Virginia Prince (November 23, 1912 – May 2, 2009), c. 1954. Photo c/o University of Victoria. Virginia Prince, who was born one hundred and four years ago today, “has to be considered a central figure in the early history of the contemporary transgender political movement,” Susan Stryker wrote in “Transgender History.” And this is “in spite of her open disdain for homosexuals, her frequently expressed negative opinion of transsexual surgeries, and her conservative stereotypes regarding masculinity and femininity.” In 1952, Prince (who, at the time, identified specifically as a transvestite, i.e., a cross-dressing man; in 1968, she began identifying as a woman) published two issues of “Transvestia,” which Stryker calls “arguably the first overtly political transgender publication in U.S. history.” The periodical, which was revived in 1960 and published until 1980, “made a plea for the social toleration of transvestism, which it was careful to define as a practice of heterosexual men, distinct from homosexual drag.” In the early 1960s, Prince founded the Foundation for Personality Expression, later known as the Society for the Second Self (or Tri-Ess), “as a platform to promote her personal philosophy about gender…that cross-dressing allowed men to express their ‘full personality’ in a world that required a strict division between the masculine and the feminine.” Despite her conservative views—Tri-Ess membership, for example, was limited to heterosexual men—Prince “undoubtedly played a key role in founding…an inclusive, expansive, progressive, and multifaceted transgender movement.” After beginning to live full-time as a woman in 1968, Prince focused her efforts on winning civil rights for those undergoing gender affirming processes. Virginia Prince died on May 2, 2009; she was ninety-six. #lgbthistory #HavePrideInHistory #VirginiaPrince