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From Female to Male: The Life of Jack Bee Garland
"Jack Bee Garland, who was assigned female at birth, was born in San Francisco and was a rebellious tomboy. He escaped from a convent school at 15 through a brief marriage to his brother’s friend. In 1897, he was arrested in Stockton, CA for impersonating a male. Pretending to be mute, he used the name Babe Bean.
[...] Dressed as a soldier, he followed the regiments where he served as a Spanish language interpreter, war correspondent, and nurse. After almost a year in the Philippines, he returned to the U.S. and published “My Life as a Soldier” in the San Francisco Examiner in 1900. When San Francisco passed a law banning the wearing of opposite sex clothing in 1903, he took on his chosen name Jack Bee Garland. Thereafter, he devoted himself to working with the American Red Cross and other charitable organizations. He served as a medic in the aftermath of the 1906 earthquake and worked as a social worker serving homeless men for the remaining three decades of his life.
On September 19, 1936 Garland collapsed on the sidewalk and died at age 66 of peritonitis in San Francisco. His colorful life and gender fluidity proved inspiring to transgender activist Louis Sullivan, who wrote From Female to Male: The Life of Jack Bee Garland in 1990."
-Legacy Project Chicago
[...] Dressed as a soldier, he followed the regiments where he served as a Spanish language interpreter, war correspondent, and nurse. After almost a year in the Philippines, he returned to the U.S. and published “My Life as a Soldier” in the San Francisco Examiner in 1900. When San Francisco passed a law banning the wearing of opposite sex clothing in 1903, he took on his chosen name Jack Bee Garland. Thereafter, he devoted himself to working with the American Red Cross and other charitable organizations. He served as a medic in the aftermath of the 1906 earthquake and worked as a social worker serving homeless men for the remaining three decades of his life.
On September 19, 1936 Garland collapsed on the sidewalk and died at age 66 of peritonitis in San Francisco. His colorful life and gender fluidity proved inspiring to transgender activist Louis Sullivan, who wrote From Female to Male: The Life of Jack Bee Garland in 1990."
-Legacy Project Chicago
183 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 1990
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601 people want to read
About the author
Lou Sullivan
4 books76 followersQuoted from Wikipedia 11/25/2016:
Louis Graydon Sullivan (16 June 1951 – 2 March 1991), better known as Lou Sullivan, was an American author and activist known for his work on behalf of trans men. He founded FTM International, one of the first FTM organizations, along with SHAFT in the UK and Rupert Raj's Metamorphosis in Toronto, and is largely responsible for the modern acknowledgment that sexual orientation and gender identity are totally different concepts.
Sullivan was a pioneer of the grassroots female-to-male (FTM) movement and was instrumental in helping individuals obtain peer-support, counselling, endocrinological services and reconstructive surgery outside of gender dysphoria clinics. He founded FTM International, one of the first organizations specifically for trans male individuals, and his activism and community work was a significant contributor to the rapid growth of the FTM community during the late 1980s.
trans male persons, and also a biography of the San Francisco trans man, Jack Bee Garland. Sullivan was instrumental in demonstrating the existence of trans men who were themselves attracted to men. Lou Sullivan began peer counselling through the Janus Information Facility which was an organization that provided support for transgender issues. He is also credited for being the first to discuss the eroticism of men’s clothing.
Sullivan was a founding member and board member of the GLBT Historical Society (formerly the Gay and Lesbian Historical Society) in San Francisco. His personal and activist papers are preserved in the institution's archives as collection no. 1991-07; the papers are fully processed and available for use by researchers, and a finding aid is posted on the Online Archive of California.
Sullivan lobbied the American Psychiatric Association and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health for them to recognize his existence as a gay trans man. He was determined to change people's attitudes towards trans homosexuals but also to change the medical process of transition by removing sexual orientation from the criteria of gender identity disorder so that trans men who are gay could also access hormones and surgery, essentially making the process "orientation blind".
Sullivan was diagnosed as HIV positive in 1986 after his surgery, and was told he only had 10 months to live. It is likely that Sullivan was HIV- infected in 1980, just after his chest surgery. He wrote, "I took a certain pleasure in informing the gender clinic that even though their program told me I could not live as a Gay man, it looks like I'm going to die like one." Sullivan died of AIDS-related complications on March 2, 1991.
Louis Graydon Sullivan (16 June 1951 – 2 March 1991), better known as Lou Sullivan, was an American author and activist known for his work on behalf of trans men. He founded FTM International, one of the first FTM organizations, along with SHAFT in the UK and Rupert Raj's Metamorphosis in Toronto, and is largely responsible for the modern acknowledgment that sexual orientation and gender identity are totally different concepts.
Sullivan was a pioneer of the grassroots female-to-male (FTM) movement and was instrumental in helping individuals obtain peer-support, counselling, endocrinological services and reconstructive surgery outside of gender dysphoria clinics. He founded FTM International, one of the first organizations specifically for trans male individuals, and his activism and community work was a significant contributor to the rapid growth of the FTM community during the late 1980s.
trans male persons, and also a biography of the San Francisco trans man, Jack Bee Garland. Sullivan was instrumental in demonstrating the existence of trans men who were themselves attracted to men. Lou Sullivan began peer counselling through the Janus Information Facility which was an organization that provided support for transgender issues. He is also credited for being the first to discuss the eroticism of men’s clothing.
Sullivan was a founding member and board member of the GLBT Historical Society (formerly the Gay and Lesbian Historical Society) in San Francisco. His personal and activist papers are preserved in the institution's archives as collection no. 1991-07; the papers are fully processed and available for use by researchers, and a finding aid is posted on the Online Archive of California.
Sullivan lobbied the American Psychiatric Association and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health for them to recognize his existence as a gay trans man. He was determined to change people's attitudes towards trans homosexuals but also to change the medical process of transition by removing sexual orientation from the criteria of gender identity disorder so that trans men who are gay could also access hormones and surgery, essentially making the process "orientation blind".
Sullivan was diagnosed as HIV positive in 1986 after his surgery, and was told he only had 10 months to live. It is likely that Sullivan was HIV- infected in 1980, just after his chest surgery. He wrote, "I took a certain pleasure in informing the gender clinic that even though their program told me I could not live as a Gay man, it looks like I'm going to die like one." Sullivan died of AIDS-related complications on March 2, 1991.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
April 19, 2023
Content warnings are listed at the end of my review!
Available to read for free at the Digital Transgender Archive (DTA) website.
In an extreme instance of luck, I was able to read a physical copy of this from my library, a first edition print. It's really amazing to hold a piece of trans history like this, especially as someone who has read We Both Laughed in Pleasure: The Selected Diaries of Lou Sullivan (my review). Contextually, I'd like to reread at least the portions where he talks about his work on this book, leading me to find and presently read it. I guess all of the buildup I've had towards reading this didn't help, but, no offense to your memory, Lou, but this book was a rocky read. My best explanation for the nature of the book, a scattered, dragging, and quote heavy piece, is it’s a frantic compilation to preserve a part of queer and gender variant history. That in itself is commendable work, but the form of the preservation itself just isn't the best reading experience.
Lou's formatting of the work I think is what really lost me, as well as the walls of quotes, vaguely related historical context, and some of his writing choices. Chronologically, we jump around everywhere with very loose narration as to the order and relevance of events. We get chapters by "category" of Jack lore, and a bunch of events crammed in. The majority of this book is just quotes either from Jack, his relatives, or the relentlessly hysterical articles about him, which will grind away at the reader. Contextually, either events are as organized as a list, or there's extensive information that feels out of place. One hallmark of Lou's writing that didn't age well is his tendency to most commonly use she/her/hers/herself pronouns for transgender men, this was seen in Information for the Female-to-Male Cross Dresser and Transsexual (my review), but here it is bizarrely used on and off, mostly on. His point here is to establish Jack's trans identity yet he almost strictly refers to him as a woman, female, you name it, with minimal exceptions that feel out of place and accidental.
Jack himself is a bit of a character, who is comically hateable with some of the upsetting choices and words he uses. He's got a indignant and proud attitude towards keeping up with how he dresses. Plenty of praises are sung about his eye for helping the needy and hardworking nature. This is great and all but the dude was also a raging ableist, classist, misogynist, and racist (see my later Michael Dillon shoutout in the review, haha, two peas in a pod here). The comments he made were just downright ghastly with only one ever intervention from Lou to hilariously drag Jack and the transmasculine community of the day (and unfortunately there's still people to this day who act like this):
"Typical of the gender dysphoric female, Bean did not consider herself a woman, and even subscribed to sexist male attitudes."
This was genuinely my favorite aspect was just the darkly humorous picture we get of a historical example of the still looming issue of what contemporarily could be viewed as transmedicalism, non-intersectional queer spaces, and the scapegoating of other marginalized people for your own advancement. Here's one of your forefathers! It is important for us to acknowledge these attitudes historically and see how they have modernized to continue to shut down these bigoted and reductive ideas that only harm us.
Summary:
Readability: ★★★☆☆, Compared to Out of the Ordinary: A Life of Gender and Spiritual Transitions (my review), it was profoundly readable, so I'd safely put it up in comparison to Memoirs of a Man's Maiden Years (my review) where this might even be slightly better? The quotes for the most part were digestible, but as I said, Jack was known to say and do some incredibly disgusting things, his ableism, classism, misogyny, and racism are harrowing- but that also goes for the other two titles in ways as well.
Entertainment: ★★★☆☆, By the end I really couldn't stand Jack, but at least it was readable and an interesting look back at how some attitudes have still stuck around. It feels like a very personal project, which it was, so it never obtains a polished cohesive feeling.
Audience: Trans, gender variant, and queer history nerds can appreciate the work here. If you're someone like Lou and I who have spent shameful amounts of time reading through painfully dated newspaper archives, this is the primary chunk of the experience. This isn't a super casual read, so it's going to take a willing party to enjoy. If you really like Lou, not a lot of his voice is present here aside from the start and end of the book.
Content Warnings: ableism, ableist slur, accident, alcohol, alcoholism, anti-Black slur, anti-Romani slur, anti-vax, cannibalism reference, child neglect, death, death of spouse, drugs, gambling, guns, houselessness, hunting, illness, injury, military, misgendering, misogyny, murder, needles, poison, police, poverty, prison, racism, sexism, sickness, smoking, suicide, theft, war
Available to read for free at the Digital Transgender Archive (DTA) website.
In an extreme instance of luck, I was able to read a physical copy of this from my library, a first edition print. It's really amazing to hold a piece of trans history like this, especially as someone who has read We Both Laughed in Pleasure: The Selected Diaries of Lou Sullivan (my review). Contextually, I'd like to reread at least the portions where he talks about his work on this book, leading me to find and presently read it. I guess all of the buildup I've had towards reading this didn't help, but, no offense to your memory, Lou, but this book was a rocky read. My best explanation for the nature of the book, a scattered, dragging, and quote heavy piece, is it’s a frantic compilation to preserve a part of queer and gender variant history. That in itself is commendable work, but the form of the preservation itself just isn't the best reading experience.
Lou's formatting of the work I think is what really lost me, as well as the walls of quotes, vaguely related historical context, and some of his writing choices. Chronologically, we jump around everywhere with very loose narration as to the order and relevance of events. We get chapters by "category" of Jack lore, and a bunch of events crammed in. The majority of this book is just quotes either from Jack, his relatives, or the relentlessly hysterical articles about him, which will grind away at the reader. Contextually, either events are as organized as a list, or there's extensive information that feels out of place. One hallmark of Lou's writing that didn't age well is his tendency to most commonly use she/her/hers/herself pronouns for transgender men, this was seen in Information for the Female-to-Male Cross Dresser and Transsexual (my review), but here it is bizarrely used on and off, mostly on. His point here is to establish Jack's trans identity yet he almost strictly refers to him as a woman, female, you name it, with minimal exceptions that feel out of place and accidental.
Jack himself is a bit of a character, who is comically hateable with some of the upsetting choices and words he uses. He's got a indignant and proud attitude towards keeping up with how he dresses. Plenty of praises are sung about his eye for helping the needy and hardworking nature. This is great and all but the dude was also a raging ableist, classist, misogynist, and racist (see my later Michael Dillon shoutout in the review, haha, two peas in a pod here). The comments he made were just downright ghastly with only one ever intervention from Lou to hilariously drag Jack and the transmasculine community of the day (and unfortunately there's still people to this day who act like this):
"Typical of the gender dysphoric female, Bean did not consider herself a woman, and even subscribed to sexist male attitudes."
This was genuinely my favorite aspect was just the darkly humorous picture we get of a historical example of the still looming issue of what contemporarily could be viewed as transmedicalism, non-intersectional queer spaces, and the scapegoating of other marginalized people for your own advancement. Here's one of your forefathers! It is important for us to acknowledge these attitudes historically and see how they have modernized to continue to shut down these bigoted and reductive ideas that only harm us.
Summary:
Readability: ★★★☆☆, Compared to Out of the Ordinary: A Life of Gender and Spiritual Transitions (my review), it was profoundly readable, so I'd safely put it up in comparison to Memoirs of a Man's Maiden Years (my review) where this might even be slightly better? The quotes for the most part were digestible, but as I said, Jack was known to say and do some incredibly disgusting things, his ableism, classism, misogyny, and racism are harrowing- but that also goes for the other two titles in ways as well.
Entertainment: ★★★☆☆, By the end I really couldn't stand Jack, but at least it was readable and an interesting look back at how some attitudes have still stuck around. It feels like a very personal project, which it was, so it never obtains a polished cohesive feeling.
Audience: Trans, gender variant, and queer history nerds can appreciate the work here. If you're someone like Lou and I who have spent shameful amounts of time reading through painfully dated newspaper archives, this is the primary chunk of the experience. This isn't a super casual read, so it's going to take a willing party to enjoy. If you really like Lou, not a lot of his voice is present here aside from the start and end of the book.
Content Warnings: ableism, ableist slur, accident, alcohol, alcoholism, anti-Black slur, anti-Romani slur, anti-vax, cannibalism reference, child neglect, death, death of spouse, drugs, gambling, guns, houselessness, hunting, illness, injury, military, misgendering, misogyny, murder, needles, poison, police, poverty, prison, racism, sexism, sickness, smoking, suicide, theft, war
April 22, 2021
Trigger warning: historical transphobia, war
I read this book because of the importance of Lou Sullivan for our community. But I’ve been searching for narrative stories about trans people in history for years, and this hit the mark perfectly.
This book reads like a story, and it is easy to follow Jack’s life and adventures as the story progresses. The book is not complex or difficult to follow.
Now I just need to find a way to buy it so I can own it...
I read this book because of the importance of Lou Sullivan for our community. But I’ve been searching for narrative stories about trans people in history for years, and this hit the mark perfectly.
This book reads like a story, and it is easy to follow Jack’s life and adventures as the story progresses. The book is not complex or difficult to follow.
Now I just need to find a way to buy it so I can own it...
March 20, 2017
Jack "Babe Bean" Garland had such an exciting life, and I'm so glad I got to read about it! The one thing that confused me was how the author kept switching pronouns throughout his life, but constantly reminded us that Jack/Babe was always male, no matter how he presented. Still, a really great read overall!
November 16, 2024
As with I dare say most who read this book, I came to it through Lou Sullivan's published diaries (which are phenomenal, for their part). This is a more complicated work to take in, as it's an odd mix of newspaper clippings and quotes, occasionally intermingled with Sullivan's observations on its subject's life.
The result is a somewhat disorganised scrapbook memoir which is a bit hard to read. The content is still very important, of course, and I consider having read it worthwhile. But the lack of careful editing makes it more of a challenging academic source than a readable introduction to Garland's life.
The result is a somewhat disorganised scrapbook memoir which is a bit hard to read. The content is still very important, of course, and I consider having read it worthwhile. But the lack of careful editing makes it more of a challenging academic source than a readable introduction to Garland's life.
January 14, 2024
Invaluable piece of trans and gay history. It's a shame that physical copies are so difficult and expensive to get a hold of but I got one and I scanned and uploaded it to the free internet archive so everyone should be able to read it now!
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews