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Assigned Media@assignedmedia· Jul 9

The Chevalière is the only subject of this strip to date where it is impossible to piece together how they fit into our modern gendered language. Zagria of *A Gender Variance Who's Who* classifies them as a "cross-dreamer", and historian Peter Farrer refers to Charlotte's biographies as "very nearly cross dressing fiction, a century in advance,", due to the sheer number of liberties the Chevalière and her biographers took in describing her life.

There's also significant reason to believe that the Chevalière herself started the rumors that she was born a woman. Whether it was to drum up an elaborate reason to return to France with her life and debts reset, or because she genuinely wanted an excuse to present herself as she pleased, is a reason only known to her.

Whatever her intentions at the time, her persona as the crossdressing Amazon of Orleans would find a very different life and following nearly a hundred years after her death....but we'll talk about that next month. Stay tuned.

Assigned Media@assignedmedia· Jul 9

Illustration: A still life, featuring a dragoon's rapier, a French lady's summer hat, a rose, some papers, and a feather.

Assigned Media@assignedmedia· Jul 9

Illustration: A portrait of the Chevaliere d'Eon (a stocky transfemme wearing a very elaborate feathered cap) as Pallas Athena. The hand-lettered annotation explains that the drawing in question is based on an engraving by N. Pruneau, made in 1779.

Assigned Media@assignedmedia· Jul 9

Expected amount of jeers at the Chevalière's (and France's) expense notwithstanding, the public did not reject the concept of a cross-dressing French woman, turning her into a Joan-of-Arc-esque folk hero. An engraving by illustrator N. Pruneau bore an enscryption which compares her to the fearsome Greek goddess and guardian of Athens, Pallas, adding, "For a long time she has been feared, and now she is loved".

Despite being publicly retiscent to give up her dragoon coat and sword for a dress, the Chevalière eventually settled into a more quiet life, She took up fencing for a while to pay the bills, leaning into her Amazonian image. But, racked with her own debts (due, in part, to the French revolution sending her employers en masse to the guillotine and rendering them unable to pay,) she died a spinster in England, devoting herself to writing on Christian feminism and an autobiography of her life as a woman forced to live as a man, which was ulitmately never published before her death.

But, upon her death in 1810, her housemate made a startling discovery. The Chevalière didn't entirely lie. She *did* spend half her life as the wrong gender. Just not in the way she told everyone.

Assigned Media@assignedmedia· Jul 9

In 1776, King Louis XVI of France made a public announcement. A trusted French servant in London, one of the spies and ambassadors that made up the intelligence service known as Le Secret du Roi (The King's Secret), had pulled one over on the crown. This individual had served as a liason in Russia and a negotiator in Britan, one of king's most loyal men -- or so they thought. Rumors started to come around. Things were getting out of hand.

And so, by order of King Louis, the bets were off. Charlotte d'Eon de Beaumont was a woman raised as a man to pay off her father's debts, or so the King was told. But this soldier was coming home to France; a hero, and -- now, legally in the eyes of the Crown -- a woman. She was to be relieved of her dragoon's uniform (only to be worn by men, naturally), and gifted a new wardrobe more fitting of her gender, fitted by the royal couturière in service of Marie Antoinette herself.

Somehow, no one at the fitting for that wardrobe bothered correcting the Crown.

Assigned Media@assignedmedia· Jul 9

In 1776, it was revealed that a French spy pulled one over on the crown. @piperbomb.bsky.social brings you the story of this historic trans person in The Triple-Cross of the Chevaliere d'Eon!

Illustration: A large sailing ship flying the French flag sails through a vast ocean.

Assigned Media@assignedmedia· Jun 11

FOR ASSIGNED MEDIA MEMBERS: Right now you should already have an email to help you RESUBCRIBE to our new site. To leave Squarespace we were forced to cancel all existing memberships. This is a huge risk, so we need all of you to go find that email and RESUBSCRIBE so your membership doesn't lapse.

Assigned Media@assignedmedia· Jun 4

There is one other thing Monica Helms did, and even if you never heard of her name before reading this strip, you’re more than likely very familiar with it. On August 19, 1999, a week after a conversation with the creator of the bisexual flag, Michael Page, she woke up with an idea in her head. In her autobiography, More Than Just A Flag, she describes her thought process:
“The design I’d subconsciously come up with had five equal-sized stripes going horizontally across the flag. The top and bottom stripes would be light blue, the traditional color for baby boys. The two stripes inside of the blue stripes were pink, the traditional color for baby girls. The center stripe would be white for those either in transition, those who have a neutral or undefined gender, or those who identify as bigender or agender.”
Speaking to Elliot Owen of The aBay Area Reporter in 2015, she stated, “No matter how you fly it, it’s always correct, which signifies finding correctness in our own lives.”
“It’s important to note that the flag only represented how I felt about being trans…But I told myself that if other people wanted to use it too, they could. And apparently, they did.”

Assigned Media@assignedmedia· Jun 4

An older Monica Helms (drawn after photos of her at the New York City World Pride celebration, which she was grand marshal at) wearing a trans pride t-shirt and a hat that says NAVY holds a trans pride flag high in a parade. People are marching in the parade behind her.

Assigned Media@assignedmedia· Jun 4

A mid-40s Monica Helms stands in front of a crowd of trans women, smiling at the viewer. The American and trans pride flags are flying behind her, and the US Capitol building is visible in the background behind them.

Assigned Media@assignedmedia· Jun 4

Monica Helms didn’t just form Alpha Zeta. In her twenties, she served in the US Navy as a submariner, and ended up a member of the US American Submarine Veterans Group. After her transition in ’97, she re-applied under her own identity, but was refused. She persisted, and eventually was re-admitted, becoming the first woman–cis or trans– to ever hold membership in the organization. She would eventually found It’s Time Arizona, an org dedicated to helping trans veterans gain equal protection and respect for their military service, and co-found TAVA, the Transgender American Veterans Association, which exists to this day.
Monica’s fighting spirit and activism didn’t stop there. Her time as a union organizer at Sprint in the ’90s and her experience forming Alpha Zeta would eventually lead her to Washington. She was part of a delegation to lobby Congress for equal rights for trans folk in 1999, and eventually would become part of the first trans delegation at the DNC in 2004. And, after moving to Georgia in the mid-2000s, she worked with and eventually became the executive director of TransAction, an org which lobbied Georgia homeless shelters to accept trans folk.

Assigned Media@assignedmedia· Jun 4

Summer, 1983. Two AV technicians at a video duplication startup in Arizona are hard at work building their new workspace, with a TV on in the background to keep them company. One day, the Phil Donahue show comes on. The guests are members of the Chicago chapter of Tri-Ess (check out our August 2025 strip for more on them), talking about their organization for cross-dressers. One of the technicians has a breakthrough, and writes down a contact number broadcast at the end of the show.
She had known for almost a decade at this point. As she would later write, “in the year 1974 I had no easy access to information about gender identity. Only a few doctors in the world performed sex-change operations, they received limited publicity, and the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association Standards of Care wouldn’t be written for another five years.”
But she called that number, and would later help found the Arizona branch of Tri-Ess, Alpha Zeta. Four years later, at a meetup called Holiday En Femme, attendees were videotaped by a member of the Arizona chapter and asked to introduce themselves. When the camera turned to her, she did just that. “Hello, my name is Monica Helms.”
As for the name, as she would later recall: “it sounded simple, so that must be why I picked it.”

Assigned Media@assignedmedia· Jun 4

A person with ‘80s permed, curly hair glances at a television set behind them, which has two figures talking on a daytime talk show setup.

Assigned Media@assignedmedia· Jun 2

@rikiwilchins.bsky.social 2026 Enjoying Assigned Media's daily feed of trans news stories as they break by Riki WIlchins? Check out her BlueSky feed at @rikiwilchins.bsky.social or her new book from Bloomsbury... www.amazon.com/Lets-Not-Tal...

Assigned Media@assignedmedia· May 7

Sadly, despite clamouring for her portrayals of women, the industry writ large never seemed to understand Jones’ own womanhood. Her own autobiography page and a stream-of-consciousness “A Recollecting Remembrance” page on her website talk openly about her gender identity and struggles. Despite this, multiple obituaries from her own peers refused to remember her as herself. The Comics Journal’s Steven Ringgenberg insisted upon making a “deliberate choice” to misgender her throughout their recap of her early career. Fellow illustrator Steve Pratt chose to commemorate Jones’ life by pairing photographs of Jones in a dress with a story where Jones asks Pratt, “How does it feel to have your friend become a lesbian?” Despite his clearly deep respect for Jones and her work, Pratt does not refer to Jones as “she” a single time in the post.
Jeffrey Catherine Jones was a personal influence of mine and many others. Her art distilled something subconscious about the trans experience and overtly about life itself–the wistfulness, the longing, the deep, rapturous want–and piped it through oil and ink in a way all her own, crafting brushstrokes into clouds, and love without fear.

Assigned Media@assignedmedia· May 7

A drawing of a woman facing away towards a wooded path.

Assigned Media@assignedmedia· May 7

Assigned Media@assignedmedia· May 7

Despite originally studying to be a geologist, Jones’s early career found her in New York, where she found her footing doing cover art paintings for Vampirella and pages of comics for Wally Woods’ Witzend, and Warren Publishing’s Creepy and Eerie. Eventually, she found her way into the underground comix scene, and published the recurring strips I’m Age in Heavy Metal Magazine and Idyll in National Lampoon. (Her 1973 solo book, Spasm, is preserved on the Internet Archive, and I highly recommend giving it a look.)
Eventually, her and her wife divorced, and she moved into a small flat with Barry Windsor-Smith, Bernie Wrightson, and Michael Kaluta. Known collectively as “The Studio,” the space the four of them shared and the work they produced would eventually become the stuff of legend amongst illustrators, with their work compiled into a 1979 volume of the same name. As illustrator George Pratt states in the book, “Jeff was one of our gods…his (sic) work blew me away. He (sic) was our Rembrandt.”
But Jones did not stick with illustration–after many years of being paid dirt and mistreated by the publishers of the day, she eventually declared “It is my firm opinion that illustration is immoral” and forged her own path. Eventually, she found success selling her paintings to private clients who clamoured for her unique vision, soft, glowing landscapes, and dreamlike female figures. “The female form just reflects light so simply and beautifully,” she once said.

Assigned Media@assignedmedia· May 7

In 1998, one of the greatest painters of the 20th century illustration world decided to stop living in fear.
Jeffrey Catherine Jones had spent a life at the drawing board painting her favorite subjects, imbuing them with life through lavishly colorful brushstrokes and expressive, soft linework. Legendary draftsman Frank Frazetta reportedly called Jones his “favorite living painter.” But, at the age of 55, she realized that she couldn’t just live vicariously through her paintings of women anymore. She had known from the age of 5 that she was one, and she couldn’t hide herself any longer.
As she put it on her website, “In the south, in the ’50s there were no gays and no lesbians, and certainly no one like me. So I became secretive. In my own mind I became ashamed, guilty and worthless…After many years of therapy, and many years of trying to drink away the shame, I arrived…I decided to stop the denial and start living as a woman.”
“People have also said to me how brave I must be. If I understand courage to be self-possession and resolution in the face of fear, then there is certainly no bravery here. I had no choice, really. There is certainly no fear of being female.”

Assigned Media@assignedmedia· May 7

In 1998, one of the greatest painters of the 20th century illustration world decided to stop living in fear. Read about Jeffrey Catherine Jones here in this month's Clippings by @piperbomb.bsky.social

A drawing of a woman in black looking over her shoulder to the right.

Assigned Media@assignedmedia· Apr 2

Her penchant for performance was a survival strategy as much as it was a livelihood. She lived stealth for most of her life for safety reasons, apart from the greater trans and queer community, even hiding her identity from her husbands.
But she eventually came out, releasing her autobiography and outing herself in the process in 2001. Aleshia granted several interviews and released a follow-up biography, The Woman I Was Born To Be, before her death in 2017,
In her interview with Monika Kowalska, she offered advice to the new generation, saying: “It’s never an easy journey, but each plateau along the upward path offers its own rewards. I would never presume to tell others how to best live their lives; I can only hope that those so inclined will find their dreams fulfilled.”

Assigned Media@assignedmedia· Apr 2

An older Aleshia Brevard, with bright white hair, a boat-neck top, and a shining pearl neckless, smiles fearlessly at the sun and clouds above her.

Assigned Media@assignedmedia· Apr 2

Aleshia Brevard, as Gigantia – wearing a cavewoman one-shoulder dress and with a great big goofy smile on her face – talks to the actor playing The Atom, who is very tiny and sitting on a stack of books, gesticulating wildly.

Assigned Media@assignedmedia· Apr 2

Despite giving her a job and a start in California, the management at Finnochio’s nor the AGVA was not happy with her departure. As she recounts in her biography, The Woman I Was Not Born To Be, her union representative told her, “If you do not sign a new contract with Mr. Finocchio, I’ll see to it that you never work again.”
But depart she did, finding herself on the operating table for one of the first SRS operations. She changed her name to Aleshia, and despite the threats from both management and her crooked union rep, she found work.
She starred alongside Don Knotts in 1969’s The Love God, portrayed a cigarette girl in an episode of The Partridge Family, and found herself in Rod Sterling’s criminal roster in a 1972 episode of The Night Gallery.
And, nearly fifty years before Nicole defied the possible in her role as Dreamer, Aleshia took the villain’s role as the first trans actress to play a superbeing, portraying (ironically) Wonder Woman’s arch-nemesis Gigantia for two episodes of Legends Of The Superheroes.

Assigned Media@assignedmedia· Apr 2

On October 14, 2018, the Supergirl episode “American Alien” aired on the CW network. For the first time, trans folk saw one of their own in a superhero uniform, as actress Nicole Maines took the screen as Nia Nal, the first trans superhero to ever make it to television.
But, while Maines has the honor of being the first hero, she wasn’t the first superbeing to ever hit the airwaves. And, perhaps fittingly, before we were ever allowed to play the hero…society first had us play the villain.
Born in rural Tennessee in 1937 and eventually ending up hitchhiking to San Francisco, Aleshia Brevard’s transition first found her under a stage name: Lee Shaw. She performed as a “female impersonator” (or, as we now call it, a drag queen) at Finnochio’s, a revue and nightclub which “glorified the American boy.”.
Aleshia was not interested in staying a boy, however; eventually, she found access to female hormones and into the patient room and client list of Dr. Harry Benjamin.

Assigned Media@assignedmedia· Apr 2

In 2018, Nicole Maines became the first trans person to play an explicitly transgender superhero on television. Fifty years prior, another trans femme quietly took on a role on the opposite side of the coin. Read this month's Clippings by @piperbomb.bsky.social here!

Two femme figures stand side-by-side, both bathed in starlight and with spotlights highlighting their faces. On the left is Nicole Maines, wearing a low cut leather top with a lace-scalloped hem and with her long brown hair unfurled around her neck. On the right is a younger Aleshia Brevard, wearing a country-western button-up with very flashy earrings, her hair done up in a ’60s style.

Assigned Media@assignedmedia· Apr 2

For those following this story, an interesting new tidbit on where the New York Times may have erred in a story from the Advocate. (from this: www.advocate.com/health/trans...)

“In this case, the New York Times relied on a quote that was itself sourced from another outlet,” they said, describing an “echo effect” that distorted the AMA’s underlying policy framework.

Assigned Media@assignedmedia· Mar 26

The American Medical Association directly responds to New York Times coverage mischaracterizing their posiiton on gender affirming care for trans young people. cloud.e.ama-assn.org/newsletter?u...

In recent days, AMA communications to the New York Times have requested a correction on their part to reflect the actual language the AMA used in response to their inquiry. Additionally, a letter to the editor has been submitted requesting a public correction—this was neither a policy change nor was it an endorsement of a position taken by another medical society. In addition, during Congressional testimony in mid-March, I had the opportunity to set the record straight stating to the Subcommittee on Health of the House Energy and Commerce Committee that there has been no change in AMA policy with respect to access to and provision of gender-affirming care. This will appear in the Congressional Record.

Assigned Media@assignedmedia· Mar 3

Despite the Nazi's crushing defeat, their hatred lived on. The Allies' own censorship and anti-gay laws helped erase the queer dead from the record and kept the living hiding or imprisoned To quote the Auschwitz Memorial's own website, "embarrassment is the reason that scholars remain silent about Nazism's homosexual victims".

In the decades since, many queer stories from the era have been unearthed, and many read as losses upon losses. John Topham's photographs of the battery in drag were banned from publication in the UK. Queer men like Alan Turing were subjected to chemical castration. Christine and Roberta both spent their lives as outcasts, hounded by the press and, in Christine's case, dened her own marriage due to the court ruling her a man and her union sodomy.

I do not need to point out the parallels. I *do* need you to help us ensure that this history is not allowed to repeat itself.

LEAVE NO ONE BEHIND. --piper

Assigned Media@assignedmedia· Mar 3