Jim Beaux
02-02-2009, 02:12 PM
Born Sheila Sullivan in Milwaukee in 1951, Lou Sullivan died, from AIDS complications, as a male homosexual in San Francisco in 1991.
It is difficult to get an evaluation of the true importance of Lou Sullivan in TS history as he appears to have been little known outside of the GLBT community of those days.
However his story illustrates the diagnostic model for transsex that prevailed at that period, and his battle against this.
Lou was an activist on a number of fronts and had no qualms about revealing, to relevant parties, that he had been born in a female body, or that he was a male homosexual.
Lou in his own words, when he was 22. “I know I can get what I want now – to fantasize is no longer enough. Before it was beyond my dreams. It was the worst perversion that I wished I had a penis, to fuck a boy, to be on top and inside! But now it’s only a matter of time.”
This was December 1973 in the USA, when the idea of a woman transitioning to a man, getting a penis and penetrating another man wasn’t quite what even advanced thinking counted as transsexual.
In the early 1970s, Sheila had discussed her transsexuality with one of the founder members of the Gay Peoples Union of Milwaukee. It was something she had known from an early age, although she self identified as a female transvestite for a couple of years before identifying as transsexual.
The turning point in Milwaukee was an incident in a Laundromat. Her appearance was feminine gay boy and a group of local toughs threatened to beat up this faggot, although she escaped this by fleeing.
Sheila decided she had to go somewhere safer and transition. Her family was supportive and as a going away gift they gave her a man’s suit and grandfather’s pocket watch.
In San Francisco she found a shrink willing to come to a diagnosis that allowed hormone treatment in 1978, and she became Lou. Lou got a good job with a major sporting goods company, which knew his past but cared not. A double mastectomy followed in 1980.
The problems he faced inspired him to become an activist in the FTM field, at that time under the GLB umbrella.
The standards in place for those days meant that as a male homosexual, he was rejected for SRS on 3 occasions, before a fourth attempt was successful. Genital reconfiguration took place in April 1986, but there were many complications, from which he never fully recovered.
In late 1986, he was diagnosed with AIDS.
In early 1987, he started a separate, pure FTM support organisation in San Francisco and set the stage for international groups to follow. He helped in the splt of gender identity from sexual orientation in professional circles. He wrote books for the FTM cross dressing and transsexual community.
He died on 2nd Mar 1991, age 39, relatively unknown outside of his community.
This link is a somewhat odd collection of people’s reminiscences of Lou, but it has a lot more bio than I’ve covered here. http://ftmsf.org/LouSullivan.pdf And the site itself is the FTM support site run in his name.
Footnote. Lou’s story was front line in the 70s/80s and, oddly, remains front line today. I have a couple of other recent stories with distinct ‘flavour of Lou’ in them. For another day.
It is difficult to get an evaluation of the true importance of Lou Sullivan in TS history as he appears to have been little known outside of the GLBT community of those days.
However his story illustrates the diagnostic model for transsex that prevailed at that period, and his battle against this.
Lou was an activist on a number of fronts and had no qualms about revealing, to relevant parties, that he had been born in a female body, or that he was a male homosexual.
Lou in his own words, when he was 22. “I know I can get what I want now – to fantasize is no longer enough. Before it was beyond my dreams. It was the worst perversion that I wished I had a penis, to fuck a boy, to be on top and inside! But now it’s only a matter of time.”
This was December 1973 in the USA, when the idea of a woman transitioning to a man, getting a penis and penetrating another man wasn’t quite what even advanced thinking counted as transsexual.
In the early 1970s, Sheila had discussed her transsexuality with one of the founder members of the Gay Peoples Union of Milwaukee. It was something she had known from an early age, although she self identified as a female transvestite for a couple of years before identifying as transsexual.
The turning point in Milwaukee was an incident in a Laundromat. Her appearance was feminine gay boy and a group of local toughs threatened to beat up this faggot, although she escaped this by fleeing.
Sheila decided she had to go somewhere safer and transition. Her family was supportive and as a going away gift they gave her a man’s suit and grandfather’s pocket watch.
In San Francisco she found a shrink willing to come to a diagnosis that allowed hormone treatment in 1978, and she became Lou. Lou got a good job with a major sporting goods company, which knew his past but cared not. A double mastectomy followed in 1980.
The problems he faced inspired him to become an activist in the FTM field, at that time under the GLB umbrella.
The standards in place for those days meant that as a male homosexual, he was rejected for SRS on 3 occasions, before a fourth attempt was successful. Genital reconfiguration took place in April 1986, but there were many complications, from which he never fully recovered.
In late 1986, he was diagnosed with AIDS.
In early 1987, he started a separate, pure FTM support organisation in San Francisco and set the stage for international groups to follow. He helped in the splt of gender identity from sexual orientation in professional circles. He wrote books for the FTM cross dressing and transsexual community.
He died on 2nd Mar 1991, age 39, relatively unknown outside of his community.
This link is a somewhat odd collection of people’s reminiscences of Lou, but it has a lot more bio than I’ve covered here. http://ftmsf.org/LouSullivan.pdf And the site itself is the FTM support site run in his name.
Footnote. Lou’s story was front line in the 70s/80s and, oddly, remains front line today. I have a couple of other recent stories with distinct ‘flavour of Lou’ in them. For another day.