree develop the transkids.us hoax site in 2004. See Jenn Ross
Websites
- http://www.qis.net/~triea (1998 – 2002, defunct)
- http://www.sonic.net/~cisae (1999, defunct – also former home of Heike Boedeker site)
- http://www.2tough.com/~kiira/ (2001 – present, 2004 to present for site)
- http://transkids.us (December 2004 – present)
Images
Below: Kiira Triea, wannabe rocker.
Below: Kiira Triea, wannabe recording engineer.
Below: An undated photograph from either her first or second attempt at living as female.
Note: Triea has an advanced case of “internet disease,” with her most recent photo being about 10+ years old as she gets more reclusive. You can cut and paste the links below for a few additional images.
- http://www.2tough.com/~kiira/rec/images/hkiira.jpg
- http://www.2tough.com/~kiira/Kiira_vocals.jpg
- http://www.2tough.com/~kiira/cisae/images/attitude.gif (from Cowley, G. 1997. Gender Limbo. Newsweek, 19 May, 64-66.)
- http://www.manleylabs.com/images/gallery/n_kiira.jpg
- http://www.2tough.com/~kiira/kiira-caster.jpg
Lots of shots of her electronic and audio equipment, though:
- http://www.2tough.com/~kiira/rec/studio1.jpg
- http://www.2tough.com/~kiira/rec/studio2.jpg
- http://www.2tough.com/~kiira/rec/studio3.jpg
- http://www.2tough.com/~kiira/rec/studio4.jpg
- http://www.2tough.com/~kiira/rec/images/prima_d.jpg
- http://www.2tough.com/~kiira/rec/images/amps.jpg
- http://www.2tough.com/~kiira/rec/images/preamp1.jpg
- http://www.2tough.com/~kiira/rec/images/tps0.jpg
References
1. Denise Tree (June 3, 1993). Obtaining personal medical records from military hospital. misc.consumers
“I too have been unable to obtain my medical records (concerning birth and pre-natal care) from the Navy. I was born on Clarke A.F.B. [sic] and the Navy states repeatedly that my medical records were lost, and I know my sponsor’s SSN. A lawyer friend has been unable to help.”
2. Denise M. Tree (January 25, 1993). Linux News #12. comp.os.linux.announce
3. Kira Triea (1996). “The Choice… The Awakening…” Intersex Voices. Retrieved December 7, 1988.
4. Kiira Triea (October 30, 1998). Intersex 101. soc.motss
“I am a former client of the Psychohormonal Research Unit at Johns Hopkins Hospital. […] many IS people are simply too traumatized over body and sexual issues to attempt sexuality (my situation until age 36. I am 38. But for those who do express sexuality… most of us are lesbians or bisexual.”
5. Kiira Triea (January 25, 1999). Dykes raising sons. soc.women.lesbian-and-bi
“I did my best to exclude men from my existence between the age of 17 and about 26 or so (1977-1986). I lived in the Berkeley Women’s Music Collective and played some with Bebe K’Roche (as on Olivia Records) and I was awfully damned happy to live in an environement where my aversion to men was completely accepted.”
6. Hank Hyena (December 16, 1999). The micropenis and the giant clitoris. Salon
“In Baltimore, intersexual Kiira Triea, 35, claims her genitalia “look like crap” because doctors treated her like an “exotic lab rat.” Born with in-between organs, she was raised as a boy until doctors decided to feminize her at puberty. To accomplish this, they hacked off her enormous and sensitive clitoris and they surgically created for her a rudimentary vagina. A full-time anti-surgery activist now, Triea directs an online support group for intersexuals worldwide.”
[Taking the date of publication and claimed age, there’s a 95% chance Triea claimed to be born in 1964 and 5% chance for 1963.]
7. Louise D. Palmer (December 9, 1999). Hermaphrodites Press Surgeons to Quit Gender Adjustment of Infants. Newhouse News Service (wire service)
8. Nancy Nangeroni and Gordene O. MacKenzie (March 20, 2000). GenderTalk #250. Minute 66:00 ff. Full Kiira Triea interview transcript.
“It was diagnosed, but I was born in 1960 in the Philippine Islands. I’m a Navy brat, so you know, one of those not-so-rare instances where I was treated outside of the treatment methodology, and kind of fell through the cracks until I was 14.”
9. Michelle Morgan LeFay Holmes (January, 2000). The Doctor Will Fix Everything: Intersexuality in Contemporary Culture. Concordia University
“Kiira Triea, who was assigned male at birth but reassigned female at age 14 when she experienced a feminising puberty…”
10. Morgan Holmes (2002). Rethinking the Meaning and Management of Intersexuality. Sexualities, Vol. 5, No. 2, 159-180
“Kiira Triea, who was born in the mid-1960s and assigned male, but was diagnosed with progesterone-induced female pseudo-hermaphroditism and treated in the mid-through-late-1970s by John Money and his colleagues at Johns Hopkins…”
11. John Colapinto (December 11, 1997). The True Story of John/Joan. The Rolling Stone, 54-97.
Kira Triea was assigned as a boy at age 2 and did not learn of her intersexuality until puberty, when she began to menstruate through her phallus. She was a patient of Dr. Money’s at the Johns Hopkins Psychohormonal Research Unit from age 14 to 17; this was in the mid-1970s, concurrent with John Theissen. They have never met, but Triea’s story bears striking parallels to his. […] At 17 she agreed to undergo feminizing surgery to create female genitals, but when she became sexually active for the first time, at age 32, her erotic orientation was toward women.
12. Kira D. Triea (April 20, 1998). aiii I cut my hair… alt.support.srs
13. Kiira Triea (August 6, 1999). Your First Amp? alt.guitar.amps
“I had to play in the basement when no one was home because my mother and my sisters thought I had lost my mind. Next summer of 1975 I turned 15 and got a summer job.”
14. Analee Newitz (July 27, 1999). They Wrecked My Genitals! gettingit.com
“Chase’s fellow activist Kira Triea says she was raised as a boy until she turned 13 and began to menstruate. Her frightened parents took her to Johns Hopkins. Under extreme duress, she was given a clitoridectomy and what she calls “a crude vaginoplasty, an artificial vagina made from a piece of skin on my arm. Basically it’s a bunch of scar tissue and a hole.” Triea was asexual until she reached 32, when she fell in love with a woman.”
15. Kira D. Triea (December 9, 1997). Sex Reassignment and Feminism. soc.feminism
“BTW – It is misstated in the article that I had vaginoplasty at age 17… it was 14 after a period of 4 months in which I was tracked for testosterone treatment and phalloplasty.”
16. Intersex Society of North America (July 12, 1998). John/Joan redux in Pediatrics. Press release.
17. Kira D. Triea (April 23, 1998). Being there (defining Transsexualism). alt.support.srs
18. Kiira Triea (August 27, 2001). 3″ XJ lift questions. rec.autos.makers.jeep+willys
Self-describes as an “off-road motorhead” in a 1988 XJ Limited: “My mother needs to drive this XJ with no highway glitches at all – it gets driven from N. Minnessota to Baltimore MD.”
19. Kiira Triea (April 24, 1999). Take Our Daughters to Work Day. soc.women.lesbian-and-bi
20. Kiira Triea (September 5, 1998). Eggcarton Question! rec.audio.pro
21. Kiira Triea (September 8, 1998). Eggcarton Question! rec.audio.pro
22. Kiira Triea (February 2, 2002). I love my Langevin DVC (was Re: Royer’s MXL 2001 Tube Mod) rec.audio.pro
23. Kiira Triea (June 15, 2001). Yet Another “What If” Mic Collection Thread. rec.audio.pro
24. Kira D. Triea (April 18, 1998). having done it young … alt.support.srs
25. Denise Tree (January 1, 1993). Linux News #9. comp.os.linux
If you have praise, criticisms, suggestions, virtual beer or pizza or postcards send to:
tree@midget.towson.edu
Denise Tree
348 Ilchester Ave.
Baltimore, MD. 21218
26. Denise Tree (January 10, 1993). Linux News #10. comp.os.linux.announce
“tree@cs.jhu.edu ( a real special thank you to hometown Activist Bill Bogstad, at J.H.U., for this account, no more will “less” be my news reader)!”
27. Kira Triea (1994). The Awakening. Hermaphrodites With Attitude, Volume 1, Number 1, Winter 1994.
28. Denise Tree (March 1, 1993). information tidbit requested. alt.transgender
29. Kira Triea (1997). Power, Orgasm, and the Psychohormonal Research Unit. Chrysalis, 23-24.
30. Tracy Baim (September 10, 1997). Snyde & Sneak. Outlines
31. Denise Tree (June 21, 1992). GCC2.11c stdlib.h. comp.os.linux
32. Denise M. Tree (January 25, 1993). Linux News #12. comp.os.linux.announce
33. Denise Michele Tree (April 24, 1993). Female orgasm, yet again. alt.sex
34. Kira Triea (1993). Intersex Newsletter/Mailing list. Quoted in E.C. Bryant (August 17, 1993). Intersexuality mailing list. soc.bi
35. Kira D. Triea (November 25, 1993). Gender discussion. alt.transgender
36. Kira Denise Tree (June 10, 1994). 20something swm seeks sf for relationship (midwest). alt.personals.ads
37. Kira Tree (September 29, 1994). Moving to Tucson: Need an IP! az.general
38. Kiira Triea (November 22, 1997). SWLAB-MJG Facts and a proposal. soc.women.lesbian-and-bi
39. Kira D. Triea (June 13, 1998). Todd Rundgren. alt.guitar
40. Kira D. Triea (November 11, 1997). The Myth of Walking Away. soc.women.lesbian-and-bi
“I changed the spelling of my first name to Kiira because recently I found out some very nice things about the first two years I spent in Finland.”
31. Kiira Triea (October 11, 2001). Can Cycling replace a car without problem?uh, winter? rec.bicycles.soc
“Winter? What winter? Sorry, I’m from Finland? :-)”
42. Kira D. Triea (May 12, 1998) Beaulieu power repair question. rec.arts.movies.production
“Kiira is Finnish… as am I. :-)”
43. Kira D. Triea (July 17, 1998) Blessings. rec.audio.pro
44. Kiira Triea (December 25, 1999). Logic, Math and Kiira’s Bowling Story. soc.women.lesbian-and-bi
“That laughing. The Gym Class Laughing. It’s all the fault of those ball sports. I fixed them… I ran track. I got to hear that gym teacher say “If you beat Kiira you get an A”. Ha! My 9:47 2 mile time at the Melrose Games stood for 12 years as a national record. Kiira – Finnish and proud”
45. Kiira Triea (March 8, 2002). Old Atala: guesses on age? rec.bicycles.tech
“my teenaged years as a bike assembler”
46. See Kiira’s posts at rec.crafts.metalworking in 2001 and 2002.
47. Kira D. Triea (Jun 30 1997). Intersex: what does it mean? soc.women.lesbian-and-bi
“I do the web pages for isna”
48. Kira Triea (April 14, 1997) Letter to editor. Time
“As a former intersexed client of Johns Hopkins Hospital, I am pleased to see the true story and outcome of “John/Joan’s” treatment. The erroneously published outcome of his case has stood for more than 20 years as “proof” that gender is acquired, that sex and gender–and by implication, sexuality–can be surgically imposed upon children who are genitally nonstandard, regardless of the cause. I assure readers that this surgical treatment modality was not confined to “the 1960s and early 1970s”: it continues today for approximately five children per day of the perhaps 1 in 2,000 children born with some anomaly of biological sex differentiation. The ramification of this experiment is not that “dozens of other boys may have been needlessly castrated.” It is that thousands of children had, and continue to have, their bodies and their lives mutilated and traumatized by unconsented surgical, hormonal and psychological medical interventions. KIRA TRIEA Intersex Society of North America Baltimore, Maryland”
49. Kira Denise Tree (September 27, 1995). Workstation resellers? misc.forsale.computers.workstation
50. Kira D. Triea (April 20, 1998). new person. soc.women.lesbian-and-bi
“I live in Hampden. It’s like a giant trailer park with no trailers!”
51. Kira D. Triea (April 7, 1997). Female guitarists: stand up and be counted. rec.music.makers.guitar
52. Kira D. Triea (October 22, 1997). Best Female Guitarists. rec.music.makers.guitar
53. Kira D. Triea (January 20, 1998). Gender therapy – An Anonymous Submission. soc.feminism
54. Kiira Triea (February 28, 2000). Letter to the editor. Salon
55. Finland 2003
56. Heike Bödeker & Kiira Triea (April 15, 1998). Native vs. White Sex Cosmologies: Sex and Gender Variability vs. Variance in Inter- vs. Intracultural Perspective. Yumtzilob
57. Kira D. Triea (April 20, 1998). The Wrath of Mom. soc.women.lesbian-and-bi
58. Kira D. Triea (April 21, 1998). new person. soc.women.lesbian-and-bi
“I am the only lesbian in Baltimore. I’m 37 and my mom treats me like I am 14.”
59. Kiira Triea (2007) Questions about transsexuality. transkids.us
60. Kira D. Triea (November 27, 1993). Hi. alt.transgender
61. Alice Domurat Dreger, ed. (1999). Intersex in the Age of Ethics.Hagerstown, MD: University Publishing Group. ISBN-13: 978-1555721008 (reprint of Triea’s Power, Orgasm, and the Psychohormonal Research Unit at pp.141-144.)
62. Simon LeVay and Sharon McBride Valente (2005). Human Sexuality, 2nd edition. Sinauer Associates, Inc. ISBN-13: 978-0878934652
Stephanie Alejandra Velasquez on”autogynephilia“
Stephanie Alejandra Velasquez is the nom de’ plume of a poster on the “autogynephilia” support group. Like many on that tiny list, she used to post on USENET and on some of the online lists devoted to theory. She is a friend of Kiira Triea and like Triea has used many online aliases.
She wrote an online review of The Man Who Would Be Queen by J. Michael Bailey which was censored during the Amazon purge of negative book reviews in early 2004. A saved version appears below:
Some stuff wrong… but something important right
May 4, 2003
Reviewer: Stephanie Velasquez from USA
Trannyland is having a collective cow over Michael Bailey .
Ever since autophallometrics went out of style as a part of the evaluative process involving transsexuals there has been a kind of conceit at play that both acknowledged and simultaneously denied that there did exist two definite poles of biologically male people who would want to redefine their sex identity. The problem was, one of these groups, the ones Bailey calls homosexual transsexuals, were completely invisible, their lives and stories subsumed and appropriated by a social understanding in which we appear only theoretically in the “Transsexual Discourse”. I have no complaint that I am being misrepresented by Michael Bailey as it is an improvement to having my life colonized and “disappeared” by autogynephilic transsexuals and the strange, to me at least, notion that the desire to change sex is all about deep internal feelings, passages and conundrums. Despite its flaws, his book is the only book on the subject that allows me to see some glimpse of my life as a teenaged trans-kid runaway.
In my opinion Michael Bailey gets it right when he writes that redefining sex identity is part of a process that makes sense in an overall social/sexual and in his view, possibly biological context, for obviously feminine androphilic transsexuals and that it is part of a dynamic that involves sexuality, rather than based on some deeply felt, but unshared, internal ideation that one is actually a “woman”.
Where I feel he goes very wrong is in making sweeping generalizations about sexuality based on his contact with a very marginalized population. It is hard to get much further down the social ladder than being a Latina transsexual sex worker. Maybe it would be much better to save the observations about homosexual transsexuals being especially suited for prostitution until such time as we are able to allow children to grow into their lives with understanding and support, rather than requiring them to prostitute themselves in an all or nothing gambit to become complete.
Stephanie Alejandra Velasquez
Velasquez claims she was an “extreme” transkid. She seeks to cast herself as the outermost or ultimate type of gender-variant person, as a strategy to rob others of their subject position in what she likes to call the “Transsexual Discourse.”
She and I would certainly agree that assimilated women who are not public about their transitions are grossly under-represented, and most of them would like to keep it that way at this time.
Velasquez seems to like the “autogynephilia” group because they affirm her belief that she is “more transsexual” than they are (or the “other pole” of this constructed “extreme”).
Velasquez is kind of like those people who claim they are an extreme homosexual because they had sex a few years earlier than anyone else they know, and who claim they are more gay than people who came out later in life.
I have had the pleasure of meeting and corresponding with plenty of transkids and their supportive parents who are way more “extreme” than Velasquez, who has set age 14 as her personal de facto standard for “extremeness.” Liminality of this sort is common among transwomen, who frequently use their own life trajectory as the yardstick of validity.
As time goes on, more children will have understanding parents like Just Evelyn. Governments will be more accommodating like The Netherlands. Oprah will have more 5- and 11-year old transkids on.
As more and more children and parents have access to information and resources at earlier and earlier life stages, the runaways, loners, and social outcasts like Velasquez will become increasingly rare. And that’s a good thing. Most of these people don’t play well with others and would prefer to heckle from the sidelines than to collaborate and look for common ground that will help everyone. The sooner our children don’t grow up so damaged, the sooner society will no longer see us as an “extreme” type of anything.
Deni
View profile
More options Oct 17 1998, 11:00 pm
Newsgroups: alt.support.srs
From: anon-22…@anon.twwells.com (Deni)
Date: 1998/10/18
Subject: A hello
Hello, I would like to introduce myself and say hello to this newsgroup. I had SRS in 1977 at the Johns Hopkins Gender Identity Clinic. I hadleft home at age 15 and used estrogen on my own – and Hopkins thought that I was a year older at the time.
I was told for a while that i was the youngest person to undergo SRS but I am not at all sure how true that is.. the surgeon I had is quite old and doing IVF now and things were rather weird at the GIC.
I am hoping to find other people who were at Hopkins GIC before it closed in )I believe) 1979 ??? Or also other Ts people who had surgery w/ Dr. Jones .. or not (meaning at the PRU but not by Jones/Whalen/Momey). Or also peopele who had sureger at an early age (before 18).
I am curious and very alone, have been completely closeted sinces the 70’s. I work as a therapist w/ autistic children.
I would also like to talk to other women who has surgery over 20 years ago.
thanks… Deni
Deni
View profile
More options Oct 18 1998, 11:00 pm
Newsgroups: alt.support.srs
From: anon-22…@anon.twwells.com (Deni)
Date: 1998/10/19
Subject: A hello
In article <362A41B3.5…@erols.com> you wrote:
: It’s a funny thing, you posting at this time. Some of my family members
: were just asking about the program that Johns Hopkins used to have. Do
: you know the reason they closed it down? I would be interested in
: hearing from those who are alumni of that particular program. I have
: one VERY skeptcal brother and a couple of cousins who seem to never want
: to let this be and are always trying to “cure” me.
It closed down because of internal politics at Hopkins. From what I remember of what I saw, SRS was dispensed almost purely on the basis of passability – this was great for me but not so great for the confused DQs and TVs who also had surgery and then discovered they could not orgasm any longer. I have learned all this since I was there. Once I got from them what I wanted I left and never went back. It was not a good place. Mark McHugh, the current head of psych there, accepted the job stating that it was his mission to shut down the GIC and put an end to sex change surgery.
Deni
Deni
View profile
More options Jan 17 1999, 12:00 am
Newsgroups: alt.support.srs
From: anon-22…@anon.twwells.com (Deni)
Date: 1999/01/17
Subject: “Being a Woman”
Emi Melissa Briet wrote:
> *sigh*
> Again with this…
> Ask GGs someday how much they like having to take 30 minutes on their
> appearance! Sure they may like the results, but I doubt very many like
> the fact that they feel they have to do so much to get the look.
Women do not _need_ to use makeup to proclaim their sex however, they
will be accepted as female with or without makeup.
> Would you say that a GG who decides not to specifically style her hair
> or decides one day not to put on make up has “flaws” in her
> presentation? Would you question that maybe she’s FtM and doesn’t
> know it?
Well her mother might complain – her friends might ask if she is depressed or admonish her to “fix herself up” and pay attention to her appearance. This is especially true of women who are attractive – they certainly do not need to use makeup or wear dresses to establish their sex identity but there is often social preasure for them to conform. This is a different dynamic than that facing _most_ m2f TSs.
>Obviously MtF’s need at least a makeup job to hide a beard if it’s not
>electro-removed, and FtM’s with significant breast growth need to bind
>them, but other than that, should we really have to worry that much
>about our presentation? We’re men and women, not streotypes of them!
So that’s it? A little makeup for M2Fs, some breast binding for FtMs? It seems to me that you are contradicting yourself because if you:
>When I see myself in my mind, I am female. I self-identify as a
>woman. That is how I know I *am* a woman, despite the fact that my
>body is male.
then you would not need to hide your beard. I think it entails a great deal more than just the acquisition of female aspect – but that is a definite starting point if you have been socialized as a male and have a male body. For whatever reason, M2F TSs want female bodies and female social acceptance. You may see yourself as any number of identities in your mind but humans are social creatures and the way that other people see you is a part of your identity too.
I can’t help but to perceive your assertion that you *are* a woman, despite your male body, as an expression of delusion or male privledge. If you go to a girl’s bar will you be perceived as a butch lesbian, a man or a transsexual? It is a bit paradoxical but you would need to be _very_ feminine as an M2F to be accepted as a butch lesbian or lesbian at all. I consider acceptance by lesbians to be pretty much the acid test for “passing”.
I’ve only written here once or twice. I use a friends computer. Next month I am 20 years post-op. I had surgery at 17 at Hopkins GIC in 1977 and transitioned when I was 14 YO.
Deni
Deni
View profile
More options Feb 15 1999, 12:00 am
Newsgroups: alt.support.srs
From: anon-22…@anon.twwells.com (Deni)
Date: 1999/02/15
Subject: amazing…
In article <7a9r25$ue…@nnrp1.dejanews.com> you wrote:
: The “bitter and angry” people who run around this group didn’t bother saying
: anything to Chaundra about being “careful” and “don’t be too naive” or
: anything of that sort. I like to think of Chaundra as both an IQ test and a
: humanity test.
Humanity test? Now there’s a paradoxical little phrase that speaks volumes. Did you ever stop to consider (it’s also called “empathy” in this context) how people might feel who have been deceived into offering their sincere support? Will they be pleased to have gained membership in *your* club, to have passed your test? Or will they feel a bit more cautious next time around?
In my 24 years post-transition I’ve really never encountered the phenomenon of women constructing IQ tests for other women. Most women generally refrain from such arrogant and hierarchal behavior.
Deni
Deni
View profile
More options May 11 1999, 11:00 pm
Newsgroups: alt.support.srs
From: anon-22…@anon.twwells.com (Deni)
Date: 1999/05/12
Subject: SRS: the good *AND* the bad
This is a hard question to answer honestly but I think it is a good one to ask. I had surgery when I was very young at the GIC at Johns Hopkins, 1977, and they did a very poor job there.
Best things
1. No longer needed to worry about getting srs.
2. healed very quickly
Worst things
1. anorgasmic
2. appearance would not fool a blind celibate gay priest
a. no labia
b. no clitoris
c. no introitus (just looks like a hole in my perineum)
d. mostly scar tissue from urethral opening to opening of “vagina”
e. ugly scar from graft
3. no depth, 2″ maybe, if I would try hard with a small dilator
4. many UTIs from unprotected urethral opening
5. Would not be able to have sex with men if I wanted
etc.
Despite these problems I feel I did the right thing by transitioning extremely young (and on my own). I could have waited 10 years for better surgical techniques perhaps but instead I bypassed male puberty and did not pay for surgery. I am in a weird position though because I “pass” perfectly but my genitals do not.
Deni
Deni
View profile
More options Jun 27 1999, 11:00 pm
Newsgroups: alt.support.srs
From: anon-22…@anon.twwells.com (Deni)
Date: 1999/06/28
Subject: Reversing SRS? a message for Alan
Reply to author | Forward | Print | Individual message | Show original | Report this message | Find messages by this author
miche…@michelle.org> you wrote:
: The original SOC required a period of RLT before HRT, and there are
: still places around (e.g., the Clarke and many European clinics) where
: that is still a requirement.
: Some therapists have required their clients to wear skirts all the
: time, to wear their nails long and wear nail polish, and even to wear
: breast forms–and not too long ago at that.
In 1977 when I had surgery at Hopkins GIC one was required to pass very very well and behave in very gender-appropriate fashion for a female. I worked as a waitress as I was very young – they fell all over themselves getting me to surgery because they wanted results. This also happened with some very passable people who really should not have opted for surgery though – they got all caught up in seeking approval and “making the grade” so to speak only to discover post-op that they were very unhappy and being a DQ or TV was not so fun anymore.
This is ancient history now I know but just a few years ago a very passable person came out to me (not knowing my history) and told me how her therapist asked her to try wearing dresses, makeup, etc. and urged her to quit her job working in a bicycle shop. This was in spite of the fact she looked just fine with no makeup and jeans and t-shirt and had been living on her own RLT for three years since age 18 before she went to get her letters. This therapist had also told her that “I am the only game in town, you have to go through me to get approval”. So it’s probably not a bed of roses for everyone even today even though from the accounts I read when I lurk here it sure seems to have improved.
Deni
Deni
View profile
More options Feb 23 2000, 12:00 am
Newsgroups: alt.support.srs
From: anon-22…@anon.twwells.com (Deni)
Date: 2000/02/23
Subject: TS/IS dynamics
Hi Julie,
I have posted here a very few times and I also know Kiira in real life. I went to a lecture she gave at a college in 1997 because I knew from her published writing that she was also at Hopkins (I had surgery at Hopkins when I was very young in 1977) and I had never met anyone else who was there.
First though I really want to say how honest and real your previous post, talking about surgical results and your girlfriend, seemed to me. I think that you hit the nail on the head. My surgical results are quite bad, but it is something that I CHOSE to do. Kiira doesn’t tell the half of it, Hopkins is a terrible place, but I could have walked away and did not. I chose not to. I have the peace that comes from needing something, going after and paying a certain price and living with my choices. Kiira and the few other IS people I have met through her do not have that in their lives at all. From what I have learned, most of them were not asked anything AT ALL about what they wanted or needed.
Julie wrote:
:Karen A. wrote:
:> Also why would that *have* to be the case for intersexed infants
:> that are operated on (IO am not advocating that they are
:> operated on)?
I find it appalling that you would even ask such an insensitive question.
Look at it this way. I’m a surgeon and I don’t like the way you look, or your genitals. I’ve decided that you should be a man and since it is 2019 and laws have been passed giving all surgeons UTTER and COMPLETE control over sexual anatomy, it’s off to the OR for surgical re-reassignment as a male. You will be very pleased because phalloplasty is VERY effective now!
:> BTW, the adult TS’s who went to certain doctors 30 years ago got
:> *exctly* that type of surgery…
: No, they didn’t. I know a number of 30+ year post-ops and they
: had SRS that was much better than what those girls get.
I had the same surgeon as Kiira (and also the boy David Reimer who has been in the news lately). He sucks. But *I* walked into Hopkins and *I* TOLD THEM I wanted surgery. It doesn’t matter whether my surgery is better or worse than Kiira’s (it’s better). What matters is that it is WHAT I WANTED. I determined at a really young age that I was a primary transsexual, wanted surgery desperately and DECIDED to do whatever was needed to accomplish my goals. I lied (about my age), broke the law (was a runaway, obtained hormones without a doctor) and got what I needed. Not only do I not regret it, I’m proud of it.
Karen A where did you get the idea that being a women means being a victim? Do you see girls and women in literature or on television acting like victims? Which women do you admire? Are they victims?
Deni
Alejandra Alvarado
“Alejandra/Suki”
I have previously discussed a troll using the name “Stephanie Alejandra Velasquez” online. As with many online kooks and trolls, this persona is fond of sockpuppets and hangs out on an “autogynephilia” group moderated by Lisanne Anderson aka “Lori Anjou”.
On that group, “Alejandra” claims to be a poor widdle down and out Latina “transkid” who had it real tough when she transitioned 30 years ago.
Compare the Asian persona this allegedly Latina/Native American “transkid” named “Alejandra” created on this same account:
Note that “Suki” even praises “Alejandra.”
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/autogynephiliasupport/message/4231
Message 4231
From: “aishiteru1961” < aishiteru1961@y… >
Date: Tue Nov 9, 2004 2:51 pm
Subject: IntroductionHello. I have been reading AGP-support since June of this year with great interest. I am a 42 year old Japanese transsexual woman raised in Japan, southeast asia and the USA – I transitioned and had surgery here in the early 80s with my parents blessing. I have only met and socialized with primary transsexuals or homosexual transsexuals myself though I am not really completely like them at all. I believe my transsexuality was motivated by autogynephilia so extreme that I had no attracion to women at all. Because I passed easily and transitioned young at 19, I originally believed I was like the HS transsexuals of SE Asia with whom I have often been friends – with the advantage of wealthy parents and good education. The more I learned of myself and of them however the more I came to understand that there is a profound difference. Now I understand those differences in terms of Dr. Blanchard’s theories. I have been particularly moved by the insights of several writers here, primarily Kendra and Alejandra Velasquez.
I believe that AG is tremendously variable in contrast to homosexual transsexuality. It is such a peculiar form of sexuality that it places severe spiritual and emotional tests on our development as humans. I believe from observing American autogynephilic transsexuals that many, possibly most, do not do a particularly noble job of coping with that challenge.
Suki
Below is a note sent in response to Kendra Blewitt (in italics). Here, “Suki” talks about how she misses “Alejandra” and finds honesty admirable.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/autogynephiliasupport/message/4272
Message 4272 of 4885
From: “aishiteru1961” < aishiteru1961@y… >
Date: Mon Nov 15, 2004 10:46 am
Subject: Re: Introduction
Hi Kendra,
Thanks for the compliment. It is a pity that Alejandra no longer posts here. I miss her.
I also. However Ican understand why she and her friends left.
I believe that AG is tremendously variable in contrast to homosexual transsexuality.
I agree.
I must admit I envy them sometimes as their group is very alike in many ways. If you are a different form of AGP however you will have very few people in the world to relate to on the subject, if you ever come to an internal understanding of yourself.
It is such a peculiar form of sexuality that it places severe spiritual and emotional tests on our development as humans. I believe from observing American autogynephilic transsexuals that many, possibly most, do not do a particularly noble job of coping with that challenge.
True, they are almost all in deep denial about it. I don’t know why. Yes, I would like to have a female brain too. But I would rather be honest.
Your honesty is admirable.
Your English is very good, Suki. The two languages are so different that this is an admirable accomplishment. There is no way in the world that I could learn Japanese.
Oh, English is the second language to many people in Asia and especially Japan. I went to school in England and the United States. One of my primary interests is linguistics btw – I have worked as a translator.
Suki
Finally, we have this note that came out shortly after the transkids site went live. Apparently “Alejandra” forgot to change screen names and posted as “Suki”. I am sure it’s difficult to keep all those sockpuppets straight, especially when you are an unstable kook and suddenly become agitated as “Alejandra” does below.http://groups.yahoo.com/group/autogynephiliasupport/message/4420
Message 4420
From: “aishiteru1961” < aishiteru1961@y… >
Date: Sat Dec 18, 2004 6:48 pm
Subject: omg this is patheticThis is the most pathetic thing I’ve ever seen. I had no idea they were going to go this nuts.
“The Evil Man” … is the guy we bought our web site from who owns a small ISP and sells used computers and websites to local bands, bookstores… and us. He’s very sweet and hires GLBT folks at his shop. The “evil Arizona Connection” is um, Godaddy.com where people buy domains from??? I thought these people knew about this stuff it’s ridiculous for me to have to explain.
Kiira Triea… the Kiira in like 5 books about intersex, one of the 3 founders of ISNA and also interviewed in Time, Newsweek and Rolling Stone. It’s uh… it’s really just a bit of a stretch to make her out to be a evil chaser since she’s been doing support work for 12 years for intersex and ts people.
There’s me, who several people know in 3D and phone, and Alex, Gogo and Inoue… age 19 to 22.
Want to see why no one wants their personal info on our website? Look at the behavior of these people.
I see what the problem is here – these people are looking into their worst nightmare… having their disgusting behavior still more documented.
Alejandra Velasquez
Legal troubles for Denise Tree (aka Kiira Triea) expose more lies [archive]