Whisper Magazine

More Columns: Women's Press and Printing School Roy Cohn Fakir Musafar More... Interact: Talk about it About Susan Stryker

The simple fact of sexual and gender diversity has provided grist for exploitative popular publications since the beginnings of mass media. Although magazines like Whisper cast issues of sexual diversity in a lurid light, they often provide truly illuminating insights into how our grandparents' generation thought about such things as homosexuality, cross-dressing, transgender identity, and fetishism.

The May 1949 issue of Whisper featured here tries to entice readers by asking, in a bold headline, IS THERE A THIRD SEX?" Although the story is sandwiched between a risque semi-nude centerfold of an "Oriental Beauty" and a feature on why men should try to control their impulses to harass women, "Is There a Third Sex?" is chock full of historically interesting content.

It includes a photo of Tommy Lee, billed in the article as a "Manhattan night-club female impersonator," who will show up a few years later as the male-to-female transsexual whose transformation is documented in Ed Wood's famously bad 1953 film Glen or Glenda?

Another photo is of Barbara (formerly Edward) Richards, who made headlines in 1940s Los Angeles by claiming to be slowly turning into a woman. Based on this story, Richards was later able to achieve a legal change of gender and gain access to crude medical conversion procedures.