Michel Seghers (1932 – 2014) sex-change surgeon

Michel Seghers qualified as a doctor at the Catholic University of Luvain in 1957. As an alternative to Belgian military service he did a three-year medical internship in the then Belgian Congo, first on a sugar cane plantation, and then at the University of Lovanian in Léopoldville (renamed Kinshasha in 1966), which was affiliated with the his alma mater. His wife was with him, and as it happened each of their three children would be born on different continents.

From 1962 he worked for a year in Cincinnati, USA, where he gained experience in plastic surgery at the Christ and Children’s Hospital. He accepted a position at the University of Léopoldville in 1963 where he did plastic and reconstructive surgery, but returned to Brussels in 1966 during the instability with the change of government that resulted in Mobutu Sese Seko coming to power.

In October 1967 Peggy Wijnen died of a blood clot shortly after transgender surgery. Her surgeon, Andre Fardeau, was charged with inflicting fatal blows and wounds with premeditation and willingly but without intent to kill, but died during the trial. This attracted Segher’s attention, and shortly afterwards a French psychiatrist introduced him to a patient who lived and passed as female and had attempted suicide several times in despair. Seghers studied the literature, and realized that he was the only hope for the patient. The operation at St Joseph’s Hospital was successful, and afterwards Seghers communicated the facts to the Belgian Society for Plastic Surgery.

There was another Belgian surgeon who was known for attempting to build extra-large vaginas and ended up with vagina-rectal fistulae. Against this background, two of Seghers’ early patients requested penectomy and orchiectomy only, that is without a vagina.

At his clinic first at St Joseph’s Hospital and then from March 1991 at Avenue de Broqueville 60, Brussels (map) he performed over 1,600 mtf genital operations, and some ftm top surgery. He generally insisted that a patient be 21 or older, but did the operation on a younger US girl who was accompanied by her mother.

In 1988 a registered nurse from the US, Michelle Hunt, herself trans, stayed on in Brussels after her operation. She met Dr Seghers’ US patients at the airport, and took them to his office. She also toured trans groups in the US, and made appointments for surgery where appropriate. However she held back the name of the surgeon to protect him from enquiry letters which generated criticism. In Fall 1993 there was conflict between Michelle Hunt and the Ingersoll Gender Center in that their respective booklets on Dr Seghers' services were similar.

Dr Seghers retired in 2001. He died at age 82.


Patients include:

patient of French psychiatrist, early 1970s
Maud Marin, 1974
Yeda Brown, 1975
Veronica Jean Brown, 1985 – doesn’t give Seghers’ name.
Michelle Duff, 1987
Michelle Hunt, 1988
April, 1991, arrived with a bout of the flu. Had to come back at a later date.
Dallas Denny, 1991
Lechane Bezuidenhout, 1992
Rachael Booth, 1992/3
Christine White, 1993
Rusty Mae Moore, Chelsea Goodwin, 1995
Karine Espineira, 1998
Catrina Day, 1999

• Veronica Jean Brown. “On the Road to Brussels”. The TV-TS Tapestry, 48,1986: 50-4. Online.
  
• The Brussels Experience. Seattle: Ingersoll Gender Center 16 pp 1989.
  
• Dr Seghers Patient Information. 3 September 1991. http://lvtgw.jadephoenix.org/Info_htm/Surgical/Segher01.htm.
  
• Michel Seghers at the Southern Comfort Conference, 4 October 1992. Transcript    Dallas Denny Interview.
  
• Chrysalis Quarterly, 1, 6, 1993. Online Contains letters between Michelle Hunt and Ingersoll, and the interview with Dr Seghers.

Vidensbanken om kønsidentitet

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Veronica Jean Brown assured her readers that Dr Seghers is "American trained'.   Well he did one year in Cincinatti.   He did six years in Zaire.   So 'Zaire trained' would be more descriptive.   This is actually very relevant.   He got a lot of experience reconstructing bodies that had been seriously damaged by war and violence.   That kind of training makes a good surgeon.   Other sex-change surgeons who learned their skill in war zones include: David Wesser (Vietnam War),  Stanley Biber (Korean War), Howard Jones (WWII), Georges Burou (WWII), Harold Gillies (WWI & WWII).

Karine Espineira (1967 - ) activist, author.

Espineira was born in Santiago, Chile, with a Chilean father and a French mother. After the US-backed Pinochet coup in September 1973, they fled to France.

In 1987 Espineira was involved in a serious road accident and expected to die, and ended up needing over 30 operations over several years.

From 1988 to 1992 Espineira did a degree at the University of Grenoble in letters and communication, and started a doctorate at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, but dropped out to deal with personal issues.

As Karine she went to Paris and became involved with the Association du Syndrome de Benjamin that had just been founded by Tom Reucher, Diane Potiron, Hugues Cariou and others. Another participant was Maud-Yeuse Thomas who became Karine's life partner. Karine started psychiatric interviews as part of the official French transition protocol, but as Tom Reucher as done earlier, she was repelled by the excessive pathologization, and by the surgical failures. She did keep seeing a psychiatrist on the official team, but negotiated hormones, and in 1998 has surgery with Dr Michel Seghers in Brussels. She was able to obtain a changed Chilean birth certificate.

Karine and Maud-Yeuse joined the anti-essentialist, anti-psychiatry, queer-theory group organized by University of Lille sociologist, Marie-Hélène Bourcier, and also LesboTrans.

In 2001 Karine and Maud-Yeuse moved to Marseille and became a social activist. In 2008 Karine published La transidentité: de l'espace médiatique à l'espace public. In 2012 Karine, Maud-Yeuse and Arnaud Alessandrin published La Transyclopedie: Tout Savoir Sur Les Transidentites, a history-cum-encyclopedia of transgender in France. In 2014 Karine obtained a PhD at the University of Nice – Sophia Antipolis in Information Science and Communication.

• Karine Espineira. La transidentité: de l'espace médiatique à l'espace public. Paris: l'Harmattan, 2008.
  
• Karine Espineira. “Transidentité:  de la théorie à la politique: Une  métamorphose culturelle entre pragmatisme et transcendance”. L’Information psychiatrique, 17 Sep 2011. http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/62/44/40/PDF/TransidentitA_de_la_thA_orie_a_la_politique.pdf.
  
• Karine Espineira. “Le bouclier thérapeutique : discours et limites d'un appareil de légitimation”. Revue internationale de recherche biographique, 2 (2011) 280. http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/63/27/48/PDF/Karine_Espineira_Le_Bouclier.pdf.
  
• Lynn Conway. “Karine’s Story”. TSsuccesses. http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TSsuccesses/Karine.html.
  
• Karine Espineira, Maud-Yeuse Thomas & Arnaud Alessandrin. LA TRANSYCLOPEDIE : Tout Savoir Sur Les Transidentites. Lulu, 2012.
  
• "Karine Espineira est la première Trans à obtenir le grade de Docteure de l’université française". Existrans, 18 Octobre 2014. www.txy.fr/blog/2013/01/09/karine-espineira-est-la-premiere-trans-a-obtenir-le-grade-de-docteure-de-luniversite-francaise.
  

Blog    Amazon.FR     WorldCat


 
Présentation de la transyclopédie : extrait by QueerDays

Christine White (1949 - ) construction boss, bank robber

Anatoli Misura was born in Belgium to Ukrainian refugees, who later ran a dairy farm in Mont St. Grégoire, Quebec. By age 18 Anatoli was reading about and identifying with transsexuals. He trained as a mechanical designer and worked as a manager of a construction crew, and was married for seven years.

She transitioned as Christine White in 1993, reportedly spending $60,000. She had genital surgery with Dr Michel Seghers in Brussels, a nose job, breast implants and three operations on her vocal cords. She was then unable to obtain work in the construction industry. She worked a little in Edmonton, Alberta as an escort and manicurist.

However she felt that she was entitled to recompense. She robbed 31 banks across Canada taking an estimated total of $80,000 between May 1997 in Edmonton and November 1998 when she held up the Scotiabank in the Quinte Mall, Belleville, Ontario, and was pursued in a high-speed chase.

Her initial approach was to disguise as a man, and pass the teller a note from a day-timer book. Sometimes she had a fake bomb. The robber was described as an effeminate man, or a masculine woman in men's clothes: the Toronto Police referred to her as the Unisex Bandit. However the police had been looking for a man, and she was living as a woman.

After a protracted trial during which White successively fired five lawyers, she pleaded guilty in 2002 and was sentenced to eleven years minus three for pre-trial custody. In Burnaby prison and then Joliette prison outside Montréal, psychological counselling brought out her feelings of persecution. She studied computers and construction health and safety. She also sued her arresting officers for assault, the doctors who initially treated her after her arrest, and Legal Aid Ontario when it refused to finance her suits. She befriended notorious killer Karla Homolka.

She was granted parole in 2007.

*Not the racing commissioner, nor the actor, nor the anthropologist.

• Don Campbell. "Transvestite arrested in robbery rampage: Gender-bender allegedly looted 31 banks in two years". The Ottawa Citizen, 20 Nov 1998.
• "Unisex robber pleads guilty in bank heist". Kingston Whig-Standard, 18 Sep 1999.

• Erin Anderssen. "Confessions of the Unisex Robber It was a near-perfect subterfuge. Christine White was Bonnie and Clyde rolled into one". The Globe and Mail, 20 Dec 1999.
  
• Marnie Ko. "Big hands and female parts: The 'unisex bandit' repudiates her 30 bank robbery guilty pleas". Report Newsmagazine, 27, June 19, 2000.
  
• Tracy Huffman. "Robber jailed 8 years for spree ; Unable to earn money, transsexual turned to crime". Toronto Star, 12 June 2002.
  
• "Edmonton robber befriends Karla Homolka in jail, says she poses no threat". Canadian Press NewsWire., 19 Jan 2004.
  
• Doug Beazley. "Bookworm bandit". Maclean's, 117, 1 Mar 2004: 46.
  
• "Canada’s Bookworm Bandit". Country Facts, March 29^th, 2010. www.kwintessential.co.uk/articles/article/canada/Canada-s-Bookworm-Bandit/2728.
  
• Jeremy Ashley. "Unisex Bandit to learn fate of civil suit today". Ottawa Mens Centre, October 15, 2004. www.ottawamenscentre.com/news/20041015_unisex_bandit.htm.
  
• "Parole board approves transsexual bank robber's release". CanWest News Service, January 26, 2007. www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=b3911c56-a0b3-4c19-bf08-7682ae70e579&k=47103.
  
• John Schmied. "The Case of the Gender-Bending Book Bandit ". Mississauga Life, June 2011. www.mississaugalife.ca/2011/06/the-case-of-the-gender-bending-book-bandit.

Rusty Mae Moore (1941– 2022) professor of international business.

Moore’s first marriage at 21 to a woman lasted for 10 years and they had a daughter; a second marriage produced two children. As a teacher of international business, Moore became associate dean at Hofstra University on Long Island. He also won a Fulbright scholarship to teach at the Fundação Getúlio Vargas, in São Paulo.

Her increasing desire to be a woman led to a marriage breakup as she entered her forties. In 1992 she met Chelsea Goodwin in a transsexual support group, and went to the New York drag clubs together. Moore was dressing as female more and more. In 1993 Rusty announced to the Hofstra officials that she would be living as a woman from the fall semester.

Until 1994 they and Julia Murray, who transitioned at the same time as Rusty, shared an apartment in Long Island. Then Rusty purchased a house in Park Slope, Brooklyn, New York. Despite abuse from the immediate neighbor, the man's wife became very friendly. In 1995 both Rusty and Chelsea flew to Belgium and had genital surgery from Dr Michel Seghers.

They welcomed half-a-dozen other trans persons including Kristiana Th’mas, a Workers’ World Party photographer and later Julia’s spouse Sylvia Rivera to share what they called Transy House.  Sylvia regarded Transy House as a continuation of the STAR House (run by Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries) of the early 1970s. They would go as a group to the drag club, Sally’s II in Times Square, where they were considered as a ‘house’ in the Paris is Burning sense. Those at Transy House without any other employment did telemarketing for trans artists and others.

When Dr Leo Wollman died in 1998, his widow donated his papers and other material to Transy House which established the Wollman Archives of Transgender History and Culture. The next year year Lee Brewster donated his extensive library. Rusty was chairperson of Metropolitan Gender Network, and active in the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy and other groups.


Rusty later ran a bookstore in Pine Hills in the Catskill Park, in upstate New York.

She died age 81.

• Rusty Mae Moore. “Transy House”. In Joan Nestle, Clare Howell & Riki Wilchins, GENDERqUEER: voices from beyond the sexual binary. Alyson Books, 2002.
• Rachele Kanigel and Michael Cervieri. “Transition: Crossing the Gender Divide”. NYC24 Feb 22, 2002. www.nyc24.org/2002/issue02/story01/index.asp
• Deborah Rudacille. “Conversation with Chelsea Goodwin and Rusty Mae Moore”. The Riddle of Gender. New York: Pantheon Books. 2005: 141-150.
• Rusty Mae Moore. “Satan and Lady Babalon: Polyamory Again at 64”. In Tracie O’Keefe & Katrina Fox. Trans People in Love, 2008. Excerpted as “Blood Lust”. Cherrie. 22 Sept 2008. cherrie.e-p.net.au/features/blood-lust.html.
• Cristiane Segatto. “Entrevista com a transexual Rusty Mae Moore”. Epoca. http://revistaepoca.globo.com/Epoca/0,6993,EPT442433-1655,00.html
• www.transyhouse.org.
• http://drmooresibblog.blogspot.com.
• http://greenfrogcafe.blogspot.com. 
• www.pinehillbookbunny.com.

Yeda Brown (194?–) performer.

Brown was raised in Bagé, in Rio Grande Do Sul, Brazil.  His father was a military officer, and as a familial duty he did apply for military service, but was rejected.

The name ‘Yeda’ was picked in homage to Ieda Vargas, who was Miss Universe 1963, and also from Rio Grande Do Sul.

In 1967 Yeda moved to Rio de Janeiro and became a performer with Rogéria at the Teatro Rival. She was part of the show, Les Girls, and toured in Uruguay and Argentina.

In 1974 she moved to Paris, and performed at Madame Arthur's and Le Carrousel. In 1975 she completed her transition with Dr Michel Seghers in Brussels, and her father paid for the surgery.

Afterwards she moved to Spain, where she was the first known surgically completed transsexual, and became famous on stage, screen and record. She had a small part in the ground-breaking El Transexual, 1977, that was partially inspired by the story of Lorena Capelli who died of peritonitis after an illegal sex change (the only kind in Spain at that time).

Yeda became known as El Cuerpo de Oro and Musa da Transição , and was taken up by Salvador Dali, who declared her to be his new muse. She partied with Boy George and David Bowie. Yeda returned to Brazil several times in the late 1990s to get her documentation changed. She lived in Barcelona, and then in Madrid.

• Yeda Brown, la última musa de Dalí. 5 de maio de 2008. http://yedabrownmusadedali.blogspot.com/2008/05/yeda-brown-la-musa-de-dal.html.
• Jim Beaux. “Brazil: Yeda Brown, the Muse of Salvador Dali”. Trans Mirror. 7 June 2009. http://transmirror.blogspot.com/2009/06/brazil-yeda-brown-muse-of-salvador-dali.html.

Maud Marin (1945 - ) postal inspector, sex worker, lawyer.

Jean Planchard worked as an inspector for the Post Office. As Maud Marin, she succeeded in getting her French identity papers changed in 1968, one of the first to do so since the process had been stopped after Coccinelle’s divorce in 1960. She worked as a prostitute before she had surgery in Brussels in 1974 with Dr Michel Seghers.

She qualified as a lawyer in 1980 and has worked on behalf of prostitutes. She was removed from the Paris Bar in 1992, but was admitted to the bar of Seine-Saint-Denis, and also that of Bobigny.

She has written autobiography, and about the legal system that is disinterested in victims.

In 2006 she applied to enter the competition to become a magistrate but Minister of Justice refused to include her years as a postal inspector towards her years of public service.

*Not the Houston veterinarian.

• • Maud Marin & Marie-Thérèse Cuny. Le Saut de l'ange. Paris: Fixot, 1987.
  • Maud Marin & Marie-Thérèse Cuny. Tristes plaisirs. Paris: Fixot, 1989.
  • Maud Marin & Marie-Thérèse Cuny. Le quartier des maudites. Paris: Fixot, 1991.
  • Maud Marin & Philippe Delannoy. Pitié pour les victimes. Paris: Fixot, 1996.
  • Jean-luc Garcia. “Maud Marin, déchue, plaide sa cause à Paris”. La Depeche. 05/09/2006. www.ladepeche.fr/article/2006/09/05/50217-Maud-Marin-dechue-plaide-sa-cause-a-Paris.html.
  
  
   FR.Wikipedia  

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Both the Wikipedia article and that in La Depeche claim that Maud was the first transsexual lawyer in the world.  Close but not quite.  She qualified in 1980.  However Daniel van Oosterwijck had qualified in 1979.

Lechane Bezuidenhout (1967 - ) princess.

Leon Bezuidenhout was a Telkom technician in Pietersburg, (map) now renamed Polokwane in Limpopo, South Africa.


Leon transitioned to Lechane in 1992 with surgery with Dr Michel Seghers in Belgium, where she worked as a waitress before returning to South Africa in 1995.

In KwaZulu-Natal she used the name Princess Charné. With her husband, Prince François, she promised the director general of the provincial government that her nonexistent African Business Development Consortium would invest R800m in a resort near Port Durnford. She claimed to be descended from a Dutch prince and a Sotho princess, and appeared before the province’s constitutional committee to get her lineage recognized.

She and her husband ran up debts of R120,000 from their lifestyle and as part of registering a purported African Television Network, which cost R13,000.

In 1998, at the expense of a local businessman, they went to Limpopo where they attempted to get Rain Queen Mokope Modjadji to validate their lineage. She refused and the media paid attention and exposed both of them, and outed the princess as transsexual. They quickly disappeared.

In 2004, Bezuidenhout reappeared, again in South Africa, claiming to be an Albanian princess raised in South Africa. She was arrested after convincing investors to loan R100,000 against inflated returns after she regained her Albanian title.

• “Lechane Bezuidenhout”. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lechane_Bezuidenhout.
• Greg Ardé. “Once upon a R100,000 fraud charge”. The Mercury. June 11, 2004. www.themercury.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=283&fArticleId=2109524.

Michelle Ann Duff (1939 - 2025) Motorcycle racer.

With Kristen Worley, Michelle Dumaresq and Alana Hardie, Canada is becoming known for its transgender sportspersons. But the grandmother of them all is Michelle Duff who won the Belgian Motorcycle Grand Prix in 1964 before the others were even born.
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Michael Alan Duff was born in Toronto. He was a competitive motorcycle racer 1955-69, mainly on the European Grand Prix circuits.

In 1963 he married a Finnish woman and had a son with her the same year, and daughter two years

later. In 1964-5, he rode under contract for Yahama. He won the Belgian Grand Prix 1964 at a record average speed. In 1965 he broke his pelvis and left hip joint during testing and was six months in hospital.

In 1967 he stopped professional racing, separated from his wife, and moved to California to become an associate editor of Cycle World. He still did some racing, and in 1969 won the Eastern Canadian Championship. From 1970-8 he ran a Yamaha dealership. He also remarried and had another son. From 1978-84 he worked doing specialized machine-shop work in the Greater Toronto area.

In 1984 Michael became Michelle and commenced transition. She separated from her wife, moved to down-town Toronto to start living as a woman, and became involved with the transsexual group FACT-Toronto. She completed transitioned in 1987: surgeon Michel Seghers in Brussels.

She published her autobiography in 1999, and in 2000 moved to an isolated cottage in central Ontario. She is also a photographer and writer of children’s fiction. In 2009 she published two young-adult titles about animals.

She lived to the age of 85. 

*Not Michael Duff the physicist, nor the Northern Ireland footballer, nor the baronet, nor the New Zealand journalist.

• Michelle Ann Duff. The Mike Duff Story: Make Haste Slowly. Toronto: mad8 Pub., 366pp 1999.
• Michelle Ann Duff. Michelle Duff - A career with a twist www.ttwebsite.com/features/0280.php
• Make Haste, Slowly: The Mike Duff Story By Michelle Ann Duff - www.mcb.net/amulree/duff.html
• Life After Transition - www.cbc.ca/fifth/becomingayden/trans.html
• Michelle Ann Duff, illustrated by Kathy Kaiser. Serial Number 6218. Toronto: mad8 Pub., 36 nd. A child’s story from the point of view of a motorbike.
•  Michelle Ann Duff. Jennifer's Boots: Son of Big Black. mad8 Publishing.  2009.
• Michelle Ann Duff.  Mikita: A Legacy Earned.  mad8 Publishing.  2009.
• www.michelle-duff.ca

EN.WIKIPEDIA   CANADIAN MOTORCYCLE HALL OF FAME