In 1952, Prince and a group of transvestites who met regularly in Long Beach published an unprecedented newsletter—Transvestia: The Journal of the American Society for Equality in Dress—which they distributed to a mailing list consisting largely of Lawrence’s correspondents. This little mimeographed publication, which existed for only two issues, is arguably the first overtly political transgender publication in US history. Even its subtitle seems deliberately intended to evoke the dress reform activism of nineteenth-century first wave feminism. The periodical made a plea for the social
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