#tamara rees

[gwydionmisha]

Five trans historical icons you've probably never heard of

Bigoted rhetoric claims that being trans is a recent fad, but these historical figures prove that trans people have always been with us.

[franciswhetsel]

THE PARATROOPER WHO TURNED STRIPPER AFTER JUMPING BEHIND ENEMY LINES IN EUROPE, GI HAS SEX OPERATION, TURNS INTO WOMAN AND DISPLAYS 'HER' FIGURE TO CURIOUS BURLESQUE AUDIENCES BY DAN CHRISTOPHER Back in 1943, a lithe young figure pulled a rip-cord after dropping from a big Army plane and danced in the air, dangling from a parachute. There was a war in Europe and Robert Rees, a many-times decorated paratrooper, was jumping into enemy soil. Now 12 years later, the same figure does a considerable amount of dancing in a different setting. Instead of a ripcord, a G-string is now involved. And now the figure belongs to a young lady named Tamara Rees whose transition from paratrooper to stripper is one of the strangest chapters in the numerous sex-change operations in recent years. Unlike some others who have changed sex in a flurry of international publicity, Tamara describes herself as "a person who always was a woman and who has finally found the means of fitting properly into my own sex." Raised as a boy, then a man, Tamara never was either.

She was one of the tragic group called hermaphrodites, belonging physically to both sexes, but mentally only to one.

"It wasn't until three years ago that I had full medical proof of my conditions," Tamara explains. "I was what is technically called a pseudo-hermaphrodite. There is a person who appears to belong to one sex on the surface, but who actually has the interior physical characteristics of another."

After a sex operation in Europe, Tamara returned to the States and went into burlesque on a dare from friends.

"It was after I had done some lectures on psychology and sex that the idea occurred," Tamara relates. "I had appeared at the University of California and later before some private and American Legion groups to lecture.

"Then a friend talked me into appearing at the Alameda Theater, a dolly house in Sacramento. Believe me when I say that it was a real bump and grind education."

(continued in reblog)

[crumblingpages]

1955: Tamara Rees

"Will Lecture - Tamara Rees, paratrooper turned 'woman' by sex surgery, poses on the stage of a burlesque theater in Los Angeles with her new husband, J.E. Courtland, III. Couple will lecture on 'straight psychology.'"

~From Breckenridge American (Breckenridge, Tex.), July 29, 1955