Trans* Success

Sister Boom Boom, the drag nun persona  of astrologer Jack Fertig (born February 21, 1955 in Chicago, Illinois), was one of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence who has since retired from the group. Sister Boom Boom joined the Sisters in 1980, several months after its founding. She left the order in the Spring of 1986. Her full name was Sister Rose of the Bloody Stains of the Sacred Robes of Jesus, which would trail into a sing-song cadence and a long fermata. This called for a short nickname.  In 1982, Jack ran for a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors as Sister Boom Boom with agitprop campaigning tactics bringing humor and raising issues he felt were being ignored in the race.  He won 23,124 votes with his occupation listed as “Nun of the Above”.  Five supervisors were elected; he placed eighth. After he started campaigning for mayor in 1983 against incumbent Dianne Feinstein, San Francisco passed a law requiring candidates to use only their legal names on the ballot.

This was commonly called the “Sister Boom Boom law”.  Jack wrote a theatrical-ritual exorcism of Jerry Falwell and Phyllis Schlafly performed in Union Square the Friday before the 1984 Democratic National Convention.  Boom Boom is one of the characters in Emily Mann’s play Execution of Justice about the trial of Dan White for the 1978 Moscone–Milk assassinations. George Moscone was mayor of San Francisco and Harvey Milk was the city’s first openly gay supervisor.  In the Broadway production she was played by Wesley Snipes.  Jack Fertig retired Sister Boom Boom in 1986, and joined a sobriety program.  He converted to Islam in 2001, and continues to live in San Francisco where he works as an astrologer.

Claude Cahun (1894-1954) was a French artist, photographer and writer. Her work was both political and personal, often playing with the concepts of gender and sexuality. She was the niece of writer Marcel Schwob and the great-niece of Orientalist David Léon Cahun. Her mother’s mental problems meant that she was brought up by her paternal grandmother, Mathilde Cahun. She began making photographic self-portraits as early as 1912, when she was 18 years old, and she continued taking images of herself through the 1930s. Around 1919, she settled on the pseudonym Claude Cahun, intentionally selecting a sexually ambiguous name, after having previously used the names Claude Courlis (after the curlew) and Daniel Douglas (after Lord Alfred Douglas). During the early 20s, she settled in Paris with her life-long partner and stepsister Suzanne Malherbe. For the rest of their lives together, Cahun and Malherbe (who adopted the pseudonym “Marcel Moore”) collaborated on various written works, sculptures, photomontages and collages. She published articles and novels, notably in the periodical “Mercure de France”.

Around 1922 she and Malherbe began holding artists’ salons at their home. Cahun’s work encompassed writing, photography, and theater. She is most remembered for her highly-staged self portraits and tableaux that incorporated the visual aesthetics of Surrealism. Her published writings include “Heroines,” (1925) a series of monologues based upon female fairy tale characters and intertwining them with witty comparisons to the contemporary image of women; Aveux non avenus, (Carrefour, 1930) a book of essays and recorded dreams illustrated with photomontages; and several essays in magazines and journals. Cahun’s life was marked by a sense of role reversal, and her public identity became a commentary upon not only her own, but the public’s notions of sexuality, gender, beauty, and logic. Her adoption of a sexually ambiguous name, and her androgynous self-portraits display a revolutionary way of thinking and creating, experimenting with her audience’s understanding of photography as a documentation of reality. Her poetry challenged gender roles and attacked the increasingly modern world’s social and economic boundaries. Also Cahun’s participation in the Parisian Surrealist movement diversified the group’s artwork and ushered in new representations. Where most Surrealist artists were men, and their primary images were of women as isolated symbols of eroticism, Cahun epitomized the chameleonic and multiple possibilities of the female identity.

In 1932 she joined the Association des Écrivains et Artistes Révolutionnaires. Following this, she started associating with the surrealist group, and later participated in a number of surrealist exhibitions, including the London International Surrealist Exhibition (New Burlington Gallery) and Exposition surréaliste d’Objets (Charles Ratton Gallery, Paris), both in 1936. In 1934, she published a short polemic essay, Les Paris sont Ouverts, and in 1935 took part in the founding of the left-wing group Contre Attaque.  In 1937 Cahun and Malherbe settled in Jersey. Following the fall of France and the German occupation of Jersey and the other Channel Islands, they became active as resistance workers and propagandists. Fervently against war, the two worked extensively in producing anti-German fliers. Many were snippets from English-to-German translations of BBC reports on the Nazi’s crimes and insolence, which were pasted together to create rhythmic poems and harsh criticism. The couple then dressed up and attended many German military events in Jersey, strategically placing them in soldier’s pockets, on their chairs, etc. Also, fliers were inconspicuously crumpled up and thrown into cars and windows. In many ways, Cahun and Malherbe’s resistance efforts were not only political but artistic actions.

Note:In some areas this role model is listed as a trans male, however, due to the fact that she appeared to go back and forth between multiple genders, we are listing her under Androgyne and Genderfluid. Apologies for any incorrect pronouns, there is no mention of Claude’s preferences.