Tri-Ess

Development

The organization that would become Tri-Ess was established by Virginia Prince, a female-presenting crossdresser from Los Angeles, in 1961. Prince had begun Transvestia, a bimonthly magazine for crossdressers, and the initial members of the group were local subscribers. Prince invited the magazine’s readers to a meeting, telling them to bring stockings and high heels but not informing them that the other crossdressers would be there. When the group was assembled, Prince had them don the female apparel, thus disclosing to each other and ensuring that they would maintain their shared confidence. Because of its origins, the organization was initially known as the Hose and Heels Club, but Prince changed its name to the Foundation for Personality Expression (FPE or Phi Pi Epsilon) the following year.

Prince envisioned FPE as the Alpha Chapter of a sorority-like crossdressing organization that would have chapters throughout the country and internationally, and by the mid-1960s, she had chartered several other U.S. chapters. Prince set strict membership requirements. Only cis heterosexual male crossdressers—whom she referred to as “true transvestites”—could join, as she wanted to dissociate the group from both gay and bisexual male crossdressers and trans women. In so doing, Prince sought to address the two main fears of the wives and partners of cis heterosexual male crossdressers: that their husbands and boyfriends will leave them for men or that their partners will begin to identify as women. Prince maintained tight control over the organization until 1976, when FPE merged with the Mamselle Sorority, a Southern California crossdressing group led by Carol Beecroft, to become the Society for the Second Self or Tri-Ess.

Becoming Tri-Ess’s first president, Beecroft worked to make the organization more inclusive and more visible. She made alliances with trans women and gay and bisexual men, as well as enlarged the group’s outreach and programming. She began the group’s journal, The Femme Mirror, which she edited for more than a dozen years, and started its annual Holiday En Femme event, in [Page 886]which members would gather each November in a different city and go out crossdressed. For some members, the holiday gatherings were the only opportunity they had to be feminine in public. These events also gave crossdressers who lived far from a Tri-Ess chapter a chance to meet and socialize with others like themselves. Beecroft also initiated a confidential mail service, organized a project to donate books on crossdressing to local libraries, and encouraged the wives of the crossdressing men to become more involved through the creation of Couples Groups.

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