Jennie June

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Jennie June (pseudonyms Ralph Werther and Earl Lind, 1874 -?) was an American writer from the Victorian and Edwardian era and activist known for advocating for the rights of people who did not conform to gender and sexual norms. June was one of the earliest transgender individuals to publish an autobiography in the United States. Although June expressed a lifelong desire to be a woman, June consistently used he/him pronouns in reference to himself in his own writing. June wrote of feeling like a combination of male and female, and of his practice of alternating between these two gender expressions. He published his first autobiography, The Autobiography of an Androgyne, in 1918, and his second, The Female-Impersonators, in 1922. June also authored an unpublished third autobiography in 1921, which historians discovered in 2010. June's stated goal in writing these books was to help create what he would have wanted for himself: an accepting environment for young adults who do not conform to gender or sexual norms. He also wanted to prevent youth from committing suicide. June also created an organization for the rights of androgynes, together with others like himself. June wrote under the pseudonyms of Earl Lind and Ralph Werther, which are sometimes incorrectly mistaken for birth names. June's birth name and legal name have been considered lost to history and are not certain. Queer history researcher Channing Gerard Joseph claims that June was most likely the writer and journalist Mowry Saben (1870-1950), an early advocate for gender and sexual diversity.

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