Virginia Prince

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Virginia Prince (November 23, 1912 – May 2, 2009) was an American transgender activist and the publisher of Transvestia. She also started Full Personality Expression, which later became Tri-Ess, an organization for heterosexual men who cross-dress.

Prince was born in Los Angeles to a well‑to‑do family. She began cross-dressing around age 12 and could pass as a girl in public. At 18, she attended a church Halloween party dressed as a woman and won first prize, the first time she appeared openly as a girl.

She studied chemistry at Pomona College, earning a BA in 1935, and later earned a PhD in pharmacology from the University of California, San Francisco in 1939. She married Dorothy Shepherd in 1941 and had a son, Brent Lowman, in 1946. The marriage ended in divorce in 1951 because of her transvestism. After the divorce, Prince returned to UCSF as a research assistant and lecturer and began using the name Charles Prince to hide her identity; she eventually adopted the name Virginia Prince.

In 1960, Prince launched Transvestia, a magazine funded by a group of supporters. It ran 1960–1980, producing 100 issues. It was mostly written by readers and focused on education, entertainment, and self‑expression for cross-dressers. The magazine later had some issues edited by Carol Beecroft until 1986. Transvestia helped many people share their stories and connect with others.

Prince wrote about gender and cross-dressing, arguing that cross-dressing relates to gender, not sexual orientation. She helped popularize the term transgender and discussed ideas such as “transgenderism.” She distinguished true transvestites as heterosexual and not wanting surgery. She sometimes used the term gynandrous to describe her own view of gender, believing the feminine mattered more than the masculine.

her views drew criticism in the 1970s from some transgender people and LGBT and feminist groups who disagreed with her emphasis on traditional marriage and gender roles, and who felt she excluded transsexuals and other groups.

Virginia Prince died in Los Angeles in 2009. Her papers and work are archived at the University of Victoria in Canada and at California State University, Northridge.