There are an estimated three-quarters of a million transgender Americans. Herewith, 20 individuals from the U.S. and beyond whose life stories have resonated across the culture
It’s amazing what a rich filmic and emotional experience has been created by co-directors Aisling Chin-Yee and Chase Joynt in their documentary “No Ordinary Man,” given how little audio-visual material, data and certainty was left behind about their subject: transmasculine jazz musician Billy Tipton, who died in 1989 at age 74.
Tipton was assigned female at birth but presented as a man from age 19, when he began looking for work in the male-dominated field of jazz music. (It’s roundly debunked here that he tried passing as male to gain employment in a kind of reverse “Tootsie” scenario). He lived as a man for the next 50 or so years, achieved moderate success as a performer and bandleader in the 1940s and ‘50s, recorded two albums with his band, had five common-law wives he adopted three sons with his last partner, Kitty Kelly and successfully hid his birth-designated gender from, it seems, virtually everyone. That is until the truth was discovered by a coroner upo