Jennie June (autobiographer)

For other uses of "Jennie June", see Jennie June (disambiguation).

Jennie June
Jennie June posing as "A Modern Living Replica of the Ancient Greek Statue of Hermaphroditos." 1918.
Jennie June posing as "A Modern Living Replica of the Ancient Greek Statue of Hermaphroditos." 1918.
Born1870s
New England
Pen nameEarl Lind, Ralph Werther
Occupation
  • Autobiographer
  • Law clerk
Notable worksThe Autobiography of an Androgyne
The Female-Impersonators
The Riddle of the Underworld

Jennie June (fl. 1895–1922) was a pseudonym of an American writer from the Victorian and Edwardian era known for advocating for the rights of people who did not conform to gender and sexual norms.

June was one of the earliest transgender individuals to publish an autobiography in the United States.[1][2] Although June expressed a lifelong desire to be a woman, June consistently used he/him pronouns in reference to himself in his own writing. June wrote of feeling like a combination of male and female, and of his practice of alternating between these two gender expressions.[3]

He published his first autobiography, The Autobiography of an Androgyne, in 1918, and his second, The Female-Impersonators, in 1922. June also authored an unpublished third autobiography in 1921, which historians discovered in 2010. June's stated goal in writing these books was to help create what he would have wanted for himself: an accepting environment for young adults who do not conform to gender or sexual norms. He also wanted to prevent youth from committing suicide.[4] June also created an organization for the rights of androgynes, together with others like himself.

June also wrote under the pseudonyms of Earl Lind and Ralph Werther, which are sometimes incorrectly mistaken for birth names. June's birth name and legal name have been considered lost to history and are not certain. Queer history researcher Channing Gerard Joseph claims that June was most likely the writer and journalist Israel Mowry Saben (1870–1950), an early advocate for gender and sexual diversity.[5]

  1. ^ "Lesbian and Gay Studies at Yale: Earl Lind 1874". Yale University. n.d. Archived from the original on June 4, 2008.
  2. ^ "Earl Lind (Ralph Werther-Jennie June): The Riddle of the Underworld, 1921". Out History. October 9, 2010. Archived from the original on June 27, 2013. Retrieved May 5, 2012.
  3. ^ Jennie June. "Prologue: I. How I Came to Write This Book." The Riddle of the Underworld (partial manuscript). Out History. 1921. https://outhistory.org/exhibits/show/earl-lind/manuscript/prologue Archived April 21, 2021, at the Wayback Machine
  4. ^ Meyerowitz, J. "Thinking Sex With An Androgyne". GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 17.1 (2010): 97–105. Web. Retrieved April 13, 2017.
  5. ^ Joseph, Channing Gerard (October 10, 2022). "Who Was Jennie June?". OutHistory: It's About Time. Retrieved November 3, 2022.