Jennie June (active from 1895 to 1922) was a pseudonym used by an American writer from the Victorian and Edwardian eras. This person worked to support individuals who did not follow traditional ideas about gender or sexual identity.

June was one of the first transgender people in the United States to write and publish an autobiography. Although he wanted to live as a woman, he always used "he" and "him" when referring to himself in his writing. He described feeling like both a boy and a girl and often changed how he expressed his gender.

In 1918, June wrote his first autobiography, The Autobiography of an Androgyne. He published a second book, The Female-Impersonators, in 1922. A third, unpublished autobiography was written in 1921 and found by historians in 2010. June aimed to help create a kinder world for young people who did not fit typical gender or sexual norms. He also hoped to stop these individuals from harming themselves. Around 1895, June helped start an organization to support people who identified as androgynes, or those who felt both male and female. Most members of this group were described by June as ultra-androgynes.

June also used other names, such as Earl Lind and Ralph Werther, when writing. These names are sometimes wrongly thought to be his real name. His actual birth and legal name are unknown. A researcher named Channing Gerard Joseph believes June may have been Israel Mowry Saben (1870–1950), a writer and early supporter of gender and sexual diversity.

Early life

Jennie June was born in 1874 in Connecticut to a Puritan family. He was born as a boy. At the time of his birth, his mother was 28 years old (born around 1846), and his father was 32 years old (born around 1842). June was the fourth child among eleven siblings. His family was from a middle-class background and had wealth.

Education

June became quiet and shy after his parents sent him to a boys' school. Other students at the school had been sent there because they were noisy and needed strict rules.

June graduated with honors from a university in a city in New York, which might have been Columbia University.

Later, June attended graduate school. His doctor told the university president that June was a sexual invert. Because of this, June was expelled from the university for being an androgyne. This caused him to experience neurasthenia (depression) and he almost tried to take his own life. Because of his difficult experience, June wrote a plea in his third book, using all capital letters.

Career

In his professional life, June appeared to be a man. He was known for being innocent and often felt surprised and uncomfortable when men around him made sexual comments. Because of this, most people didn't think there was another side to his life. He was known for being very studious and hard-working.

June worked as a law clerk for Clark Bell, who was the editor of The Medico-Legal Journal and its publishing company. The same company also published books June wrote about his own life. June probably used his personal connection with Bell to help get his books published.

Identity and transition

During the Victorian and Edwardian eras, people did not use words like transgender, transsexual, gay, or non-binary to describe gender or sexual identity. June used several older terms to describe his own identity and experiences:

• Androgyne: An ancient term for someone who has both masculine and feminine qualities.
• Invert: A term used in psychiatry and sexology during that time to describe people who today might be called lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT).
• Urning: A newer term for someone assigned male at birth who is attracted to men. This word was created by people who identified as urnings to advocate for their rights. It was sometimes spelled Uranian in English, but June used the original German version, urning. Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (1825–1895) developed this idea, suggesting that men who are attracted to men and women who are attracted to women belong to a "third sex" with traits of both genders. He called this phenomenon Uranismus (or Urningtum in German). Ulrichs compared this to a theory from Plato’s Symposium, where love was divided into two types, each ruled by a different goddess: Aphrodite, daughter of Uranus, and Aphrodite, daughter of Zeus and Dione. Ulrichs believed that being an urning was natural and healthy, not a disease, and he fought for legal rights to express love between consenting adults. He also described some urnings as having feminine traits, calling them Weiblings, who he said looked more like women than men. June compared himself to the ancient figure Hermaphroditus in his self-portraits.
• Bisexual: June used this word to mean someone who feels both male and female, though he said he was never attracted to women.
• "Instinctive female impersonator": A term meaning someone who naturally wants to live as a woman.
• Fairie [sic]: A word used in the underground community for people assigned male at birth who had receptive sex with men.
• Ultra-Androgyne: A term for people who strongly identify as female despite being assigned male at birth. They often wore feminine clothing, avoided masculine traits, and preferred passive roles in relationships. Some sources said they should be referred to with he/her pronouns. One writer described them as "neither men nor women" in terms of biology but "women" in terms of mind and feelings.

At the time, people often mixed up gender identity and sexual orientation. Many believed that men who liked men had some female traits in their brains or bodies. Some argued this was not always true, but June felt the terms used to describe him fit his experience.

As a young child, June said he would only wear skirts as an adult and asked friends to call him Jennie. In that era, young children wore dresses, and boys were "breeched" (given trousers) around age seven. When June’s parents did this at seven, he was very sad and wished he were dead. He sometimes wore his sister’s clothes and prayed to become a girl. In his teens, he developed breast growth, possibly gynecomastia (a common condition in people assigned male at birth). He was upset his genitals remained the same. At fourteen, he prayed daily to stop wanting to be a girl or be attracted to men.

At eighteen, June was so depressed about being an invert (a term for someone with non-heterosexual identity) that he sought medical help to feel "normal." Two doctors, a venereologist (sex disease specialist) and an alienist (early term for psychiatrist), tried to "cure" him with drugs, hypnosis, aphrodisiacs, and electrical treatments. These had no effect.

A third doctor, an alienist, explained that being an androgyne (someone with both masculine and feminine traits) was natural, not a "depravity." This helped June stop feeling guilty and accept his identity.

According to one autobiography, June had close relationships with about 800 young men, half of whom were soldiers or sailors.

At 28, June had an orchiectomy (removal of the testicles), hoping it would reduce his sexual desires, remove unwanted masculine traits like facial hair, and improve his health. During that time, some doctors believed castration could "cure" inversion, and many feared that nocturnal emissions (wet dreams) harmed health and intelligence.

Community and activism

As a young adult, June found safe places, like the gay bar Paresis Hall in New York City, where he could express his feminine identity. Paresis Hall, also called Columbia Hall, was one of many places where people who identified as homosexual could gather. At these locations, some men worked as prostitutes and acted in ways that were typically seen as feminine, similar to how female prostitutes might act. These places allowed people like June to meet others who shared similar experiences and feel more comfortable expressing themselves during a time when cross-dressing was not accepted by society and was even against the law.

In 1895, June was a member of the Cercle Hermaphroditos, a group led by someone who used the name Roland Reeves. Other members of the group were people who did not fit traditional ideas of gender. The group aimed to protect its members from harsh treatment by others and to show that having a different gender identity was natural. Historian Susan Stryker noted that the Cercle Hermaphroditos was the first known group in the United States to focus on issues related to transgender rights. However, very little information about the group remains today, except for June’s own story. No pamphlets or other materials from the group have been found by historians. Because of this, some historians question whether the group actually existed.

Autobiography

In 1918, June wrote his first autobiography, The Autobiography of an Androgyne, and his second book, The Female-Impersonators, in 1922. These works make June one of the earliest transgender or gender nonconforming individuals in the United States to share their personal experiences publicly. In the preface of his first book, June explained that he had kept detailed records of his life and that the autobiography was written based on those records.

June divided the book into sections that read like chapters, in which he described events from his life and shared his views on social issues. He wrote the book to encourage people in the United States to support young adults who do not follow traditional gender or sexual norms. June believed that such support would help these individuals avoid harm, such as suicide, and he wanted to create a more accepting society for them. He also described his personal desires, which he found difficult to live with because they were different from what society considered normal.

The memoir includes detailed descriptions of June’s personal experiences, including his sexual relationships and desires. It also discusses the story of his castration and includes appeals for people to understand and accept individuals who identify as "fairies." The Autobiography of an Androgyne also explains how June felt he lived two separate lives: one as an educated, middle-class white male scholar, and another as someone who experienced intense desires for sexual acts that caused him emotional pain.

The Female-Impersonators

June's second book, published under the name Earl Lind—Earl meaning girl—came out in 1921. It had a print run of 1,000 copies meant to be sent to people in the medical field. The book covered topics like hate crimes, including murder, blackmail, violence, and sexual abuse, as well as June's early life and the stories of two other Ultra-Androgynes.

A quote from the book reads:

The Riddle of the Underworld

In 2010, Dr. Randall Sell, a professor at Drexel University, became interested in the first two books of a trilogy. He searched for about twenty years to find the missing third book, and finally located part of the manuscript in the archives of the National Library of Medicine.

The third book, called The Riddle of the Underworld, was written in 1921. It focused on communities of people who were different in terms of gender and sexuality around the world. One part of the book describes an event where a person named June was hurt by men he had tried to befriend. June defended people who did not follow traditional gender or sexual roles, stating they were born with a different nature, but still natural.

As mentioned in his second book, one chapter of Riddle was planned to discuss the Gynander, people with female bodies who felt more connected to masculinity in different ways. However, this chapter was not found in the Robinson manuscript.

Riddle was planned to be published in parts in the Medical Life journal by or after March 1922, but this never happened, even though the agreement and terms for publication were included in the discovered manuscript. A planned collection of all three books was intended to be released in the fall of 1922, but this also did not happen. Early 1922 appears to be the last time J-W was active in the Underworld.

Mowry Saben theory

Historians are not certain about the exact dates of June's birth and death. Channing Gerard Joseph suggests that June may have been Mowry Saben, who lived from 1870 to 1950. Saben was born in Uxbridge, Massachusetts, into a well-known family. He had a younger sister named Jennie May. He studied at Harvard University, Oxford University, and Heidelberg University. Saben passed away in San Francisco in 1950.

Legacy

June provided instructions for making a memorial plaque. The plaque was to be placed on the front of a new police building, near the location where he first introduced himself as Jennie June. Choosing a police building for this purpose is unusual, as the police often harassed and frightened June and his friends, which caused him to experience frequent nightmares.

Works

• Autobiography of an Androgyne, published in 1918
• The Female-impersonators, published in 1922
• The Riddle of the Underworld, written in 1921 but never published. Only three chapters of the original writing are known to still exist.

Photos

Jennie June included photographs of himself in his books. He used fake names and often hid his face in the photos to protect his identity, even though he showed his body. This was because New York had laws that made it illegal for people to wear clothing typically associated with the opposite gender. Some of the photos showed his body in a way that reminded people of medical studies, as a belief called physiognomy was popular during the Victorian era. This belief claimed that a person's body shape could reveal their personality, which helped support June's idea that being an invert was part of his natural identity. One of the photos showed June imitating a statue called the Sleeping Hermaphroditus, which was created by the ancient Greek artist Polycles around 155 BC. The Borghese Hermaphroditus is a famous Roman copy of this statue, and it has been in the Louvre since before 1863. Another Roman copy, mentioned by June, is located in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy.

• "The Author Ready to Set Out on Life's Journey"
• "Rear View of Author at Thirty-three"
• "Front View of Author at Thirty-three"
• "The Author at Thirty-four"
• "The Author—a Modern Living Replica of the Ancient Greek Statue, 'Hermaphroditos' (Photo by Dr. A. W. Herzog)"
• June included a photo of the statue he was imitating, captioning it "Ancient Greek Statue of an Androgyne, Called 'Hermaphroditos,' Now in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy"
• "The Author at Forty-four"